Posts filed under 'Life'
So, the last two months have been incredibly crazy for me. To say that they haven’t been life changing would, quite simply, be profoundly incorrect. Alas, I wish I could tell you all about it right now, but I can’t. I don’t have the time for it, the chapter in my life isn’t complete yet, the story isn’t yet ready to be told, and quite simply, I don’t want to talk about it all just yet. So what the hell am I writing about?
Well, this! AllisBrawl.com
This has been a project I’ve been working on for the past six months or so. On and off for most of it, but pretty hardcore the last couple months. I’m very proud of my work on it and I think it’s phenomenal. It’s a new site dedicated to Smash Bros., particularly for Smash Bros. Brawl. Quite simply, it is the most full-featured and dedicated site for any one game made completely and entirely by less than a handful of fans.
There is nothing I can say here that can’t be accomplished by simply going to the site and checking it out, so please do so. It is the fruit of a lot of my effort the past few months, and will be the portal of a lot of my other efforts in the coming months. It uses some of the latest and cutting-edge technology available for web developers, and not only was it exciting, but it was fun! The site went live Monday, February 18th, 2008, a day that will go down in infamy. In only a week it has had over 400 unique visitors, and almost 60,000 pageviews. We hope you enjoy this, and look forward to your feedback! Welcome to the new face of Smash fandom.
February 26th, 2008
by Anuj
Smash got delayed. Oh yes oh yes oh yes oh thank you god. Ok, so I’m probably one of probably three people saying this in the world, but I have a lot of reasons to say so. Some of which I can’t say, some of which I don’t want to say, but I’m glad. There are some reasons I can say though. Like one, it was coming out at an inconvenient time. Two, I was going to be out of town and so I would be missing launch. Three, there are other games coming out around the same time that I want to play that I’ll now have time for relatively close to launch. And also, I wanted an excuse to post this video.
I guess I could talk about my trip out of town a bit more. Well, I’ll be going to India for a family wedding. I’d be leaving Friday Night Feb. 25th and returning Sunday Night Feb. 10th. It should be an amazing trip and I’m looking forward to it. To be honest, the time bracket in which it falls couldn’t be more inconvenient, but what are you gonna do. It’s all fun and good stuff. I remember about 6 months ago where for about 3 months straight I had something or another going on every weekend and it was all fun stuff, but I was getting exhausted not being able to just sit down and relax and play some video games. I guess we’ll have something like this going again… but I’ll definitely make time for video games.
January 15th, 2008
by Anuj
I found this great new game that I think everyone would find interest in if they are into this kind of thing. It’s called the simExchange and it’s like play-stock market for gamers… well more specifically for gamers that are interested in the “politics” of games. In essence it tracks NPD data for most games in the current generation on a monthly and a lifetime setting. It also tracks the Metacritic score a game will get.
So in essence you are buying stock in a game and investing in it. You play with play money called DKP where 1DKP = 10,000 sales of a game or 1 Metacritic score. If you think a game will do well, you buy buy buy! If you think it will do worse than it is projected at the moment, you sell sell sell! And like the stock market, it’s all based on “investor” interactions where the current “price” is based on their selling and buying tendencies; take a look at how Super Smash Bros. Brawl is doing right now! Anyway, it is a little complicated, and particularly more complicated than I just described, but it’s very addicting and a lot of fun! It’s something you can spend minutes a day with or hours with, much like the stock market! I recommend you all at least check it out. Also when you do create an account, feel free to friend me: AnujSuper9.
December 7th, 2007
by Anuj
Alas I make this post because the video told me to… and of course it’s an interesting and amusing video/song. Also, it’s certainly not as easy as the video makes it sound… I think everyone with some kind of website has hopes and ideas of being able to do something like that with it, but I think it requires things from you as the developer, sacrifices that aren’t seen on the surface of the simplicity that make it questionable if it’s worth it or not. Ah ‘get rich quick,’ always easy on paper… even easier in your head.
Oh and a snippet of my opinion, myspace sucks, facebook is pretty awesome.
