The internet is awash with fake video game pranks for April Fools’ Day though some of them are more tangible this year.
With everyone’s attention squarely on tomorrow’s Nintendo Direct for the Nintendo Switch 2, it’s easy to forget that it’s April Fool’s Day today.
Every year, the games industry likes to make fake game announcements that, frankly, aren’t all that funny. There are some exceptions (Sega made a whole Sonic The Hedgehog murder mystery visual novel one year), but the misses are more numerous than the hits.
As always, it’s important to take any gaming news you hear today, especially anything that sounds too good to be true, with a pinch of salt. Things will only get worse as the day goes on too, as America wakes up, but there have been a number of fake reveals already.
Examples of definitely fake announcements include screenshots for an 8-bit remake of NieR:Automata, made by the NieR franchise’s Japanese X account, and a PowerWash Simulator update that teases dual-wielding; both of which would actually be pretty neat.
Zenless Zone Zero’s April Fool’s prank may be the meanest since it teases an Xbox port for the game that’s scheduled to launch… on February 30, 2222. Considering Zenless Zone Zero is only on PlayStation 5, PC, and mobile, any Xbox owners might feel a bit peeved by the rug pull.
We’ll give Argonaut Games some credit for its effort. Ahead of the launch of its Croc: Legend Of The Gobbos remaster, it has claimed to have rediscovered a long lost Commodore 64 graphical text adventure game ‘which served as the inspiration for the 1997 classic 3D platformer.’
This is obviously all fake, but Argonaut has gone out of its way to release a playable version of this lost game, that you can download from its website and run through an emulator. It’s an awfully niche joke, but we respect the work put into making something more tangible.
Thankfully, Rockstar hasn’t tried anything cute with a fake GTA 6 announcement or something, probably since that’d just infuriate the already disgruntled fans who are still waiting for a second trailer.
Insider Gaming has taken a crack at trolling the fanbase though, by sharing an ‘exclusive’ report on an Xbox 360 version of GTA 6 being in development, including a statement from a Rockstar representative called Don Beleevit.
Unsurprisingly, there are a couple of dating sim announcements too, which seem to be the low hanging fruit of video game April Fool’s pranks. The first is for PUBG Battlegrounds, which turns the game’s guns into anime waifus to romance.
We initially assumed this was just a fake trailer, but it turns out it is playable through the PUBG Battlegrounds website and has three endings that unlock minor rewards for the actual game.
And then there’s Palworld, 2024’s indie survival game hit most famous for its similarities to Pokémon. Last year, developer Pocketpair did a fake announcement for a dating sim spin-off, saying it would launch on April 1, 2025.
Another trailer for it was recently shared, which seemed like Pocketpair was just repeating the same joke. Except this time, the Palworld dating sim has a listing on Steam and can even be added to customers’ wishlists, suggesting that it’ll be a real product.
The new trailer doesn’t mention a release date, only saying it’s in development, so fans shouldn’t expect a surprise drop by the end of the day.
It being April Fools’ doesn’t mean the regular news cycle has stopped though. In fact, Nintendo has today elected to confirm the runtime of the Switch 2 showcase, revealing it to be the company’s longest Nintendo Direct yet.
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