[Myth Bustin'] April Fools 2009

darleysam

I still say they need to release a wrongly-titled Never Gonna Give You Up, for free.

cloudeagle

Lunker wrote: »

Henroid wrote: »

cloudeagle wrote: »

And so it begins.

Rock Band is getting three songs from SpongeBob Squarepants as DLC next week. Given the timing, I'd say it counts.

I would consider it a serious announcement if it was going to Guitar Hero as DLC.

Edit - I stereotype people terribly.

The thing with Rock Band is that I think the songs will actually be released. The prank isn't the announcement—it's the goofiness of actually releasing the songs. For reference, they released Still Alive on last year's April Fools Day.

Oh, of course! Nowadays April Fools isn't just about pranking with fake stuff, it's also about being goofy with real stuff.

Zerokku

darleysam wrote: »

I still say they need to release a wrongly-titled Never Gonna Give You Up, for free.

That would be amazing.

darleysam

cloudeagle wrote: »

Lunker wrote: »

Henroid wrote: »

cloudeagle wrote: »

And so it begins.

Rock Band is getting three songs from SpongeBob Squarepants as DLC next week. Given the timing, I'd say it counts.

I would consider it a serious announcement if it was going to Guitar Hero as DLC.

Edit - I stereotype people terribly.

The thing with Rock Band is that I think the songs will actually be released. The prank isn't the announcement—it's the goofiness of actually releasing the songs. For reference, they released Still Alive on last year's April Fools Day.

Oh, of course! Nowadays April Fools isn't just about pranking with fake stuff, it's also about being goofy with real stuff.

Which is a better strategy. It's boring as hell for me just reading a bunch of "Half-Life 3 will be out in June featuring an entirely new protagonist and a wise-cracking pie for a sidekick!".

Oh my, how absurd.

Rock Band being announced on April 1st was brilliant.

cloudeagle

Yeah, crap like "you can unlock Sonic the Hedgehog in Mario Galaxy lolz" doesn't really do it for me. Use some creativity, dammit!

Zerokku

I remember last year blizzard used a script for their wow forums where random words were replaced with shorthand/netspeak, so this would turn into dis, and punctuation would always turn into lolz.


Didn't seem to much different then normal tbh

UncleSporky

JihadJesus wrote: »

Henroid wrote: »

Steampunk Zelda... bah. Why not just get Frank Miller to take over the writing of classic Nintendo series?

That phrase 'take over' indicates that Nintendo is currently employing a writer for their classic IPs. I'm sorry, but a monkey flinging his feces at the wall is not an employee. As a writer he's still preferable to whoever handles the Zelda storyline as he's demonstrated with his work on the Prime titles, but I doubt he's drawing a paycheck.

This standpoint implies you have never played a Mario RPG.

cloudeagle

Actually, that would be hilarious for RP servers.

"Verily, we must rid the earth of these accursed Horde lolz
....dammit!"

Tasteticle

The two I fell the hardest for when I was a dumb kid:

1) Mew being under the truck in pokemon red/blue
2) How to unlock Luigi in Mario 64.

Oh god I tried so many times to get those

MrDelish

cloudeagle wrote: »

Actually, that would be hilarious for RP servers.

"Verily lolz we must rid the earth of these accursed Horde lolz
....dammit!"

commas count, too, you know

Zerokku

MrDelish wrote: »

cloudeagle wrote: »

Actually, that would be hilarious for RP servers.

"Verily lolz we must rid the earth of these accursed Horde lolz
....dammit!"

commas count, too, you know

Would probably take a fair bit more work to get that kind of script running ingame. Then again they have scripts to slur what youve typed when your character is drunk so I guess it could be possible.

UncleSporky

Tasteticle wrote: »

1) Mew being under the tuck in pokemon red/blue

You mean truck, but yes, I remember that. I was always skeptical, plus if I remember right I figured out that the common set of instructions made it impossible; you needed to have cut before you were able to get it, or something.

However there really is a way to get Mew in original R/B without hacking. It has something to do with letting a trainer see you and pausing/flying away before he can walk over to you. The game draws encounter data from the wrong place and you can meet and capture Mew. This method never became really prevalent though because it was discovered years later.

AshtonDragon

UncleSporky wrote: »

Tasteticle wrote: »

1) Mew being under the tuck in pokemon red/blue

You mean truck, but yes, I remember that. I was always skeptical, plus if I remember right I figured out that the common set of instructions made it impossible; you needed to have cut before you were able to get it, or something.

