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April Fool's Day in the game industry: A retrospective

From Street Fighter's fake character to Irem's fake console, Gamasutra looks back at classic April Fool's Day hoaxes in the game industry that made us laugh, groan, or simply shake our heads.

Alex Wawro, Contributor

April 1, 2015

1 Min Read
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Hey, it's April Fool's Day! This is typically a tricky time to try and get stuff done on the Internet.

Today has been no exception, as folks from across the industry seem to have put a whole heck of a lot of work into goofing off: Blizzard added Big Head Mode to Heroes of the Storm, Sony announced some fake waterproof VR gear, BioWare mocked up a Nug dating game and the Superhot developers released a very special version of Quake. The list goes on.

These are just a few examples of the pranks that are being pulled today, but many of them pale in comparison to the fake-outs that game companies have pulled in years past. 

We've already covered some of the classics on Gamasutra -- this seminal postmortem of Schadenfreude Interactive's Accordion Hero, for example -- but as the day winds on we thought it might be fun to share our favorite April Fool's Day game industry hoaxes with you, the reader. 

I've taken the liberty of compiling some of our favorite moments from April Fool's Days past below; if you think we missed a good one, by all means let us know via Twitter @Gamasutra.

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