Some video games should never have existed. Not for the sake of quality, but because before becoming games, they boiled down to simple jokes. Behind the joke, it’s hard not to see it as a good communication call and sometimes, an attempt at least risk to test the ground. So much so that after enthusiastic feedback from the players, these valves became a reality. Here are a few.
The magic of the Internet
Remember this famous meme called "banana scale" or "Banana for Scale". It all started with an ad posted on the Internet to sell a TV. The person did not know the size of the screen in inches and therefore placed a banana as a scale. This funny situation quickly conquered the web, to the point of turning into a full-fledged meme. February 2020, B anana for Scale becomes a… virtual reality
Untitled Goose Game is one of those simple, wacky little games that make everyone agree. But did you know that this concept came from a joke? In an interview for the media Vox , one of its creators, Nico Disseldorp, talks about how the idea of the goose was born. A designer slipped an image of the animal as a joke in one of their conversations. This bird had a non-negligible comic potential: despite his somewhat empty gaze, it stirs up the reputation of being very characteristic and sometimes even threatening. Quickly, this farce takes the place of a running gag in the team. At the same time, their video game project has reached a standstill. Having their new totem animal play a role for the latter then seems obvious. They unveil for the first time on YouTube a gameplay extract from Unititled Goose Game. Between the originality of the goose and the humorous title, this presentation went viral until it turned into a meme. Suffice to say that Unititled Goose Game did not go unnoticed when it was released.
April Fools
In recent years, the Battle Royal has been one of the most popular genres of video games. To ride this wave, Gaijin Entertainment studio presented an April Fool in 2018: Battle Cuisine. As its name suggests, the title incorporates all the ingredients of a Battle Royal but with a humorous touch. Indeed, your character must be the last survivor on the map, but bundled with kitchen utensils with a colander (among others) as a weapon. Starting from a simple joke related to the MMO Enlisted of the same company, the game arrives on Steam a few months later. Cuisine Royale is an assumed parody of PUBG
Publisher Funcom released a trailer for Conan Chop Chop on April 1, 2019. With its simplistic graphics, his parodic aspect of Conan the Barbarian and its release date, we all welcomed this news as an April Fool's Day. And yet, what a surprise to rediscover this rogue-lite at E3 2019! The joke was not one or the positive reception that the presentation received convinced Funcom to start the project seriously. Conan Chop Chop was originally scheduled to be released in September 2019, but is now expected to be released in the second quarter of 2020.
THQ is also a little prank. On the first day of April 2011, the publisher released a rudimentary teaser on an expansion for Saints Row: The Third. Following the buzz, it becomes reality and bears the name of Enter the Dominatrix. See aliens land as well as a hero with superpowers intriguing. Finally, THQ chose to put all of its good ideas in a Saints Row DLC.
In 2014, Google and Nintendo concocted a stunning April Fool: Google Maps: Pokémon Challenge. Thanks to Google Maps, there are no fewer than 151 Pokémon that we should have captured. And to make us believe it, the joke did not wait until April 1. The YouTube announcement took place on March 31. At the time, Niantics is a subsidiary of Google and has already released Ingress, a game of the same ilk as the future Pokémon GO. The rest you know, in 2016 Pokémon Go was a hit.
A foot call
In 2020, FDG Entertainment announced on Twitter that a new DuckTales QuackShots game was in development. But more than the words, it was the visuals published that made us doubt. In addition to being attractive, they borrow the artistic direction of the last season of the animated series DuckTales (La Bande à Picsou).
The publisher then admitted that it was an April Fool, but that these screenshots existed since they were part of a project submitted to Disney some time ago. The response was not positive, but this April 1 joke still reacted all over the canvas, including a certain Frank Angones, co-executive producer of the DuckTales series. He asked Disney directly to accept the sale of his license so that this game could be released. Cross your fingers to make the joke come true.
By k-miye, Journalist igamesnews.com
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