Pikipedia:April Fool's Day
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Starting in 2015, Pikipedia editors agreed on making April Fool's Day jokes on the wiki. These pranks are made in good faith, and only exist to entertain the readers. Although pretty much nothing is to be taken seriously, none of the pranks are to go overboard, to the point of being offensive or destructive. Readers who came to the wiki to learn about a subject should still be able to, after all.
Normally, these are created by staff members, are placed on the wiki at midnight (UTC) of the first of April, and are reverted back after 24 hours. After being reverted, this page gets updated with information about the year's prank, in order to enlighten readers on what the joke was. For a list of steps to take before, during, and after the events, please read this page.
Editors can add to the joke articles at any time after April Fool's Day has passed, but they must have a good reason to do so. The idea of the joke and its core contents should be kept intact. For instance, adding an image to a gallery of funny images is all right. Changing the plot of a game is not. In addition, each article can also have extra contribution notes on its April Fool's Day disclaimer box.
The following is a list of jokes made so far.
2015
Bolbert
The Bolbert article is Pikipedia's first April Fool's Day joke. It details information about a made-up enemy called a "Bolbert", that is actually a description of Bulborbs and mimics, said to be quite elegant, when in reality, the images show Bulborbs in hilarious poses.
The idea for this joke article came from a post on Miiverse that, when shared, caused a lot of laughs within the editor community, half due to the incorrect name given to the Red Bulborb, half because of the enemy's face in the screenshot. The article would focus on a fake Bulborb-like creature said to be quite majestic, only to have the images on the page show hilarious Bulborb poses. The name of the invented enemy and the main image come directly from the Miiverse post. In this joke, Pikipedia does not attempt to mock the player in the Miiverse post. We understand that not all players are familiar with the names of the enemies, and as such, would not dare to acknowledge such player mistakes, much less ridicule them. The image and name combination however, were just too funny for the community to ignore, leading to the creation of this light-hearted parody enemy article.
Since 2015, the article has been maintained by various editors, to add more images and details from newer games.
2016
Pikmin: Color Splash
Paper Mario: Color Splash got announced in a Nintendo Direct not long before the time of this April Fool's Day. The trailer revealed that Nintendo plans to keep several of the features that made Sticker Star so controversial, which in turn caused a fair amount of controversy for Color Splash. Seeing this opportunity, some members of the Pikmin fanbase got together to discuss the idea of a mock Pikmin game announcement, based on what is known about Color Splash, with special care to all the controversial parts. The idea was to originally create an article of a game mocking Fire Emblem Fates, for the same reasons, but Color Splash was chosen for being more recent and closer to Pikmin. The plot and gameplay mechanics for this made-up Pikmin game try to stay parallel to the most defining parts of Color Splash, but at the same time, exaggerate some of them for the sake of humor.
Pik-Min
Some time before April Fool's, some NIWA members gathered around to discuss the possibility of a collaborative April Fool's joke. The premise would be that Nintendo announced a new franchise, the Nintendo Cinematic Universe, as a parody to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Like the latter consists of a collection of Marvel franchise films, the joke would involve a series of movies about different Nintendo franchises. Being a collaborative joke, other wikis would make fake articles about the Nintendo Cinematic Universe and whatever movie they wished, all keeping the same theme. Only SmashWiki and Mario Wiki joined in, besides Pikipedia.
The Pikmin movie in this line-up was decided to be a parallel to Ant-Man. Given that in both the Ant-Man and the Pikmin franchises, the human(oid) heroes are of a small size compared to their surroundings, and are able to control an army of colony insects, the connection was clear as day straight from the start. The similarity between the two series' names also made the final movie's name an easy choice: Pik-Min.
2017
Patapedia
Like the previous year, some NIWA members got together for a collaborative joke. This time, the wikis would pretend that their subjects are instead about a Sony franchise. It wasn't hard to decide that Pikipedia should represent the Patapon series – both Pikmin and Patapon have the player control a horde of minimalist creatures, and the names are pretty similar to boot. The gameplay of Patapon is radically different however, in that all units are controlled at once, and their orders are given by carefully timed drum patterns.
