This Year’s Best Video Game April Fools’ Jokes

Easily one of the best jokes this year was The Pokémon Company’s short about competitive Pokémon. But this isn’t for Scarlet and Violet’s competitive battling. This is for competitive Pokémon Sleep. The competition is commentated by casters Chris Pillow and Kenny Mattress as they watch a group of competitive Pokémon Sleepers getting some shut-eye in front of a live audience. It is an incredible commitment to the bit that does not have to go as hard as it does.

One thing that makes a video game April Fools’ joke stand out is when it is more than just a made-up concept. InnerSloth is making a new, goofy mode for its social deduction mode that makes all players the longest versions of themselves. The limited-time mode will run from April 1 to 8, and will include new animations to accommodate for the characters’ new height. If you’re a party pooper, you can change back to the original character models at any time.

If you missed out on the free trial last week, you might be thinking about picking up Cyberpunk 2077. But what if, instead of buying it on your PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S and only having to worry about one disc, you could buy it in the form of 97,619 floppy disks? CD Projekt Red has envisioned this future, but alas, it is only a dream. Who among us isn’t nostalgic for the lengthy process of installing PC games via multiple pieces of physical media? Put “I Really Want To Stay At Your House” on loop as you load several thousands of these bad boys into your gaming PC.

The funny thing about Sega’s April Fools’ joke this year is that they’ve already kind of done it once before before. The Sonic the Hedgehog company posted what looks like a vintage ad for Genesis cartridges that you can use for DLC, or, Cartridge Loadable Content. The end result is a giant cartridge that towers over the Genesis system and only gets bigger with each piece of new content you install. But Sega already did something similar with Sonic & Knuckles, which included an adapter that let you combine it with the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 cartridge. Funny to look back on how things would be if we didn’t have the internet to install all those add-ons developers like to put out.

Look, we still don’t know when Mina the Hollower, the next game from Shovel Knight developer Yacht Club Games, is coming out. But it sounds like the studio is looking for some new business opportunities while it finishes up the game, and what better market is there right now than skincare? That’s right, Shovel Knight devs are ready to shovel some dirt onto your face with D by Yacht Club Games, a skincare line that will keep you looking like you’re decades away from being put in the dirt yourself. I mean, you’ve seen the Shovel Knight, that man hasn’t aged a day in ten years. This must be his secret. His face is constantly covered in dirt.

Everyone loves PowerWash Simulator for the serene, satisfying act of giving an environment a deep cleaning. But what if one day you decided you just wanted to go apeshit? You spend all this time cleaning up a space, but what if you just chucked your Shovel Knight skincare dirt all over the clean surface you just spent hours painstakingly scrubbing spotless? That’s the future I want, but FuturLab is merely dangling that possibility in front of me with a trailer of a reverse PowerWash mode that lets you spray everything with dirt instead of cleaning it. Damn you, April Fools’ Day.

Overwatch 2 has made it an April Fools’ Day tradition to throw the game into chaos for the bit. This year was no exception, as Blizzard released a limited-time arcade mode that slaps google eyes on every hero’s face, makes them say silly shit whenever they use their ultimate abilities, and riffs on their cooldowns in unpredictable ways. Orisa’s Javelin now ricochets off walls and then explodes on impact. Shit, that’s actually pretty cool. Can we keep that one, Blizzard?