Deciding on April Fools' Day pranks is tricky - if you do something genuinely cool you prompt fans to think that, well, you're a bit mean. We're not sure whether Nintendo's effort for this year qualifies as that, but it just might.

It's already April Fools' Day in countries like Japan and Australia courtesy of time zones; the big N's effort is for a Switch / 3DS game called Fire Emblem: Battle of Revolution. It incorporates old-school 8-bit visuals and takes the series into an unlikely time period. The irony, of course, is that if this was real it'd possibly do quite well...

You can see the Japanese website here, and a couple of screengrabs are below.

FE Revolution.JPG
Fire Emblem April Fools.JPG

We're not 100% sure what the gag is, in fact no-one seems to 'get it'. The idea of a different spin of the series with such retro visuals, presumably, is the nudge and wink, while the site apparently explicitly says it's a joke near the bottom.

At least it wasn't a Metroid tease...

[source nintendo.co.jp]