Jason Schreier

Lost NES Version Of SimCity Emerges After 27 Years

In January of 1991, a prototype for an NES version of SimCity appeared at an electronics show. It was never seen again—and the iconic city-building game would come out solely on the Super Nintendo several months later—but video game historians have tracked down a previously undiscovered version, and uploaded it on the internet for all…

New Destiny 2 Plot Twist Leaves Players Wondering What’s Next

When Destiny first launched, its story was a punchline, a string of proper nouns that was barely coherent, let alone engaging. Over the past four years, the developers at Bungie have worked very hard to change that, and the game’s latest plot twist makes for strong evidence that they’ve succeeded. To go see this new…

Jason Schreier’s Top 10 Games Of 2018

It’s been a wonderful year for video games both big and small. The games that appealed to me most were games that moved me, that challenged me, that gave me interesting tools and then allowed me to decide what to do with them. Also, the ones that were on Switch. Here are my 10 favorite…

What’s The Next Great Vaporware Game?

Next month, Kingdom Hearts III will finally come out, which is great news for video game fans, but bad news for people who need to write punchlines about video games that never come out. It raises an interesting question: What’s the next great vaporware game? Vaporware, a name coined for software that’s announced but never…

The Year In JRPGs, 2018

After a tremendous 2017, Japanese role-playing games were due for some regression, and that’s exactly what happened this year. There were no all-time classics like Persona 5 or Nier Automata in 2018. Yet it was a decent year for the genre, and we got some JRPGs that I enjoyed quite a bit. As is annual…

Every Game Kotaku Splitscreen Played In 2018, Part One

It is now time forKotaku Splitscreen’s Game of the Year discussions. Except we don’t really want to pick a Game of the Year. We want to pick every Game of the Year. As has become annual tradition, this week we’re going back and talking about all of the games we played in 2018. Kirk, Maddy,…

With Activision’s Influence Growing, Blizzard Is Cutting Costs

Blizzard has spent the year taking big measures to cut costs as it prepares for a lean 2019. Those measures, as conveyed by people who work or have worked for the iconic studio, include employee buyouts in which workers are offered money to leave, a broadening of the finance department, and the limitation of budgets…

For Honor is getting a limited-time crossover event with Assassin’s Creed. It starts today and runs through January 10, and it’ll pit Assassins against Templar in a battle that will ultimately prove pointless because none of them are as cool as Kassandra.

Surprise: The ‘Sam Raimi’ Suit Is Now In Spider-Man PS4

In a last-minute holiday present to Spider-Man fans, publisher Sony said today that it is indeed adding the iconic ‘Sam Raimi’ suit—you know, the one from the Tobey Maguire movies—to the recently released PS4 game. It’s free for everyone with a copy of Spider-Man There’s a lot of drama attached to this one, as some…

Kingdom Hearts III Leaks Six Weeks Before Release

Copies of Kingdom Hearts III are out in the wild, more than a month before the release of the highly anticipated role-playing game. It’s not clear exactly how the game leaked, but director Tetsuya Nomura told fans this weekend to watch out for spoilers, promising that the epilogue and final movie “are planned to be…

How The Game Awards’ Big Announcements Came Together

How does a surprise Game Awards announcement come together? Host Geoff Keighley joins this week’s Kotaku Splitscreen to discuss. First up, we’ve got a very special surprise announcement for fans of the show. Then we talk about the games we’ve been playing, including Celeste, Obra Dinn, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (33:28). Then Keighley joins…

Destiny 2‘s New ‘Dawning’ Event Is A Blast

It’s holiday season in Destiny, a video game in which players travel through space trying to get at least one exotic drop before they die. That means it’s time for The Dawning, an annual event devoted to sleighs and snow. Last year’s Dawning was full of Grinchy loot boxes, but this year’s is stuffed with…

Blizzard Abruptly Kills Heroes of the Storm Esports, Leaving Players And Casters Fuming

Last night, Blizzard announced plans to scale down Heroes of the Storm, moving its developers to other games and putting an end to its Heroes of the Storm Global Championship (HGC) esports league. The news came as a shock to hundreds of Heroes of the Storm players and broadcasters, many of whom say they now…

Call of Duty Developer Evacuated After Bomb Threat

Infinity Ward, the Los Angeles-based developer behind various Call of Duty games including Infinite Warfare, evacuated employees today following a bomb threat, Kotaku has learned. Police showed up at the studio this morning telling employees to leave, according to one person who was there. Staff were able to evacuate without a problem. This comes as…

Don’t Expect The Outer Worlds To Be As Gigantic As Fallout: New Vegas

The Outer Worlds, the next game from the developers at Obsidian, might be the game I’m most excited for in 2019. Helmed by the original creators of Fallout, it appears poised to be the New Vegas successor that everyone has wanted for years. Just don’t expect it to be quite as vast. The Outer Worlds,…

Guy Counts Every Ellipsis You Have To See To Finish Xenogears

There are 6,970 ellipses in the main story of the epic Japanese role-playing game Xenogears, according to one intrepid player who decided to spend his free time counting them all. Todd, who goes by SpikeyHairedOrphan on Reddit, thinks that if you counted all of the optional dialogue, you’d probably find thousands more. Ellipses—those three-dot punctuation…

The next episode of The Walking Dead’s final season will hit on January 15, 2019. A team of 40-something former Telltale developers are picking up where they left off to finish episodes three and four despite the studio’s demise.

Obsidian’s Next Game, The Outer Worlds, Is Basically Fallout: New Vegas In Space

As Bethesda takes Fallout multiplayer, the original creators of Fallout are making a brand new single-player shooter-RPG along with the studio that made Fallout: New Vegas. It’s called The Outer Worlds, it’ll be out next year, and it’s basically New Vegas in space. Game studio Obsidian announced The Outer Worlds at The Game Awards tonight,…

BioWare Wants You To Know That Story Is A Priority For Anthem 

One of the biggest ongoing questions surrounding BioWare’s upcoming online shooter Anthem is whether it will be able to hit the narrative bar that the studio has set for itself through series like Dragon Age and Mass Effect. With a new trailer tonight—and a presentation to press this morning in Los Angeles—BioWare is trying to…

Destiny 2‘s Newest DLC Embraces The Grind Even More

Today marks the release of the latest expansion for Destiny 2, a video game in which players travel through space trying to buy enough shaders to please Bobby Kotick. In the past, Destiny’s expansions have followed a certain familiar rhythm. The Black Armory is very different. Rather than release individually priced expansions in Destiny 2‘s…