PlatinumGames and Hideki Kamiya published on April 1st their own April Fools' 2020 joke as the fourth and finalPlatinum 4 announcement. In a pretty funny video, PlatinumGames reveals its new arcade system, the Neo-Classic Arcade, and its first game,Sol Presta,seemingly developed in collaboration with Hamster Corp.
According to the video,Sol Prestais the newest shmup in thePrestaseries, which contained two games:Moon Prestareleased in 1980,andTerra Prestareleased in 1985. These are parodies ofMoon CrestaandTerra Cresta, two real shmup arcade games released in the 80’s. Back in 2014, both games got a new digital release as part of Hamster Corp’s Arcade Archives series on Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch.
Hideki Kamiya shared some comments on Twitter as well, explaining how did he thought up this april fools' joke:
Here’s a quick translation: “This year, as usual, we, PlatinumGames, tried our best to make an April Fools' joke. We’re living through tough times now, so as an entertainer, I wanted to cheer you all up. My thanks to Hamster Corp who cooperated with us for this joke. I have two rules when making an April Fools' joke. First, it needs to be obvious that it’s a joke. Second, it needs to be something that won’t make you disappointed when you realize it’s not real. Following these two rules, this is the joke we made and we (I?) found it pretty exciting. I’ll be happy if it made you realize once again that when PlatinumGames fools around, we do it at full power.”
Platinum 4 included three announcements so far,The Wonderful 101 RemasterKickstarter.ÂThereveal ofProject G.G.The launch of anew PlatinumGames studio in Tokyo, working on anew engine we explained here.
Unless the fourth Platinum 4 announcement was a joke in itself, and it’s pretty likely, my bet is we’ll get the real announcement tomorrow on April 2nd. Maybe it’ll be news regardingÂBayonetta 3orBabylon’s Fall.
