April Fools Day in the gaming world is always a thorny proposition. The prank news stories can wear on the nerves, the joke game modes and maps are either too good to last or an embarrassing rush job — lots of the jokes are funny, but not all of them, and at their worst, you’ll be cringing over them for the rest of the month. This year, however, there was one really good April 1st prank: A PlayStation 1 “port” of Remedy’s Control.
This prank video is the work of Tommi Saalasti, Remedy’s principal gameplay designer. It shows what Control would look like if the game had indeed been made for the PS1. A pixel-y Jesse Faden takes down wave after wave of bad guys and floats around a “demade” version of the Federal Bureau of Control. I won’t lie — I want to play it.
At first glance, it looks less like what the game would look like on the PS1 and more like the game when you turn the settings all the way down. The graphical downgrade means that Jesse looks less like herself and more like Jill Valentine in business casual, and the Service Weapon is sometimes hard to see in her hands as she’s firing it. I think my favorite part of the video is that the environmental objects Jesse can telekinetically fling at her enemies are here labeled with placeholder “Throw me” text.
Considering Remedy is working on more stuff in the Control/Alan Wake universe (including, allegedly, Alan Wake 2), it’s good to see they have time to make something fun and silly like this. Unless… this is what they’re making and they’re using the cover of April Fools Day to let us know? Remedy, if you’re reading this, let it be known I would not be mad about that.
Source: Remedy Entertainment/Twitter