Special Feature: Japan’s Best and Meanest April Fools’ Jokes

It’s easy for April Fools’ Day to qualify as one of the worst days of the year for some, depending on who they are and where they go. Plenty enjoy partaking in the day to fool people they know, or those who least suspect it online, and post surprise reviews. But not everyone can come up with something clever. It’s always good to think about these jokes carefully, and consider whether they’re actually worth inflicting on someone else.

However, others like to take an alternative approach to the day, like Japan. Instead of fooling someone with fake news they think might be real, Japanese game developers enjoy creating entertainingly fake material. It’s been the tradition for at least half a decade, and more developers and publishers partake in it every year. This year, however, they took these festivities even more seriously; but some felt a little mean, as some were projects fans would have wanted to see as real games.

One of the meanest was Square Enix’s Tactics Alexander, a fake strategy/RPG based on the world of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, whose sprite style is derived from Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. Given the number of Squaresoft, Square Enix, and Quest fans who’ve wanted a new SRPG from the company (or new SRPGs from Japan at all) for a while, this was cruel. It’s unlikely a new project in this vein is in development, so it was simply a fun side activity for the existing FFXIV team.

That said, it was strange how the remixed music theme used chiptunes, given that Tactics Ogre was originally a Super Famicom/Nintendo title. Game Boy Advance title Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis also didn’t use chiptune music, though its tracks were comparatively restrained thanks to the system’s limited sound capabilities. But this remix is good enough that I’m willing to let them slide.

Another cruel joke came from Arika, who dug into their archives and used their original Street Fighter EX characters for a special video. It shows Kairi, Hokuto, and Garuda battling it out in a fighting game rendered on Unreal Engine 4, made using SFEX mechanics like super-cancelling and Guard Breaks. Unlike those games, the backgrounds have walls where characters will have a tough time maneuvering if they’re backed into one. The characters and backgrounds look too good to be a project simply made for April Fools’ Day, despite only three characters being playable.

There’s a good reason for that, because this may not be entirely a joke. Arika likely revealed this on April Fools’ Day for potential exposure, and it appears this is an actual project early in development, evinced by how it was playable at an event Arika attended yesterday. The joke here, according to the company’s Ichiro Mihara, is how this has been in development for a while, but wasn’t leaked. Whether it will be a new Street Fighter EX game or a sequel to Fighting Layer (a late-90s fighting game that included Allen and Blair from the first EX game) is unknown, but perhaps they’re hoping a publisher will pick it up to fund its remaining development. If not, word from the event is going around that they could try crowdfunding it.

PC players have been asking for Sega and PlatinumGames to port Bayonetta (and Vanquish) to PC for years, and they decided to address that with…8-bit Bayonetta on Steam. It was a great poke at their fanbase, though some unsurprisingly didn’t appreciate it, especially with Sega Europe’s tweet. This originally mainifested as a browser game two years ago, which can still be played on PlatinumGames’ 404 page.

But there’s a catch — a potentially good one. Completing a puzzle within the game leads to a teaser site that displays a timer and Bayonetta’s heel in the background. The clock is counting down to April 11th, a week from Tuesday. There will be some angry people if this doesn’t lead to the announcement of Bayonetta on Steam, because Sega isn’t cruel enough to have this clock end with anything else, right? Hopefully that’s the case, or they’ll never hear the end of it.

In another fake game announcement: Nintendo announced Fire Emblem: Battle of Revolution, a title that uses Famicom/NES-style sprites and similarly retro-style promotional artwork for Switch and 3DS. This fake game takes place in Japan’s Edo period, and stars old school versions of Valbar, Kamui, and Leon from Fire Emblem Gaiden. It’s also structured after Gaiden, a title receiving a remake in the upcoming Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valentia for 3DS. Most took this as a nice novelty, but the irked certain fans who think Valentia should be on Switch alongside 3DS.

Between these, it feels like the theme among Japanese developers was teasing games people would love to play but never will, though that status could change on at least one of them. Japan April Fools’ Day jokes are usually worth looking forward to, and while the creativity on many of them here was appreciated, it’s good that we’re past the festivities now. But now you know that you should brace yourself for next year.