Spot On: April Fool's Day

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As has become the tradition each April Fool's day, this year a passel of gags, jokes, and japes descended on the game world. The best ruse came courtesy of Blizzard, who used the occasion to "reveal" the newest playable race in World of Warcraft--the two-headed ogre. "By selecting the two-headed ogre race, you are selflessly choosing to share your existence in World of Warcraft with another player," read the Web page dedicated to the new character type. "While you have full and absolute control of your head and its associated arm, both players will have simultaneous control of equipment and inventory management, both legs, and character locomotion," continued the site. "This can make it somewhat difficult to travel anywhere in particular if that particular destination at all differs in the mind of either player." Also included were some hilarious screens of the two-headed ogre in action, with one head dozing off when its respective player logs off.

Bungie took a cue from Tyler Durden's "Planet Starbucks" rant in Fight Club by revealing the sponsors of Halo 2. According to the fake story, the anticipated Xbox shooter sequel will be laden with more high-tech product placement than Minority Report. In the game, the Master Chief will defend the Mall of the Universe Food Court from a Covenant onslaught. In the real world, Bungie promised an assortment of product tie-ins to take advantage of "broad-based teen and tween influencer synergy," including Keds "GruntKickaz" sneakers, a Starbucks' "Plasma Gren-o-lade" tapioca drink, and the "Chevy Astro Extreme Edition" minivan, which features a built-in Xbox and a Master Chief graphic plastered across the side. Bungie also updated its classic Pimps at Sea story with the new "Sir Courvoisier" character and more buccaneer bling-bling.

However, some gags took a more cunning tack. A realistic-looking product page on LucasArts.com promised an Xbox, PC, and Macintosh remake of the classic PC shooter Dark Forces. "Star Wars Dark Forces Gold will allow gamers to play through the original Dark Forces with the added benefit of the modern gaming environment found in the latest Jedi Knight engine," read a plausible-sounding press release.

Less believable was fan site BeyondUnreal.com's claim that production of the various versions of best-seller Unreal Tournament 2004 has been stopped for legal reasons. It gave a less-than-credible quote from an Epic Games spokesperson that read, "It's with great sadness that I have to confirm that the rumors are true - as of today, we're suspending production of UT2004 while we clear up a bunch of legal crap that's going on here at Epic HQ." However, the story did have a clever twist, offering a zipped, free "Limited Edition" of the game for download, which turned out to be a 55K "April Fool's JPEG."

While there were almost too many lesser gags to count--Blue's News has a handy index of many--a few stood out. For rodent-loving PC gamers, ThinkGeek has the HabiCase, the only computer housing that doubles as a hamster cage. Indian site TechTree.com made a crude-but-amusing mock-up of Grand Theft Auto: Mumbai, complete with a scooter-riding, cricket-bat-wielding thug. However, it was a story on Kikizo.com that had many game-industry watchers chuckling, since it listed a series of stories that would sound ludicrous to the uninformed. Unfortunately, they have one thing in common--they're all true.