PixlBit

I don't really think too much about April Fools Day any more. In many recent years, it's come and gone without me even realizing it. I suppose that's a good thing, as though I miss out on the "fun," I also miss the annoyance. And hell, Adult Swim playing a hilariously censored version of The Room isn't much of a trick, since after we both watched the Nostalgia Critic review of it I showed him, my friend Austin actually asked me to watch it with him on April Fool's Day; and it wasn't a trick, it was just as gloriously bad as I thought it would be, which made it great. Still, there's a certain something I miss about being so duped I had to slow clap for a job well done. From my memory, there's only two times this happened, and they were the doing of Electronic Gaming Monthly.

First is one where I really should have known better, but I really wanted it to be true. Made me feel really gullible, but oh well, I was fifteen and had a very limited understanding of the time it took to render graphics and such.

Well played, you assholes. Or should I say "really, jackass?" to myself?

It's painful to know that at the age of fifteen my understanding of how much time, effort, and money it takes to completely redo a graphical style for a game was so limited I actually thought Nintendo would seriously offer this completely revamped, realistic graphics style version of Wind Waker as just a pre-order pack-in for Twilight Princess, especially considering it had only  been released in North America about two years earlier than its then-projected release date in November 2005 (it actually ended up being 2006; Wind Waker came out for North Americans March 24, 2003). Granted, it didn't fool me for long, as though I went to a rather close by Gamestop to ask about the pre-order details (I can technically walk to it, its location hasn't changed from then to now), whenever the clerk told me he hadn't heard anything like that, I went back home to check my copy of EGM and its month (I think I received it in the mail early or late; can't remember, but I do know the time I got them didn't necessarily reflect what month it actually was), and I didn't so much slow clap as I said to myself "dammit, I should have known better."

That reaction was quite fitting really, as it's the same one I have to most Zelda puzzles once I figure them out.

Of course, I think in that case, it was more just my wishful thinking, as I figured "hey, I got a disc with Ocarina and Master Quest from my Wind Waker preorder, maybe they can redo graphics like they redid puzzles for that one." A teenage boy could dream...

Then there's the Zelda puzzles I figure out immediately, as IGN's attempt was akin to.

That said, credit where credit is due: for an April Fool's joke, this is pretty elaborate, and the windmill enemies whose name I forget actually look pretty good, despite that I can tell they're CGI rather easily; of course, that's probably the best the CGI gets in this, and it was 2009. CGI is still improving, but for as big a budget as a Zelda film would have if they actually went through with it, it would look a bit better, and it wouldn't be so obvious there was a green screen behind Ganon at 1:54 and behind ... whoever that chick is at 2:05, it's been a while,  Ganon's make-up wouldn't look so cheesy, and most damning of all, I really doubt none of the actual game's music would be used, and IGN's name would be in the credits with no mention of Nintendo. At the time, I really appreciated what they did with the trailer, and hell, I still do, but it wasn't convincing past the first few frames. Also, no offense to the guy playing Link, I'm no looker myself, but Orlando Bloom, who most anyone at the height of the LotR movie's popularity said would be a shoe-in for the character after seeing him as Legolas, he is not. Zelda looks very attractive, though. Actually, while it wouldn't match with the illustrations, I kind of like that they did that princess and the stable boy thing in their casting, but I digress.

So an awesome effort considering it was merely an April Fool, but not really convincing ... to me. Hearing one of the guys I was going to school with at the time (I was eighteen, and a senior in high school when the trailer came out April 1, 2008) go on and on about how they really were making the movie even after April 1 made me feel a lot better about being duped with that EGM Zelda fool. Good to know I'm not the only gullible person in the world.

But that doesn't make me feel better about the one I remember most, the one that even EGM felt bad about when people were duped for months, and if I didn't slow clap out of respect, I should have:

While they became playable in Brawl, they weren't yet in Melee, but EGM sure got a lot of people, myself included, by telling us Sonic and Tails were unlockable if you KO'd twenty characters in Cruel Melee mode. The genius of this was that request didn't really seem all that much more ridiculous than some of the things Melee had you do to earn trophies, and Sonic was already coming to Nintendo platforms at the time; hell, EGM later let fans submit videos of the twenty KO achievement to them in exchange for a copy of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle on Gamecube.

Of course, EGM's best ones always seem to be fighting games, considering possibly their best know April Fool was the Sheng Long one for Street Fighter they published in 1992.

I actually took that image from the Wikipedia article on EGM's April Fools, if you want to read it.

Anyone remember when they were gotten really good?

Here's some Rick Astley to play us out. 

Just in case you don't know what that means.