April Fools Day Pranks

2002: Retirement

Dreadknux announces retirement from The Sonic Stadium. Obviously it wasn't true. We don't have much archive content from this period of the site's life, but we'll add anything related if we manage to dig something up. Bit of a boring prank though, to be honest.

2003: N/A

No April Fools ran this year due to a server crash.

2004: Sonic Fanatic

Sonic Fanatic ‘Best Forum Member’ Banner

A bot was placed on SSMB posting rubbish and spamming the forums for days, and so on April 1 we announced that the incredibly annoying ‘Sonic Fanatic’ was the site/forum’s best member ever.

2005: Sonic Smash Cards

Sonic Smash Cards Fake Announcement [ Link ]

We had toyed with the idea of providing an interactive card game on The Sonic Stadium for many years… in a somewhat cruel gag, we ‘finally’ ‘launched’ the feature to our community, only for them to encounter a large number of ‘errors’ whenever they tried to do anything.

2006: Knuckles' DS

‘Knuckles DS’ News Story [ Link ]

A lot of work went into this fake story about a leaked Knuckles the Echidna game on Nintendo DS. A forum member from SSMB helped create these mock images of the title, which would apparently see Knuckles use ‘Punch Gears’ to tackle various obstacles.

We also ran:

• "Sonic the Movie on PSP" fake story

2007: El Dominio de Sonic

Unfortunately April 1 in 2007 coincided with a random server screw-up and we ended up being taken offline while we focused on repairs. Not one to miss an opportunity, though, I decided to make good use of the downtime by announcing that I had sold The Sonic Stadium to a random person in Spain called Diego. Of course, Diego wasn’t real. I made sure to update this basic front page on April 2 explaining what was really going on.

2008: TBC

TBC

2009: Super Tails in Sonic 2 Beta

Sonic 2 Beta Secret Reveals Super Tails [ Link ]

With the discovery of Sonic 2 Beta now the stuff of legend, TSS spent the day on 1 April 2009 by ‘revealing’ a newly discovered fact – the origin of Super Tails. It was short, cute and quirky and was an added nod to the retro hacking community to boot.

2010: BIGNEWS

Go to BIGNEWS now!

Something’s biting! Big the Cat took over The Sonic Stadium on this day, becoming chief reporter on all things large, purple and fluffy. A lot of these stories ended up being about Froggy in some way, but the audience seemed to really love it – and you’ve got to give the people what they want!

2011: The Chuckle Stadium

Oh dear, oh dear! The Chuckle Brothers, consisting of UK-based kids’ comedy duo Paul and Barry Chuckle (of ChuckleVision fame) became the proud new owners of TSS for a day. It’s probably not something you’d understand unless you were a kid growing up in the UK during the 1980s – 1990s. But then the whole thing started as an in-joke anyway, with SSMB Forum members changing their names to some form of ‘Chuckle’ brother on AFD the year before. To me, to you!

2012: Right Said Fred x Cash Cash

Right Said Fred X Cash Cash Remix [ Link ]

1990s pop group Right Said Fred were in talks with Cash Cash to produce a modern remix of their ‘hit’ song Wonderman (which was released to promote the release of Sonic 3)… if you believed our April Fools Day story, of course. Truth is, this wasn’t happening at all. But we kind of wish it would.

We also posted:

• 'Sonic Plushes Found By Lost Tribe'
• 'Sonic Team Announces No More Big the Cat'

2013: The Sonic Stadium 1997 Edition

Ah, the World Wide Web. The Information Superhighway. The Dial-up Frontier. Things were certainly much simpler back in the late 1990s, and on AFD 2013 we illustrate this by going totally retro with the front page! Marquee text, huge animated sprite gifs, theme colour mismatches and non-transparent garish background images – feels like 1997 never left.

2014: Sonic Movie Script Leak

Sonic the Hedgehog Movie Script Leaked [ Link ]

Fake a movie script, write it about Sonic, make it look genuine (which to be honest wasn’t that hard but UGH effort) and take some dodgy looking photos, et voila – your very own film-related April Fools Day gag. This one tripped up a number of you, which made us feel pretty bad by the time we made the big reveal. All in good fun though, right?

