2006: They announced the Two-headed Ogre. The ridiculously complex rules for playing such a creature (you had to play with a second person on a second account, randomly assigned) made it obvious it was a joke. In a slight subversion, they also announced a new neutral hero, the Goblin Tinker, for Warcraft III on the same day that was not a joke. They tried to make it seem like either of the two could be real but it was fairly obvious. Hilarious in Hindsight if you consider that they made exactly that 10 years later in Heroes of the Storm.
2007: They announced Burgercraft: A chain of fast food restaurants that would serve Blizzard gamed themed food. They also announced the new Alliance race would be the Wisp, the weakest member of the Night Elf army, who could only attack by self-detonating. Finally, a "fired" employee "leaked" the next patch notes, a list of facetious changes ranging from game breaking (Druids may only shapeshift outside of dungeons) to absurd (Hunter pets have a small chance to attack their owner when hungry) and outright insane (Paladins turn into bears) or literally pointless (being friendly via emotes to your demon slaves make them last longer, while the same update removed the warlock's ability to USE said emotes).
2008: Due to Blizzard's parent company purchasing Activision and changing its name from Vivendi to "Activision Blizzard", Blizzard announced a "second prestige" class: the Bard, which required you to play Guitar Hero while playing World of Warcraft. Also, poking fun at Sony's attempt to turn their MMO Everquest into a Warcraft style RTS, Blizzard announced that they were releasing "WoW: Heroes of Azeroth", an RTS prequal to World of Warcraft. It was Warcraft III, and also served to poke fun at WoW players who were unaware of the previous games and lore. There was also the announcement of the "Tauren Moorines" for StarCraft II.
2009: Blizzard announced a dance battle system complete with trailer. The controls were said to work like riding a vehicle in Wrath of the Lich King. For StarCraft II, there was the announcement of Terratron, a HumongousCombining Mecha made out of Terran buildings. For Diablo III, the Archivist was announced as a new class, having the character play a Deckard Cain-like old geezer whose dialogues are senile rantings. And on the UK World of Warcraft site, they announced a "Pimp My Mount" feature, which allows players to add ridiculous customizations to their mounts a la Pimp My Ride. Additionally, every post made of the World of Warcraft forums that day was peppered with random roleplaying lines.
2010: Blizzard announced a new character rating for World of Warcraft called the Equipment Potency EquivalencE Number a vertical bar on your character that grows as their gear improves (a Take That! at players who rely too much on gear ratings to determine their worth), and the Battle.net Neural Interface which permanently immerses the player in full VR and hopefully doesn't cause any permanent brain damage. And the WoW Armory character feeds had all boss kills changed to "<Player> Cheesed Boss" and all loot changed to "<Player> Ninjaed [Item]". Blizzard also introduced the new Battle.net matchmaker, a dating site where players would find romance in the form of "Someone to pwn noobs with." They also announced Diablo III blankets and pillows and a Deckard Cain GPS voice pack to go with it.
2011: Blizzard announces Crabby, an expy of Microsoft's Clippy, to assist on the forums and in-game for World of Warcraft. For StarCraft II,Blizzard makes a return to consoles, with peculiar motion-sensor tech. In addition to this, there are spoof patch notes for SC2 and WoW, which serve as playful take thats to player complaints concerning both game balance ("Fixed a bug where Terran players were able to lose a game.") and aesthetic concerns (Every class with fire-based abilities gets green fire - except Warlocks).
2013: The StarCraft II situation report announced the return of the Warhound, a unit removed from the HotS beta for being pretty much identical to the marauder, to the lineup of their favorite race (Terran) based solely on the fact that the Terran player might have won the world championships with them. However, this left their favorite race (Zerg) at a disadvantage, so the Warhound was also added to the Zerg lineup. Finally, realizing that their favorite race (Protoss) were getting the short end of the stick, they also gave them the ability to build the Warhound in order to keep Protoss players from whining about it on the forums.
Crabby also returned to the Warcraft site, though still linked to last year's jokes.
2018: World of Warcraft got new "realistic" mounts (including Rex the Lapwarmer, Sir Buster Fluffybottom, and King Cluckcluck), "Always Online" mode, "impersonal loot" (which is just thrown at you), Narcissa's Black Mirror ("Integrates your DPS meters with your social media. If you drop too low, all your relationships IRL will crumble"), a battle royale mode, and new micro-holidays (including "Looking for Queue" queues, everyone becoming elven, Geographically Themed Faction Ownership, etc.). Blizzard Korea also unveiled "Dance Battle" for World of Warcraft (which, to top it off, features a Pump It Up machine with a DanceDanceRevolution pad on the second player) and Overwatch VR among other things.
And to top it all off, every year they release a joke changelog detailing a ridiculous list of changes made to WoW.
Frontwing (of Grisaia Series and Island fame) turned their homepage into a fake movie site for King of Grisaia, even including a page for the film's hypothetical "cheer screenings".
In 2018, the Japanese Kirby website was redesigned to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Waddle Dee.
In 2019, they released a square redesign for Kirby. Naturally, they also announced a circular redesign for Qbby, the protagonist of BoxBoy!. The Twitter account for the latter also posted pictures of round Qbby facing the perils of golf clubs, baseball bats, and table tennis paddles.
In 2020, the BoxBoy! Twitter announced Final Box!, a Final Fight-style Beat 'em Up where all the characters gain buff bodies. HAL Egg celebrated by Art Shifting all the animals in Kame Sanpo to photos of the animals they were based on.
In 2021, the Part Time UFO Twitter announced the Dating SimPart Time UFO Boys, starring human Jobskis that have UFOs for heads.
The Kindly Beast, developer of the Bendy and the Ink Machine series, released this trailer for the first season of a new multiplayer fighting game called Bendy Royale before admitting the game isn't being made at the end.
Landfall Games notably twisted this trope a bit, where every April 1st leading up to the release of Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, they would release something related to the game which isn’t a full on prank.
In 2017, they released a zombie survival game with TABS physics called Totally Accurate Battle Zombielator.
In 2018, they released a Battle Royale type game with TABS physics called Totally Accurate Battlegrounds.
2019 would see the full release of the first 5 factions in TABS, with the game first showing a rickroll when booted up before changing to the main menu.
2020 would see DLC to TABS absolutely loaded with intentional Good Bad Bugs called the Bug DLC.
2021 would end up having the release of the final factions in TABS.
Nintendo news site Vooks reported in 2017 about the first physical giveaway from their My Nintendo program, Jelly Beansof the Wild. Including classic flavors like Daruk's Jock Strap Sweat, Urbosa's Abs Oil, Cucco, and Dubious Food.
