April Fools' 2006

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Revision as of 16:11, 2 April 2006

Which way is up again?

On April Fool's Day 2006, The Brothers Chaps flipped the site upside down.

Fun Facts

Remarks

• The following pages / sites were exempt from the flipping because they are hosted separately from the main H*R content or are not Flash files:
  • Strong Bad's Website
  • Store
  • Legal
  • Strong Sad's Lament
  • Stinkoman 20X6
    • Note that if an HTML file is put together to try to do this, the "no Flash 7" warning appears.
  • Podstar Runner
  • Store Thank You Messages
  • All the stuff in Museum.
• Seek bars do not work with the flipped toons.
• Amusingly, this makes Homsar's character page right-side up.

Glitches

• Several toons that are not the usual 550x400 resolution were not centered properly:
  • virus
    • This email also suffered from its custom navbar missing, so Homestar pulled his words from nowhere.
  • Not the 100th Email!!!
  • Handheld Games Menu
  • flashback and Main Page 22 were both correct, as they used their own flipper swf files, which handled the different size.
• Some pages had invisible or missing text:
  • Under Construction
  • Main Page 18 (No HTML text in the "Store" effect.)
• In highschool, the "m." on Young Strong Mad's shirt was missing.
• TROGDOR! didn't load up properly - the game itself took up only the bottom right quarter of the usual frame, and the rest is filled in with gray.
• Many buttons and other scripts on some of the site did not work, as they used the _root property in ActionScript to access the main scene of the Flash file. However, with the flipper file loading the main scene, _root actually referred to the flipper, not the scene itself. The Brothers Chaps could have gotten around this by using the _lockroot property in the flipper, but it seems they didn't know about it (probably because they still use Flash 5, in which the _lockroot property doesn't exist).
  • The Eject button on the Characters page (which normally makes Homsar's video come out of the VCR) did nothing.
  • Edgar's Baby's Daddy on candy product did not appear. Neither did the Old-Timey Easter egg in little animal.
  • The video clips in HomestarRunner.com PAY PLUS! repeated themselves automatically.
  • The rando link on the navbar did not work.
  • The King of Town DVD, King of Town Main Page and anything linked from there looped at the end instead of stopping.
    • Additionally, Revenge of the King seems to have had a similar fate to TROGDOR! (with the broken screen), except you could not hurt The King of Town, nor did he shoot at you. The timer also didn't work
  • On the Decemberween Email Menu, none of the Easter eggs worked.
  • The buttons on Downloads didn't work.
  • The Telebision Toons Menu didn't work.
  • On any Strong Bad Emails featuring the Tandy 400 or the Compy 386, the contrast buttons didn't work. This includes the Easter eggs in gimmicks. The ripples on the Lappy 486 appeared and disappeared much faster than normal, and did not stay if the mouse button was held down.
  • In any of the Strong Bad's Message Bored Games, none of them worked right. There is no possble way to score on any of them.
  • In First Time Here?, the number of takes never changed.
  • The Peasant's Quest Movie Trailers never loaded.
  • The number of messages on Marzipan's Answering Machine never changed.
• In Peasant's Quest, Trogdor's voice didn't work.
  • When the Kerrek is encountered, his tune did not play.
  • Trying to kill Poor Gary proved unsuccessful.
• It seems that the text in the Quote of the Week wasn't bold, like before the 'flip'.
• Nothing in the Handheld Games Menu (except for Homestar Quiz), including itself, was fully playable.
  • None of the buttons in the actual menu worked (except for "new games").
  • None of the buttons in Dancin' Bubs worked.
  • Homestar Talker did not lay out stars for each correct word, and never progressed to the Strong Bad Talker.
  • Nothing but the bongos in Audition With Marzipan were playable.
  • Bronco Trolleys was broken; you could click the "Play" button, but the timer didn't work and the ingredients were missing.
  • Neither the text boxes nor the finished libs work in Strong Libs.
  • Hairstyle Runner is playable, but many things are not visible because the top frame is off-center.
  • The fortune cookies in Fortune Cookies do not work.
  • The Spin and Say does not spin.
  • The buttons on the Astro Lite don't work.
• Although the Main Pages rollover effects were mostly fixed, some issues remain:
  • Main Page 3: Homestar isn't knocked back by the coconut for "Email".
  • Main Page 8: The screen keeps moving on "Characters".
  • Main Page 10: The Homestar Runner's body doesn't expand when the bomb explodes after "Downloads".
  • Main Page 16: The entire menu still doesn't work properly. In fact, two versions of the copyright notice appear at the "top" of the screen, and the trees in the background are light blue.
  • Main Page 18: On "Games", Sherlock does not mumble to himself. On "Store", the background "opens" and "closes" faster than usual, with no sound effects and no HTML behind it.
  • Main Page 22: The "What's New", "Weeklies", and "Main Pages" buttons appear in their normal positions and orientations, and the partial scene from Peasant's Quest does not come in from the side.
  • Main Page 23: Homestar doesn't move his lips for "Toons" and doesn't reply with "'Sup" for "Store". Also, the "What's New" and "Weeklies" are missing.
  • Homsar Main Page: None of the effects work, except a few bubbles appearing on "Toons".
  • Awexome Cross 98: When you lose all your lives, the game freezes and you see The Cheat spinning in the tire, but the background stays still.
• The Storyboards and Deleted Scenes in "In Search of The Yellow Dello" do not work.
• When the pages were fixed early on the morning of April 2nd, the Main Page Navigation Bar fix was not initially repaired, leaving the main page right-side up, but the News button and Main Page numbers flipped.

Main Page 16: Looking into the past?

• After the orientation reset on April 2, Main Page 16 had a copyright date of 2001 overlaying the regular copyright notice. Homestar would still speak as normal, but no triggered animations would happen other than mouth movements and a visible wisp of Homestar's breath.
  • Homestar's scarf was also missing, as were some trees in the background.
• Strong Bad's Message Bored Games were also not functioning correctly, as many of their components (cars, Homestar Runners to shoot) were not present.

Fixed Glitches

• Originally, the "What's new" button on the main pages did not appear in the correct location and was right-side up. This was fixed shortly after the "feature's" release.
• The Strong Bad Email menu originally did not list any emails. This was also fixed.
• The Weeklies popups originally appeared right-side up, but were later fixed so that they would appear flipped like the rest of the site.
• Many of the rollover button effects on the Main Pages don't work. In most cases, the speaker simply says the name of the button that is hovered over (without moving his lips) and no visual effects or other sounds occur. This was later fixed.
• In the Main Page 22 the word "games" was not there. This was fixed later in the day.

Real-World References

• The Flash file that causes the pages to be flipped contains the phrase "They call him Flipper", which is one of the lyrics to the Flipper theme song.

External Links

• View the Flash file for the flipped opening page
• Several toons with different sizes have their own flash file to compensate:
  • View the Flash file for the flipped navbar
  • View the Flash file for the flipped Toons Menu
  • View the Flash file for the flipped Games Menu
  • View the Flash file for the flipped HomestarRunner.com PAY PLUS!
  • View the Flash file for the flipped Main Page 22
  • View the Flash file for the flipped flashback
• Forum thread Re: April Fool's 2006