Yeah but you could just trade for a pokemon that had Cut.

This rumor fooled a lot of people.

Xenogears of Bore

AshtonDragon wrote: »

UncleSporky wrote: »

Tasteticle wrote: »

1) Mew being under the tuck in pokemon red/blue

You mean truck, but yes, I remember that. I was always skeptical, plus if I remember right I figured out that the common set of instructions made it impossible; you needed to have cut before you were able to get it, or something.

Yeah but you could just trade for a pokemon that had Cut.

This rumor fooled a lot of people.

The Mew trick is cool.

The Celebii Egg trick in GSC is CRAZY, involving 2 Sneasels, five sacrifical pokemon, and a malformed clone. It's like an obscure Yu-Gi-Oh card!

Based on the same ideas though, tricking the game into putting the pokemons reference number in a place that it doesn't belong.

Zerokku

UncleSporky wrote: »

Tasteticle wrote: »

1) Mew being under the tuck in pokemon red/blue

You mean truck, but yes, I remember that. I was always skeptical, plus if I remember right I figured out that the common set of instructions made it impossible; you needed to have cut before you were able to get it, or something.

However there really is a way to get Mew in original R/B without hacking. It has something to do with letting a trainer see you and pausing/flying away before he can walk over to you. The game draws encounter data from the wrong place and you can meet and capture Mew. This method never became really prevalent though because it was discovered years later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkF7Xjxn9jc

UncleSporky

AshtonDragon wrote: »

UncleSporky wrote: »

Tasteticle wrote: »

1) Mew being under the tuck in pokemon red/blue

You mean truck, but yes, I remember that. I was always skeptical, plus if I remember right I figured out that the common set of instructions made it impossible; you needed to have cut before you were able to get it, or something.

Yeah but you could just trade for a pokemon that had Cut.

This rumor fooled a lot of people.

Actually I think it was before you could use cut, before you had the badge that enabled it. They were very specific about that.

Tasteticle

Zerokku wrote: »

UncleSporky wrote: »

Tasteticle wrote: »

1) Mew being under the tuck in pokemon red/blue

You mean truck, but yes, I remember that. I was always skeptical, plus if I remember right I figured out that the common set of instructions made it impossible; you needed to have cut before you were able to get it, or something.

However there really is a way to get Mew in original R/B without hacking. It has something to do with letting a trainer see you and pausing/flying away before he can walk over to you. The game draws encounter data from the wrong place and you can meet and capture Mew. This method never became really prevalent though because it was discovered years later.

*insane youtube vid*

I want to know how someone figures this kind of shit out on their own

Tasteticle

UncleSporky wrote: »

AshtonDragon wrote: »

UncleSporky wrote: »

Tasteticle wrote: »

1) Mew being under the tuck in pokemon red/blue

You mean truck, but yes, I remember that. I was always skeptical, plus if I remember right I figured out that the common set of instructions made it impossible; you needed to have cut before you were able to get it, or something.

Yeah but you could just trade for a pokemon that had Cut.

This rumor fooled a lot of people.

Actually I think it was before you could use cut, before you had the badge that enabled it. They were very specific about that.

Nope, you could use cut. I remember following it to the T and being disappointed many times.

Willeth

Man, I haven't played Pokémon in so long. I looked at the preview for that video and was like "Hah! Wigglytuff? They're not even trying to make these jokes believable any more!"

Zerokku

Willeth wrote: »

Man, I haven't played Pokémon in so long. I looked at the preview for that video and was like "Hah! Wigglytuff? They're not even trying to make these jokes believable any more!"

That's a completely legit way to get mew in r/b...


Edit: The reason it shows a wigglytuff is because this is an example of how to do it before you ever even leave cerulean city. Since mew has such a low capture rate, a wigglytuff with sing would help exponentially.

Cameron_Talley

Tasteticle wrote: »

Zerokku wrote: »

UncleSporky wrote: »

Tasteticle wrote: »

1) Mew being under the tuck in pokemon red/blue

You mean truck, but yes, I remember that. I was always skeptical, plus if I remember right I figured out that the common set of instructions made it impossible; you needed to have cut before you were able to get it, or something.

However there really is a way to get Mew in original R/B without hacking. It has something to do with letting a trainer see you and pausing/flying away before he can walk over to you. The game draws encounter data from the wrong place and you can meet and capture Mew. This method never became really prevalent though because it was discovered years later.

