Streamer pulls cruel prank on Animal Crossing fans at the end of Nintendo Direct livestream

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A streamer pulled off the cruelest prank of all time yesterday by temporarily fooling their audience that there was an Animal Crossing: New Horizons-related announcement at the end of the February Nintendo Direct. 

Streamer Wilbo's World - who is known for their Animal Crossing content - livestreamed their reaction to yesterday's Nintendo Direct showcase. In the clip, that was shared by the streamer to Twitter, Wilbo reacts to the last of the announcements from the broadcast before the screen fades to black and shows Animal Crossing: New Horizon villager Judy floating through space before displaying the name of the game.

It then gets even better, as shortly after this, Wilbo's feed showed footage of the music box item from the game playing a peaceful rendition of Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley. This is when Animal Crossing's residential musician K.K Slider appears on screen performing a cover of the song, which is really being performed by K.K Slider cover artist Clay K Slider. 

In hindsight, it's very obvious from Wilbo's reaction that this is a joke. Almost immediately after the edited footage plays, you can see the YouTuber struggle to hold it together as the chat seemingly takes the bait at first. It doesn't take long for everyone to catch on though and now we can all laugh about it. Except no, we can't, because the reality is we don't have anything new coming to Animal Crossing: New Horizons which is a very difficult thing to accept. 

All jokes aside, this prank was pulled off brilliantly by Wilbo's World, and I would've definitely fallen for it if I was watching the broadcast live. This is especially painful as shortly before the Nintendo Direct was scheduled to happen, several Animal Crossing: New Horizons fans got their hopes up for some kind of announcement when it was spotted that the island getaway game had received a random maintenance update just hours before. As we know now though, this really didn't mean anything more than routine maintenance.

It's not all bad news though, we did find out about the new Fantasy Life game that could fill the Animal Crossing: New Horizons-shaped void in our lives.

Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.