December 6th, 2007
by Anuj
So last night I noticed a dashboard update to the Xbox360 dashboard, which I thought was mostly pretty cool! Most of the changes seemed kinda pointless, but it did add efficiency and I’m always a fan of efficiency.
I guess they also took this time to unveil the new and highly talked about feature, which would be the “Xbox Originals,” which seems to be the ability to pay $15 for classic favorites on the Xbox and then be able to emulate their play from your hard drive instead of from your disk. If you ask me, this is a ripoff… you could find most of these games on shelves for under $15 bucks anyways, and you get no added features or support by downloading it, no 360 menus or dashboard options, no achievements, no content addtions or things via the 360Live system, not really anything new. I don’t really expect a whole new game with features that didn’t exist when the game was first released, but I expect some reason to pay for this.
Also, comparisons to the Wii VC are undeniable, but I think the comparison would be more fitting if you saw GameCube games on the VC for $15, and furthermore, it seems to me that Wii VC titles are a lot harder to come by, the prices are much more reasonable, and you’d actually have to connect another console to your TV to play these games, which, depending on the game, is reason enough (IMO).
Oh hey also, I got the Psychonauts theme which was awesome, and that’s probably the coolest thing about the new Xbox Originals update is that they are giving away themes for those things free instead of charging the dollar or two they normally might to especially rip you off. I’m sure it won’t be long before they add price tags to those things. But anyway, I did get the Psychonauts theme because Psychonauts is awesome. You can see it in the pictures I took with my cell phone above. But hey, you know what’s also weird, for some reason I’m getting my messages from other people in Spanish!
December 5th, 2007
by Anuj
So, this post is entitles, Super Mario Happiness. Well, why is this? Well, I found it fitting on many levels. First, there is the “URMRGAY” amusing coincidence discovered about the letters that appear to have sparkles on them. Second, and by far most importantly, is the fact that, well playing Super Mario games just plain makes me happy, be it Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, and no less, Super Mario Galaxy.
So, needless to say, I love this game. I did in fact play this game almost non-stop for the past two days (since it’s release), and I have in fact “beaten” the game (by which I mean, beaten the game first pass, which refers to the fact that I’ve beaten the game sans 100% completion… on which I’d like to add that I plan on doing it second pass later in the evening tonight.) The thoughts and opinions I am about to share came with much thought and insight, as such.
First of all, I love this game. It’s brilliant and it’s fantastic. So much platforming goodness. It takes me so far back, the feeling is so SM64. It feels so old school. There’s no stress about collecting this or collecting that, completing this objective, not screwing up this side-quest, blah blah blah, or anything like that, it’s all carefree and fun. It’s genuinely fun, at that; not like one of those things where you’re having fun going for a reward and a goal, and collecting the reward is fun despite the path their being riddled with bits of tediousness and the like, no you’re playing it for the pure joy and goal of playing it. It feels like SM64 in that the star is simply a hint at what you could try to do that might be a lot of fun.I love the new mechanics, the new gameplay, the visuals, the music, the powers, the level design, both aesthetically and functionally, the *snicker* voice acting, I love it all, and I love playing it on the Wii and with the Wiimote and Nunchuck. I feel it’s exactly what a Mario game should be. There were moments where I was surprised by what I was playing, where I for a fleeting moment thought that I was getting something below what I expected, but I found that they instead gave me what I wanted knowing more what would please me than I myself knew.
I’ve heard a lot of early critiquing for the game, such as the game being far too easy, well, I disagree with that notion. I think it’s the perfect level of dificulty: it starts out easy, gets more challenging, presents optional challenges for people not up to the task, and especially difficult ones for renown experts. Though, I rarely find a problem with difficulty in a game, or lack thereof… I know I’m pretty good at games, so expecting games created to give me a hard time would, in my opinion, be a game made far too difficult. Also I’d like to add, sure I could be one of the people boasting about only dying a handful of times throughout my entire adventure, but I’d be exaggerating for one, and two, the difficulty in most adventure games today can rarely be quantified by the number of times you were killed.
