Chris Kohler

Genesis Flashback Review Units Were Faulty, Maker Says

Samples of the upcoming Sega Genesis Flashback console sent to media outlets last month had outdated firmware that caused game glitches, according to the manufacturer. It will send updated hardware to those outlets soon, it said. Much like the SNES Classic, the Sega Genesis Flashback is an HDMI-enabled, $79.99 console that plays emulated versions of…

Sealed Copy Of Super Mario Bros. Sells For $30,000

You read that right: A mint-condition sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. from one of its earliest print runs sold at auction for $30,100.44 on eBay yesterday afternoon, and the seller confirmed to Kotaku that the buyer has paid up. The seller, a longtime retro game dealer based in Pennsylvania called DKOldies, put the game…

New Nintendo 2DS XL: The Kotaku Review

If you don’t care about 3D anymore—and even Nintendo’s interest in it seems to be fading—then the New Nintendo 2DS XL is the absolute best model in Nintendo’s line of portable gaming hardware. It’s a shame the company makes adding new devices such a burden. Nintendo’s nomenclature for handhelds has turned into alphabet soup, as…

Walmart Cancels SNES Classic Pre-Orders, Citing A ‘Glitch’

Oops! If you breathed a sigh of relief as you locked down your SNES Classic pre-order on Walmart.com Friday night, it’s time to start hyperventilating again, because the retailer has just canceled the orders en masse “Unfortunately, due to a technical glitch, the Super Nintendo Classic Edition was mistakenly made available last Friday evening ahead…

The Friendly Rivals Who Created Final Fantasy V

Big news for me today: Boss Fight Books has launched its fourth Kickstarter, and my upcoming book Final Fantasy V is part of it. Here’s an exclusive excerpt, discussing a bit about how this legendary role-playing game was made. Final Fantasy V, the book, is many stories woven together: One is my own story of…

5 Hours With The New Layton: Great Writing, Weak Puzzles

Professor Layton is back! Well, it’s actually his daughter Katrielle this time around. But other than that, Layton’s Mystery Journey is the return of everybody’s favorite London-based puzzle adventure game series. Here are my first impressions, about 5 hours in. Mystery Journey is available for iOS and Android today, with a 3DS version coming to…

Rare NES Game Stadium Events Sells For Nearly $42,000

A sealed copy of the rare Nintendo Entertainment System game Stadium Events has sold for $41,977, the seller has confirmed to Kotaku While the owner had originally attempted to sell the game through an eBay auction earlier this month, the winning bidder did not pay, the seller said in an email. But after speaking with…

The Worst Way To Meet Miyamoto

For a certain type of video game enthusiast, getting to meet Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto is the ultimate dream. You rehearse in your head what you’re going to say. You hope you don’t blow it. In 1997, game music composer Grant Kirkhope had, shall we say, a suboptimal experience meeting Nintendo’s game design guru. This…

Telling Lies is the next game from Her Story creator Sam Barlow, and it will be released by Edith Finch publisher Annapurna Interactive, Variety reported today. The new game will also be an interactive movie, but with more characters and a more complex story. Filming will begin late this year or in early 2018.

I presented a panel on the history of the Super NES CD-ROM at the Seattle Retro Gaming Expo, and now you can watch the video! Digging for information on this unreleased add-on (and the “Nintendo PlayStation” as well) turned up a lot of surprising facts and crazy stories.

It’s the 30th anniversary of Doki Doki Panic, the Famicom Disk System game that would get reskinned and released as Super Mario Bros. 2 in the U.S. But what exactly was Doki Doki Panic, anyway? That question is answered in this brilliant historical video from YouTuber “Gajillionaire.”

Nintendo Has Now Been Making Video Games For 40 Years

July 2017 marks a big anniversary for Nintendo: The company has now been producing video game hardware and software for 40 years, beginning with the Color TV Game 6 and Color TV Game 15 in July 1977. Like most game hardware of the 1970s, Nintendo’s first two machines were Pong clones. In fact, they were…

Seriously, Nintendo: It’s Time For Mother 3

If you watched the June 19 episode of WWE Monday Night Raw, you surely noticed something interesting in the crowd: A wrestling fan in the front row holding a giant pink posterboard sign that read “Localize Mother 3.” This was not the first such sign that had been spotted at a WWE taping; Kotaku even…

The Switch version of Namco Museum will include Pac-Man VS. Co-developed by Nintendo and Namco for GameCube in 2003, the 4-player game has three players as ghosts and one player, on a separate screen, as Pac-Man. Two Switch consoles will be required to play this version. Namco Museum is out July 28.

Ever Oasis: The Kotaku Review

The sad decline of the Mana series has been difficult to watch, and it’s equally unfortunate that its spiritual successor Ever Oasis suffers from similar problems—solid action RPG mechanics and moments of creative brilliance hampered by an experimental gameplay structure that drags everything down with it. Ever Oasis is the latest 3DS collaboration between Nintendo…

Project Rap Rabbit, a rhythm game by the creators of Parappa and Gitaroo-Man, ended its Kickstarter campaign today far short of its goal. Its creators say they won’t pursue another crowdfunding campaign, but had a “very busy E3 filled with meetings about our vision” and are “determined… to bring Project Rap Rabbit to life.”

Another prototype of EarthBound for the NES has been discovered, this time at a garage sale in Portland, Oregon. It seems identical to the prototype found back in the 1990s. Nintendo has since released the game officially on Wii U as EarthBound Beginnings. Just goes to show you what might still be out there at…

Keith Robinson, the godfather of the Intellivision, passed away Wednesday at 61. Robinson designed games for the pioneering Mattel console, but that was just the beginning: He bought the rights to Intellivision in the 1990s and kept the games in print via the Intellivision Lives! collections, while documenting the history of the console and the…

I Can’t Stop Listening To The Mario Odyssey Theme Song

Metroid Prime 4? Shadow of the Colossus? I don’t know. For my money, the best thing announced at E3 is the Super Mario Odyssey theme song. You heard an abbreviated version of it during the Super Mario Odyssey trailer: a big brass band-backed swing vocal performance, a woman belting out earnest lines about jumping and…

Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga Remake Coming to 3DS

Nintendo’s not done announcing games yet at E3. On its Treehouse Live stream, it just unveiled Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions. The game will be out on October 6. The “Bowser’s Minions” part is a new storyline starring enemy characters. Nintendo describes it as: “Recruit characters to grow your own Minion army…