For many, Twitter serves as the web's hottest way to spread the word, but for some it extends a platform for fun and sometimes mischievous roleplaying. I tend to reserve my follows for real-life folk, but on the occasion that my favorite and most beloved riddle-solving academic, Professor Layton of Professor Layton and the Curious Village for the DS, joined Twitter, I followed without a second of hesitation.
@TopHatProfessor brought the voice of Layton to life on the web, serving up daily riddles to his followers and rewarding the first to answer with a satisfactory @reply of "CORRECT!" As time went on, other players from the Curious Village began to appear on Twitter, and it was the general understanding that Nintedno had developed a clever marketing campaign to rustle folks up for the next Layton game, Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box.
But (!), thanks to some investigative work of Kyle Orland at Crispy Gamer, it turns out that the entire Layton ensemble was something that curiously came together with the start of one college student/game journalist, Roger DiLuigi (@RogerBase):
"I figured that if Nintendo wasn't going to make the U.S. release of
the second game known, I was going to take matters into my own hands."
Never once supported by Nintendo, DiLuigi crafted TopHatProfessor into such a convincing character that three other writers joined in on the fun and created @ApprenticeLuke, @DonofScience, other familiar faces from the game. While DiLuigi has since revealed the man behind the Professor, the characters continue to engage in what seems like a fan-fueled dinner-theater atmosphere. A truly neat story, check out the article to get the details!
