April Fool's Prank
The customary April Fools prank on MFGG is to change the forum in some way. Not often is the site itself affected.
Contents
April Fools 2002
MFGG was changed to WFGG — Wario Fan Games Galaxy, and Wario was made an admin, the entire event was sudden and unexpected, and very very subtle, taking a few minutes for everyone to notice. Some people wondered if Wario was an Admin in disguise, or if he was some kind of hacker, but it was enjoyed all the same. Some forum images depicting Mario were changed to Wario, such as the main Logo. Simultaneously, some avatars and signature images of various members were modified or altered slightly, such as being flipped upside down, inverted or swapped with other members. The only complaints came from 1 or 2 individuals who wondered if they'd get their avatars and sigs returned, however all images, sigs and avatars were saved, and returned to normal once it was over.
While an Admin, Wario made a number of posts about money, saying for members to give him their coins and things like that, and other people played along, eventually creating more joke accounts such as Mario and Luigi, when this happened it was clear the prank had reached its peak, so this is when the April Fools joke came to a close.
This April Fools prank was a spur of the moment prank pulled off by Kritter.
April Fools 2004
The 2004 April Fool's prank is highly controversial, and begun the Spy vs. Spy-like battle between Shadowman and Retriever II.
ShadowMan's Fun
The recently elected administrator, ShadowMan, changed the forums to Waligie Fangames Place based on a cult hit fangame, Waligie Bros. The forum was changed to a blinding uniform white, and all fonts were changed to System. Some liked the skin, but most administrators despised it to the point of editing posts to make it seem that more people disliked it. Near the end, all the forums were removed except for one as a member named US Army claimed to have arrested Waligie.
Retriever II's Revenge
The new host of the forums, Retriever II, decided to prank ShadowMan in retaliation. The administrative controls were reverse-engineered so that ShadowMan no longer had the ability to change skins. It took nearly an hour before ShadowMan was told this, which infuriated him, much to many's delight. In an effort to fix it, however, all the Waligie skin images were replaced with default ones. The forum images remained to be in the /waligie directory for nearly a year.
April Fools 2005
The 2005 April Fools prank is considered to be the most elaborate.
ShadowMan's Fun
ShadowMan, with the aid of Klobber, changed the forums to Uncle Billy's Spanish Chicken Shack Fangames Galaxy, or Choza Espanol de Pollo Galaxias Fangames de Tio Billy. The traditional blue colors of the forum were replaced with various images of wood planks, ShadowMan became Tio Billy, and the language on the forum was changed to be Spanish. All images on the boards revolved around either Mexico, Spain, or Tio Billy, depicted as George Foreman. A regularly changed MIDI file was also played in the background. This prank was well-received, and more smoothly executed than that of 2004.
Retriever II's Revenge
Once again, Retriever II pulled a prank on ShadowMan in revenge. This time, Retriever II prevented ShadowMan from changing his name back to ShadowMan, forcing him to be Tio Billy forever. Taking another counter-measure, Retriever II changed the password to MFGG's FTP, preventing ShadowMan from removing the "deny" code from the Admin CP. However, ShadowMan obtained the Penguinia FTP password from Klobber and manually changed the file to a working one. Unfortunately, the one ShadowMan uploaded was from an older version of Invision Boards, which nearly destroyed the functionality of some features.
April Fools 2006
ShadowMan's Fun
Forum replaced by All About Beards. Because of the Religion/Scientology forum, a huge flamewar ensued. ShadowMan considered this to be a great disaster, as the skin was only up for a few hours and then disappeared. ShadowMan blames the poor execution of the prank on his (at the time) recent case of pneumonia that he had developed the week prior that completely debilitated him.
Retriever II's Revenge
Retriever II edited the boards so ShadowMan only had access to the Beards subboards and could not see the normal sections (such as General Chat and the Pointless Post Palace). This was quickly changed back.