Crusader Kings Z, a new expansion for Crusader Kings II, which would unleash zombies upon medieval Europe, and even allow you to play as a zombie. It was also something of a Take That! to their own Broken Base with regards to the Sunset Invasion DLC.
In Hearts of Iron IV, there are historical quotes that show up on the screen as the game loads. On April 1st, not only does the game scramble the quotes and people they are attributed to, it also throws in unique April 1st quotes and people into the mix, resulting in gems such as "Do or do not, there is no try.-Hirohito" and "Video Games were a mistake -Lieutenant Glitterhoof"
In April 1st 2019, the mod Kaiserreich for Hearts of Iron IV received an unexpected update. Players loaded into the game with enthusiasm only to notice that their soldiers now resembled little ponies in World War 2 helmets and talked about power of friendship in cutesy British accents. It was later revealed that the Kaiserreich team acquired almost-finished models and voice acting from another mod, Equestria at War(Long story), to surprise their playerbase with.
The previously mentioned Equestria at War also had a surprise in store for April 1st that year. Both the Steam Workshop page for the mod and the in-game title was changed to "Griffonia at War" (A reference to the frequent jokes about a mod about My Little Pony containing more griffon content than ponies), and starting a campaign will see the place quickly met with a fake notification telling them that they have to pay before being able to continue playing the mod (A reference to griffon reputation for being greedy in the show).
The studio released a fake teaser near April 1st 2019 for a game called Chief Executive Omni-Weapon Ken-Ichi, which was hyped to be a finance simulator about a fighting cyborg and their biggest title yet.
They weren't completely fibbing: Platinum mentioned it would look into self-publishing a new IP (which it did as part of the "Platinum 4" announcement in 2020), and Ken-Ichi's body armor resembles that of the hero of "Platinum 4" IP Project G.G.
In 2020, Platinum joked that Sol Cresta was the last project in their "Platinum 4" initiative; not long after, they revealed the existence of a "fifth" (the actual fourth) project.
2014 had them announcing their next big video game project: The Blocolus VR, which will create an instant Video Game Demake of whatever you're currently playing. As a bonus, it'll also gender-swap the male hero of any game.
In 2015, they announced You Are The Winner! Go You!, featuring WayForward's new PlayForMe technology, which automatically collects coins, defeats enemies, and does everything for you without having to press a single button.
In 2018, they did something similar with the announcement of The MummyDemastered...Remastered. Among other things, one clue of this being an April Fool's Day joke is that it's slated for the TurboGrafx-16, the Sears Tele-Games System (read: an Atari 2600clone sold exclusively at Sears), and the Atari Jaguar.
In 2021, they released a trailer for a visual novel titled "Are We Soulmates Or Am I Just Being Way Forward", with presentations of silhouetted characters from several games, who turned out to be completely different ones.
Yacht Club Games, the creators of Shovel Knight, created a post on their website in 2017 that seemed designed to criticize knockoffs of the game. All of the content that seemingly stole from the game had come out before the game; the article was a sneaky way of showing off the things that influenced the world and design of the game.
For 2024, the studio announced it's pivoting to skincare, with a new "D by Yacht (tm)" line of beauty products.
The English version announced the release of "Rebirth 2020" on 4/1/2020, where players would supposedly be able to patrol modern Japan. Event patrol previews were released with the characters saying hilarious lines over photos of modern Japanese locations, but the patrols themselves were locked until a later date after the official end date. The next day, the event was "canceled" due to unspecified "unforeseen circumstances." At the bottom of both the event announcement and the cancellation, a small print stated that the whole thing was indeed a prank.
The Japanese version replaced the characters that normally appear in patrols with chibified versions on 4/1/2020. Images of gems earned were replaced with food.
The Player Character is able to marry ship girls with whom he or she has reached maximum affection in this game. The marriage comes complete with a wedding scene, wherein the player must swipe on the screen to remove the wedding band from its box, then swipe again to place it on the ship girl's finger. On April 1, 2019, players were surprised to discover a select few ships offered the Commander their foot instead of their hand after receiving a proposal. The player would then swipe to tie a ribbon around it, rather than a ring. This was expanded upon for 2020's April Fool's Day, adding artwork for several different sizes of feet and colors of pantyhose (or lack thereof). Some of the more top-heavy ships opted to instead present their huge, protruding breasts for the Commander to tie the ribbon to!
April Fools' 2020 also saw the game's official Japanese YouTube account upload footage from a fake 15-minute long, fully voice-acted dating sim starring the ship girl representing the USS Baltimore. Many players were disappointed that this was not to be an actual Spin-Off game.
Daily runs introduced in Afterbirth have special gimmicks on certain days. On April 1st, the playable character is the Red Herring "old man" sprites for Keeper, who starts with random trinkets. Item effects are also randomized.
Afterbirth+ has the challenge "April's Fool" named after the day, which gives a map that doesn't really worknote It shows the general layout of the room and fills as you explore those rooms, but it sites you as being in a different room from where you really are, items that have different appearances from what they really are, active items that can use any other active item effect, pills, cards, and runes using different pill or rune/card effects from what they say, pickups also give any random pickup effect except what they appear to be (coins actually give health, keys can give money, etc), and every single boss is replaced with the much-hated Bloat. The reward is also laughably Boring, but Practical: resident Mighty Glacier Magdalene starts out with a pill, but said pill is always a Speed Up that brings her to the average speed.
And when Arcsys announced they would port Arcana Heart 3 to console.
More when Mikako Takahashi (Heart Aino's seiyuu) guest stars in BlazBlue Radio and rechristened it for one episode 'Araraji'. Complete with BlazBlue chibi style sprite for Heart (they did it with Sol already...)
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 has a freaking Mammoth Tank on 2009, which is essentially living mammoths outfitted for war. Though this didn't work terribly well, considering how silly the game already was (War bears, anyone?).
In late March 2018, a Fortune Cookie event opened up where you could read each Cookie's "truthful saying"; of course, these were always the opposite of how they normally acted, with GingerBrave saying to go back into the Witch's Oven, the inarticulate Zombie Cookie revealing that they could speak normally the whole time, and Dark ChocoCookie reminding the player to keep a positive attitude. On the day itself, certain Cookies had their sprites reversed so that it looked like they were running backward; if you found them, you got a Cyrstal reward.
In 2019, an extra-short New Cookie Cup and Trial (normally reserved for new or buffed Cookies) were held for GingerBrave, the weakest Cookie. The announcement was... interestingly designed and warned that "Within GingerBrave's Trial, certain Treasures and Choco Drop's Pet Skill may or may not function... 'properly'". By that, they mean that the maximum effective level for Treasures was 1 instead of 7. For the Trial itself, the background and Jellies looked like a child made them in MS Paint and the music was a shitty chiptune remix of Land 1's theme. While running, Potions would disappear and trampolines would materialize out of thin air, and all point values were vastly inflated so that one could reach the goal of 555,555,555 points note At the time, a score half that large meant you were one of the best players around.. Even the Trial Missions got in on the act, as all were horribly misspelled, and the last one was "IDK LEL ¯\_(ツ)_/¯". Meeting the Trial goals gave you the Jelly skins to use permanently.
