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Time To Get A Jump On Halloween
To: Crecente From: Bashcraft RE: I Should Read That Today was Halloween costume fitting day at chez Ashcraft. Micro-Bash is going to be a pirate. We didn’t ask him what he wanted to be. He’s one! Pirate is fine. Mini-Bash wants to be a racing driver on the McLaren Mercedes team. Anyone is okay, he…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 6, 2010 -
The Most Delayed Game Of 2010 Must Be…
“Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi” (“The Bridge over the Starry Sky”) was originally slated for release on December 11, 2009. Then it was delayed. A whole bunch. The next release date for the 18-years-old-and-up adult adventure game was penciled in for February 26, 2010. The release slipped to April 23. And that turned to May 28,…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 6, 2010 -
Hey Video Game Industry, You Are Not Hollywood’s Junior Varsity!
Does the game industry have a Hollywood complex? BioShock designer Ken Levine seems to think so. “I think there’s a sense in the entertainment fields that video games are seen as the junior varsity,” Levine tells Develop. “There’s this feeling of ‘oh one day you can come up to our league’.” Back in the late…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 6, 2010 -
Watch A Pac-Man Moleskine Gobble Stuff Up
As previously posted, the Italian notebook maker is marking Pac-Man’s 30th anniversary with notebooks that white people everywhere should love. And if you don’t like the Moleskine journals, perhaps you like stop motion photography? Moleskine Pac-Man – Moleskine ® English [Moleskine via Technabob]
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 6, 2010 -
Yes, There’s Another Pokemon Movie
There have been new Pokemon movies every summer since 1998. And in 2011, there will be a new Pokemon movie. The anime will be out next summer and tied into Pokemon: Best Wish!, the current Pokemon anime running on Japanese television. The embedded link below has some footage of the upcoming flick. Last year’s Pokemon…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 6, 2010 -
Rolling A Fiat In GT5, Second Time’s A Charm
A young woman named Yurina Takiguchi wearing a siren on her head is about to test drive a Fiat in Gran Turismo 5. She has never driven a car before and doesn’t have a license. Yep, this is Japanese television. Takiguchi is from the television program Sakiccho. She’s a student at the University of Tokyo,…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 6, 2010 -
Homefront Multiplayer Impressions: Let’s Go Shopping!
I get on my belly and inched forward. Looking through my scope, I could see several Greater Korean Republic troops making their way down a ridge. They were totally exposed. I fired. Pop, pop. Time to buy a drone. It was September during the Tokyo Game Show, and a group of the gaming press had…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 6, 2010 -
The Cosplay And Cars Of Dream Party
Another autumn, another Dream Party. The fall Dream Party was recently held in Tokyo, complete with cosplayers, booth companions and sticker-covered cars called “itasha” (“painmobile”). There is even moé pudding. As there should be? Dream Party is a twice-a-year bishoujo gathering in Tokyo and Osaka for game developers, retailers and fans. Some, but not all,…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 6, 2010 -
Japanese Kinect Commercial Doesn’t Mention Room Size
According to the Kinect manual, the controller-free peripheral needs between 6 and 8 feet of space. That’s important to know. Here is the manual’s exact wording: The sensor can see you when you play approximately 6 feet (2 meters) from the sensor. For two people, you should play approximately 8 feet (2.5 meters) from the…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 6, 2010 -
A Visual Guide To Cut The Rope
The early stages are straight forward, but the game gets gradually more and more difficult. The whoopee cushions change up the game physics. Zap! Spiders and electricity. The Foil Box levels sure are tricky. These knobs in the Gift Box stages make the ropes longer or shorter.
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 5, 2010 -
About The Time I Left Tokyo Vice On An Airplane
To: Crecente From: Bashcraft RE: …A Day Without An Owen Last Christmas on the flight back to Japan, I read about half of Tokyo Vice. It’s a non-fiction crime book by Jake Adelstein, a writer we’ve featured here on Kotaku a couple of times. But! I didn’t finish the book on the plane. I accidentally…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 5, 2010 -
Yes, Of Course There Could Be Super Street Fighter IV DLC
The arcade version of Super Street Fighter IV features characters that are not in the console version. That might change. Producer Yoshinori Ono tweets that he has written a proposal about downloadable content for Super Street Fighter IV. He adds that he is heading to Capcom USA’s San Francisco office, presumably to pitch the idea.…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 5, 2010 -
In This Manga, You Spank Girls
PSP game Criminal Girls puts players in the role of a prison guard that “spanks” and “disciplines” bad girls. Oh yeah, and the game is set in hell. So a manga version of this would look like… This. We can’t show you the full image. Well, we can, but we’re not. The game is getting…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 5, 2010 -
But Did He Play Heavenly Sword?
Writer Alex Garland of The Beach and 28 Days Later fame penned Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. That game was developed by Ninja Theory of Heavenly Sword fame. Garland hadn’t played that game when he met Ninja Theory. Why? Here’s why: He was “fucking sick” of his PS3. “There weren’t any original games that really…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 5, 2010 -
Schoolgirl Singers Promoting Kinect In Japan
In Japan, schoolgirls are often the default characters for product pitchmen. They pop up in sports drink ads, life insurance ads, bicycle ads — you name it. One of the main reasons for this is that their youthful image is healthy, happy and spirited, but they are also able to appeal to a cross segment…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 5, 2010 -
Taito: Maker Of Games, Builder Of ROBOTS!
During the 1980s, game company Namco started making awesome robots. Robots! But Namco was not alone. Space Invaders developer Taito also took the know-how it attained from the arcade business and funneled that into building its own bots. In 1983, Taito created a walking, talking bot named “Yumemaru” as well as a guitar-playing robot. Yumemaru…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 5, 2010 -
What’s Up With The Tentacles?
The latest trailer for Japanese survival horror game The 3rd Birthday features phallic looking tentacles. Tentacles, again with the tentacles. What gives, Japan? One of the earliest (if not the earliest) pieces of tentacle erotica is The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife (NSFW) by Edo-period artist Hokusai, who is one of Japan’s greatest artists. The…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 5, 2010 -
A Week In Comments
A Game About Insurgency Comment by: Kogo Nominated by: DunnCarnage A real game about “insurgency” would require some form of subscription payment. The subscription cost would get higher and higher, the longer you play. These escalating payments would, however, come with mailings, emails or messages that the subscription cost would soon end and, indeed, be…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 5, 2010 -
A Game About Insurgency
The sounds of guns echoed throughout Al-Assad Library Book Exhibition in Damascus, Syria. The guns weren’t tangible, but virtual. The conflict, however, was from real life. It was late 2000, and a crowd gathered around the television set that was running first-person-shooter Under Ash. The game’s designer, Radwan Kasmiya, thought all those long hours he…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 4, 2010
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