The gaming world has long embraced April Fool's Day, serving
up year after year of memorably goofy lies unleashed on unsuspecting fans.
Though our BS-detector's grown much stronger since, for example, Electronic
Gaming Monthly's 1992 incredibly successful (and bogus) 'Sheng Long' hint for
Street Fighter II, it's still plenty entertaining watching the Web lose its
collective mind for a day.
In case you missed 'em, here are some of the kookier video
game stunts of 4/1/11:
Blizzard goes big
One prank wasn't enough for the World of Warcraft makers.
Instead, they delivered a four-pack of April Fool's insanity, highlighted by
this LOL-worthy trailer for StarCraft: Motion Overdrive for your Kinect
console:
They've also unveiled 'Crabby the Dungeon Helper', a not-so-subtle jab at 'Clippy' the annoying paperclip helper for Microsoft Office. Crabby won't fix your punctuation, however; instead he'll help out World of Warcraft players by offering tidbits of advice about
equipping items, beating bosses, and, well, absolutely everything else. Joining
Crabby in WoW is the pitch-black 'Tomb of Immortal Darkness', which offers a thoroughly blacked-out instance for high-level players (warning: Crabby might help you view the page).
It's Crabby, the dungeon guide you love to hate! - Blizzard
Even Diablo gets a little love in the form of the 'Horadric Cube', an
app that lets you combine other apps into super-apps! Be sure to check out the
disclaimers at the bottom of the page, though. We don't want anyone getting
hurt.
Guild Wars 2 goes commando
The original Guild Wars was something of a big deal, competing admirably with WarCraft while kicking off the 'free-to-play' concept by doing away with subscription fees. The sequel's been taking forever, but an exciting new feature was revealed today -- the Commando class. Air strikes > orcs.
Destructoid goes old-school
The popular game blog went all out today, ditching this whole newfangled 'typing' thing in favor of a more, uh, "classic" manner of communication. They even drew pictures.
Hats off to them.
PopCap goes pop-tart, unpleasant
Gamers are accustomed to taking their games everywhere these
days, but casual game kingpin PopCap wants them to hang out in one their
favorite rooms -- the kitchen -- with the PlayWave.
And apparently, the combo microwave/game console is just the
first in a new line.of play-everywhere systems. Take it away, press release:
"The launch of PlayWave follows extensive research into
the gaming habits of consumers, which revealed they wanted to be able to play
games wherever they were. In response to this research, PopCap have revealed
that they are also working on a toilet game console. They originally hoped to
launch both consoles as a kitchen and bathroom suite but due to complications
arising from the curvature of the toilet touchscreen. PopCap do not expect to
have a prototype of Play-n-Poop until early 2012."
Bizarre? How about the company's other major announcement
today: Unpleasant Horse, an upcoming, uh, something, made by PopCap spinoff
company 4thandbattery. It's headed to the App Store soon...or is it?
