26 years later, an April Fool's joke turned urban legend comes to life as a Resident Evil 2 mod that lets you Shoryuken zombies as a Street Fighter character

Folks, the fabled Resident Evil 2 Akuma Mode is real.

Backing up about 26 years to April 1998, the famously jokey gaming magazine EGM2 claimed the Street Fighter character Akuma was an unlockable playable character in Resident Evil 2, and that to unlock him players had to beat the game as both Leon and Claire six times each, using only a handgun and a knife, and achieve an A rank in every scenario. Well, that turned out to be one weirdly cruel April Fool's Day joke in a long line of annual pranks, which of course has caused plenty of confusion in the years since about whether there ever really was such a thing. Thus, 'Resident Evil 2: Akuma Mode' would go on to achieve urban legend status as one of the all-time great video game hoaxes.

Now, it's no longer a hoax. Thanks to a new mod available via Mod DB, you can actually play the original Resident Evil 2 as Akuma from Street Fighter and use Shoryukens and Gohadokens against zombies, lickers, crows, zombie dogs, giant alligators, and all manner of undead creatures.

Created by a team of modders made up of Captain Kashup, Snipz, and Zky, the Resident Evil 2 Akuma mode lets you "play as the classic Street Fighter character Akuma in Resident Evil 2 just like the old classic 1998 rumour, utilize his Gohadoken to defeat your enemies and use his Ansatsuken fighting style to kill any opponent."

The best part of all of this is you don't need to play through the game six times to unlock the Akuma mode. All you need to download the mod is the Resident Evil 2 Sourcenext PC Version with the latest version of Classic Rebirth installed, and otherwise it all sounds fairly straight forward. There's even an alternate ending you can unlock by killing "all guest stars that have been turned into zombies."

In the words of Akuma, there can only be one true winner, and it won't be the zombies.

Now's not a bad time to check out the best Resident Evil games of all time and see where your favorite ranks.