This Makes Me Happy

What with all the doom and gloom going on, it's nice to have at least one megacorporation able to use it's considerable talents and wealth to do something pretty damn special.

If you haven't seen the Google Maps 8-bit April Fools prank, well you should take a look here:

I love these people. In a thoroughly sexy way. The whole blowing on the cart thing, the authentic Japanese Famicom unit, the Dragon Quest-style box art... I'm so overloaded with geeky nostalgia right now.. I want to have their babies.

But, it's not really coming out though.. a cartridge for a system whose support died out fifteen years ago? Pfft. All just a load of mocked-up screens.

But then you can go to Google Maps and this happens.

The bestest thing ever to happen on the internets. Ever. Not only is the whole planet now an overworld map from any one of those games (not surprising it looks so authentic seeing as Google enlisted Square Enix to help them), but there are also tonnes of easter eggs.. Try going into street view for example, or maybe visit a well-known landmark, or perhaps scour the world for DQ video game characters.

Anyone interested in catching 'em all, might want to go here.

Also related: this is quite fun, a browser game where you protect well-known landmarks from invasion from Google Map pins. It's distracting in a losing-an-hour-of-your-life sort of way.

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