The joke involved editing the main page with Patapon facts, completely as if this wiki – then named Patapedia – were a legitimate wiki for the franchise. To really drive the point home, the main page's theme was also changed to an orange, black, and white theme, reminiscent of Patapon. The wiki's logo and main page imagery were also updated accordingly. For the sake of simplifying the process and cleanup, the wiki's favicon, title, and sidebar were not changed. Although everything that is on the front page is (presumably) fact, and appropriate for a Patapon wiki, the links aren't whatsoever. The April Fool's project comes mostly in the form of this change, but there is some humor in the links: they indirectly compare things like Ciokina and the Peckish Aristocrab, or the PS Vita with the Nintendo 3DS. They're far from gut-busting jokes, but hopefully good enough that they'll bring a hearty smile to fans of both franchises.
Since this was meant to be an alliance-wide joke, the "NIWA" box was changed to the "SIWA" box, as if all other NIWA wikis were also changed to cover Sony franchises. The matching franchises may not be the best, but they're good enough. The wikis for Dragon Quest, Tetris, and Strategy Wiki remained the same, since they also apply to Sony franchises. A couple of different wikis joined in on the fun this time:
- Mario Wiki became the Crash Bandicoot Wiki (for Crash Bandicoot),
- Nookipedia became the Toropedia (for Toro Network),
- Fire Emblem Wiki became the TearRingSaga Wiki (for Tear Ring Saga),
- Inkipedia became the Krillzone Wiki (for Killzone),
- SmashWiki created an article on PlayStation All-Star Battle Royale, and made it the featured article.
Every wiki did things their own way: some changed the front page and theme, some only changed either one, others didn't even change a thing, but only created articles.
2018
Hotel Pikmin
There are a lot of jokes about the Philips CD-i games starring Nintendo characters, mostly because of their debatable quality and really bizarre cutscene styles. With the brief resurgence of the infamous Hotel Mario as a meme,[1] particularly the part of the opening cutscene where Mario and Luigi are walking into the Mushroom Kingdom, the editorial staff got together to discuss the possibility of remaking the cutscene, but with Pikmin characters and themes. The idea was to keep the same weird "MS Paint-like" style and goofy nature of the original, but with as much content remade as possible to match the Pikmin universe.
In this new cutscene, Captain Olimar replaces Mario, Louie replaces Luigi, Bowser is replaced by the Emperor Bulblax, which could be considered Olimar's top antagonist in his first adventure, and the plot starts with both explorers talking about how the President invited them for a vacation, much like how Mario and Luigi are invited to a picnic by Princess Peach. Eventually, they notice a letter by the President, which was actually written by Bowser in the original. The letter explains how their vacation was replaced by a mission to repay the debt, very similarly to Pikmin 2's main plot point. The letter draws some more parallels with the Hotel Mario scene, like the captive ship in the All-Devouring Black Hole Loan Sharks and the captive princess in the Koopa Hotels. After this, the part where Mario explains that the player can read the manual to get help with navigating the hotels is replaced with Olimar explaining how the player can read the enclosed data file for help on how to control the Pikmin.
In the end, the entire cutscene was rebuilt, low audio quality and everything, and the only thing that has not been changed is the letter song. The core of the joke is just the video itself, but it also made sense to create a fake article about how this cutscene for a new Pikmin game got leaked.
2019
Olimar's notes in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate had been recently released, and it brought back several "Smash Taunts" from previous entries in the series. These include Snake's codec calls, Palutena's Guidance conversations, and more. These events happen during gameplay with specific characters and stages, and when a specific player presses the down taunt button very quickly. If they pull it off uninterrupted, the conversations will start, and will be overlaid on-screen on top of the action, serving mostly for distraction and amusement. Their secondary goal is to provide info on a given fighter, but more often than not, they're not very serious and mostly make jokes at the expense of the Nintendo characters.
Given that, in his games, Captain Olimar usually writes down his own interpretations of enemies and "treasures", and how these logs are mostly humorous, since he misinterprets a lot of things we take for granted, the idea to create a fake concept for a Smash Taunt about fighter notes sprung up. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate features over 70 fighters, but since each one would only receive a paragraph or two of text, the editors behind the joke went for it.
The concept behind these entries were that some would be informative of the character's nature, some would expand on Olimar's life, and some would be funny misinterpretations of the characters's actions and looks, similar to how the captain's journal entries in the canon games work.