I’ve also heard some comparisons on the process of shaking the Wiimote to accomplish the spin when a button press could accomplish the same task just as easily. Well, after much thought, I think I prefer the waggling. It truly sends across the meaning of what you are doing in exerting the extra energy on your behalf to get that perfectly times spin and such. If it was just a button press, the action wouldn’t feel as significant, that little bit of energy that you have to yourself exert really truly makes the action feel so much smoother and better. And also, it really moves us into the new generation of timing movements of our body appendages along with movement of our thumbs/fingers/eyes/etc.My only “complaint,” which isn’t really much of a complaint, is that each “galaxy” has the luxury or being like a small level just connected with the launcher stars, so you don’t get to have those well designed large scale levels that you’d see in SM64. I mean, SMG has it’s own unique brilliant level design for sure, and it’s very impressive, and it’s at least as impressive, but I think it’s probably more challenging to do levels like you would see in SM64 than what you mostly see in SMG, which is the only downside to that thought.
Alas, I have not 100%’d this game yet, and believe me I will FOR SURE, but right now where I am with this game I will say this. I love this game, a lot, it is purely brilliant. It has some small flaws here and there that really make me wish for a teeny bit more. But anyway, this game is AMAZING, but it is not as good as SM64. Close, but not quite. Though it is the true sequel to that game in every way shape and form, and it is indeed SM64 reborn. To be honest, it’s almost everything I could hope for.
So, to describe a little bit of what I’m talking about, about doing more: I wish that you had to “earn” powers similar to how you would in SM64, which caused the powers to be unlocked all over the world. By this, new possibilities and areas would be opened in almost every world, giving you all sorts of amusing and interactive experiences. Also, as fun as the comets are, I wish instead that they were, “comet-stars” or something, and you could get one of each type on every level in the games, so like, 4 comet-stars per star basically. Sure, it’d be really hard, but it’d be for the uber-hardcore. And then instead of these stars-from-comets-stages, they had instead put in another 2 challenges on each level for stars, which surely they could have done. Though I must say, I’m glad the 100-yellow-coin challenges are gone. I never liked those.
Anyway, if I were to give this game a score, and though I choose not to do so, I would easily feel no regret about giving it a 10/10, but I feel a 9.5 is the score it deserves (hell, it’d be 9.9 if I believed in going by 0.1 increments)… which really makes me want to re-think the scores I’ve given other games in my mind. Honestly, it breaks my heart that this game has those shortcomings, because it really is so close to the perfect game, and having those extra little bit of tid-bits to make it that 10 really would have been a brilliant game to play, over and over again. Haha, I’ll be playing this one over and over for years to come anyway though. 
November 16th, 2007
by Anuj
Halo. I mean, you gotta be living under some kind of rock to not have heard of Halo. I mean, it really means something special when you as something of a hardcore gamer get messages from friends you haven’t spoken to in ages speaking random cryptic messages about a game that has yet to be released, yet to be played by more than a small finite percentage of the target audience. It’s really something when a game can impact our community in this way while still being positive, creating excitement and hype and happiness in something to look forward to, something of a global phenomena.
[pwning your mom’s face]
I personally enjoy Halo. I think it is a good game, it is fun, and it’s a game that provides a decent story, decent universe, decent characters, and really an amazing sandbox in which to enjoy an FPS. To say it is anything more is in my opinion something of a fallacy. As a game, I feel it is inferior to many that don’t get nearly the praise that it gets, and the praise that it gets is sometimes far greater than it deserves. However, when it comes to Halo, you can’t ignore the meta-game. I mean, there is no other game that really has and will have the player volume that Halo will have… and I don’t just mean good competition, I mean bad competition too. Players of all skill levels and of varying interests, hardcore players, casual players, friends, hell, family.