*insane youtube vid*

I want to know how someone figures this kind of shit out on their own

Well if I recall this method was not discovered until 2003, so it took 7 years.

Also, probably examined the source code/how the game is put together/how pkmn data is stored, etc.

Opty

Basically they discovered a buffer overrun bug. Then they had to figure out how to get that buffer overrun to put the right number for Mew in the right place. Then they had to figure out where in the game they could get that to happen legitimately. I can only imagine the explosive nerdgasm the guy who discovered it had when his plan ended up working.

Willeth

No, I understand. Just, for a minute or two I forgot that Wigglytuff was a legitimate Pokémon.

Henroid

Zerokku wrote: »

I remember last year blizzard used a script for their wow forums where random words were replaced with shorthand/netspeak, so this would turn into dis, and punctuation would always turn into lolz.


Didn't seem to much different then normal tbh

That was one of the best things ever. Way better than their other pranks.

Rent

How did the missingno glitch work, exactly

Zerokku

Rent wrote: »

How did the missingno glitch work, exactly

According to bulbapedia -

Missingno. appears due to an oversight in the programming of the Old Man's tutorial in Viridian City on how to catch Pokémon. When the game sets up the battle between the Old Man and a wild Weedle, it needs to change the player's name (temporarily) to "OLD MAN" so that it will display that name, rather than the player's entered name, during the battle.

Due to the limited space on a Game Boy cartridge, the programmers decided to use the space where data for wild Pokémon found in the grass is stored (which is completely blank in Viridian City; only Surfing and Fishing data is used) to save the player's name temporarily. Normally, this would cause no abnormal activity, as this data is overwritten when the player moves to a different area.

In all cities, however, this data remains blank, and so the data is never overwritten (as there is nothing new to overwrite it with), and thus, the data that was last entered (be it the player's name or the wild Pokémon data from another area) remains in place. This itself still causes no harm, however, an oversight in the programming of the tiles used to denote the shore of an island marks them as equivalent to grass. As all water routes have no real grass on them, likewise, the data is not overwritten, and so whatever data is in the slots for wild Pokémon found in the grass is used, be it the player's name or wild Pokémon found elsewhere, such as the Safari Zone.

The name of the player has six hexadecimal values in it. The game needs only three "slots" of wild Pokémon data to store this.

The species of wild Pokémon the player encounters along the coast are determined by the third, fifth, and seventh characters of the player's name, while their levels are determined by the second, fourth, and sixth characters, respectively. By knowing which letters and symbols correspond to which species and levels, through the use of certain calculators and charts (such as [1]), it is possible to set the name of the player at the start of the game to find specific Pokémon at specific levels.

Henroid

Zerokku wrote: »

Rent wrote: »

How did the missingno glitch work, exactly

According to bulbapedia -

Missingno. appears due to an oversight in the programming of the Old Man's tutorial in Viridian City on how to catch Pokémon. When the game sets up the battle between the Old Man and a wild Weedle, it needs to change the player's name (temporarily) to "OLD MAN" so that it will display that name, rather than the player's entered name, during the battle.

Due to the limited space on a Game Boy cartridge, the programmers decided to use the space where data for wild Pokémon found in the grass is stored (which is completely blank in Viridian City; only Surfing and Fishing data is used) to save the player's name temporarily. Normally, this would cause no abnormal activity, as this data is overwritten when the player moves to a different area.

In all cities, however, this data remains blank, and so the data is never overwritten (as there is nothing new to overwrite it with), and thus, the data that was last entered (be it the player's name or the wild Pokémon data from another area) remains in place. This itself still causes no harm, however, an oversight in the programming of the tiles used to denote the shore of an island marks them as equivalent to grass. As all water routes have no real grass on them, likewise, the data is not overwritten, and so whatever data is in the slots for wild Pokémon found in the grass is used, be it the player's name or wild Pokémon found elsewhere, such as the Safari Zone.

The name of the player has six hexadecimal values in it. The game needs only three "slots" of wild Pokémon data to store this.

The species of wild Pokémon the player encounters along the coast are determined by the third, fifth, and seventh characters of the player's name, while their levels are determined by the second, fourth, and sixth characters, respectively. By knowing which letters and symbols correspond to which species and levels, through the use of certain calculators and charts (such as [1]), it is possible to set the name of the player at the start of the game to find specific Pokémon at specific levels.