The 2022 event promised the "blazing return" of the universally hated Invocation Cards. It turned out to be a memory game, where matched cards were burned in a furnace. The reward for scoring a certain amount of points was a costume for GingerBrave that had him stuck in a card.
2022: Poison Mushroom Cookie finds some Rainbow Shroomies, which when consumed turn cookies into either pretty anime versions of themselves...or some sort of meme. Silly transformations include hastily scribbled drawings, Picasso-style paintings, Renissance painting, and even a coin!
Now you can install Cyberpunk 2077from floppy disk. All 97619 of them.note Technically the game can fit in just 68877 floppy disks. That's with the Phantom Liberty expansion. They'll even be shipped to you by truck.
In April Fools' 2020, the Nintendo/Cygames mobile gacha RPG Dragalia Lost featured a one-day-only event called "Wagabond Pupper", featuring a puppy that had found its way to the Halidom. The single quest the event has was basically just giving the puppy walkies and taking photos! April Fools' 2021 reintroduces the mode and made it permanent, with added features such as bringing multiple adventurers as well as dragons.
Epic Battle Fantasy 5: On April 1st of 2021, Matt Roszak made a post on the official website saying that the then-upcoming mobile version of the game would have exclusive payed-for weapons that are literally just weapons from other video game series. It is a Take That! towards overpriced DLC, as each of them would cost $12 and would only be available for April 1st, something he openly calls a scam.
Final Fantasy Brave Exvius teased an extremely long 365-round gauntlet of enemies with an extremely challenging final boss... before announcing that nobody on the operations team could beat said boss and giving all players a Rare Summon Ticket instead.
2019 releases a legendary trailer for Feh, the messenger owl. The other 11 slots? Feh with accessories imitating various weapons. Players would also receive a wearable Orb that they could give to their heroes.
2020 features a trailer for a Retraux style, to reference the 30 year Milestone Celebration later in the month. Also released are various 8-bit versions of some of the characters.
2021 saw a dance routine from Fáfnir and Reginn, with the summoner as the DJ. The day after, the earphones the summoner wore was given out as a summoner-only accessory.
2022 (released a few days later) had another music video, with Kiran on tambourine, Veronica on violin, and Ash on guitar. The tambourine was later sent out as another summoner-only accessory.
2023 was an exercise video led by Askr, with Kiran and Seiðr carrying pom-poms. Joining Askr are Alfred and Timerra from Fire Emblem Engage.
Furcadia has released a number of pranks on April Fools' Day. One prank flipped upside-down and reversed the player's view window of the world on main maps, so navigating was extremely difficult. Another, recurring in some form each year, is a global text filter — one year, all curse words (and the word "yiff") were filtered to "NARF". Another year, parodying thesaurus-rape roleplay common on some areas of Furcadia, the word "eye" or "eyes" would be filtered to "orb" or "oculars". Another April Fool's pranks have revolved around avatars, in an effort to gain funding for the graphics update; in 2009 there was the Toasterwing event, turning everyone on a main map into a flying toaster; in 2010 there were two localspecies who you would become when one ran into you, the Fluffs and Floofs, and a massive zombie apocalypse battle took place.
Gaia Online has a history of pranking its users on April Fools' Day, often by finding creative ways to blow their heads up.
In 2004, strange gift boxes appeared randomly around the main site. Users who clicked on them had their faces covered in soot until they changed outfits. "Sootfaces" eventually became a reason not to change your avatar, until the great avatar resave wiped them out.
In 2005, resident megalomaniac Johnny Gambino built a giant tower. He was assassinated, and the tower fell on top of the mansion of his rivals, The Von Helsons. (They all got better)
In 2006, resident Mad ScientistLabtech X made Gino Gambino explode in a Sphere of Destruction that apparently destroyed all of Gaia. No one was killed. (Johnny K. Gambino actually came back to life!) But the explosion did attract a bunch of aliens because it ripped a hole in the universe. This is a major plot point in the MMO.
In 2007, Gaia did a repeat of its classic 2004 joke, with boxes that apparently gave out Platinum Halos. (The Angelic Halo is one of the most expensive items on Gaia, and a silver version had long been requested). Equipping it gave you a classic "Sootface".
In 2008, The Easter Bunny (who happens to be a cyborg. Don't ask), angry that its holiday was being neglected, gave out Easter Eggs. When April 1st rolled around, users were asked to open their eggs...KABOOM! They also released a special pair of pants that could be worn as a multitude of different things...except, ironically, pants. (That pose was added in on the second)
In 2009, in response to complaints about Gaia accepting sponsorships and "selling out", Gaia created its most elaborate prank yet. The logo was altered to read "OMNIDRINK", with a tiny "presents Gaia Online" in the corner. A video on the main page implied that Gaia had been forcibly bought out by a MegaCorp, that made products you were not supposed to drink. (Including a hilarious "Personal Improvement Spray", that apparently made you more manly). Players who visited the information page would see multiple messages asking them NOT TO DRINK OMNIDRINK PRODUCTS, and would be given a free sample of "Personal Improvement Spray", with a "CHUG IT!" option. The results aren't pretty.
The gag carried over to zOMG!, Gaia's MMO. Players logging in found that Omnidrink had redecorated Barton Town, and that a new Expansion Pack World (Based off both Greek and Aztec Mythology) had been added in. Players got a chance to board an Airship that would take them to this new world, but found that it simply took them to a fake loading screen, parodying zOMG's infamous loading issues from earlier builds. Upon returning to Barton Town, players received an equipable error message.
users began playing along with the zOMG! prank, by discussing the new world at length and explaining to those fooled that the airship had crashed because it was attacked by an Air Shark (made slightly more believable by the presence of a Landshark in the beach area). The Air Shark was later homaged by an evolving item's pose.
The forums played along with the joke as well, and began a war between those who had been brainwashed by OMNIDRINK, and the resistance.
In 2010 Gaians signed on to find a swf image with a video repeating "Loading..." over and over. On the left of the image was a button to be clicked, this button led to a 404 SUSHI ERROR page. Later, users were able to gain an item called "Phoenix Up" from the fake 404 page ...which later turned into a sootface, as well as a bonus pose of a Grunny coming out of the urn holding Johnny Gambino's ashes. They also added several blaring banner ads, some that even covered up avatar editing and trades. As of now there's no proof they were connected, but it ended up backfiring, and the developers fixed it.
