Google is well known for their great April Fool's jokes, one of the best of which was the introduction of Gmail in 2004. This year was no different. They announced that they were entering a partnership with Nascar to create self driving race cars and unveiled a new app designed to make sending Gmail on an Android phone easier by using Morse Code. The app was named Google Tap, and they even created a video of people using the two on screen buttons to tap out email messages. Both of those were funny, but the best joke by far was turning Google Maps into an 8-bit SNES quest map. If you haven't seen it yet, you just need to click on the map view button labled "Quest".
Even though April Fool's Day is over, you can still have a ton of fun with Google Maps. If you visit MapsTD, you can play a simple tower defense game in any location on the map. All you have to do is enter in your location and MapTD will give you a path to defend. The game starts you off with a small amount of money and a selection of towers you can purchase that all have different range, speed and damage attributes.
You can watch the enemies try to get to your location and as your towers pick them off, you earn more money to upgrade your defenses. What makes the game so addictive is that you can actually defend your home or office. The invaders have to use a legitimate path to your house, no walking over bodies of water or just crossing arbitrary lines.
So, the next time you are in front of your computer and need to kill a little time, try defending your home or office. It's a ton of fun. I checked it out, (for research purposes, you know) and I was please that my location is fairly easy to defend.
Have you played the game? What do you think about the 8-bit version of Google Maps?
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