Chris Kohler

The Year In Old Games, 2018

Whether you want to play your classic games on the Switch, the PlayStation 4, the Xbox One, a half-sized wooden arcade cabinet, a tiny PlayStation, or a Genesis controller plugged into your TV, 2018 had you covered. It’s time once again for a look back at the year in New Old Games. While the majority…

The much-anticipated PvP Trainer Battles in Pokémon Go are live now, for players level 10 and up. It’s finally time for you and Weedle to go kick some ass

The State Of The Nintendo Switch In 2018

As sophomore slumps go, the Nintendo Switch’s wasn’t so bad. When the Switch burst onto the scene in 2017, it could seemingly do no wrong. It was the new kid on the block: young and cool, with an air of mystery and excitement. So it goes with most new game consoles. In 2018, Switch hit…

Atari’s Much-Hated E.T. Is A (Slightly) Better Game If You Read The Manual

Welcome back to Complete In Box, our video series that looks back at classic games through the lens of their boxes, manuals, and other cool stuff that came packaged with them. Today, we look at what is often called the “worst game ever”: Atari’s E.T. Listen, I don’t think E.T. is the worst game ever.…

The State Of Nintendo 3DS In 2018

At this time last year, I predicted that the aging Nintendo 3DS would probably be sent to its grave after Christmas 2018. Recent events have caused me to reconsider. I am now here to argue that you should prepare for the Nintendo 3DS to stay alive for a couple more years at least—if you can…

Crash Team Racing Remake Will Release In June 2019

Crash Team Racing, the PlayStation 1’s answer to Mario Kart, is coming back in 2019, Activision announced at The Game Awards this evening. In development at the studio Beenox, which created the racing portion of 2015’s Skylanders Superchargers, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is a “built from the ground up” remake of Naughty Dog’s 1999 kart…

PlayStation Classic: The Kotaku Review

PlayStation Classic is a faithful reproduction of the experience of playing original PlayStation games in the mid-1990s. In that respect, it succeeds. What it lacks is passion. This piece originally appeared 11/27/18. We’re bumping it today for the PlayStation Classic’s release. With Nintendo roundly rejecting the idea of a Nintendo 64 Classic in the foreseeable…

Trainer battles—PvP, that is—are coming to Pokémon Go “soon,” Niantic has announced

Devil May Cry Series Coming From Castlevania Netflix Producer [Correction]

An animated series based on Capcom’s Devil May Cry is coming from Castlevania series producer Adi Shankar, IGN has reported The series, Shankar told IGN, “will join Castlevania in what we’re now calling the bootleg multiverse.” Shankar’s acclaimed Castlevania adaptation was recently renewed by Netflix for a third season. Correction, 4:58 p.m. Eastern: The original…

The Best Places To Buy Old Games

Collecting video games is easy. All you have to do is create an eBay account and click “Buy It Now” on every video game you ever wanted. Congratulations, you have a video game collection! Your bank account balance is now negative a million dollars. It’s collecting video games without going broke that’s hard. In the…

The Final Fantasy XIII series—the original, XIII-2, and Lightning Returns—are all heading to Xbox One’s backward compatibility next week, Square Enix said at X018 today. They join the other Final Fantasy classics heading to Xbox One in 2019.

PlayStation Classic Plays Fine, But It’s A Bare-Bones Experience

With the PlayStation Classic’s release less than a month away, I went to PlayStation HQ this week for three hours of hands-on time with Sony’s nostalgic mini-console. It plays its selection of 32-bit classics like Final Fantasy VII and Resident Evil: Director’s Cut just fine, but the features of the device are pretty much the…

Shigeru Miyamoto is “front and center in the creation” of the upcoming Super Mario animated film, the studio’s founder Chris Meledandri told Variety. “I’ve rarely seen that happen with any adaptation where the original creative voice is being embraced like we’re embracing Miyamoto,” he said

The Best-Selling Games For PS1, N64, Saturn, And Dreamcast

Historical game sales data can be hard to come by, so I was quite interested to see NPD analyst Mat Piscatella tweet a series of all-time best-seller lists for the Nintendo 64, PlayStation 1, Saturn, Dreamcast, and Game Boy Color over the weekend. Some of these might surprise you! The game industry’s sales numbers have…

From Software’s VR Game Deraciné Is Short And Unsettling

Deraciné, the first PlayStation VR game from Dark Souls maker From Software, definitely isn’t for everyone. It’s a brief, slow-paced, story-heavy game set in a boarding school. You solve puzzles with an inventory of items in classic adventure game fashion, but unlike most classic adventure games, these puzzles are quite easy. Deraciné is more about…

PSVR Platformer Astro Bot Is More Fun If You Don’t Try To 100% It

Ever since I played the first demo of Lucky’s Tale, I’ve been convinced that third-person platform games are a surprisingly perfect fit for virtual reality. It’s fun to play a platformer when you’re enveloped in the world itself. It’s more thrilling to make your character jump off a high cliff when you yourself can feel…

‘Retrogame Roadshow’ Highlights Rare Gaming Collectibles

At the Portland Retro Gaming Expo last weekend, I teamed up with my friends Frank Cifaldi and Steve Lin of the Video Game History Foundation to present the Retrogame Roadshow panel, where audience members could get their collectibles evaluated. What resulted was a fun 45 minutes of chat about the game collecting world, all centered…

Jade Raymond has left Electronic Arts. The original producer of the Assassin’s Creed series, Raymond founded the EA Motive studio in 2015 after a 10-year stint at Ubisoft. Originally tasked with overseeing Amy Hennig’s now-canceled Star Wars game, Motive is now at work on a different Star Wars project and a new IP

Video Game Collecting Tips For Beginners

Almost nobody wakes up one morning and decides out of the blue that they want to be a video game collector. In my experience, it’s more of a gradual thing: You start out by buying some old games you want to have around, then you get a few more, and the next thing you know,…

Danganronpa, Zero Escape Creators Team Up For A New Murder Game

The writer-directors behind Zero Escape and Danganronpa have formed their own studio and are teaming up to create another game about school kids and murders. Fans of both series will likely want to check out Death March Club—especially since the developers don’t think their former employer will continue their old series without them. Danganronpa’s Kazutaka…