New Halo 3 "Being Hunted" TV Commerical Believe
I can’t help but give props to the incredible marketing campaign that has followed Halo since nearly the beginning and honestly I love people of all creative backgrounds being able to get into something that I’m interested in, just as much as me. I’m not one of the ‘haters’ of ‘posers’ or anything of the like. It’s all just a whole lot of negativity that I’m not interested in anymore. I look forward to Halo very much at the moment. Perhaps I may not enjoy it as much as most people out there but I think I will have plenty of fun with it. I saw this video online and it’s simply amazing.
Halo: The Future of Gaming
As a single-player/co-op game I don’t have high expectations (though I intend to play it co-op and not at all single-player like all of the other Halos) because the story and characters are just something I didn’t get into too much. I enjoy some of the rather static aspects of the characters and can appreciate some of the design for things that may not have been intended or were created in a juvenile mindset to still create something somewhat unique. I’ve heard that the games, when combined with a whole helluva lot of reading yields into quite an interesting story, and so I hope one day to have the interest in reading it, but in the meanwhile, I find then that it’s just such a shame that the games do such a poor job of it. But hey, it’s a game anyway right? Most people don’t even care about the story… it’ll be the ending that matters to anyone.
As a multi-player game, I have the same expectations I’ve always had with Halo. New weapons, new toys, new modes, new blah blah blah, and it’ll be a blast for me and my cohorts I play with for a good solid month probably. Then it’ll be fun off and on here and there for a while, and then I’ll stop and be done playing it for the most part. The dynamic environment of the game will be interesting though, much like Halo 2. When I played Halo 2 around launch-time, I found myself seriously just kicking ass. I would actually own fights and win left and right. About a year later when I played again, oh man, I just got my ass handed to me. There were still times when the game was fun, but no matter where I went really, it was just self-inflicted chaos really. Was it fun at that point… well I was playing with a friend and we were doing random stuff so I was having fun, but on the same note, being just easy prey wasn’t really fun either. But the point is that a game that can give and create an environment in which you can experience something like that in addition to a normal level of content can’t be ignored.
Anyhoo, as I said, I look forward to Halo 3 and I think I will enjoy it. When all is said and done it will probably leave a taste of being just slightly below satisfying I’m betting, because of major flaws here and there, but I think most of those will be caused by losing focus of the bigger scope of the game and really how difficult it is to do some of the things that Halo does so well not wasting time on some of the less significant points of the game that somewhat have become so important when considering the surface-value of the game. Anyway, more thoughts when the game is out and I actually play it. Also, I think the pricing plan of the “game(s)” is bullshit.
September 24th, 2007
by Anuj
What is the meaning of War? It’s rather cliche to begin a piece of writing by asking the definition of the topic for which the piece is being written, but I really cannot think of any better way to begin this piece.
[war-nado]
A look at a dictionary yielded an indredibly long list of definitions, a revelation that is somewhat depressing to think about… a fact that a word so negative can mean so many things and be used in so many contexts. The definition of ‘war’ in the sense I find it most fitting and appropriate, and the meaning which I find true to define any kind of war would be simply, “conflict that leads to struggle.” You won’t find this definition in so many words anywhere, but it is something of an amalgamation of most of the other meanings I found, and it represents best what I have in mind.
What leads me to this somewhat depressing and strangely repetitious chapter of humanity? Well a lot of things that have been going on lately that have led me to many interesting thoughts and I think it was just time I felt like making a post about it. The topic that more specifically led to my study of the semantics involved with said topic was a few of the more heated debates I find on gaming forums and even our very own forum, that being the everlasting console war. The console war is honestly a topic I and few others really care about, but then why does it yet find such a strange place in all of our minds? It’s a topic that I feel most of us believe truly pointless, but then why does it still incessently continue?