Also, Dernier* Cri returned with a single item that cost 300 million gold and was only about a few pixels wide. The description says that it was made for "commemorating a very special day", which shows that Brennivin is at least in on the joke.
In 2011, Gaia decided to do something different. Mike Sego stepped up for the job of replacement CEO after Craig decided to step down to pursue his own interests. When word got around that Mike had worked for Facebook in the past, there were considerable fears and doubts within the userbase concerning how he'd handle the site, eventually morphing into rumors that Facebook had in some manner acquired Gaia and was ruining the site. So much like Omnidrink, the staff released the Meowbook event as a response to the rumors. The forum posts all showed people with a few randomly chosen cat head clippings imposed over their avatar's head, emotes all received a visual overhaul to give them cat ears, even the shop keepers were given cat heads. A Premium Cat Feast item could be claimed over the entire weekend by clicking the "brought to you by Meowbook" banner underneath the regular Gaia logo and clicking the submit button on the fake Meowbook signup page.
2015: The idol group of Vira, Mary, Lyria and Djeeta officially forms with them releasing their first song, "Kimi to Boku no Mirai/Our Future".
2016: Theatrhythm: Granblue Fantasy, a parody of the Final Fantasy rhythm game, was available for a day as a minigame.
2017: The one-day only "Big Bad Shadow" event launched with the Grand Blues version of Vyrn serving as the raid boss. Oh and the Bahamut battle song is sung by Kugimiya with the lyrics written from Vyrn's perspective.
2018: "Big Bad Shadow" has a re-run with new costumes and the Oira minigame went up on the App Store and Google Play, a Taiko no Tatsujin parody with fifteen of Granblue Fantasy's vocal songs available to play through.
ArenaNet, creators of Guild Wars, began running relatively low-key pranks in 2007. Each year a set of joke updates is made public along with an additional one-day change to the game.
2007: All players are gender-swapped.
2008: All players are converted into stick-figures.
2009: All players are converted into Gwen-chan, a chibi-deformed version of story character Gwen.
2010: All players are scaled down to the size of miniature pets. All miniature pets are scaled up to normal size.
2011: The quest "Annihilator", a Terminator spoof, is made available, featuring time travel to stop the Annihilator golem from killing Gwen's mother.
2012: The quest "Annihilator II: Searing Day" is made available, featuring time travel to stop the G-1000 from killing Gwen as a child. Character dialogue lampshades many criticisms of the Prophecies storyline, especially the fan base's mockery of Prince Rurik.
In 2005 they announced a home version of the game was in development.... except that this "home version" was just a single unit of the arcade system. Highlights include being small enough to fit into a pocket (owned by a blue cat robot) and an internal battery (estimated battery life: 15 seconds). The press release devolves into existential questions on what girls like, how the press release author enjoys emulating Haruki Murakami, and warning the reader not to play the pocket version when it rains, but it's perfectly okay to enjoy juice. This turned out to be foreshadowing for the Xbox 360 version which at the time was about to begin development.
In 2009, they announced that Urf the Manatee (who uses a Spatula and a Chicken foot as his weapons) would be added to the game, but it was quickly revealed to be a joke.
In 2010, they did it again, but made it look much more official. Shorty before Urf was supposed to be released, it was announced that another champion, Warwick, had killed and skinned him. A skin was briefly released for Warwick that showed him wearing Urf, and all the proceeds were donated to real-life Manatee Preservation Groups.
In 2011, they posted a set of patch notes that would either be ridiculous in a game balance method, uses Memetic Mutation, or are otherwise pointless changes to make a joke on an aspect of the characters being 'changed'. In addition to this, they announced that the Blind Monk champion, who was dropped early in the game's development, was going to be released, but all the promotional material they released for him made him look to be the most brokenly overpowered champion in the game. When he was actually released, Lee Sin, the Blind Monk, was actually a well-balanced champion.
In 2012, a video was released advertising an upcoming 3D viewing option for the game.
In 2013, there was a Rampage parody starring Cho'Gath, which also contained a Jetpack Joyride parody with Teemo as an Easter Egg (Astro Teemo).
In 2014, they revealed Ultra Rapid Fire, a set of changes they dubbed "the next evolution of League of Legends" which included things such as removing everyone's mana or energy costs and giving everyone 80% cooldown reduction, x5 passive gold generation and a host of other fun bonuses.
2014: The game was purchased by Facebook for a million dollars. The announcement even included a fake screenshot of the game running on a Facebook webpage. This was an obvious Take That! at Facebook's purchase of the Oculus Rift.
2017: Legends of Sockquestria. Because the fandom has an obsession with ponies in socks apparently.
2018: LoE now has microtransactions. Like back in 2014, this was a Take That! at the microtransaction scandal that had hit other AAA games recently.
Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story: In Japan, the 2018's April Fool's event had a special cutscene. The game already has a mode where players could take real-world pictures with their cell phone camera and add one of the magical girls they have to it; however, certain characters were replaced with their designs from the official parody webcomic Magia Report. The official twitter account also changed its banner and profile pic to use these designs. A Magia Report event then started on April 2nd, adding a Magia Report version of Madoka and a character illustrated by Magia Report's artist.
In 2018, Rockman Unity, an official Capcom blog, "revealed" all 8 of the Robot Masters for Mega Man 11, featuring ones that could conceivably be real (Whip Man and Necro Man), to the absurd (Shogi Man and Shower Man), and a bunch of references to other media ("Dark Roll" is designed after Popuko, Career Woman is a direct Shout-Out to Japanese comedian Chiemi Blouson, and Bit Man is highly reminiscent of Beck).
The following year, a video for the game's EX mode is published, showing... a music video for "What is Might?" featuring a composite of Ray and Apple No. 1.
In 2013, Minecraft 2.0 was released, including overfeeding, tinted glassnote which would later be added to the base game, now renamed to stained glass, and an event known as Super Hostile Mode, where a huge number of lightning bolts strike the ground around the player and a huge number of hostile mobs spawn.
On April 1st 2014, all player skins were changed to villager skins, and all sounds were replaced by the sounds of the Element Animation Resource Pack.
In 2015, Mojang announced the Love and Hugs Update. Hunger and health are completely removed in this update, replaced by a "Love" meter that fills up if the player takes damage or punches a mob. This update also adds obsidian boats (which sink instantly), turns dungeons into homes, and adds random patches of snow, that, on a superflat world, form a QR-code announcing the title of the upcoming 1.9 Combat Update.
2016 saw the Trendy Update, with the addition of "Reality Vision" glasses, a USB charging block with the same properties as a redstone block, ankle monitors, and the texture of signs was changed so they all read "OBEY".
