April Fools' Day 2014

April 1, 2014 was an April Fools' Day that fell on a Tuesday. In the Pokémon fandom, some websites pulled hoaxes on gullible fans.

Hoaxes

Fansites

Bulbagarden

• Bulbapedia adopted a Canadian theme.
• Bulbagarden forums were redesigned into Maple Garden Forums, adopting a Canadian theme. Other changes in the forums include:
  • Forum moderators having their usernames and avatars changed to reflect the theme. Most of them were named after famous Canadians.
  • Random Messages X became Friendly Maple Messages along with a multitude of other Canadian related topics.
• Bulbanews posted the following articles:
  • A real life Shiny Canadian baby being born using the Masuda method.
  • An insider spoils the next generation, which is based on Canada. Contents include but are not limited to a regional Professor named Professor Maple, a legendary based on the steam-punk moose, an alternate evolution of Bidoof, and dual-purpose gyms which serve as a hockey rink or a sawmill.
  • Bulbagarden webmaster Archaic declared missing by Canadian authorities due to a computer error, which caused a deportation.

• 

  Canada inspired Bulbapedia logo

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  The Canadian Bulbapedia Main Page

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  The Maple Garden Forums

Other fansites

PokéMasters's The Finnomasters

• The PokéMasters changed its forum theme to a Finnish theme giving the site's name as "The Finnomasters." The forum banner featured Articuno and was designed by Finnish forum member Mikachu Yukitatsu.
• Pokémon Showdown! changed all the sprites on Pokémon Showdown to various fan-drawn sprites, like the previous year.
• PokéCommunity had a various amount of pranks all around the forum. Their main prank though was randomized forum descriptions.
  • Alongside the randomized forum descriptions, several sections on the site had pranks. Several of those pranks included Member Fan Clubs being "revived" by Minerva (Fan Clubs & Groups), an X & Y giveaway hosted by Peitharchia (Pokémon X & Pokémon Y), a Pokémon Battle Link/Trozei Challenge thread created by Jak (Challenges), a topic that talked about the shutdown of the Chit Chat Café created by Dakota (Chit Chat Café), and a thread created by an alt of moderator Terabyte exclaiming his "hatred" of technology (Technology & Internet).
• Marriland's News section announces an upcoming Black and White 3 release.
  • In the Marriland Forums, there's also a separate section under April Fools 2014 named Mod Squad v2, a "new and reformed" moderator section, only it was open to public view. Some threads were made for April Fools festivities elsewhere, then moved to said forum after the event.
• PKMNcast.com published in their News section a fake CoroCoro scan of Mega Raichu. The Raichu was designed by Wil Brendel and the layout of the illustration was done by Steve Black Jr. The final design was printed, placed in a magazine, and the shot on a mobile phone to upload to the site for a more "authentic" look.
• PokéJungle.net pretended to have joined forces with Serebii and changed the Twitter account name and site name to Junglebii.
• The Cave of Dragonflies posted a "What Trainer Class Are You?" personality test. It was available both in regular radio button form and in a Javascript enabled "psychic" test that would use mouse inputs to read the users mind before coming to a decision. Either way, the test was a joke, outputting a 100% randomized result that included some absurd details.

Others

• Google updated their Google Maps mobile application with a licensed, time-limited "Pokémon Challenge" mini-game running until April 2, 2014 at 02:00 PDT where users have to find and catch Pokémon scattered across the worldwide map. This is accompanied by a live-action announcement trailer depicting exaggerated augmented reality gameplay.
  • Google's Pokédex contains 151 Pokémon, spanning all six generations with 25 per generation (nine of them each were forms of first partner Pokémon), along with Mew*.
  • Players who caught all 151 Pokémon on Google Maps received a real-life congratulatory letter and "Pokémon Master" business cards from Google on June 2014.
• yugiohcardmaker.net changed its name from Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Maker to Pokémon Card Maker, adopting the appropriate font for the Pokémon logo.

• 

  Catching a Pidgey in Google Maps

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  Viewing the Pokédex in Google Maps

References

This article is a part of Project Fandom, a Bulbapedia Project that aims to write comprehensive articles on every aspect of the Pokémon Fandom.