Really? I have to do the real news on April Fools' Day? OK, but if any of this turns out to be a joke, I don't want to hear about it.

News Blips:

PlatinumGames relaunches as Platinum Next -- says that other Japanese developers have lost their vigor. Yo, Capcom, Konami, and assorted other Japanese developers -- get it together! That is the gist of a letter PlatinumGames -- now Platinum Next -- CEO Tatsuya Minami posted on the company's website. He claims that games exist to supply fresh surprises and that those have become rare, especially in Japan. Of course, Minami believes that his company is one of the few "healthy" game makers in Japan. They are currently working on Anarchy Reigns -- the surprising freshness of that game is still up for debate.

Bethesda explains why Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim won't include multiplayer. "The two most requested features we get are dragons and multiplayer. We got one of them this time," Skyrim Director Todd Howard said in an interview with IGN. "We always look into multiplayer, put lots of ideas on the whiteboard and it always loses. It's not that we don't like it. I can think of ways it would be a lot of fun." In the end, however, Bethesda didn't have the resources to develop a co-op game parallel to the campaign. I think I can live with this -- after all, as most of you know, around 95 percent of my poetry revolves around dragons, and maybe only 2 percent includes references to in-game multiplayer.

Seth Green confirms that his Mass Effect character, Joker, will return for the third game. It's unwise to take things for granted, especially video-game voice actors. Thankfully, Seth Green has been brought back into the fold at Bioware and will be reprising his role as the pilot of the Normandy. He confirmed this via Twitter, where he said, "I look forward to completing many more missions with you sir, or mademoiselle."

Get Back to the Future: Episode One for free. Obviously all those times I called Telltale "chicken" rubbed them the wrong way, because they are coming at us with the full first episode of Back to the Future: The Game. This is a pretty good deal, and if I were you I'd go ahead and just play it right now. It'll help distract you from all the April Fools' Day jokes. Head back to the future -- or, y'know, here -- to get down with Doc Brown.

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