Right before the actual update to Minecraft's textures in 2018, Mojang released a "trial version" of their new and improved textures. Said textures looked... Well, have a look for yourself.
By the time April 1st 2021 rolled around, original Newgrounds mascot Pico had gained a newfound boost in popularity thanks to his appearance in Friday Night Funkin'. In response, creator Tom Fulp replaced Pico's debut game, Pico's School, with a deliberately Lighter and Softer version. In it, instead of gorily shooting down the perpetrators of a school shooting like in the original, Pico now befriends and talks down the would-be shooters before the massacre could even start. The protagonist of Friday Night Funkin' even appears, with Pico stating they're dating! The change was reverted a day later, and the newer version, now dubbed Pico's School: Love Conquers All, was given a separate upload on its own page.
On April 1, 2017, they advertised a modeling campaign starring Machamp for a new brand of underwear called "MaChamps."
On April 1, 2018, Team Rocket took over the official social media. The website contained articles exclusively about Team Rocket, and the Featured Pokémon were all Team Rocket's favorites (plus Meowth). Users voted in polls on Twitter to help Team Rocket steal Ash's Pikachu...but of course, they didn't succeed, and blasted off by the end of the day.
The official Twitter account was taken over by Bidoof on April 1, 2021.
Shortly before April 1, 2018, Pokémon GO changed the Pokémon images in the Pokédex, the Nearby tracker, and the list of captured Pokémon to the pixel art sprites seen in PC boxes in the main series.
On April 1, 2019, instead of Smeargle photobombing trainers' photos, it was Ash Ketchum, which would spawn a special Pikachu with Ash's cap to catch.
April 1, 2020 replaced the Smeargle photobomb with Croagunk and Aipom, and increased the spawn of Pokémon who were pranksters, like Gastly and Aipom, or had a masquerade ability, like Sudowoodo and Voltorb.
April 1, 2021 featured a "Tricky Pokémon" event that focused on mischievous Pokémon like Aipom, Croagunk, and Purrloin, as well as a higher chance of encountering Ditto. The event also offered a weeklong Times Research opportunity which included a chance to obtain a Shadow Zapdos.
Playing Power Bomberman on April 1st will play a special intro before the title screen parodying the SNES version of WWF Raw.
Progressbar 95, despite having a legit large update on the same day in 2020, decide to prank its players by turning Clippy's appearance, the game's main nuisance, into the in-game dog's. Normally the dog isn't annoying and gives points when tapped on, so it led to people getting confused.
Puyo Puyo!! Quest has celebrated April Fools' Day in several ways, all of which gave away Cabaloons as gag presents.
Early incarnations popped a fake home screen that can be easily closed out.
2018 reskinned the game into Puyo Puyo Touch for the full 24 hours, and gave away the Touch versions of Arle, Amitie, and Ringo. The Pastel Puyo skin introduced in Touch became a mainstay after the event, and the character cards became recurring April Fool's Day event maps.
2019 continues the tradition with a Puyo eSports/Champions theme, giving away the Champions versions of Carbuncle and Dark Prince.
2020, in contrast from the previous two years, made the game Sig-centric, the title screen being a honey-slathered tree, the interface being bug-themed, and the central character is Sig wearing a ladybug costume...while only speaking Pokémon Speak like his Japanese alternate voice in Puyo Puyo Tetris.
2021 became Suketoudara-themed, utilizing a disco dance floor theme for the title screen. A Faketoudara (a human-limbed catfish) was given away as a present, and released Dancing Star Suketoudara into the gacha pool.
2022 is Puyo Puyo Fever 2-themed, emulating the original game's title screen.
2023 made the game Retraux, styled after Puyo Puyo 2, complete with a pixelated version of the game logo.
In 2008, the Puzzle Pirates staff "accidentally" allowed everybody to read a (fake) staff-only forum, which was filled with posts like "Bug report: My 'send instakill' button is grayed out."
All of the song jackets are replaced with pictures of food, mainly ramen.
Note targets are redesigned to look like chopsticks.
The starfield background is replaced with flying bowls of ramen.
Tap notes are designed to look like bamboo shoots (one of the ingredients of a typical ramen bowl, while hold notes look like ramen noodles when being picked up by chopsticks.
In 2018, their very firstRivals Direct was filled with joke announcements (the most notable of which being Sandbert) prior to the announcement that Elliana will be joining the roster.
In 2024, they streamed themselves cooking pasta for over three hours, occasionally decorating the stovetop with dolls from their plush line, culminating with the reveal of Loxodont's chef skin for Rivals 2.
Roblox pulled off several, but in 2014, they said that they would change the game so that your character is a cat. This joke aloneenraged fans of the game, which some said they'd quit if this was true.
The admins pulled off a scheme before in 2013, which was changing forum titles to memes.
Someone did an extreme one in 2012, where he took over the admin's accounts, unadmined them, and said several unusual things.
Harmonix appears to release ridiculously silly (and not at all rock-like) songs during the week of April Fools' Day. In 2008, it was "Still Alive", available for free download. In 2009, three songs from SpongeBob SquarePants were released to be sold at a cheaper price than the average song. A tradition broken in 2010, when instead they opted to release a Jimi Hendrix album.
Years before the sequel's development, they posted mock screenshots of RosenkreuzStilette Freudenstachel on their website.
One was planned but was missed due to personal issues, which involved Liebea Palesch's brother Kahl parodying the classic Castlevania series with Kahl as an expy of Simon Belmont.
In 2013, a short-lived RosenkreuzStilette Lustatem April Fool's site was dedicated to the RKS's resident Cloudcuckoolander.
RuneScape has done several. In 2004, they announced that a cowboy-like merchant named Diango was selling Horses, which players had wanted to see in the game for a while. He was selling Horses- toy horsies.
Diango was later re-used in the 2005 and 2008 jokes, where two more popularly demanded items, dragon platebodies and dragon kite shields, usually abbreviated to "Dragon Plate" and "Dragon Kite" respectively, were sold. They were actual plates with a dragon on them, and kites with a dragon on them that could be flown. These joke items remained in the game after April Fools' Day, although re-named to make the fact that they were jokes more obvious. Dragon Platebodies and Dragon Kite Shields were actually added to the game later.
Their 2007 joke was a fake newsletter on the front page claiming a lot of silly cabbage-related updates were going to be released that month, with an actual newsletter being released the following day.
In 2009, they did something else cabbage-related by making cabbages wieldable, and gave the ability to make some of the cabbages in the game able to move on their own and be kicked- with the secret joke that if you kicked one from Falador to Oo'glog (which takes a really long time), the Cabbage King, Brassica Prime (mentioned in the 2007 joke) would show up and congratulate you.