People took the time to find this out.

Xenogears of Bore

It was very easy to figure out actually.

The glitch was first used to get Safari Zone pokemon not in the safari zone. Go into the safari zone, fly to cinnabar/swim to seafoam islands, surf a coast and blammo. Safari Zone pokemon.

Then people figured out the missigno glitch with the old man. Then people figured out that the random above level 100 pokemon people were getting were different depending on what name you had.

Nimoy

I did the Missingno glitch back in middle school and after a few days of the game being buggy it just erased my saved game data. It made me sad and I never messed with it again. I did have a gameshark though, and when yellow came out I used it to teach my Pikachu surf and played the surfing mini game. Good times.

Ganluan

If they put I'm a Goofy Goober in as Rock Band DLC, I will go out and buy Rock Band right now.

Cameron_Talley

Nimoy wrote: »

I did the Missingno glitch back in middle school and after a few days of the game being buggy it just erased my saved game data. It made me sad and I never messed with it again. I did have a gameshark though, and when yellow came out I used it to teach my Pikachu surf and played the surfing mini game. Good times.

I'm still pissed that I was never able to play that game because I couldn't get a Surfing Pikachu. Yeah, I know you can get one from Pokemon Stadium, but I could never beat the damn trainers past a certain level to get it.

GPIA7R

MissingNo evolved into Kangaskhan... making it possible to have a surfing and flying Kangaskhan if you taught those to MissingNo first. It was fun to use in fights with friends, watching Kanga fly in the air...

Also, ThinkGeek always has great April Fools. They caught me on a lot of them... like a "Grow your own 1-UP Mushroom"... which became SO popular, they actually manufactured it. I bought one

The Wireless extension cords though, made me think...

Taximes

Part of the reason I love Blizzard's April Fool's so much is 'cause it's pretty likely by this point that one of each year's jokes winds up being real at some point.

EvilBadman

Still Alive was an April 1 Free Song. We could have an unannounced gag again.

Or Spongebob, either way, sufficiently wacky.

The Muffin Man

UncleSporky wrote: »

AshtonDragon wrote: »

UncleSporky wrote: »

Tasteticle wrote: »

1) Mew being under the tuck in pokemon red/blue

You mean truck, but yes, I remember that. I was always skeptical, plus if I remember right I figured out that the common set of instructions made it impossible; you needed to have cut before you were able to get it, or something.

Yeah but you could just trade for a pokemon that had Cut.

This rumor fooled a lot of people.

Actually I think it was before you could use cut, before you had the badge that enabled it. They were very specific about that.

If you get traded a Cut-using Pokemon you're fine *Misty gives you the Cut ability outside of battles, the HM is just in Vermilion).

Also, if you faint to a trainer after visiting the captain, you'll appear outside the boat and it won't have left.

Willeth

EvilBadman wrote: »

Still Alive was an April 1 Free Song. We could have an unannounced gag again.

Or Spongebob, either way, sufficiently wacky.

I am positive it'll be Astley, you know.

Camui

Willeth wrote: »

EvilBadman wrote: »

Still Alive was an April 1 Free Song. We could have an unannounced gag again.

Or Spongebob, either way, sufficiently wacky.

I am positive it'll be Astley, you know.

I always wanted them to announce they gotten the rights to use a Led Zeppelin and give out a free single song in celebration of the moment. When the player downloads it and tries to play the song it will have all the right names and so on but when the game started it played Astley's song instead.

polaris314

FuriousDude wrote: »

The news of Mitch Hedberg's overdose death was announced on his website on April 1st, 2005. Unfortunate timing, especially for a stand-up comic. I was sure it was a joke....

Yeah, I had a real hard time believing that too. The even stranger thing was that I only went there because I was curious what he was up to, and just ended up being depressed instead.

cloudeagle

Willeth wrote: »

EvilBadman wrote: »

Still Alive was an April 1 Free Song. We could have an unannounced gag again.

Or Spongebob, either way, sufficiently wacky.

I am positive it'll be Astley, you know.

Buh? What's this Astley thingy?

h8b1llg8ts

irn wrote: »

I can't remember where I heard this AFJ but it was something along the lines of playing as Mortal Kombat characters on NBA Jam... I think I wasted $10 worth of quarters at a local Putt Putt before I finally gave up... April Fools is a racketeering business more than it is a joke...

Save your money back up and get the Saturn version. There you can unlock MK Raiden ...