This year might have been surprising for us to see a Taiko-flavored April Fools that doesn't involve the infamous 2000 series for a change, but what is not a surprise anymore is that there's not a prankster alone among music gaming once again!
Venture with us to see what shenanigans are happening in 2021 right next door...
— maimai でらっくす公式@4/1(木)新バージョン「The Piano」発売決定！！ (@maimai_official) March 31, 2021
A lot of software houses have offered their piano simulation rhythm game of sorts, and now there's a new promising top dog in town!
Sega is planning to make the thext maimai installment into a piano series, porting to the current arcades a couple of piano-centric tracks to highlight that effort. It's kind of surreal when a joke chart for a piano CM series can rival a "more conventional" charting job for the other 1-day-only newcomer!
— チュウニズム公式＠4/1(木)新バージョン『CHUNITHM 大炎上』稼働開始！ (@chunithm) March 31, 2021
The CHUNITHM penguin saga rages on, with this year's iteration concerning a really heated firmware update that features Fire notes that will actually make the players feel the burn every time these are correctly timed! Due, however, to one unfortunate departure from the avian betatester involved, the CHUNITHM Dai Enjou update was shelved and a unique 3-headed collaboration was announced in its place.
Breaking away from their usual mold like Taiko gaming, Irorimidori are not involved this year: one impromptu collab with Sangokushi Taisen (三国志大戦), Sega's arcade card game based on China's Three Kingdoms historical period, makes it so that three new tracks are available for one day only! If the impromptu sequel to Cranky's first CHUNITHM song and a surprise treat in Totaku Utsubeshi (董卓討つべし) aren't enough for your historical recreation needs, let yet another meme chart for a CM song do the heavy lifting instead!
— オンゲキ公式@新バージョン『R.E.D. PLUS』稼働中！＆『セガNET麻雀 MJ』イベント開始！ (@ongeki_official) April 1, 2021
The idol-focused Ongeki, on the other hand, has been blessed with a Mahjong-fueled collaboration, resulting in a couple of week-long song additions on top of a new set of mahjong-styled cards to collect, on top of previous April Fools prints that are also getting rerun.
To see yet another Singularity to pop up in different April pranks... two years in a row... how crazy is that!?
Not everyone, however, is quite active on the jokey side... but they're at leasty showing some pulse, like for Taito's Groove Coaster arcade line reviving their very first April Fools song
For a joke-active contender that lies dormant, have a sleepy one who became active once more! SOUND VOLTEX of bemani gaming fame is back with another long-titled jokey track with an "EXCEED course that is a little different from Exceed Mask (エクシード仮面ちゃんのちょっと一線をえくしーどしたEXCEED講座), bringinjg old and new visual trickery to shine!
On top of that, former April Fools songs have been made available on both the arcade line and SOUND VOLTEX's subscription-based PC port.
— WACCA 公式@3/11 Lily R稼働！ (@WACCA_official) March 31, 2021
Many people online have joked on how Marvelous's WACCA rhythm game has been the uncontested "HARDCORE TANO*C machine" of choice due to the label's heavy music downpouring to its song catalogue.
With the game's latest limited campaign, no title is going to be more apt for it as the whole HARDCORE TANO*C crew will be featured as its sole navigator, sound clips and all! Have a better taste of it with a gameplay video as well.
Taking a page from their own book of 2 years ago, C4Cat's Dynamix is featuring another LV.41 Giga troll chart for everyone to grind on, based on mmry's Go Escape.
If mono-side charting nightmares from some of the game's boss songs aren't enough to attract your fancy, how about a little over 500 notes popping out of nowhere, near the end?!
Untitled joke tracks are back in the menu among the April dish courses of Noxy's Lanota... with one twist that is sure to let everyone have a blast!
Under the lulling melody of Yukino's Night Yacht, this Master 0 challenge adds a bunch of Bomb notes into the mix that will trigger if either they're pressed or a 'regular note' popping up at the same time is missed. Are you a bad enough dude to perfectly purify this treat without blowing yourself off in the process?