2015: Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) Remastered

Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) Remastered Announcement [ Link ]

This is probably our finest work. We created an entire announcement for a Remastered version of Sonic 2006. Because if any game really needs a do-over, it’s that one. We even created a convincing trailer for it – who knew that SEGA could deliver 4K graphics on a Dreamcast? – by editing existing footage and turning up the bloom/sharpness. We’re still getting people confused about whether it’s real or not on YouTube, even though the video is clearly labelled AFD 2015. So yeah, pretty good job.

2016: BigFeed

Go to BigFeed now!

Our favourite fat feline is at it again – this time he’s given up life as a cool BIGNEWS journalist and instead is trying his hand at viral, social media-friendly ‘content’ creation. The result is BigFeed, your ultimate source of Big the Cat wisdom, in sharable chunks! Learn about the best fishing tips, find out which pet you would be most compatible with and read the exclusive review of Big’s Big Fishing Adventure 3.

2017: Big the Cat in Sonic Mania

Big the Cat as Sonic Mania’s Fourth Playable Character [ Link ]

We crafted a story about SEGA announcing Big the Cat as a playable character in Sonic Mania, after a ‘TSS investigation’ found that the developers wanted to build a cross-promotion with the fan-made Big’s Big Fishing Adventure 3 game. How excellently cheeky of us!

2018: N/A

We didn’t do an April Fools Day gag this year, because we were boring. Sorry.

2019: N/A

No April Fools Day gag here either. Did we need a humour bypass or something?

2020: Sonic Movie Prototype James Marsden

New Sonic Movie Cut Reveals Prototype James Marsden [ Link ]

All the talk of 2020 has been about Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog movie – and for good reason, as it’s actually pretty damn decent. With the Blu-ray version’s release, and news of various ‘behind the scenes’ footage being included, we wanted to do a quick gag that flip-reversed the visual do-over of the CG Sonic. Instead, our story was about a CG James Marsden… that definitely was not just a lift of Baldur from Too Human.

2021: GFUEL Ruined It For Everyone

We didn't do an AFD gag this year, mostly because the wind got taken out of our sails with this actually-legitimate news story about Chili Dog-flavoured GFUEL energy drinks. Yuck. When people take April Fools Day seriously, it kind of takes the fun out of it, you know?

2022: Special 'British' Edition of Sonic Movie 2

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Opens in UK Theatres With Exclusive 'British Edition' [ Link ]

We put our AMAZING Photoshop skills to use again this year, and took advantage of the fact that the Sonic movie sequel was premiering in the UK before the US - by making up a story about exclusive 'British Edition' edits to the blockbuster film. Knuckles as a telephone booth, Sonic with Avengers (no not those Avengers, the British Avengers) iconic bowler hat and umbrella, Agent Stone opening a tea shop, Queen Elizabeth II attending the wedding... totally pukka.

It's a good job we made it very clear that it was a joke on the day, because our image editing abilities are clearly so incredible that we would have fooled our American friends for a whole eight days straight before it would have landed in their theatres.

2023: The Return of Omochao!

[image coming soon]

We resurrected an old, dear friend for the SSMB Forums for AFD 2023. 'Omochao' was a little script we made that sent everybody's favourite tutorial helper into the corner of everyone's screen. Every page load, he would float in and offer a random (but always useless) hint or fact about the Sonic Stadium or the Sonic franchise. If you clicked him, he would go away... but after a while he would always come back. Clicking certain parts of him would make him spin around too.

Although we cheated a little bit by reviving an old gag, we were in the middle of our big site/forum integration at the time and at that point, the Omochao prank was seen as pretty retro in the community. Everyone who logged in and saw the robot Chao earned themselves a special achievement, too. So there was that.

2024: BIG X - It's Twitter, But Bigger

Go to BIG X right now!

Big the Cat has had a fair crack at running a news organisation and a magazine-style 'viral' outlet, but what about social media? In 2024, the Sonic Stadium became 'BIG X', a legally-distinct and not-at-all-infringing parody of a social media platform. Big, in his ever-lasting quest to find Froggy, bought a dying platform and decided to rebrand it in his own image. Best of all, it was user-interactive; Sonic Stadium members could log in and post 'Croaks', which were used to crowd-source "a big enough noise for Froggy to hear and so he'll come back" to Big the Cat. Don't question the logic. It's just science, baby.