Fooled ya!

April 1st is a day feared by regular inhabitants of the internet. It’s the one day of the year when you can practically ignore all amazing and outlandish news stories as rival sites attempt to out-do each other with their attempts at humour. However, putting aside the more pathetic jokes for one moment (anyone here still think the Nintendo Life merger is an April Fool?) it’s also one of the most amusing days of the year and some of these pranks are genuinely funny.

Possibly the most cruel Nintendo-related joke came from Japan. Japanese website Akiba Blog ran a story stating that the eagerly-awaited Square Enix RPG Dragon Quest IX – which has been subject to some annoying delays and is due for release in July – had been released and even showed a photo of keen Otaku queuing up to receive their copy.

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The end result was that people logging onto the site believed they had legitimately missed the biggest DS launch of the year. We wonder if any of them dashed out to their local video game store and argued with the staff about the release?

Elsewhere, UK site Pocket Gamer scored a significant victory with a Zelda-related jape. The news stated that the forthcoming DS release Zelda: Spirit Tracks would possess a DSi-only option where you could take a photo of a train in real life using the DSi’s camera and the game would automatically ‘skin’ it around a 3D locomotive:

A source close to Nintendo has revealed exclusively to Pocket Gamer that yes, there will be DSi functionality, in the shape of a unique train-snapping element.

As we reported, this Zelda will feature Link in full-on train-driving mode, but if you own a DSi you'll be able to take snaps of real-life trains and import them into the game. The skin will then be wrapped around Link's locomotive, and hey presto - you'll have a custom set of wheels to chug around Hyrule in.

The story was so successful that it even made the front page of popular news site N4G.

Finally, we have this Wii Fit fool, which looks like a fake but is actually real! If you happened to boot up your copy of Wii Fit on April 1st (ours is stuck at the back of the cupboard gathering dust, sadly) then you will have been greeted with this message:

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While we're at it, check out this classic April Fool from UK magazine Computer & Video Games. It was run in the early '90s and had quite a few people tricked!

Personally we can’t wait till next year!