For how many jokes anyone can come up with on April Fools Day, chances are someone else around the world has already had a similar idea to it; at the end of the day, however, what matters is the unique spin the prankster gives to it to stand out. One such tale can be found among music gaming too, this year!
Similar to MUSYNX's makers announcing the game's End of Service some years ago, PeroPeroGames has announced a bit ahead of April 1st that the company went bankrupt and that the next MuseDash update would be their very last one. The situation is so dire to push them to post the above-embeded DLC announcement with what little they got left, shambling together what remained of the budget to add customization elements to the game, from pencil drawings to weird opening animations... Hell, even one of the update's songs is literally titled PeroPeroGames, who makes MuseDash, went bankrupt～(MuseDashを作っているPeroPeroGamesさんが倒産しちゃったよ～ )!
On the mobile front we also got some April Fools gag reprints in RAVON, restoring the food-flavored RAMEN shenanigans one more time. It's road to flavortown all over again!
Cytus II 3.8.5 出たっぽい
- BMに有料サイキョー楽曲パック「Initial G 2nd Stage」追加！Tsuko Gのアゲアゲな楽曲が5曲も追加されてるんだって！
For Rayark's Cytus II, today's update is set to add further development to the character of the infamous Graff.J, a giraffe artist who was first introduced as an April Fools-only trailer gag only to become a true character into the game to rather crossed over music from collaboration events of all sorts (being also announced with quite the Picasso-tier magnum opus art, might I add).
From a new Black Market song pack for the just-released Initial G 2nd Stage collab to new CAPSO-system unlockable sound effects, the update sure is a meaty one... combine both like the above-embeded video and the result is a thing of beauty! Graff.J himself might also have some character-developing new log to read as well...
One of the all-time BMS boss implants in VOEZ is also getting a LV.41 troll chart to go on with the festive mood! I hope for you that your fingers are quite thing for the challenge... and don't laugh at those sexually-explicit-shaped marker combos!!
New in Arcaea version 3.5.3: decide your own ratings for all songs and charts in the game! Simply tap and swipe right on a song's difficulty to access authoritative controls that will allow you to bestow your opini-- your accurate judgement upon the game once and for all.#arcaeapic.twitter.com/oNVMXj4tlN
April has always been a bountiful time for 1-day feature additions to lowiro's Arcaea, and this year was no exception! This time around, players are now able to change the difficulty to any song's chart to their desire.The Like function has also been restored to the joys of three particular classics' fans.
If you were expecting something wackier on their part, please understand it's a small indie company but nevertheless, don't let your inner snob berate a certain track's difficulty degree, lest you want to pay the price...
[Phigros] version 1.6.5 will be updated on 2021.3.32. A new single will be added.
The new single is: • 「Wavetapper」by Frums @frumsdotxyz
Bug fixes: - Fixed some display errors of game information. - Fixed the issue that Legacy charts could not be played. pic.twitter.com/1lvBPRXFCZ
The nicknamed Frums is not one to slouch this year either, as his musical portfolio has been the inspiring muse of yet another 1-day prank for everyone to panic at! Boot up Pigeon Games's Phigros and further delve into his Wavetapper song to see what I mean. Thank god its availability has been extended from March 32nd, too!
— TAKUMI³公式@3/22 第二回DAN認定！ (@takumi_cubic) March 31, 2021
Closing up with a newcoming prankster is TAKUMI³ (as in, 'Cubic'), hailing from their own LuzeriA Direct presentation (clearly a State of Play ripoff, you can't fool me!) with a playable rendition of the BMS-famed Better Graphic Animation, as part of their graphics overhaul plans.
A shame they couldn't afford the song's original BMS video, but at least these remarks playing along with the song (and above the chart) should suffice for a dandy time, shouldn't they?!