Console War. I think it’s aptly named that. As far as I know it hasn’t broken out into actual physical struggle or such, but isn’t that simply the next logical progression? I feel uncomfortable talking about War in general, especially that on a political level because I hardly consider myself as knowledgable on the topic as I feel I would need to be to qualify making claims on the topic, but then it occurs to me that when you consider the fact that it always boils down to conflict that leads to struggle, there really shouldn’t be much that one would need to know in order to speak on it. All war is relatively pointless when you consider it as a struggle that began from conflict. Is it so difficult to resolve a conflict without some kind of struggle? But then, it is the virtue of humanity to be able to have conflict and conflict is unavoidable, nor is a lack of conflict desirable. Conflict is what leads to the betterment of something, an aim to please higher than what is already there, and so we should embrace conflict, but embrace it as means of finding resolve and nothing else.
The console war (like all wars really), is a subject matter somewhat trivial, and certainly not something worth going into physical resolve about, but is it really a fire we should be feeding? Most people are capable of dismissing the conflict, but yet we find such amusement in continuing its discussion as well as creating feeding grounds from which it can spawn more followers and grow ever larger. I speak in part of most of the gaming internet, but more specifically the website that brought this idea to my mind. I was introduced to this site by Penny Arcade when they made a mockery of the site that is clearly a joke. Anyone can go there and see that it’s clearly meant to be condescending and amusing, but at the same time, too many people take it seriously and join forces or forge to fight against it. I think Penny Arcade approaches it well by simply making fun of it since I feel confident to say that that is entirely the purpose the site serves, but conversely, they must be aware they continually feul the fire. Though, I find it thoroughly impossible to not be amused and impressed by some of the things that spawn as a result of the console war.
But on the other hand isn’t that what the competition or the war is there for? And I mean, is acknowledging current preferences biased? And hell, is bias even wrong? I think the answer to both questions is no, the problem though is that far too often people’s actions make them both out to be yes. Anyhoo, like all Wars, I am interested to see how it will all resolve but it is something I wish not to contribute to or feed into. I’m not interested in sales, or numbers or anything, it’s really all about the games and I easily forsee myself needing at least all three consoles to play some of the awesome console exclusives. The real question is where and how I’ll actually manage to find the time/money to play all of these things…
August 19th, 2007
by Anuj
Now, I could be like every other asshole on the internet and just post craploads of videos of Super Paper Mario to depict how excited I am for this game, but I think I will choose not to. You’re not a dumbass… you know where to go when you want to find videos. I mean, ok, so you’re lazy, and it’d just be way easier if all you had to do was click on a big Play button in the middle of this article, but I’d hope you already had an idea about what you were getting into that it would be a somewhat moot point for me to post a video here. Also, I think that the game is so near release (Tuesday, I believe is the release day), that it’d be a travesty to spoil and thusly partialy ruin what you’ll be getting into, hopefully oh-so soon.
[more mario origami action!]
Anyway, so as I’ve already mentioned, I am excited for Super Paper Mario, and I thought I’d write about it here. Outside of the obvious reasons for anticipating this title such as series fandom, Wii goodness, and all around classic franchise fun (more on these soon), I also have many traditional and unorthodox reasons for anticipating this game itself including the look, the redifining and replaying of classic and not-so-classic gameplay, and all around poking fun at the social standard of 2D gaming we’ve all lived and loved and grown up with.
Ok, so first I’ll start with the obvious reasons:
Roots
I love Paper Mario, and I always have. Of course this all started where it may have for many of us, which would be Super Mario RPG. Though the Paper Mario direction was a drastic change in the make of the Mario RPG world, it was a continuation of it in a way, and for that I was happy. Although this created quite a divide in gamers from loving Mario RPG and hating Paper Mario for not being a Mario RPG 2, I personally never found much justification to that logic. Just because it ain’t broke doesn’t mean that you can’t try to fix it. Now, people may have been turned away by other reasons such as non-traditional combat mechanics, or the look (which was definitely ahead of its time), or some other bogus reason I myself can’t put to words, which is at least a little bit understandable because while I may not have agreed with them, at least they were legitimate reasons.
I also deeply enjoy the Mario & Luigi series on the GBA and the DS, but I think by now that those games, despite their Mario and RPG connections to Paper Mario and Mario RPG, the series is an entirely different endevour. The only reason Mario RPG and Paper Mario are at all connected anymore is because of expectations people had from the original Paper Mario… and here’s still hoping for a true Super Mario RPG 2. 
