Every year on April first there are a ton of announcements that just don’t go anywhere. It’s a joke, sure, but where’s the follow-through? In recent years, though, a few pranksters have fully committed to the bit, actually putting in the work to make the press release real. Last year Limited Run Gameshad availablefor one day only Green Lava Studios Volume 1, collecting three titles that, if bought digitally, would have set you back $8. This year has April 1 show up on a Friday, though, which is the normal new-game day for Limited Run, so there are three different titles to choose from plus a regular release just to round things out.
The normal game is the Kemco RPG Alphadia Genesis 2, a 16-bit styled adventure in the classic JRPG fantasy world of monsters and evil empires. More appropriate for the day, however, is the PS4 remaster of that Sega CD shelf-filler designed for parents who wanted to buy their kids some wholesome FMV entertainment instead of the requested Snatcher, Kids on Site. Control construction machinery and enjoy the very best of 90s FMV kid-show comedy acting in this Digital Pictures/Sega Club release. This may actually be the most impressive of the day’s games, because someone had to remaster the video from Sega CD grain-a-thon quality and that’s a long way to go for what was originally a kids' entertainment title.
Next up is the April Fool’s joke that refuses to stop for anything, ever, and that’s Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse-Bouche. Originally a joke by Wayforward back in 2013, it turned into a real game in 2016 and eventually made its way to the Switch. That made it perfect fodder for a Limited Run Games release and now, nine years after the original joke, you can order a Switch copy of one very odd little shooter that also dabbles in just about every other genre that could be squeezed in there.
Finally wrapping up the day is Green Lava Studios Volume 2, which again collects three games onto a single PS4 disk. My Name is Mayo 3 wraps up the clicker series and makes it the first clicker trilogy, and is also the newest of the bunch seeing as it’s not actually out yet. The other two games are more traditionally game-ish, with Fenix Furia being a platformer and Birdcakes a horizontal shooter that plays like a twin-stick shooter. It’s not a bad little collection of oddities at all, and if you got last year’s Volume 1 may be a required purchase seeing as it’s the second half of the two-volume collection.
Unlike last year’s one-day-only event, this year’s games are available for a little longer. Cat Girl Without Salad and Kids on Site have a full month’s ordering window, while Green Lava Studios Volume 2 is only up for order over the weekend, ending at 11:59PM Sunday night. That’s plenty of time to decide how much gaming weirdness your collection needs, but the answer is always “more”.
