Google Maps Now Has An RPG Style ‘Quest View’

April 1, 2012

We’ve seen some rather amusing April Fools jokes over the years, and Google have given us a real cracker this time. If you head over to Google Maps, you’ll notice that there’s a new ‘Quest View’ option on the menu. If you select it, the whole world becomes 8 bit and pixelated, in the style of classic RPGs of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) era of gaming. You can see what Australia looks like with the new view in the picture above. Zooming in, major cities are represented by castle symbols, while smaller ones are displayed as towns. Even the Street View option has been modified. Google released a humorous promotional video advertising Google Maps’ new support for the NES platform. The video shows off ‘gameplay’ in the style of the early Dragon Quest games:

[youtube id=”rznYifPHxDg” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Let us know what you think of Google’s prank in the comments below!