GeekDump #13: 5 April, 2011

Lucky number 13... Maybe I should have done this on the 1st. Or I could have waited a few days until my birthday... <cough>.


1up.com compiled a list of video game-related April fool's jokes/pranks. Blizzard really rocked it this year, with the crab/Clippy parody, the Xbox Motion trailer, and etc. However, my favorite was a fake patch for Starcraft II, which included gems like:

• Players who do not type "GG" before quitting a game will receive an automatic loss for bad manners.
• In addition to losses, wins are now also no longer shown. Instead, players will see Jim Raynor giving them a thumbs-up after every match regardless if they win or lose.
• To balance the issue of Zerg under-representation and Terran over-representation in the upper ladder brackets, the names of these two races have been switched. This should result in higher "Zerg" representation and lower “Terran” representation.
• To make Battle.net friendlier, all players will automatically be placed in the same Voice-Chat channel upon logging in to Battle.net. Voice-Chat is defaulted back to "On" and volume to maximum every time the game is started.
• Colossi now have 5 legs. They just looked kinda weird with 4.
• Fixed a bug where Terran players were able to lose a game.

Kudos, Blizzard. Kudos. Minecraft briefly offered microtransactions for goofy in-game items, but the url is already dead. ThinkGeek, a store that I unsuprisingly love, offered Angry Birds pork rinds. Harmonix announced that they traded in their CEO for $40 at GameStop to pre-order Portal 2.

Speaking of DLC... I couldn't find an author, post a message and I will credit you.



Recently, an Egyptian Cobra caused a bit of a stir in New York when it "escaped" from the Brooklyn Zoo. Turns out, it was chillin' in its enclosure. A witty Twitter feed details its misadventures in the big city.

Of the Legend of Zelda franchise, I think Link's Awakening might be my favorite. The Wikipedia article on it recently gained featured status, which encouraged me to dig out my Gameboy and play it again. I wish I had waited and could play this fan remake instead.

Some YouTube videos:

Ah, mixing vidja gamez and modern Middle Eastern political issues: truly art if art were to be found.

I've said before that I think gnomes are creepy. I stand by that assertation.

A pair of awesome SMB parodies in a mob setting.

Pre-Glass Ceiling

And to top it all off, some "WTF internet?" moments. (somewhat NSFW image)