Nintendo GameCube amiibo support
- Link: YouTube video
On the side, a completely unrelated joke had been made, exclusively as a video. This joke involved a never-before-seen trailer for a cancelled accessory for the Nintendo GameCube. It was basically an NFC reader like the Nintendo 3DS has, which allows the device to read amiibo.
The trailer shows Super Mario Sunshine reacting to several Yoshi amiibo, by giving the player a Yoshi of that color with unlimited juice. Then, some clips of Luigi's Mansion, and how that game gives Luigi some altered clothes based on the Mario character amiibo that are scanned. Finally, the trailer shows Pikmin 2 reacting to the Super Smash Bros. Olimar amiibo by unlocking a two-player co-op mode in story mode.
The content presented in the video was achieved with video editing and hacks. Naturally, nothing like that could ever be real, since amiibo were created long after those games had been released.
2020
Piki Plucker
In August of 2013, Cookie Clicker was created, and quickly became a popular trend. Among the many ideas for April Fool's Day Pikipedia jokes, the concept of an idle game based around Pikmin came up. After more brainstorming, the potential became clearer and clearer. Pikmin are like cookies in Cookie Clicker – the player should get as many as they can, and they can make use of them to complete tasks that give them even more Pikmin. And so, development of Piki Plucker started.
As progress evolved, several questions were raised, like how many resources the player would have, what buildings would be about, and how upgrades should alter the experience. One of the decisions that had to be taken was whether to create an engine from scratch, or use the idle game maker that Orteil, Cookie Clicker's creator, had graciously made. The former would take too long and would be too much effort, so unfortunately, but for the best, the game runs in Idle Game Maker's limited environment. This is apparent due to the bar at the top of the page, the tab's title and favicon, and the ad space. Engine limitations, balancing hardships, and lack of time were also responsible for the minor pacing issues and limited play-time.
Those flaws did not stop the game from being enjoyed by many people, thanks to its fun and quirkiness. Piki Plucker was made to stay true to both the idle game genre and the Pikmin series, incorporating a lot of elements and references that Pikmin fans would appreciate. The engine was used nearly to its full potential, with the use of upgrades that add new buttons or multi-resource achievements, and the flavor text of all elements was carefully written to be as funny as possible, truly deserving of a title of April Fool's Day joke.
The engine used reads data from a webpage, and the data for Piki Plucker can be found here. The code will be up, and its URL will remain the same, for the foreseeable future, meaning that players can play at any moment, even after the first of April! If you want to play, please enter the game's article and check the blurb at the top.
Main contributors:
2021
Super Nintendo World
During the idea stage of this year's April Fool's Day joke, Super Nintendo World was slated to open. The idea of creating a real article about the park and documenting the Pikmin cameos arrived, and due to a helpful video from Spencer at Universal Parks News Today, it became clear that Super Nintendo World has Pikmin scattered in all sorts of imaginative and varied locations. At some point, the idea of documenting ridiculous fake Pikmin cameos came up, and the staff team got to work.
At first there was no clear direction – the idea was more to just grab random famous images off the internet, edit them to include some Pikmin, and finally figure out some way to pass them off as attractions in Super Nintendo World. Eventually though, the plan got a bit more organized, and instead of making the images outlandish, the aim was more towards photos of places that look like they could be Super Nintendo World attractions, at first glance. So some effort had to be put into the composition and editing, in order to fool some readers into thinking at least some of the images are real.
In reality, for most photos, the Pikmin cameos were afterthoughts, since the real joke comes from editing images and coyly passing them off as real attractions. The final list included a nice balance between crazy and plausible, as well as a nice balance between effort and brevity. The list in the article was also organized to include the most probable "attractions" first, and get progressively more outlandish. To help hook the reader, the first image is even that of a real Pikmin cameo in the real park.
Since documentation of the real cameos was a bit long overdue, the real Super Nintendo World article was made after April Fool's Day.
Main contributors:
- Espyo: photo editing
- DavoGato: photo editing
2022
Hocotate Freight
A popular April Fool's Day joke for wikis is to make it look like it has been taken over by some character with a wild personality and conflicting goals. So this year, Pikipedia staff decided on changing the front page to make it look as if Hocotate Freight bought the wiki and took over.
