The April Fools’ Day went into full swing in Japan as the country marked the date on April 1, 2024. Companies and figures behind popular games, anime, and other titles in the Japanese subculture made prank posts to celebrate the day. Here are some of the examples of the pranks made on the 2024 April Fools’ Day.
FuRyu reported that its Japanese official website for Reynatis has an “unknown error” that changed the key splash art to feature Square Enix’s NEO: The World Ends With You.
Meanwhile, Square Enix joined the April Fools 2024 festivities by posting a tweet featuring an altered version of the Dragonlord’s deal from the first Dragon Quest entry. In this tweet, the Dragonlord “promises” to turn half of the month into holidays if people agree to become his followers.
Square Enix also published a new April Fools-themed “episode” featuring characters from Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo.
Arc System Works published a new trailer showcasing the Guilty Gear Strive “Season 4.1 playable character” Malcolm Myers.
In another Arc System Works-related title, Cygames published a joke trailer for Granblue Versus Rai-Jin-Gu on the Granblue Fantasy Versus YouTube channel. Despite the “distorted” graphics, it promotes “beginner-friendly” button inputs.
Cygames also published “Uma Stars,” a space opera-themed music video featuring the Cosmo Puella group which consists of select Uma Musume characters.
Koei Tecmo “revealed” an AR device that will let people see Dynasty Warriors characters like Man Chong right in front of them.
Capcom announced via the official Resident Evil series X account that it will “establish an aviation business” by producing its own helicopters.
In addition, Capcom also made a wordplay joke involving the Street Fighter series character Akuma, who is alternatively known in Japan as Gouki. The company collaborated with Gamagori City in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture to “change” both the character and city’s names to Gamaguki.
Sony Interactive Entertainment tweeted an image on X’s Japanese official PlayStation account that “revealed” the insides of a PlayStation 5.
The developer team behind Fate/Grand Order revealed a “soccer-themed game” titled Fate/Dream Striker, which is available in Japan exclusively on the 2024 April Fools’ Day.
The English version of Fate/Grand Order also has a “bonus game” titled FGO Poker to celebrate the day.
Level-5 uploaded two April Fools trailers related to its upcoming 2024 game Megaton Musashi: Wired. The first one imagined the franchise’s “appearance” in a Super Robot Wars game. The second one features a live action-like CG trailer made with AI.
Meanwhile, Bandai Namco made a couple of April Fools pranks related to The Idolm@ster metaseries. The first one involved the upcoming mobile game Hatsuboshi Gakuen: The Idolm@ster, where the official site had an “error” that changed all idol students’ voice clips to the Akio Ohtsuka-voiced headmaster Kunio Juo.
The Idolm@ster Shiny Colors: Song For Prism, the most recently released series entry to date, also had a 2024 April Fools’ Day exclusive event “4lternative 1dentity” that let players dress characters with outfits originally worn by other characters.
Nippon Ichi Software “held a poll” asking whether Asagi should appear in more of its games. The company also gradually added boosts to the Yea votes as it tasked people to overcome 999,999,999,999 Nay votes within the day.
Shift Up revealed Dead Spicy, a new Goddess of Victory: NIKKE-themed horror shooting game inspired by Resident Evil that “will be available” on April 1, 20XX.
Key “has published” a 16-bit version of its 1999 PC visual novel Kanon. It also uploaded the game’s opening movie with 16-bit audio and graphics.
Pocketpair “revealed” a Palworld-themed school romance simulation game that will be available in both all-ages and R-18 versions.
Sunsoft tweeted an image that shows Hebe from the Hebereke series “successfully landing” on the planet Mars. The company also announced the next plan to land on Venus. However, it will not visit Mercury because the character has a water phobia and the planet’s Japanese name contains a “water” kanji letter.
Ubisoft also joined the April Fools 2024 festivities in Japan by “revealing” Tachanko’s Daily Life, a school-themed anime show inspired by Rainbow Six Siege‘s Tachanka.
HoYoverse has set up a Mondstadt Tourism Revitalization Project webpage for Genshin Impact. The page is available in multiple languages, and only people who have played the game can pre-register.
In addition, the official Japanese YouTube channel for HoYoverse’s Honkai: Star Rail also has a “new trailer” featuring a fictional live-action tokusatsu movie titled Kessen! Dai Uchu Kaitaku Goukaiden.
Hololive Vtuber Takane Lui “revealed” two new romance games: Fall in Love with Hololive 2 and Fall in Love with Hololive For Girls. The latter features gender-bent versions of six Hololive Vtubers, which include Shirakami Fubuki, Hoshimachi Suisei, and also Takane Lui.
Meanwhile, Anycolor also revealed Nijisanji Fantasy: Brave and Demon and April, a game featuring two protagonists that it “will release” in the year 2434.
Shueisha and TV Tokyo “revealed” a visual novel game adaptation of Bleach: The High School Warfare, which is also actually playable on some devices.
Sunrise published a fictional ad video “promoting” orange juice from the farm run by Code Geass‘ Jeremiah Gottwald and Anya Alstreim.
And Kadokawa also re-published the joke trailer for Date A Live: Girls’ Side, which originally appeared in 2021 and featured gender-bent versions of the series’ four key female characters, with all of them being voiced by Nobunaga Shimazaki.
