April Fools' Day 2007
From RWP Wiki
The Rare Witch Project April Fools' Day 2007 prank was carried out by Coolboyman, with assistance from Cyberen and Gold Jinjo.
Preface
Coolboyman, who felt fed up with members on the board over-analyzing everything in Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie in order to find some relation to Stop 'n' Swop, decided to "make the prank to end all stupid theories". The idea first sparked in October 2006. The original idea was to put 6 extra eggs and a new key into Banjo-Kazooie, however the idea was transfered to Banjo-Tooie because there weren't enough worlds left in Banjo-Kazooie to contain 6 extra eggs and a new key.
February 21, 2007
A video interview with Rare employee Ryan Stevenson was released, with him stating that the Stop 'n' Swop feature was dropped.
- Interviewer: For the record, what actually happened to Stop 'n' Swop?
Ryan: I'm not actually sure about that, the whole logistics of it, like pulling cartridges out and putting other cartridges in. I think we just decided in the end that it wasn't a brilliant idea.
February 22, 2007
Coolboyman posted a thread in which he claimed to find the model of a Purple Secret Egg in Banjo-Tooie through hacking, while supposedly searching for completely unrelated things in the game. The Egg was larger than Tooie's Eggs; about as large as the Eggs in Banjo-Kazooie, albeit more detailed. The location he "discovered" it in was Glitter Gulch Mine's Train Station, as he claimed that that is where he did his searching/testing in the game.
He stressed that the Egg was not collectible, as he had merely "found" it by using the Image Modification code for GameShark, which swaps one object's model for another's. Shortly afterwards, he released a video on YouTube showcasing the Egg, which seemingly corroborated his story for most members.
Speculation ran rampant in Coolboyman's thread for the next few days.
February 28, 2007
On February 27, Coolboyman made a new post in his thread saying that he had found something new, which he would soon post. On the 28th, he followed through, and posted that he had found another as-of-yet unknown Secret Egg: an orange-colored one. He claimed that when he discovered it, the game automatically warped him to the Waste Disposal Plant in Grunty Industries. Using the image modifier, he claimed, he replaced the model of the Springy Step Shoes in the area with that of the previously-discovered Purple Egg, and it became the Orange Secret Egg.
He again stressed that this Egg could not be collected, as it was merely a swapped model. Once more, as proof, he posted a screenshot of this new Orange Egg, as well as a YouTube video showcasing it in full. Interestingly, the Orange Secret Egg is the one most commonly associated with Coolboyman's prank, and it is the one that he currently uses as his Rare Witch Project Forums avatar.
On the same day, Coolboyman posted that his attempts to work out this new Egg's "trigger" had rendered his Banjo-Tooie ROM unusable: it would freeze upon load up. Thus, he warned that people should not attempt to research these Eggs while using a legitimate cartridge, as otherwise it may also be susceptible to permanent damage.
March 3, 2007
Coolboyman once again posted that he had found yet another new Secret Egg: a light brown-colored one in Cloud Cuckooland's Cheese Wedge; almost directly after Gaming Master2k posted saying that Coolboyman should find another Egg, and it should be brown. Coolboyman claimed that the Egg sparkled yellow (despite being brown in color), that he had to use a repeater jump/walk-through-walls GameShark code to reach it, and that it again could not be collected, much like the previous two. He posted a YouTube video showcasing the Brown Secret Egg, which showed that when Banjo approaches it, he goes straight through it; a difference from previous Eggs, which were spawned as solid objects.
Coolboyman also speculated that the Eggs he found had no purpose; that they were dropped from a very early version of Banjo-Tooie, and thus were just unusable remains of the dead Stop 'n' Swop feature.
March 5, 2007
On this day, the most-recent batch of official screenshots for the then-upcoming Jetpac Refuelled game contained screenshots featuring two players whose names, displayed above their scores, were "CoolmanBoy" and "Orange Egg".[1] Naturally, this was seen by many as a direct confirmation by Rare themselves that Coolboyman was telling the truth.
This event marks the first and thus far only time that Rare became directly involved in any Rare Witch Project April Fools' Day prank.
March 8, 2007
Colboyman posted a Project64 save state for Banjo-Tooie, which allowed people to see the Brown Secret Egg for themselves. Previously, Coolboyman had waited to post a save state, as said he wanted to eliminate a lot of the lag present near the Egg. When he posted it, he claimed that he did eliminate the lag successfully, however, one side-effect of that was that trying to leave the area or touch the Egg would cause the emulator to freeze and display an error.
This save state also convinced many people who were previously skeptical about the authenticity of Coolboyman's claims.
March 26, 2007
Coolboyman posted saying that he had found some "interesting music" in Banjo-Tooie, which he claimed he could not get to play completely, as it was located on a freeze digit. Later in the day, he posted again, this time with an MP3 of the music attached, as he had apparently gotten someone to rip it from the ROM. The music in question turned out to be a version of the Stop 'n' Swop anthem using Glitter Gulch Mine's instrument set. Some people believed the song was legitimate, although a few turned back to skepticism, as they did not feel that it sounded real. Forum user Banjo-Fella, for instance, was skeptical due to the sampling rate of the opening "fanfare" section of the song being different than the anthem, and MikeHive pointed out that the volume for both sections was also different.
March 29, 2007
Coolboyman posted claiming that he had found yet another new Secret Egg. He later posted a YouTube video of a Silver Secret Egg, located in Targitzan's Temple in Mayahem Temple. It is worth noting that the area where the Silver Secret Egg was located was also home to a Honey Jar which grants invisibility during Squawkmatch multiplayer in Targitzan's Temple. This brought the total of eggs found by Coolboyman up to four.
Due to this step and the previous step being posted fairly close to April Fool's Day, some were becoming even more suspicious that the entire thread was leading up to that day, although Coolboyman obviously denied such claims.
March 31, 2007
Coolboyman posted another thread, this time claiming to have found a hidden map in Conker's Bad Fur Day, which happened to be the inside of the windmill in Windy (inaccessible during the actual game). He claimed that the map was quick to crash the game, as it was located on a freeze digit, but that he had noticed a Rock Key inside the windmill and managed to take a screenshot.
April 2, 2007
On this day, Coolboyman finally revealed the whole thing as a prank, in a new thread titled "It's over." In it, he discussed why he did it: for fun, and to teach a lesson to many of the Rare Witch Project Forum members. He went into great detail explaining how exactly he did many of the things involved in the prank, along with various pictures to accompany them.
Many of the Eggs were created through modifying the game's "base" Secret Egg, the Glitter Gulch Mine Stop 'n' Swop music was arranged by Gold Jinjo, and the Conker's Bad Fur Day windmill interiors and Rock Key were modeled by Cyberen.