April Fools 2007
The first thing that has happened is the names of all the members have a letter missing and changing randomly. It is unknown if this is the work of ShadowMan, Retriever II, or someone else. Later on, it was expanded upon, supposedly by ShadowMan. Instead of a single letter being removed, the name instead would be reduced to a random length, often 0. This caused many of the usernames to appear blank in the topic list and the "Who's Viewing" list.
In addition, the main site accepted three poor-quality submissions:
- "New Super Mario Bros SSS" by dbzfan124@dbzmail.com (game)
- "SUPER MARIO MUSHROOM CHAOS" by totally4FOB99 (game; should not be confused with the game of the same name by ShyGuy182)
- "The Fire Demon" by Awesome Games (sprite; based on an original character and has nothing to do with the Mario series)
Reviews for the games were mostly positive, but the positive ones are faked. Many of the main site goers did not catch onto the joke.
April Fools 2008
Once again, the main site has five false game submissions:
- "Toad Strikes Back 2 (Demo v.1)" by Thunder Dragon - Claimed to be a demo of a sequel of Toad Strikes Back, but was really just a flashing black and white screen saying "April Fools!"
- "Super Mario Epic 3" by Jeff Silvers - Supposedly the full game of Super Mario Epic 3, but was really just a flashing red and blue screen saying "You lost the game!" while the window moves erratically.
- "Super Mario Theta" by Mario Gamer & DJ Yoshiman - Another false demo, simply consisting of a hole swallowing up the computer screen while a creepy sound effect plays.
- "Luigi's Game Demo" by ShadowMan - Upon opening up this "demo", it acts like a word document. It also attempts to print a screenshot of the game window.
- "MPUZ" by Xgoff - The only "real demo", it is a collection of Mario games featuring sprites from the Hall of Shame and flashing screens.
Most people got the joke, so sarcastic reviews were also added.
Also, a sprite submission was accepted, called "Colored Chibibo" by Marioman2002, a sheet smaller than the thumbnail, featuring only two sprites. Additionally, a Klik Library called "SSJ MARTH 23'S FIRST LIB!!!" by SSJmarth23 was submitted. It also includes an executable for those without a ClickTeam product. It's a stereotypical showcase of a variety of useless (and sometimes non-Mario) sprites, with only a Beer Penguin from the Japanese version of Wario Land 2 being remotely useful. It also holds cliché submissions such as a Super Saiyan Shy Guy.
On the forum, the Casual Conversation Castle was made password protected with these clues:
- Think below the stars.
- The sound of one hand clapping.
- It's not exactly a Super Mario Galaxy reference.
- It's a small world, after all.
- You're the one who gave me this.
- Think above the core of the planet.
- I sold you and you sold me.
The password eventually being revealed as "flaccid_fish".
Later, because CCC was password protected, and GC was thus made a "temporary CCC". Then the forum experienced "Flood Control 2.0", where the topic buttons would "fly" about whenever a user wished to make a topic, occasionally giving out messages mocking the user.
Due to The Great Mistake the plans for the 2008 April fools were drastically altered. Originally a fake forum 12 was to be made, but time restraints stopped it from happening.
April Fools 2009
Ing was filtered to smurfsmurfing, and pressing the "M" key on the keyboard anywhere on the forum would make a picture of Bill Cosby appear on the page, which can be clicked on to make it go away.
News Forum with various graphs here and there.
Fangame Discussion, now called SHPDMBGWL4 Fangames Resource Centre of Hope and Love
Submit-it with the default skin, only the images replaced with more "nooby" ones.
General Chat, or Cillit Bang Games Galaxy - Bang and the posts are gone.
Arts Board had the look of The Spriter's Resource.
Wifi and Online Gaming had the Life on MFGG skin.
In the Help Forum everything was black. All images were also removed.
Casual Conversation Castle became communist with everything written in capitals.
General Friendliness had the All About Beards skin.
Archives and the forum index remained unchanged.
THE VOID
...Later on in the day, several MFGGers were sent to "THE VOID", a place devoid of light and life. These few MFGGers fought for their lives against unstoppable odds and cruel spammers. They had no knowledge of what was happening in the outside world.