In 2010, they announced that they were making a RuneScape theme park in England. It was an obvious joke, but some people thought it was real anyway until they revealed it was a joke the following day.
For 2012, they proclaimed that "P-hats" would be dropped all around RuneScape for players to pick up for free. ("P-hat" traditionally refers to the ultra-rare party hats that are some of the most valuable items in the game.) True to their word, major cities were littered with Pea Hats: green peas that you can wear on your head.
In 2014 they Trolled players by announcing on the website that due to a technical error, a section of the forum that was not intended for players to see had become viewable and asked that players not look at it. If you actually fell for the prank you would probably think that Runescape was going to Jump the Shark with all the bad ideas they talked about adding to the game. They also changed the animation for throwing logs into a fire to look like you were throwing party hats (one of the most expensive items in the game) into the fire.
For Satisfactory in 2021, Coffee Stain Studios slipped several pranks into a seemingly innocuous Update in Experimental- firstly, the players are given a big head. Next, Lizard Doggos are scaled up to be humongous and randomly will have a pioneer helmet on. Then, they scaled down the Curious Creatures to be around the size of a lizard doggo. Lastly, they replaced the hogs with the Walkers from Sanctum. And as icing on the cake, they purposedly reintroduced the typo "error" trolling attempt they made sometime in Update 3. In true April Fools fashion, this backfired on them when unaware players flooded their QA site with bug reports on the above changes.
On the 1st of April 2023, Mechanistry posted a preview of Timberborn update 4... which consisted of a beaver very slowly walking down a path.
Toontown: Corporate Clash has an "April Toons" tradition of bringing back content from other holiday events, on top of a host of "Contractors", or seasonal event bosses, to fight depending on the year:
Count Erfit, the third cousin twice removed of Halloween Contractor Count Erclaim who's "swole, ripped, and has an expired gym membership" whose cheats are all themed around fitness, including one where he kicks a Toon out of the battle for a turn so they can get a glass of water.
High Roller, the April Toons boss introduced in 2023, who runs a game show that the Toons are expected to play in while fighting him, slowly buffs their stats from "just started playing" to "impossibly maxed-out", and can drop the Toontanic on YOU for one of his attacks.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links unleashed an army of Tristans who are so weak you win just by talking to them.
Unsorted
IGN:
2008: In possibly one of the most elaborate April Fools' Day schemes ever, the site spent six months filming the trailer for a live-action Zelda film. The trailer was hit or miss with the fans; some were ecstatic that the movie was being made, others were horrified at the idea. In any case, an impressive amount of detail went into the making, complete with CGI monsters, music taken from the games, and a complex storyline expressed in three short minutes of filming. The only clue to its status as a hoax was the purported release date for the actual movie — April 1, 2009. At one minute after midnight on April 2, 2008, the site admitted it was a fake, and released their making-of featurette, which is longer than the trailer itself.
2013: They mocked Apple's products with the announcement of the iPlay video game console.
2014: They released a fake trailer for Optimus Prime DLC for the game Titanfall, announcing said DLC to be available that very day. The fake trailer even contains a slight joke related to the Bayformers movies by joking that said DLC would come with a new Linkin Park song entitled "Prime Time."
2021: A fake trailer for a new game called Zoom Royale. Based on the video conferencing software Zoom that saw a surge in use during 2020 the game puts 100 random individuals into a group conversation letting everyone speak at once with a player losing the battle if anything strange happens that interrupts their speech.
On April 1st 2012, Half-Life 3 was spotted in the Steam store to not only be real, but on sale. When you clicked on the link, however, a drawing of Valve founder Gabe Newell sporting a troll face with the caption "Happy April 1st" would appear. Most people wrote it off as Valve trolling the fan base, and it was widely reported that Valve was responsible. However it was later revealed that the store front was fake and that someone had gone to the trouble of recreating it so it was entirely functional and would take you to the real store when you clicked on real items. The media was floored that they overlooked the extra letter in the URL, www.store.steamppowered.com. Today, that URL leads to a very serious malware infection source, but has been archived here.
The 1998 Textfire Hoax produced a collection of playable text adventure demos (including Coma! An Interactive Action Thriller and Flowers for Algernon and "Operation" adaptations) that represented the ostensible catalog of a commercial Interactive Fiction studio.
Steam once did an April Fools' Day gag by releasing fake patch notes for Counter-Strike: Source that started with features such as "cost of sniper rifle reduced by 50%", "de_dust map removed" and "jumping now increases travel speed by 50%" and got progressively more ridiculous.
Now Serebii is claiming they don't like misleading the public, undoubtedly setup for THEIR jokes.
Probably the best one was releasing the rest of the English Diamond and Pearl data in one fell swoop after trickling it out bit by bit. Making us think it was fake was the joke in itself: The names were real.
For 2011, Bulbagarden changed its name to "Fushigarden" (Fushigidane, the Japanese name for Bulbasaur) and acted like it was 1998, when Pokémon was still young. For 2021, there was a staged Hostile Show Takeover by Team Rainbow Rocket.
For 2018, the official PokémonYouTube and social media were hijackedby Team Rocket. For 2021, the Twitter featured Bidoof and made posts featuring the Pokémon.
The team behind Mushroom Kingdom Fusion' sister project Super Mario Fusion Revival also made a joke with their game. In 2013, the development team posted a video portraying Bowser as a Power-Up Mount, claiming that they were scrapping the Bowser Rampage system due to the trouble of designing fun and interesting levels. The day after it was posted, the team revealed that the Bowser Mount was the original concept for having Bowser playable, and the video was recorded using an earlier build of the game.
Every year, some gaming magazine/website or another announced that Nintendo and Camelot were finally making Golden Sun 3... then it was actually announced at E3 2009, which was sadly nowhere near April 1.
Not even Touhou Project is safe from this. On March 31st, 2008, a false trailer for a spinoff RPG was released. The fact that the trailer was a hack of Valkyrie Profile's engine, along with having very professional-looking graphics and remix of an official Touhou track, just made the revelation that it was all a lie and this amazing-looking game would never ever be playable hit even harder.
In 2000, Cyan announced Myst Mayhem, Myst turned into a First-Person Shooter game. The gun-turret tower and foreground gun did appear as Easter Eggs in real!Myst.
Some versions of Football Manager have an Easter Egg / April Fools gag that shows up only when both the in-game date and the actual date is April 1st.
Every April 1, Bungie releases new information about Pimps at Sea, which apparently has the most advanced and complex economy in a game, ever.
