After about the 20th attempt, I thought something must be wrong with me.

You see, I had it on good authority that quickly inputting a lengthy code at the title screen of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 for the NES would unlock Castlevania star Simon Belmont as a playable character. That good authority happened to be Electronic Gaming Monthly—at that point one of only two main sources I had for reliable video game information (the other being Nintendo Power). So after nearly an hour haplessly jamming on buttons, I figured the problem had to be my nine-year-old reflexes, not my magazine. I mean, they even had a picture of Belmont whipping a hapless foot soldier. It had to be real. If only I was a little faster...

It wasn't until the next month's letter's section that the subterfuge was revealed and my love/hate relationship with April Fool's jokes in the games press truly began.

After that first year it became pretty easy to pick out the various annual jokes in various magazines (as long as I remembered to start looking in late February to early March, when the April issues hit stands). Of course, the real problem isn't figuring out which stories are jokes, but figuring out which ones aren't. For the days surrounding April 1, every single story that comes down the pike has to be examined and doubted as some sort of hoax (more so than usual, I mean). The problem was especially bad this year because April 1 fell on a Sunday, leading weekday-updating sites to post jokes on the surrounding Friday and Monday.

The biggest victim this year was the rumored announcement of a new NiGHTS game for the Wii, which had to be confirmed and reconfirmed to avoid charges of foolery. Other announcements, like Bungie's Halo 2 maps and the impending shutdown of Red vs. Blue, similarly had to be clarified as serious. With smaller stories, it can be even harder to tell – I'm still not sure if this April 1 tale of a graphics card recall is true or not.

Practical and ethical issues aside, April 1 provides a chance for writers to spread their wings and report not just on the way things are, but the way they could be. Here's a quick look at some of the more notable examples from this year.

Most Overused Joke
As a rule, game companies don't tend to buy smallish fan sites. So April 1 tales like n00bstories being bought by Electronic Arts or AnimalXing.com being bought by Nintendo aren't even remotely believable or funny. At least DoomWorld's story of being bought out by fundamentalist Christians brought some absurdist farce to the proceedings.

Jokes that Make Us Sad
Usually April Fool's jokes are good for a chuckle, but Nintendojo's annual joke made me sad by pointing out that a Lego Zelda game could exist and yet doesn't. Same deal with EGM's "Mushroom Kingdom Hearts," a new Square RPG which supposedly will feature "a cast of over 41 Nintendo characters." To paraphrase IGN, our frothing demand for these joke games increases.