April 1. For some, a day of shenanigans. For most, a day of clenched teeth and tested nerves. To sort the former from the latter, here’s a roundup of the best (and worst) April Fool’s gags for 2016.
Originally run March 31. Time to put these babies to bed and rest easy for another year.
(If you’d like a recap, here’s 2015's collection)
First, here’s the best from Japan’s April 1 hijinx:
Next, THE BEST from the West!
HEARTHSTONE
Blizzard does what Blizzard does best, and imagines the card game as a full-blown MMO.
THE WITCHER 3
Making fun of your own bugs is a very good way to spend an April Fool’s Day. Nice one, CD Projekt Red.
HYPERKIN
After the success of last year’s effort, which they tried to turn into an actual thing, Hyperkin are back again with another “haha OK but I really want one of these” ideas. This time it’s for a handheld Turbograx-16 that would play the old console’s HuCards. Yes please.
POINT & CLICKBAIT
Despite the best efforts of the 37-strong marketing team, who had been workshopping the extremely clever April Fools joke since November last year, some trace elements of self-awareness accidentally made their way into Carpenter’s system.
“We intended this April Fools #prank to be a bit of a laugh about how people like poor Mr. Carpenter had built their entire identity around purchasing our product,” explained one brand ambassador, somehow managing to vocalise the hashtag.
“It was never our intention for him to actually realise that’s what he had done with his life. Holy shit! I mean if people realised that, the whole system would come crashing down.”
ARMELLO
Um, guys, people would play the crap out of this.
ASUS
That’s not fair! The cat VR experience looks much better than everything else we’ve seen so far.
STARCRAFT
Three factions aren’t enough for StarCraft. So here’s a truly intimidating fourth one: Birds!
Also, Carbot Zerglings.
ANGRY BIRDS
All pigs are now replaced with watermelons across all Angry Birds games, because today’s a special day. It’s “International Pig Acceptance and Appreciation Day”.
WORLD OF WARCRAFT
A reality TV channel in WoW with programs such as “Void Storage Wars”, “Project Transmog”, “Cleaved”? That’s sounds like let’s plays on RP servers.
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG
Fishing, labyrinths, an entire story with Sonic characters. What’s going on?!?
DARK SOULS III
But where’s the Betamax version?
BLACK DESERT ONLINE
Butt pose victory animations in Black Desert Online’s new Crimson Battlefield PvP mode? Sure, what could go wrong?
NVIDIA
Time to overclock ourselves.
AIR FAN VR
It even has a sound sensitive LED lighting system.
YOUTUBE
11 years later... YouTube in 360 degrees, with Snoop Dogg.
DEUS EX
Pink and white.
FINAL FANTASY XV
A movie, an anime series, and as if that weren’t enough, here’s a 100% green, Chocobo-driven, ride-sharing service called ChocoGo.
Portal
Food lovers website Serious Eats got a pastry chef to reverse engineer GLaDOS’ cake recipe. Click through on the “Get Recipe” link for extra deliciousness.
Super Truck
The Clustertruck folks pay homage to another indie game with Super Truck. It’s an actual playable game that you can get here.
No Man’s Sky
Hello Games’ lead dude Sean Murray might have singlehandedly derailed all the breathless hype for the studio’s space game in one tweet.
The Razer Toaster
And now, THE WORST!