Anyway, so I loved Mario RPG, I loved Paper Mario, and I loved Paper Mario “2“, so I am obviously a fan, and any incarnations of its future, no matter how drastically different, will appeal to me.
The Look
Ok, so I mentioned earlier how the look may have turned some people off, and while the look wasn’t a point of decision for me starting out, as in, I didn’t particularly like or dislike the look, now for me certainly isn’t the case. Though on the N64, this was a clever means of creating a bright colorful vibrant world without fear of overburdening processors or having poor visuals and such, the style flourished incredibly with the release of PM2, a leap I see of significant proportions with SPM as well; while the paper-y look of PM2 was amazing, to say that they concept was used to its full potential would just be …stupid.
The Wii
Ok, now this is a weird reason, but I think most of you might know what I mean. Well, there are two meanings really. One, I enjoy playing games on the Wii; the new control medium and such is something I so truly enjoy and am so desperately hungering for more gaming goodness to pass away the time, especially something with a bit more depth and continuity. Which leads to my second reason, in that, there isn’t actually much else to play. I don’t mean that as a complaint because I think the launch window is doing fantastically as far as games go, but at the same time, while most of the games have that “hey it’s on the Wii and the Wii controls are a lot of fun so this game is at least a little worth playing”-ness to it, at the same time, outside of Zelda and maybe WarioWare, nothing is die-hard must-have until now this.
And now the less obvious reasons:
Apprehensions
So despite everything I just listed, I wasn’t always without my doubts. Though I love Paper Mario, and enjoy the look and such, the game was originally slated as a GameCube title, and the stuff shown at E3 ‘06 was although cool, a little less than impressive. To me at the time, it looked like a 2D with the Paper Mario skin on top. Now though, while I think Nintendo not really initially revealing the “third” dimension was definitely a good thing, at the time, I had no idea what to expect with it. The game still looked like it would be fun, and something I would be willing to be head-strong on and buy without doubts of quality, but I was still worried that it was just a half-assed game. At the time, I would have much rather had a new Paper Mario RPG but I realize now that thoughts like that one and the same as thoughts of Mario RPG versus Paper Mario.
2D vs. 3D
Now this definitely is the bang of this game. While in PM2 they added the simple ability to travel in the depth of the 2D space, in this game, they literally turn that on its side. Har har, that was terrible. Anyway, I saw the first few levels of this game being played, and each and every level not only looked fun and fantastic, it appeared that each level in the game had such unique puzzles and designes and themes, that it appeared to have the level of depth to the level design as New Super Mario Bros. for the DS, except, moved from not only 2D, but to 3D as well. And then, this combined with the fact that I love 2D games in general, I still love them now, and despite my true undying love for the third dimension, the 2D can never end.
Which is where this game comes in. Bridging the gap between 2D and 3D and destroying norms we’ve lived by in game and level design, all while being fully aware of it and making amusing fun of it at the same time is something that should appeal to every gamer… well, at least any gamer that started playing games before it was “cool.” I saw people tire away at puzzles for a few minutes before realizing that they could turn the world to its side and see the solution as clear as day, but in 2D see nothing. Watching the realization of what the game designers and developers intended is something that I was truly happy to be able to appreciate, and I will be even more greatful when I am able to play it.
I think I’m not the only one out there that shares these sentiments and similarly anticipates SPM, and I don’t also believe that I’m the only one that this release kind of snuck up on. While I was always looking forward to it and keeping it in the back of my mind, in the wake of Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Corruption, and SMASH BROS., it’s not hard to see a title like this vanish. Seeing it at GDC was a blessing because when I heard that it would be out only weeks later, I was so relieved. I don’t think I would have been able to easily wait for this one. (Also, I’ve been very busy. :P)
April 8th, 2007
by Anuj
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.
April 1st, 2007
by Anuj
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