English
Gamereactor
articles

April Fools' Day Round-Up

Developers and publishers turn pranksters for a day.

Subscribe to our newsletter here!

* Required field
HQ

April 1 is a bit of a nightmare for any news editor.

Every story has to be checked extra carefully before being posted - and even then one or two comedic posts may slip through. Here at Gamereactor UK we haven't fabricated any stories of our own, but we thought we'd provide you with a handy list of some of the more inventive attempts at leg-pulling out there.

PlayStation Flow

Sony banged the big drum with PlayStation Flow, going big on the PlayStation Blog, social media and even dropping a press release (given Sony's relatively low frequency of press releases that's a big deal).

This is an ad:

Essentially pitched as underwater wearable goggles, with (what looks like) deflated toddler floating devices to measure motion. The idea is to allow players the option of going to their local swimming pool to simulate underwater sequences in PS4 titles.

It's quite demented, but pokes fun at Sony's own devices in a rather endearing way.

HQ

Housemarque goes VR with "The Jarvis Project"

This is an ad:

Twin stick shooter experts Housemarque opted to poke fun at virtual reality with this video for "The Jarvis Project".

Powered by Housemarque's new "Boxel Tech", there are some rather alarming side effects that include red eyes, palpitations, baldness and even loss of life.

Ilari Kuittinen, Housemarque's CEO, commented: "Despite some little hiccups, we're confident that our algorithms are above and beyond all the competition. That being said, it currently only works with games from the '80s."

HQ

War Thunder adds AT-ST-esque tank

Now this one has to go in the category "wouldn't that simply be awesome?" as Gaijin Entertainment released a new tank in War Thunder.

M like their previous antics it's not simply a joke - you're able to play the ST-1 in the event "March to Victory".

There's a rather detailed and funny developer's blog where you can read up on some distinctly alternative history facts.

HQ

Manager motions captured for FM 2016

This one falls in the category, " it's probably a joke", but surely in a few years...

Sports Interactive made use of The Mirror (that Sports Interactive have a partnership with) to introduce the fact that Football Manager 2016 will include motion captured manager movements.

"Our game is called Football Manager, so we thought that it was only right that our managers behaved as realistically as the players," says Football Manager gaffer Miles Jacobson. "We didn't know how well this was going to turn out, but as you can see the results are close to unbelievable."

The article was written by Kit Mann...

HQ

Rebellion breaks out Zombie Army Thrillogy

A dancing spin-off to the spin-off series Zombie Army Trilogy? Why not?

Rebellion pokes some fun at the subject of their game by having zombie Hitler do some formation dancing in this rather extended video.
"Supporting up to 666 players in online co-op, gamers must keep fast and freaky if they're to keep in time to the rhythm, fill their dance floor murder multiplier, and enter epic dance-offs with Karl Fairburne, Marie Chevalier, Boris Medvedev and other favourites from the Sniper Elite multi-verse."

HQ

Warhammer: The End Times - Vermintide honours M.C. Hammer

Fatshark published this video of a new mode "Hammertime" for their upcoming co-op action title Warhammer: The End Times - Vermintide. Apparently they are huge M.C. Hammer fans...

HQ

Dying Light kicks it real good

Dying Light has become something of the sleeper hit of the year so far and this "Important Public Service" announcement ushered in a 24 hour period where your kicks are far more effective than usual in Dying Light. It's the kind of April Fools celebration we can wholeheartedly support. If you've got the game, make sure you boot it up and experience what it's like to kick it harder than Cantona.

HQ

And although it's not gaming related we'd like to include a shout out to the good folks at CERN for proving the existence of the Force and for not mentioning anything about "midi-chlorians".

Oh, and GamesRadar published a list of 100 April's Fools headlines in an attempt to vanquish the tradition once and for all. Though the comedy seem to taper off before they hit the 100, we commend the effort.

Elsewhere in the Gamereactor network, some of our other editorial teams got in on the action as well. Here's a link to our Norwegian sister site who claim to have gotten some rather juicy details on the new Nintendo console - the Nintendo NeXt, courtesy of a Japanese journalist. They claim it's a portable follow-up to Nintendo 3DS and that it will launch with a remake of Metroid Prime.

April Fools' Day Round-Up

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth reborn on new 3DS, Wii U and Xbox One

Finally, there's the announcement of The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth for the New Nintendo 3DS, Wii U and Xbox One.

Normally this kind of announcement wouldn't be a joke, as porting a game from Steam and PS4 and onto other platforms isn't exactly leg-pulling material, but there's a bit more behind the story.

The game was refused by Nintendo on the basis of its religious contents and this rather lengthy blog post goes on to detail the rather significant changes made to please Nintendo, as well as Twitter posts by Edmund McMillen seemingly pointing towards its validity.

April Fools' Day Round-Up

At the end of the day we're not entirely sure what to think. It's either a rather aggressive joke targeting fans who want to see the game on these formats or a case of packing the announcement of the ports (though surely not with those rather significant changes) into a joke. But could the game still be heading to the New Nintendo 3DS, Wii U and Xbox One? Sure, why not? Maybe with a couple of minor tweaks, or perhaps Nintendo could be convinced that freedom of religion also applies to the freedom to criticise religion. If it's not happening they're simply rubbing a bit of salt in the wounds of fans who have been hoping for a 3DS port for some time now. Either way, we'll know by tomorrow.

While it's been fun seeing how inventive the industry's been this year round, we'll be glad to see the return of normal operation come tomorrow.



Loading next content