In order to align with the company's goals of advertising its shipping prowesses and its catalog of goodies, the Hocotate ship was put in charge of reworking and restyling the front page. Of course, with a company as greedy and clumsy as Hocotate Freight, readibility and browsing comfort went out the window, and instead the front page was focused more on trying to sell things to people in the most agressive way possible. This meant strong colors, all-caps, animated text, and all sorts of buzzwords to lure potential buyers in.
The layout of the front page remained mostly the same, and most of the links still served for legitimate Pikipedia browsing. That said, small bits of text, as well as the featured article, trivia, and news, were replaced with some jokes that would seem plausible coming from Hocotate Freight. Everyone knows how, despite doing their best and having some beloved characters as employees, their poor business and operation strategies usually result in them getting into a lot of trouble, so the jokes aimed to capitalize on that. Plus, with the pompous and proud Hocotate ship at the helm, some of the jokes had to be about the ship flaunting it and its company's qualities, even if it meant throwing others under the bus.
Initially, the background would be a solid blue color, to really hammer in that clichéd infomercial style, but it quickly became obvious that that would be too painful to look at, so it was changed to a white and red gradient. The website style change affected the entire wiki, and this, combined with its intense effects, made the new style a bit polarizing between users, even if it was only for the sake of a joke that lasted a day. Users who disliked it were eventually able to turn it off at will in the user settings' gadget preferences, and readers who liked it were pleased to learn they could still apply the style after April Fool's Day, by enabling it in the same gadget preferences page. Oh, and the poll results before the joke got reverted were: Five-man Napsack won with 42 votes (40%), Lip Service in second place with 34 votes (33%), and Insect Condo last with 28 votes (27%).
Main contributors:
- Espyo: Direction and execution
- Porplemontage: Technical assistance and support
2023
Pikcross
Randomly, while playing a nonogram (AKA picross) game on his phone, Espyo noticed the filled squares he had looked like a Burgeoning Spiderwort. Milliseconds later the idea of "Pikcross" sprang to his mind. After sharing the idea with the team, it was decided 2023's joke would be a web-based nonogram game with the same name, filled with Pikmin-themed puzzles.
Professional nonogram games have a ton of features to make life easier for the player, but the Pikipedia team didn't have that much time or technical know-how to implement everything they wanted. For the sake of making just a simple game, some basic quality-of-life features were enough. These limitations sprung some creative decisions, like how the idea was to make it look like Pikcross was an official web-based game that got taken down shortly after release because it was incomplete. This came about because there just weren't enough resources for the Pikipedia team to create a proper tutorial.
Even after April Fool's Day, the game is still fully playable.
Main contributors:
- Espyo: direction, programming, puzzles
- CreativeSushi: puzzles
- CosmiCam: puzzles
- Porplemontage: Technical assistance and support
2024
Things not in Pikmin 4
Various ideas were suggested this year, but in the end, it was decided to go with an idea created by SupremeKirb and developed by PopitTart back in November, a joke article listing things not in Pikmin 4. Shortly after, the team got to work on this year's joke, but it was almost not done because it was hard to work out a basic outline for what the list should be about. After all, it's very easy to just list a lot of randumb non sequiturs, but that's hardly any fun or interesting. Still, the team knew there was some potential there, so they kept trying different things. Over time more and more unique jokes came to the surface, and the list became a mix of things that complement the "humorous list of things not in Pikmin 4" idea well: legitimate omissions from the past games, debatable omissions, stretches, omissions on a technicality, wild assumptions, oddly-specific things, things that obviously could never be in Pikmin 4, things that obviously could never be in the Pikmin series to begin with, and so on.
Alongside the list, the structure of the article had to be carefully tweaked in order to pace the flow of jokes properly, trick the reader into making it look like a real article at first, be unexpected at every turn, and vary the kind of humor each tidbit had. This sort of list is something that can be added to almost indefinitely, but mostly because of time, the page was finalized a few hours before the day. If you have any ideas that work, feel free to suggest them in the talk page, but please make sure they're funny and aren't just random nonsense, or just stating things that aren't in Pikmin 4 with little attached humor.
Main contributors:
References
- ^ Hotel Mario on Know Your Meme, retrieved on March 24th, 2018