Chris Kohler

Track: Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) | Artist: Darlene Love | Album: A Christmas Gift For You

How To Spot Fake Classic Video Games

Fake classic games are everywhere: At the flea market, in your local game store, on eBay, and maybe even mixed in with your own collection. The bootleggers who make them are churning them out, meaning that the market will only become more saturated with them as the years go by. If you’re going to collect…

Luigi’s Mansion 3 Is An Eerie Delight, From The Lobby To The Penthouse

Why is Luigi still scared of ghosts? After all, it was nearly 20 years ago that he Hoovered up an entire building full of poltergeists in the original Luigi’s Mansion. Then he cleared out six haunted houses in 2013’s Dark Moon. As he enters a massive spook-infested hotel in this month’s Luigi’s Mansion 3, one…

Return of the Obra Dinn: The Kotaku Review

“Realistically I think it’ll take me around half a year,” Lucas Pope wrote four and a half years ago about his game Return of the Obra Dinn, which he released today. What’s four extra years when the results are this brilliant? Meticulously constructed, from the stippled black-and-white graphics to the intricate, devious logic puzzle at…

This Obscure Sega Puzzle Game Is Pretty Clever

Sega Ages Ichidant-R doesn’t have a lot going for it in terms of its sales potential. It’s out today on the Switch in the middle of a massive content explosion for Nintendo’s platform. It’s got a weird name that you’ve probably already forgotten even after having just read it. It’s going to get buried, which…

Luigi’s Latest Parody Nintendo Console Is The Best One Yet

Luigi’s heading back to another haunted mansion (well, a haunted hotel) in Luigi’s Mansion 3 this Halloween, and he’s got many more tricks up his sleeve for busting ghosts, including one gadget that’s a wonderful reference to a classic Nintendo console of yore. Ghost-hunting tools that resemble old Nintendo hardware are a staple of the…

Track: Hunger City | Artist: Cherry Bomb | Album: Howard The Duck

Jeopardy! Airs A Hilariously Incorrect Bit Of Tetris Trivia

I haven’t watched much Jeopardy! since my personal hero James Holzhauer left the show, but had I tuned in last night, I would probably have found myself wondering if I had taken leave of my senses, following this question about Tetris in the category “Video Game-Pourri.” “The seven rotatable blocks used in this video game…

The Bite-Sized Link’s Awakening Is The Perfect Follow-Up To Breath Of The Wild

How do you create a follow-up to Breath of the Wild? The Switch launch game was a massive rethinking of the Legend of Zelda series, a colossal non-linear open world in which players could create their own journey. As it turns out, the perfect way to follow that was with a Zelda that is as…

Respawn Is Reviving Medal Of Honor… As An Oculus VR Exclusive

Electronic Arts’ Medal Of Honor series of military first-person shooters is back in action, although not in the way you might expect: It’s being reborn as a virtual reality game for the Oculus Rift, courtesy of Apex Legends and Titanfall developer Respawn, coming in 2020. Respawn and Oculus announced that they were working on a…

Everything Announced During Today’s Inside Xbox

Following Sony’s “State of Play” livestream earlier today, Microsoft jumped in with an Inside Xbox presentation featuring new content and services coming to its platform. More games are coming to Xbox Game Pass. On Xbox One, Jump Force, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, and Lego Worlds are being added. On PC, Cities: Skylines, Saints Row…

Everything PlayStation Announced In Today’s State Of Play

Sony’s Nintendo Direct-style State Of Play livestream series returned today, with a deep look at The Last of Us II as well as short updates about other games coming to PlayStation, including Civilization 6. Here’s a rundown of the news. The Last Of Us Part II will be released on February 21, 2020. A demo…

Track: Yoshi.MP4 | Artist: WiittyUsername

I’m on two recent podcasts yammering about old video games if that’s the kind of thing you like: Memory Card, talking about the SNES CD-ROM with Kotaku contributor Ben Bertoli, and Axe of the Blood God talking about SNES and Genesis RPGs with the USGamer staff.

22 Years Later, A Major Milestone For RPGs Is Finally Coming West

Amongst all the many, many games coming to Nintendo Switch soon, you should pay close attention to Moon, a port of a 1997 role-playing game for the PlayStation that’s never left Japan before. Why should you care? Well, Moon was sort of the flashpoint from which a whole little community of unique, avant-garde Japanese game…

We Can Finally Explain What You Actually Do In Death Stranding

He’s finally done it. After years of talking about Death Stranding, Hideo Kojima finally showed off a full mission’s worth of gameplay during a live stage presentation at Tokyo Game Show this week. It’s as offbeat, meticulously detailed, and intriguing as you’d expect from Kojima, if not more so. To be released November 8 for…

Sega Genesis Mini: The Kotaku Review

Sega was always more loved than it was successful. At no point was the maker of the Genesis and Dreamcast the worldwide leader in video games. When it succeeded in America, it fell short in Japan, and vice versa. The Genesis Mini is an encapsulation of that moment when it came closest to victory—a reminder…

A cool bit of news from the Japanese Nintendo Direct: In 2020, Nintendo will release Switch remakes of its Famicom Detective Club adventure games, originally released on the Famicom Disk System in the late 1980s. No English version planned yet, but who knows what’ll happen.

Everything Announced During Today’s Nintendo Direct

Super Nintendo games are finally coming to Switch Online. And I’m sure there were other announcements during today’s 40-minute Nintendo Direct, too. Like Xenoblade Chronicles and Tokyo Mirage Sessions coming to Switch. Or Fatal Fury’s Terry Bogard coming to Smash. Actually, there was a lot. Here it all is. Super Nintendo games are finally coming…

The original Puzzle Quest is coming to Switch. Revealed via an eShop listing, Puzzle Quest: The Legend Returns includes the classic match-3 RPG and its Plague Lord expansion, plus a new expansion, new quests, and more character classes. It’s out September 19.