A Fool's Paradise

Call me childish, but I love April Fool's day. I can never come up with a great prank or joke, and I can even be fooled quite easily from time to time, but I love it all the same just because of how ridiculous and creative people get, especially on the internet, where the troll is king on a day like today. In past years, companies like Google go the extra mile and actually integrate their pranks into their search engine and other sites like Youtube. Gamers should also be familiar with the annual practices of Blizzard Entertainment and several other game companies too.

In summary, here are my favorite three examples of this year's April Fool's Day on the internet:

3. Google Maps

Among Google's several annual jokes, the one that impressed me the most was their Google Maps announcement...for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Not only is that hilarious, but the 8-bit models and sprites they use on their maps and the logo parody an incredibly popular game series called Dragon Quest, and that is just awesome.

The maps worked just like normal too, complete with zooming and drag-able map, but what impressed me the most was the maps would still be relatively accurate when you zoomed in right down to lakes and landmarks, all while keeping the 8-bit graphics and sprites. A gamer can appreciate this kind of humor and I love that such a large company can throw in an appeal like this that speaks to multiple audiences. If you want to check it out before it's gone, go over to maps.google.com and click the "Quest" icon in the upper right corner of the map.

2. Blizzard Kidzz

Call me biased, but Blizzard does come up with wonderful April Fool's jokes every year for their fans. This year, one of their several pranks was an introduction to their planned line of "Kidzz" educational games. Their new series included titles ranging from "Where in Sanctuary is Deckard Cain?" to "Zergling Teaches Typing" seen above.

Just from the video you can see how funny it is just from how bad of a game this would be. Being a gamer, it's commonly humorous to see popular developers make cracks like this, especially when it's about their own material. All of their "Kidzz" games can be found over on their preview page.

1. Adult Swim

If you were a kid through the 90's, just from looking at the above video preview, you most likely know why I loved this year's prank from Adult Swim. For the past few years, they had been showing the movie The Room instead of their regularly scheduled programming, but this year, they surprised their entire fanbase by resurrecting Toonami, a block of shows that died off in the last decade that many old Cartoon Network fans remember fondly. It took a few hours to pick my jaw up off the ground after it started, and they even had new transitions and a game review of a recent game!

All through the night they played episodes of the most popular shows that were ever on Toonami, and holy shit was it a nostalgia trip. If they have the ability to do this, then just think about the possibilities. Toonami being revived and coming back for good? I sure hope so.