The teams of two indie fighting games produced fake screenshots for supposed retro handheld versions of their series in 2012: Skullgirls had Skullgals for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, and the familiar puke-green classic Game Boy colors found their way to the supposed DSiWare "Nettou Battle High".
peppy, the creator of osu!! has a knack for adding April Fools' Day jokes to the game, which usually revolve around changes in its genre (touhousu!, a Touhou Project/osu! hybrid), gameplay (osu!core, which revolves around random increase in pitch and speed in beatmaps) and beatmaps (pretending to approve and praise an extremely poorly made beatmap).
Some of these pranks have become official, though: the osu!core mechanic is still available in the game as the hidden Nightcore mod and touhousu! has been confirmed to be in development by peppy.
The forums would also join in on the April Fools' Day pranks.
Four Leaf Studios, the group behind Katawa Shoujo, has had one every year since 2008:
2008: The announcement of KSS: Katawa Shoujo Shoujo.
2010: In conjunction with Studio DEEN, Katawa Shoujo will have an anime series.
2011: Future plans to add two more routes, bonus content, exclusive merchandise, premium content (such as the ability to save your game), and no advertising, all because it would now be hosted by Steam.
2012: It didn't stop just because the game had been released. Now available in HD with all objectionable content removed.
2013: Plans for KS2 are cancelled. Instead, they will proceed to KS3.
The Frostbite engine (used in the Battlefield series among other things) is incapable of running on Wii U hardware without severe issues (though this has been brought into question when Crytek later confirmed that the latest version of Cry Engine, a more taxing engine, can run just fine on Wii U hardware). Despite this, its developers announced in 2014 that they would back-port the engine to the console anyway and went on to tweet what were allegedly progress updates. This development, however, read less like harmless joking and more like an excuse to fire off some of the pettiest, most vicious anti-Nintendo and -Wii U Take Thats imaginable. It was taken to such an extreme that Electronic Arts COO Peter Moore eventually issued a public apology and deleted the offending tweets, with the Frostbite twitter account being updated to say that the offending programmer was acting alone and did not represent EA as a whole.
For 2015, Rovio released a preview for a fake game called Agri Birds, a game about the birds trying to save their farm from the Mighty Bagel, who intends to demolish it into a golf course. The birds are given limbs, Hal is reimagined as Sasha Lynx, and there is a Gameplay Roulette — in addition to the farming simulation, there's a Light Gun Game where Matilda shoots moles, a Virtual Paper Doll featuring the aforementioned Sasha Lynx, a Visual Novel mode in which characters interact with each other, and a Survival Horror sequence where the player is stalked by the Blues.
TYPE-MOON's April Fools usually consist of changing their website for some outrageous concept starring their proprieties. To wit:
2006: Hazakura Romantic, a seemingly original BL novel concept (co-opted with nitro+) that left many people wishing for their Defictionalization.
2008: Type Moon as a girl wrestling promotion! Also this year was Fake/states night, a joke spinoff concept written by RyohgoNarita, of all people, as a April Fools for his own site. It was later released as Fate/strange Fake in the official TYPE-MOON magazine, and from there got official light novel and manga series.
2009: moon.cinemas.jp, a site imitating a typical movie theater chain front page, where all the movies were parodies of well known films (up to including a parody of Densha Otoko starring Waver Velvet and Fate/Zero!Rider that was revived as the April Fools joke for ufotable in 2012). Hilarious in Hindsight because one of the "movies" announced, one based on the (then book only) epilogue for the movie series of The Garden of Sinners, was eventually done and released for real.
2010: Rather than fully changing the main page as in former years, Twitter- sorry, TMitter feeds were added to the site. Hilarious and very in character Twitter feeds from their most popular characters.
2011: Instead of a typical joke, for their main page they released a serious short story about the very concept of April Fools, titled "The Room of the April Witch". For their mobile site, on the other side, they reprogrammed it to show a different (parodic) image and accompanying text with each reload.
2014: The return of the TMitter! Also, TM-channel, a series of Nico Nico Douga-like "streams" of several characters, some of them done in a vlog style.
2015: A triple combo: the "release" of a new character for the capsule minigame in the PlayStation Vita version of Fate/hollow ataraxia, a Pokemon-style championship on said game (complete with A-tuborudo and The Big Ben Company branding), and "Imperial Roma", a talent agency launching the idol careers of several characters (Nero being the main spotlight), complete with release dates and everything. Also the TMitter came back again.
2017: A joke app parodying Pokémon GO, Fate/Grand Order Gutentag Omen, only available for that day, was released, allowing players to "catch" Servants using Quartz. Also, Learning With Manga! FGO card art for all the characters introduced in the previous year.
2018: Another batch of Learning With Manga! FGO card art for the characters introduced in the previous year, and a rerun of Fate/Grand Order Gutentag Omen, again only available for that day.
2019: More Learning With Manga! FGO card art was released and FGO QUEST, a Retraux RPG featuring the Learning With Manga! chibis, was made playable for the day. The English server launched FGO flippin' Summon, a concentration-style game featuring the chibis, instead.
2020: More Learning With Manga! FGO card art was released and Fate/Grand Order MyCraft Lostbelt, an Augmented RealityTower Defense game, was made playable for 5 days. The English server launched FGO Pinball, a browser pinball game featuring the chibis, instead.
2021: More Learning With Manga! FGO card art was released and Fate/Freedom Order, a fighting game with the chibis but with everyone's heads swapped was made playable for the day.
2022: More Learning With Manga! FGO card art was released and Fate/Pixel Wars, a parody of The Wonderful 101 with the chibis was made playable for the day.
2023: More Learning With Manga! FGO card art with everyone in baseball style was released and Fate/Grail League, a baseball game with the chibis was made playable for the day. The English server launched Quiz Battle Master, a trivia game with the chibis, instead.
2024: More Learning With Manga! FGO card art with everyone in soccer style was released and Fate/Dream Striker, a soccer game with the chibis was made playable for the day.
For a single day (April 1st 2015), Dying Light's physics were changed to preposterous ragdoll levels that lets you send enemies flying away with a single hit.
In 2015 Star Trek Online's devs made a big deal about a Star Trek Online: Rebirth that was now live on the Redshirt testing server. A careful reading of the release makes it pretty clear that what's actually going on is they brought back the original release build of STO for the day.
The team behind Project M likes to release special videos on this day, always ending with a fake tease of a brand new character:
For 2013, Turbo Mode is revealed, although the video depicts it as a massive overhaul of the core gameplay. The character of the year is Pichu (specifically, the spiky-eared version from HeartGold and SoulSilver).
For 2015, PMDev claimed that they're hacking the original N64 game instead, with the footage showing players with skins based on the original Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 64. Sheik, Charizard, Falco, Ganondorf, Sonic, Diddy Kong, Bowser, the Ice Climbers, Olimar, Mewtwo, Mr. Game & Watch, and Snake all get matching Retraux skins. The character of the year is Parasect.
