Today, Nintendo added saccharine platformer Yoshi’s Woolly World to its already plush 3DS lineup. In case you hadn’t heard, this time, it’s got puppies. Poochy and Yoshi’s Woolly World is fucked-up cute. I don’t even like dogs, but the Poochy Pups slay me. That said, they’re not just in the game to melt cat-lovers’ frosty…
Yesterday’s Nintendo financial report revealed that Super Smash Bros. for the Wii U sold 3.43 million fewer copies than the same game on the 3DS. It’s a surprising discrepancy considering that Smash 4 is the franchise’s first handheld incarnation and the game has traditionally been played on a home console. The 3DS’s 50% sales buff…
In October, 16-year-old Smash 4 champion Leonardo Perez (“MK Leo”) vowed to claim first prize at Genesis 4, an international Smash tournament in San Jose, California. Perez, whose 16th birthday landed on the tournament’s opening day earlier this month, arrived from Naucalpan, Mexico City a few days prior to practice with Smash players who’d been…
Vidar, an RPG puzzler where everyone dies, went into early access today on Steam. In September, we profiled its developer, a lawyer who quit his job to make the game.
For over two decades, the makers of the popular card game Magic: The Gathering have kept the game kinetic, adding and restricting cards year by year. Some players yearn for the good old days, though, and last weekend one game developer held a Magic: The Gathering tournament that was straight out of 1996. Andy Wallace,…
Today, the Entertainment Software Association, which represents the U.S. gaming industry, released a measured and somewhat tepid statement on the recent Muslim ban instated by Donald Trump. In it, they ask the White House for “caution.” Since Saturday, travelers and dual-nationals from Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Sudan and Syria have been barredfrom entering the…
Twitch broadcaster IronPhoenix87 was streaming Call of Duty on the PS4 for a few viewers late December when he was suddenly pummeled by dozens of random messages. “I have have hacked your twitch beware,” they read, over and over. “Spam by https://spampsn.com – – -.” IronPhoenix87 was playing an open game and doesn’t know who…
Competitive Super Smash Bros. 4 players are asking for silly dog Duck Hunt’s stage to be banned from tournaments. Its architecture forces players into boring, long sequences where they stare at each other and wait. Dunk Hunt’s stage is, of course, based on the NES title Duck Hunt. It’s a grassy, flat plane. Sometimes, ducks…
Winter 2017’s anime selection is a desert. Out of the nearly 50-title lineup Kotaku East’s Brian Ashcraft detailed in his seasonal guide, I found only four anime I can recommend. It’s disappointing. There’s a special pleasure in breathlessly telling your friends, “There’s this new anime and it will blow your fucking mind.” Over the last…
A hilarious glitch made its way into Overwatch with Tuesday’s update. Dvas are getting flung out of their mech suits and into the abyss on the 3v3 mode’s Ecopoint Antarctica map. [Update—12:30 PM, 1/27]: Blizzard software engineer Bill Warnecke commented last night on the Battle.net forums that “Servers are currently being hotfixed for the issue.”…
Two Mass Effect: Andromeda trailers dropped today, revealing new teammates, aliens, backstory and—gasp—a kissing scene. The game will be released on March 21st. Andromeda follows the Pathfinder Team, whose job is to “find and secure potential golden worlds, identify settlement sites and start the process of building our new home” for 20,000 people marooned in…
At Overwatch fan site Kotaku, we have a whole Slack room dedicated to the eponymous first-person shooter/dating sim. In it, we post memes and strategy tips and argue over who to ship Lucio with. One day in Kotaku_Overwatch Slack, Gizmodo writer Bryan Menegus asked whether Reaper would be into the metal band Slipknot. Somebody, and…
Rainbow Road, the dangerous and psychedelic Mario Kart map you and your friends barely survived in elementary school, is now a Halo 5 map. And, yes, of course you can race on it. The map accommodates up to 10 players. It’s got all the thwomps and twists and turns and traps that will test your…
We are now in the age of Hook 2.0, my friends. It’s been a long, sometimes unjust journey, often through walls or thick pillars. But yesterday, Blizzard fixed Overwatch’s Roadhog. And now, I feel good knowing that I deserved to hook you chumps, and didn’t just get lucky with a glitch. In the patch notes,…
The Nintendo Switch’s launch lineup was initially a disappointment for people who wanted more than five launch titles. Nintendo fans were complaining that, in fact, the only “real” launch title for the Switch is Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It makes sense—the Wii U, Wii and 3DS all launched with more. Weeks after…
Kinky at face, Ladykiller in a Bind is not fucking around about fucking. But it’s also not kidding about consent. Yesterday, developer Christine Love removed sex from a potential plot branch after players expressed discomfort. Ladykiller in a Bind is an uncensored, queer, BDSM sex game that is now sold on Steam. Its alternate title…
Super Smash Bros. Melee players Mango and Leffen clashed on Sunday in a match that will make you cry big, anime tears. Fans are already calling it 2017’s “set of the year”—despite the fact it’s only January. Cloud 9’s Mango (Joseph Marquez) and Team SoloMid’s Leffen (William Hjelte) have vied for Melee supremacy for years…
The developer of Yandere Simulator, a game about a sociopathic high school girl who murders her classmates, is demanding answers from Twitch, which banned the game exactly one year ago. Today, he posted a YouTube video describing his year of begging Twitch for a reason, which he says has led to nothing. Still in development,…
Any Super Smash Bros. Melee player will tell you that its fans are dedicated and particular. If you play seriously, you will play on a CRT for minimal lag with a brand new GameCube controller. And you will never, ever touch Pichu. At the Genesis 4 Smash tournament, which started today, Red Bull esports installed…
I’ve often told people that about half of gamers are women, citing an Entertainment Software Association report that puts the number at 41%. The invariable response: “But what games are they playing?” Yesterday, Nick Yee, the co-founder of game analytics company Quantic Foundry, published a report that spells out which game genres are dominated by…
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