Google April Fool's Pokemon

Google’s Gotta Catch ‘Em All

Search Engine pulls Pokemon-themed prank for April Fools Day

Every April Fool’s Day, Google partakes in the joke-filled shenanigans of the holiday. However, this year, Google decided to focus its annual prank towards a specific audience. Those who grew up in the 90’s were able to relive their childhood dreams of being a Pokemon Master.

For 24 hours, Android and iPhone users had the exclusive opportunity to explore Google Maps, seeking out 150 Pokemon which included Togepi, Charmander, Eevee and more. Google teased that those who caught all 150 of the featured Pokemon would be given the opportunity to compete in a final tournament at the Googleplex, with the winner landing a job with the company as their official Pokemon Master, effective September 1st, 2014. While the prize of earning a job with Google was the actual April Fool’s joke, the search engine did have a special extra accomplishment that participants could obtain. 

Upon catching all 150 Pokemon, participants had the chance to collect an extra Pokemon, Mew. Mew is a rare psychic Pokemon, who was once thought to be unobtainable in the original games, Pokemon Blue, Pokemon Red and Pokemon Yellow without going to a Nintendo promoted event for it or using a GameShark cheat. That is, until a special programming glitch was discovered for the three games back  in 2003.

The video promoting the Pokemon Challenge prank was released on March 31st and was such a success that it went viral. This comes as no surprise if people consider that the official Pokemon Twitter account has 299K followers and the official Pokemon Facebook page has 5.2 million likes. The video, in particular, currently has over 104,905 likes on YouTube, and has been viewed over 14 million times.  Brian McClendon, the VP of Google Maps made a special cameo appearance for the video. A safety disclaimer was included at the end of the video, strongly encouraging participants to not take part in the Pokemon Challenge while driving or operating heavy machinery.

Blog #9: Story Restructure 02 Assignment Summary

For my Story Restructure 02 Assignment, I wrote an article on the April Fool’s Day prank that Google did this year. The theme was Pokemon related. I decided to write about this one because it was the most recent and because it was well-received, due to Pokemon being so popular. As a fan of the original Pokemon, that also intrigued me to write about it, as I remember being excited about first hearing of the prank around April Fool’s Day. In the article, I mentioned some of the Pokemon that were featured in the prank which include Charmander, Bulbasaur, Dragonite and more. I also mentioned that after collecting all 150 Pokemon on the Google Maps Pokemon Challenge, participants could obtain the very rare psychic Pokemon Mew, who could only be obtained in the original Pokemon Blue, Pokemon Red and Pokemon Yellow games through a programming glitch discovered in 2003, a GameShark cheat or a Nintendo promoted event with the glitch seeming to be the most popular and easiest way to get Mew as the GameShark cheat could apparently mess up the data of players games and cause the games to freeze.

After finishing the article, I coded the html through DreamWeaver. I changed the font size and type, along with changing the color to red text, since Pokeballs, which are used to capture Pokemon, are mostly red colored with a little bit of white added in. Additionally, I provided links to the official Twitter and Facebook page for Pokemon, along with the link to the YouTube video promoting the Google Maps Pokemon Challlenge and a website that describes the famous Mew. I also added a photo different than the one provided as the one I used showed some of the actual Pokemon being featured in the Pokemon Challenge on Google Maps.

Links I used for the assignment:

Pokemon Twitter
Pokemon Facebook
How to Catch Mew by Using the Mew Glitch
Google Maps Pokemon Challenge

Assignment: 

file:///Volumes/NO NAME/Google April Fool/GooglePokemonindex.html

Blog Topic 8- HTML & CSS

<img src=

This html code allows photos to be visible on a website. I had issues with this particular code at first because I would have problems getting the images to appear. Usually, the reason for this was that I overlooked the fact that I did not have the photo I wanted to use saved in the same place as the HTML/CSS document.

<a href=

This code allows links to be visible on a website. I had issues with this particular code at first because I could not get the link to appear. I was able to fix the issue after realizing that I had just accidentally forgot to add a quotation mark at the end of the link that I wanted to provide before closing the tag.

Link Coding Practice:
Disney Store
WWE
Sanrio