When you’re gunning for a new job and get turned down, some companies don’t bother telling you what went wrong, leaving you to seek your own path to the self-improvement that will lead to success with either a second try or a different role. Microsoft is not one of those companies. When Stefano Tenuta got turned down for a role with the longstanding software giant, they told him quite plainly that his issue was a lack of passion. He felt that they were wrong, and thought of how to prove it. The solution he came up with was a functioning, unofficial port of Pokemon GO to Microsoft’s Unified Windows Platform, allowing the game to run on Windows 10 devices of all spades, from powerful gaming desktops to Nokia Lumia units with hacked-together Windows 10 Mobile ports.
The app, called PoGo-UWP, is an open-source Pokemon GO client that connects to Niantic’s official servers. While rudimentary and missing a number of features, the game works in a very similar manner to the official app, and uses a special API to make Niantic’s servers think that the player’s device is actually an iPhone, significantly lowering the risk of the app getting your account banned. It is, however, still a possibility. The app is up on GitHub for anybody to compile, fork from, or even port to other compatible platforms.
The app had its initial release back near the end of July, and has been shaping up in leaps and bounds since then. Upon its release, Tenuta said that he was so inundated with requests and bug reports that he wound up working about 72 straight hours to get everything in line and put in some heavily requested basic features. The latest version up on GitHub, version 1.0.29, fixes a number of bugs and adds in a few features like hatching and level up notifications, the Pokedex, and an item inventory. It’s far from perfect, but with a petition to port Pokemon GO to Windows 10 Mobile officially struggling to hit 100,000 signatures at the moment, it’s likely all that Windows phone owners will get. Further updates are planned in the future, and with the project being open-source, different versions from different deve