Roundup of the tech and game-related April Fool’s gags

Here’s a roundup of the tech or game-related April Fools jokes of the day. Did any of these trick you?

Conan O’Brien buys Mashable and boots out Pete Cashmore.

Sony comes up with the world’s smallest Ultrabook. Its screen size is three-fourths of an inch by 1.25 inches.

Virgin Volcanic will take you to the center of the Earth. Richard Branson will let you go first.

Google launches Maps 8-bit for Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy.

Reddit introduced Reddit Timeline to let you travel through time and participate in conversations from the old days.

Smashwords Weed service treats common ailments for writers.

Twilio unveiled Twilio Telegram for communication via horse power.

TechCrunch launches TechCrunch Drama channel.

Big Fish Games created a faux game called Mime Something, where you use hand gestures to mime puzzle clues.

And we have Assassin’s Creed for Kinect (pictured at top), where you can dive onto your floor as you pretend you’re descending off a 10-story building.

Notch, the creator of Minecraft, is now working on Mars Effect.

Flickr Dither will recreate your photos with the dot-based look.

The Daily Dot dove into the social-sharing business via CorkMarket in competition with Pinterest.

Nintendo and Hasbro team up to create Super Smash Bronies.

Animoto announced a new video creation service, Animoto for Dogs, where the dogs can tell you how they really feel about you.

And we wish that OMGPOP chief executive Dan Porter’s tweet about his “weakest” employee was just a bad April Fool’s joke. But alas, it was not.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.