Apr 012024
Video game news on April Fools’ Day can be frustrating, whether it’s because of fake announcements you wish were real or yet another developer using “we’re making a visual novel” as the whole joke.
But sometimes it leads to something genuinely cool, and that’s the case with the Reynatis joke this year.
I’ve been interested in Reynatis since it was announced and thrilled when its localization was confirmed. It’s an action RPG set in Shibuya…
…so what better game for a fake collaboration than The World Ends With You?
As detailed by Noisy Pixel, this April Fools’ Day joke began with tweets from the official TWEWY and Reynatis Twitter accounts about something occurring in Shibuya.
Although it’s since gone back to normal, the Japanese website for Reynatis then posted new art with the main characters of Reynatis added to the NEO: The World Ends With You key art.
Additional artwork, pictured above, later surfaced showing NEO: TWEWY’s Rindo and Reynatis’s Marin standing together.
Meanwhile, the two Twitter accounts continued to post messages in a back-and-forth conversation between Shoka from NEO: TWEWY and Sari from Reynatis.
This is a cool April Fools’ joke for many reasons, not only because the developers of Reynatis chose TWEWY to acknowledge, but also because even if the collaboration itself is fake, Square Enix clearly worked with them on it. Coming out of NEO: TWEWY’s launch, there were a lot of concerns about its sales numbers. But regardless of how it sold, it seems Square Enix still cares enough about the TWEWY brand to participate in a joke like this.
It also works as genuine cross-promotion; I’ve already seen TWEWY fans looking into Reynatis because of this, and I’m sure some people who were looking forward to Reynatis have been introduced to TWEWY now as well.
In short, while it might not be actual The World Ends With You news, it’s nice to see it still getting attention, and I’m even more interested in Reynatis because of it. Of all of this year’s gaming April Fools’ jokes, this one is my favorite so far.
Ha, it’s cute to see stuff like this. Still not sure anything beats Sega announcing a visual novel and it turning out to actually be real! (The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog)
And a legitimately fun visual novel, at that! Yes, that was definitely one of the best.
Although I’m not sure even that beats RGG Studio releasing a teaser showing Yakuza 7 as a turn-based RPG, then a few months later revealing it wasn’t a joke after all.
[…] the fun April Fools’ Day joke from the Reynatis developers this year, in which they jokingly announced a collaboration with The World Ends With […]