April Fool Madness

April Fool Madness

April 1st has come and gone, and many Sonic Websites got into the habit of tricking their visitors and members. This story provides a shortlist of Sonic sites that did their part in tricking their members. If your Sonic site is not listed here, be sure to give Dreadknux an email at dreadknux at yahoo dot co dot uk.

What remains humourous about both this list of April Fool pranks and a news report SONIC NEWS reported on March 31st, is the fact that each had their fair share of visitors who were not impressed, even stating to some websites, including Sonic Online and SonicAnime.net, that they should be ashamed of themselves. SONIC NEWS reminds the Sonic community of the age-old April Fool superstition; if a victim reacts to a prank in an angry or disagreeable fashion, they are conditioned with bad luck forever.

It’s a shame some people are not good sports to understand the fact that April 1st is all about having fun. SONIC NEWS believes that those who took an angry tone to all April Fools pranks on any Sonic website should be ashamed of themselves.

  • The Sonic Stadium pulls out all the stops – after announcing a card collecting system some years back (and are still working on it), the webmaster decided to pretend that their “Sonic Smash Cards” project was ahead of schedule and launched it to its members. ‘Honest’ error messages were abound before hitting members with an “April Fool” error at 8pm GMT.
  • Sonic Online‘s administration pretended to quit, while having their positions replaced by a “disagreeable” member. This caused such a ruckus that a “revolution” was formed by rebellious youths to “bring SOL down”

  • The GHZ made a phoney news story about a new collection of Sonic toys made by Ban Dai. Faked screenshots were made and a competition was held to “win” a sample toy.
  • Sonic HQ did its annual April Fools Day skin change yesterday. After Chris HQ, Fexusfan HQ and Mario HQ before it, 2005 saw the site changed to ‘Shadow HQ’.
  • Sonic United replaced its page with a ‘Site Suspended’/’Expired’ domain page.
  • SonicAnime.net, as reported before, announced that Shadow was to replace Sonic as ‘revealed by SEGA America’. This was made a day before April 1, but was led to some disgust towards the site, some we believe was uncalled for.
  • Sonic Zone Forums leader ‘Sonikku’ removed all moderators of their powers as a joke.
  • Sonic CulT changed their site to the layout of ‘Sonic Classic’, another Sonic secrets resource. SONIC NEWS reminds visitors that the .ORG domain for Sonic CulT no longer exists, and to use the .NET domain in future.
  • Sprite Comic website Sonic Wrecks replaced its black and red design with a pink style to celebrate Amy Rose. Their downloads section were also changed to suit, being renamed the “Rose Garden”.

Those who reacted badly to the pranks displayed above should probably hang their heads in shame, but the damage caused by irrational gullibles seems minimal overall, merely tempering the mood of the fun, instead of completely dousing it.

Feel free to post your stories, Website or otherwise, in our comments column.

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Dreadknux

Founder of The Sonic Stadium and creator/co-organiser of the Summer of Sonic convention. Loves talking about Sonic the Hedgehog in his spare time. Likes Sonic Colours a little too much for his own good, apparently.