Ethan Gach

The Accidental Origins Of Kirby

25 years ago this week, the pink puff ball made his Japanese debuted in Kirby’s Dream Land for the Game Boy. But the game’s titular character was originally just a placeholder. One of Nintendo’s most iconic characters almost didn’t get created, at least not in the form we’ve come to know and love. Kirby started…

Watch 29 Make Daily Life Feel Otherworldly In Its New Trailer

That’s part of the premise behind 29, the first chapter in Humble Grove’s No Longer Home series, a point and click game that delves into the ordinary by stripping away many of the elements that help us make sense of it. Apartment life can be all sorts of things. Cramped. Predictable. Embarrassing. Now imagine taking…

Track: Don’t Worry About The Government | Artist: Talking Heads | Album: Talking Heads: 77 Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

The Weekend In Esports: Dota 2, DreamHack Austin, And Splatoon

A Brazilian Dota 2 team looks to make history in the Ukraine this weekend but one of the best teams in the game still stands in their way. With the League of Legends spring season behind us, the spotlight this weekend is on the Valve’s $3,000,000 Major in Kiev where the stage is still being…

Vinyl Takes Video Game Music Appreciation To New Levels

Vinyl’s not just a fad, it’s a fundamentally unique way of interacting with music and art. So it makes sense that fans of the medium would want to re-introduce video games to the wonderful world of spinning records that preceded them. Take Rez for example. Released in 2001, it was one of the first games…

The Week In Games: What Remains Of Mario Kart

Battle mode makes its triumphant return. It’s hard to think that Mario Kart for the SNES was originally planned as an F-Zero sequel, or that the series original battle mode was almost conceived of as an after thought. But perhaps that explains why Nintendo didn’t give much of a flying koopa shell about Mario Kart…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: The Stare Of Duty

Welcome back friends, it’s been a while. The ‘Shop Contest had to come back sooner or later, and this week’s unofficial reveal of the next Call of Duty game seemed like as good a time as any. After more than a decade away, the series is finally returning to World War II with more grey-scale…

Track: Get the Balance Right | Artist: Depeche Mode | Album: Construction Time Again Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

The trippy platformer PsychoDelia got a new trailer and is now on Steam Greenlight. The world of weird colors and strange shapes developed by Harmlessmonkii looks like Tron turned inside out and plastered onto ancient cave walls. See for yourself

Mod To Put Red Dead Redemption Map Inside GTA V Gets Canceled

Last month, the mod group known as .White announced “Red Dead Redemption V,” a project that would incorporate Red Dead’s map into Grand Theft Auto V. But soon after releasing a teaser trailer for the mod on Friday, the group decided to cancel the project. “I know this is hard pill to swallow, but as…

Sunday Comics: Stop Manufacturing Them 

Welcome to Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics that usually occurs on Sunday except when it doesn’t. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published April 18. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published April 17. Read more…

Pigeon Steals Play Of The Game At League Finals 

Meet the pigeon that swooped into Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver where the League of Legends spring season finals are being held. It flew around a bit and drove the crowd wild, proving not matter how advance entertainment gets, people fucking love when animals interrupt sporting events The city dove dropped in some time during game…

This Is How You Fix A Really Busted Copy Of Pokémon Red

Grant Haack, who goes by Snip3r95 on Imgur, found an old Pokémon cartridge while wandering around a flea market. The game only set them back $5, but actually getting the Game Boy classic up and running required some serious elbow grease. “It was at the bottom of a bin and in pretty bad shape,” Haack…

The infuriatingly meditative N++ just got twice as big. The game’s new “Ultimate Edition,” which came to Steam yesterday as a free update, adds a bunch of new levels, colors, and a hardcore mode. The game’s currently half-off on Steam as a result, with the update coming to PS4 “soon.”

Modern Warfare Remastered‘s Map Pack Is Even More Expensive Than The Original

The game’s Variety Map Pack DLC came to Xbox One and PC yesterday, and some players are upset about the price tag. Though it came out on PS4 late last month thanks to a timed-exclusivity deal, the arrival of four new maps and a handful of loot boxes on both of the other platforms yesterday…

Track: Reach for the Dead | Artist: Boards of Canada | Album: Tomorrow’s Harvest Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Programmed Demo Reveals The Commodore 64’s Angsty Soul

This is A Mind Is Born, a demo of the Commodore 64 going haywire. It won first place at the Oldskool 4K Intro competition at this past week’s Revision 2017 event and it’s easy to see why. Amazingly, the 2:21 long video comprises no more than 256 bytes, and uses the retro-mystical prowess of the…

The Weekend In Esports: FIFA, The League Spring Finals, And More

The League of Legends spring season is wrapping up. After SK Telecom T1 strolled across the finish line earlier this morning in South Korea, the remaining contenders from North America and Europe are set to scrape it out in their respective regions over the next two days. Beyond League, this weekend also has plenty going…

The ‘Fairy Trick’ In Wind Waker HD Shows The Brutal Role RNG Can Play In Speedrunning

Last Tuesday, the Any% speedrunning world record for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD was about three hours. Now, less than a week later, it’s been cut in half, thanks in part to one super lucky fairy. The records for running Wind Waker HD first began collapsing thanks to the Barrier Skip, an…

The Week In Games: Telltale Thanos

Some weeks are deader than others. Before the modern age of Marvel, whose recent gaming outings are monopolized mostly by Disney Infinity (RIP!)and the Lego series, there was Marvel Super Heroes, a Capcom fighter that came out a year before the first Marvel vs. Capcom. The Infinity Gauntlet arc’s only real game adaptation, Thanos finally…