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.