Many big Web sites have been netting April Fools jokes for past many years. Legendry prankster Google is back in the role this year again with Google Maps for NES. Google Maps has gone retro style on April Fools Day by turning its Maps service to 8-bits quest maps and launching the same service for NES.

Just head to Google Maps and on the top-right corner click on Quest to transform Google Maps into a retro game world that looks very similar to classic games like Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft, and even like our favorite Mario and Contra games. Also you can switch back to Satellite or simple Maps view, if you do not love the new look.

The 8-bit Google Maps now work on classic Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and it is soon coming to Game Boy too. Maps application for NES features low resolution graphics and 8-bit soundtrack. But, you can still do everything in Quest mode that normal Google Maps does. You can get driving direction and view popular landmarks like Taj Mahal and Statue of Liberty in 8-bit form. Street view has also gone 8-bit.

"Our engineering team in Japan understood the importance of maps on retro game systems. In our pursuit of new digital frontiers, we realized that we may have left behind a large number of users who couldn't access Google Maps on their classic hardware. Surprisingly, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was unsupported, despite its tremendous popularity with over 60 million units sold worldwide," said Tatsuo Nomura in a post on Google's Lat Long blog. Tatsuo Nomura is a software engineer at Google Maps.

Google might be the best tech prankster of 2012, but this quest view might only be available for April 1 only. Google might shutdown this feature after midnight. So, there are only a few hours left to solve the quest online.

Google has also launched a walkthrough Youtube video for Google Maps on NES.

Exploring the new frontier - NES is an amazing prank for a tech giant firm like Google. Let us know that how much you like this prank.

(reported by Johnny Wills, edited by Surojit Chatterjee)