List of April Fools' Day jokes by McLeodGaming

This is an article about hoaxes and jokes on McLeodGaming, Smash Flash DOJO!!! and the McLeodGaming Forums.

April Fools' jokes

 * 2008: On April Fools' day in 2008, Cleod9 replaced the forums with "Forums baleeted" as a parody of the mass account hacking and porn spamming that took place weeks before. The word "Baleeted" also comes from of an internet series called Homestar Runner in a cartoon called 50 Emails.


 * 2009: On April Fools' day in 2009, Cleod9 announced that Nintendo had found out that he was making Super Smash Flash 2 and that Nintendo threatened to sue him if he did not shut down McLeodGaming and cancel the project. Cleod9 then put a link to what seemed to go to the Official Nintendo Forums, but actually went to the RickRoll'd video on YouTube. Cleod9 then announced that it was a an April Fools Joke and that SSF2 was still in development.


 * 2010: Cleod9 did not make an April Fools' day joke in 2010. However, Smash Flash DOJO!!! did a sort of joke, redirecting people to an "OBJECTION!" page, who said "You must be an April Fool if you didn't see this coming".


 * 2011: Cleod9 did not make an April Fools' day joke in 2011 either, though a DOJO!!! update was titled "Dojo Ending", and detailed the end of the Smash Flash DOJO!!!. However, if the reader scrolls down the page, a real update shows telling of "trigger items", items that look like normal items, but when used, turn into shout-outs from Phoenix Wright (e.g. "OBJECTION!" "TAKE THAT!"), causing a variety of effects on the player.


 * 2012: On April Fools' day in 2012, Cleod9 redesigned the forums supposedly having demoting himself from the rank of site administrator, even claiming the red color that highlights the name of an administrator doesn't match his style, in turn, by "demoting" himself he also promoted all global moderators to site administrators and all regular users to global moderators, only developers remained unchanged. During this day, a whole forum to made free-spam and post anything irrelevant that cannot be posted anywhere was also opened. In reality, Cleod never demote nor promote anyone, including himself, he just changed the color of the usergroups. The forum was erased afterwards.


 * 2013: On April Fools' day in 2013, Cleod9 turned the main website upside down. For the forums, he replaced every profile picture with an image depicting Link's "Elegy of Emptiness" replica statue from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, based on the infamous creepypasta called the "Haunted Majora's Mask Cartridge Hoax" or "Ben Drowned". The site would also play indefinitely the Lavender Town's theme from Pokémon Red and Blue.


 * 2014: On April Fools' day in 2014, Cleod9 and the developers released a video on McLeodGaming's YouTube account which supposedly confirmed Mr. Incredible inclusion as a playable character in SSF2. To make up the joke, Mr. Incredible was actually coded into into the game, with only one known visible attack, which was used as his down attack in the original Super Smash Flash. His sprites also hailed from the Game Boy Advance version of The Incredible game but this time using Mr. Incredible's red attire. Additionally, he also estimated a fake release date for demo v0.9b on August 21, 2014, which turned out to be the 8th anniversary of the original SSF release date.


 * 2015: On April Fools' day in 2015, Cleod9 made an announcement saying he made some updates on the forums claiming that "the tone [of the forums] has always been a bit too casual, so these upgrades should make it much easier to converse in a more polite and respectable fashion.". In reality, Cleod9 added a tag under every profile pic calling every user a "loyal subject to his royalty cleod9[sic]" and added the text "ALL HAIL CLEOD9!" under very signature. Also, typing things on posts like "Cleod9" or "SSF2" would automatically result in calling them "royal ruler of the forums" or "greatest creation of his royalty cleod9[sic]", respectively. The smiley emoticon was also replaced with a mugshot of Cleod9 himself.


 * 2016: Cleod9 did not make an April Fools' day joke in 2016. However, the fifth SSF2 Dev Blog posted by developers that day, supposedly to be focused on costumes to be included in the game, was allegedly interrupted by a bot in the likeness of Cleod9, called ＣＬＥＯＤＢＯＴ, that has grown tired of working for the devs and has rebeled against them. As punishment for trying to seize him (and failing to do so), he executes his revenge by downloading his consciousness into the . This joke invariably served as a confirmation for Sandbag's playable inclusion as the game's joke character, however, because it still seem it could be a joke not to be taken seriously, as fake character inclusions have been done in the past (such as Mr. Incredible's case), an extra Dev Blog was posted two days later to clarified the Sandbag was, indeed, made a playable character.

Hoaxes

 * 2010: On January 30, 2010, SSF2 developer Damian, backed up by several other Devs, spread a false rumor that would be replaced with Gligar. This created an uproar amongst the members of the McLeodGaming Forums until the rumor was disproven on February 1st by the same developer.
 * On October 17, 2010, SSF2 Developer Geno posted a fake screenshot of Luffy using his Gomu Gomu no Baku Baku (ゴムゴムのバク バク) against Ness, leading fans to assume that he  would appear as an Assist Trophy in the Super Smash Flash 2 Demo 0.7 (which he did not appear in.) The screenshot, while fake, actually used coded data to feature rendered sprites of Luffy in-game.


 * 2011: On December 23, 2011, SSF2 Balancer Faceless Void claimed to have uploaded the final character dev blog video for version 0.8, which was supposed to showcase Mega Man. However, after the usual intro, the video would just show on, using his Side taunt repeatedly.


 * 2013: On January, 2013, developer Damian once again spread the false rumor of Batman being a playable character claiming he was confirmed and was notably included into SSF2 for critically-acclaimed games like Batman: Arkham City on Wii U, given some support by former developer, Roy. People got less credibility on this, but some still fell for it.