Flipline Studios, creators of the Papa Louie Arcade series of video games, have done this on many occasions.
For 2012, they announced a game called "Rico's Chiliria", which starred the character Rico cooking chili for customers.
In 2013, Rico appeared again in a hoax game called "Rowdy Rico: When Chili Attacks". This was done during production of the second Papa Louie platformer.
2014 broke the trend of Rico-related hoaxes with the announcement of a real-life Taco Mia! (like the one in the game).
In 2015, a Papa's Wingeria-HD themed April Fools Day joke involving real-life versions of sauces featured in the game appeared.
In 2015, 13AM Games posted a fake guest character reveal trailer for Runbow, which shows that an apparent group of characters are actually one single entity — the Abowmination! The real characters wouldn't be revealed for almost two more weeks.
The blog site for Missing Stars posted a character bio for a girl named "Renée Baum" during the period in 2012 when they were announcing official character designs. Renee's bio had some traits of other characters and her design did slightly stand out due to her (dyed) green hair but she didn't seem too odd, so some fans thought she was a legit character.
A demake of Bayonetta was published on Steam on April 1st, 2017note the game's titled 8-Bit Bayonetta, even though the graphics resemble those of a 16-bit console, which really upset those who were expecting a proper PC port of Bayonetta... that they ultimately got ten days later.
In 2018 Path of Exile devs decided to cash in on the Battle Royale Game fad and created Path of Exile: Royale, which they boasted as something that took a single day of development to makenote Which was really just technically true. Each staff member was given a maximum of one day to work on the game mode.. The game mode itself plays like the original but in a 100 player deathmatch mode as how the games of the genre go. Funnily enough, most players consider this as the best PvP experience the game ever offered, and would see a return in 2021 as a more fleshed out game mode.
For two years, Crate Entertainment posted fake changelogs for their game Grim Dawn. It contained silly game changes such as an overly long Boss Banter before fighting Lokarr, increasing ragdolling by 1000%, casting Wind Devils be dependent on weather conditions, adding 4 new masteries while remove all existing masteries and much more.
Most of its gags have been joke charts, such as "The Rhythm Sense Test" (just tapping a consistent rhythm across the entire "song" — which is just a metronome that eventually slows down and fade out. Plus the master difficulty chart hides the notes entirely), and "Wonderland Wars Theme" (which requires more than just your hands to play)
For 2018, the game unveiled its new version, maimai III, a parody of beatmania III. It has floppy disk support, foot pedals, and three-player co-op charts. They made good on the last part, though.
A common meme among Duolngo users is taking the frequent push notifications to the extreme of Duo forcing you in real life to take your daily lesson. On April 1, 2019, the company embraced this by promoting a program called Duolingo Push. A monthly subscription would have a giant mascot version of Duo show up, so you can't ignore the reminders anymore. The joke isn't quite as frightening as the meme typically portrays Duo, though.
For April 1, 2021, they announced a new way to learn language with Duolingo Roll, where various foreign phrases are printed on sheets of toilet paper so you can learn on the can.
For April 1, 2024 a video announced Duolingo On Ice, a live skating show. The video gets increasingly ominous, with musical numbers including "Spanish or Vanish" and "French of the Trench". One child from the audience joins the cast on the ice, and is then carried off by Duolingo's minions. One of the quotes from the audience at the end is from his distraught mother, saying that they took her son. The accompanying ticket website reports that shows have been cancelled due to a lawsuit and "unsavory allegations" about Duo.
Announcer: Treat your family to the magic, the wonder and the chilling performances of Duolingo On Ice, where the tears of the innocent will please the owl for millennia to come.
In 2010, Sunsoft announced that a "lost" Blaster Master title for the Nintendo PlayChoice-10, Blaster Master: Destination Fred, would be released for WiiWare. The plot of this game was that the Plutonium Boss tried to inject deadly nanomachines into Jason and Fred, but only managed to hit the poor frog. Jason and SOPHIA III were then shrunk to travel inside Fred and destroy the nanomachines before they prove fatal.
FDG Games released concept art for a DuckTales (2017)-influenced remake of Quackshot, claiming they'd gotten the license from Disney and are working on it with Game Atelier. It was later revealed to be art from a failed pitch that they thought was too good not to show.
Digimon and Medabots did a cultural exchange by showing off a "new" member of their respective franchises built on "data from another world". In Digimon, this resulted in the Omegamon spoof Omedamon (even using Medabee and Rokusho's heads on the arms), while in Medabots, this resulted in Omegaknight.
In the year 2020, the official Japanese Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter had Rouge send an emergency message about Tribot, a triangular Distaff Counterpart to Orbot and Cubot. Judging by her giggling at the end, she was likely doing a prank call.
Bounty of One: On April Fools' Day, a new item becomes available and is an extra option in all Deputy Chests — "Undertaker In The Box". While its too-good-to-be-true description states that it doubles all your stats, makes subsequent upgrade choices legendary, and makes the Undertaker fight for you, all it does when picked is nothing but make your character exclaim "April Fools!"
In 2018 the developers made a post announcing the addition of loot crates and weapon/HEV suit skins for use in both singleplayer and multiplayer, as well as a "Last Freeman Standing" battle royale mode.
For April 1, 2023, the creators of the fanmade Black Mesa: Blue Shift added a fake option to play the unreleased fifth chapter of the mod; trying to select it just plays a "Never Gonna Give You Up" cover featuring Otis (whose voice also replaces all the menu UI sounds).
Prayer of the Faithless: The 2018 April 1st teaser image, joking about a more direct connection with Soul Sunder, the previous game set in the same universe, and a character's form that's not actually happening:
That's right! Fans of Soul Sunder will be happy to know that Zero will be joining the struggle! (Also shown: Revenant Mia)
OMORI: In 2023, the team showed off a fake title screen for KEL, a game that supposedly had Kel navigate Orange Space rather than White Space. The game's official Twitter account also turned itself orange to sell the joke.
Terraria: For April 1st of 2024, an "Undeluxe Edition" was announced as a beta feature, an option to downgrade the game all the way to Version 1.0.6.1note Terraria's version at the time was 1.4.4.9, one of the very first versions of the game released to the public. The "update" came with a poster inspired by ads for old games that tries to pass off the immense drop in content as a major selling point.
, a list of facetious changes ranging from game breaking (Druids may only shapeshift outside of dungeons) to absurd (Hunter pets have a small chance to attack their owner when hungry) and outright insane (Paladins turn into bears) or literally pointless (being friendly via emotes to your demon slaves make them last longer, while the same update removed the warlock's ability to USE said emotes).
