The Ballad of the April Fool
Now, I’m not one to normally fall prank to April Fool’s Jokes but one of them got me pretty good this year. Namely, this year’s STARMAN.NAT (the name I’ve given to the prank pulled by the guys at starmen.net). For those few of you that may not know who starmen.net is, they are a group of individuals who, years ago, started a fan-site for the wonderful game of Earthbound. Starmen.net became the first and largest house of petitions for the release of Earthbound 2 or Earthbound 64 or however it was to be known; essentially, the petition to bring us the sequel to Earthbound.
[more April Fool’s Day goodness]
Over time, their fandom rose to the ranks of being more than just an Earthbound fan-site, but a bastion in which all under-appreciated fans of games could harbor, more specifially, fans of Nintendo games. After this transition, when more fan-sites for other games that were once popularly represented by starmen.net began to rise, I think their focus towards Earthbound and Earthbound related games rose more. At which point there was also a lot more specific Earthbound content to focus on such as Earthbound, Mother 1+2, Mother 3, and Earthbound’s influence on other popular games such as Smash Bros. Now, they are easily one of the biggest unofficial fan-sites out there, period, let alone one of the biggest Video Game fansites, Nintendo fansites, and Earthbound fansites.
So, needless to say, I love starmen.net; I love their independent drive, their humor and their comprehensive collection of information, including works to translate the recently released (and fantastic) Mother 3. So upon seeing this news on the website’s homepage, my thoughts instantly went to a murderous rage! I’m thinking, WTF Nintendo? What is this crap? These fan-sites that fuel undying love and dedication for your company, being killed by the source!? I said to a friend of mine linking me to the event, that this truly would have to be a first, and an incredibly foolish thing to do. We both were outraged by such behavior, and also wondered what the fate would be of other popular Nintendo fan-sites such as one of our favorites, smashboards.com.
It wasn’t till about 15-20 minutes later that it occurred to me what I told myself early this day: April Fool’s Day, making the internet fun again. Of course! It was an April Fool’s Joke! Duh! How could I be so easily fooled! To be honest, I was relieved. A bit embarrassed and such, but regardless, I was relieved that starmen.net would not suffer, and that I wouldn’t have to take upon the burden of having self-conflict relating to the interests of Nintendo versus the interests of myself. Regardless though, having been fooled as I was, I decided that I wanted to write a bit about this occurrence as a means to depict how important starmen.net is not only because of the website itself, but because of what it stands for.
Also, I wanted to take a bit of time to write about some of my favorite Video Game April Fool’s Day jokes… well, maybe not the best jokes, but definitely some of the most memorable ones.
Goldeneye “All Bonds” Cheat
This cheat claimed to unlock models of all of the different Bonds, including Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, in addition to Pierce Brosnan. What was fun about this farce was that it turned out to be true! Rare wasn’t able to put them into the game due to licensing issues, but using a GameShark, they could be “unlocked!”
Conker’s Inappropriate Tales
I was one of the few people looking forward to Conker back before it was Conker’s Bad Fur Day and was instead Twelve Tales of Conker. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the change, CBFD was fantastic and probably better than TToC would have been, but when I saw this news in the EGM, I thought it had to be the April Fool’s Joke for the issue. The reason this was funny and memorable was because it wasn’t! It was true; the joke was that Intellivision was making a comeback!
DOAX Nude Code
Now, I didn’t fall for this one, but if I recall correctly, one of my good friends did. In the April 2003 issue of EGM, there was a rumor about a code in DOAX that would allow the characters in DOAX to be topless. The rumor stated that if one was to complete adventure mode or whatever in less than 13 minutes or something, then the “god hand mode” would be unlocked, which would allow the girls in the game to be topless. This was something my friend proved to be false, haha, which for me, was just incredibly amusing!
Realistic Wind Waker
I heard about this before I knew it stemmed from EGM. A friend of mine messages me and says that they are giving away a realistic Wind Waker for preordering “The new realistic Zelda.” I said it couldn’t be true, it didn’t make any sense. I remember arguing for about 10-15 minutes with my friend before he realized that it was the April issue of EGM.
Sonic and Tails in Smash Bros. Melee
Now this is the one that really got me good. The farce claimed that upon slaying 20 people in Cruel Melee, you would face against Sonic and Tails, two unlockables in Melee! I was glued to Smash (more than I already am) trying to get those 20 Cruel KOs. I managed to get approximately 10 with Jigglypuff when I decided that it was impossible, after which I started finding out that it was a joke. I laughed at myself for spending hours trying to get 20 KOs. I later discovered that it’s actually quite possible to get hundreds and thousands of KOs but I wasn’t going to be the one to do it. What none of you actually know is, that the secret is true. I actually unlocked Sonic and Tails in my copy of Smash Melee. Hehe. >:D
It occurs to me now that all of these are EGM April Fool’s Jokes, including one of my new favorites, the Mushroom Kingdom Hearts one mentioned in the previous article, but alas, kudos EGM on your awesome April Fool’s Jokes.
Add comment April 1st, 2007 by Anuj
