Jason Schreier

Batman: Arkham Origins Is Coming This Fall

The next Batman game is called Batman: Arkham Origins, and it’ll be out October 25 for PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U, and PC. It’s a prequel to Arkham Asylum and Arkham City Warner Bros. Montreal is making the game, taking the mantle from Rocksteady Studios, the developer behind the critically-acclaimed first two. You can see…

Turns out Armature Studio—the development house made up of ex-Retro folks who worked on Metroid Prime—was working on a Mega Man first-person shooter for Capcom. It was cancelled in 2010. Polygon‘s got the full story

Why is Luigi green? “…because of memory limitations, the second character had to be identical to the first character in appearance,” says Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. “And so we looked at that and said, ‘Well even if we have the same character, we could potentially change the color of the character.’ But again we were…

Here’s the newest trailer for Animal Crossing: New Leaf, which comes out for 3DS on June 9. It’s… relaxing.

Here’s your round-up of Durango rumors for today: Bloomberg says the next Xbox won’t be backwards-compatible, and The Verge‘s Microsoft expert Tom Warren confirms a Paul Thurrott report that Microsoft plans to announce their new console on May 21

Want Your Vita Game To Be A Best-Seller? Just Don’t Tell Anyone It Exists.

Last month, the Japanese publisher Tecmo Koei released the Vita version of Japanese role-playing game Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland. They told nobody that it was out. In an e-mail to Kotaku at the time, one of Tecmo Koei’s PR representatives joked that this was a “new tactic to get the community involved and…

Witness How Much BioShock Infinite Has Changed Over The Past Few Years

(Warning: the following video contains spoilers for BioShock Infinite.) Perhaps you remember seeing BioShock Infinite at E3 2011. What you might not remember is that it looked totally different. Yes, the critically-acclaimed shooter has changed quite a bit over the past couple of years. Blame it on the rigors of development, or maybe it’s just…

The first Dragon Fantasy, a wonderful old-school JRPG-style game, is coming to PS3 and Vita. No release date quite yet.

Grantland writes an interesting analysis of the old Super Mario Bros. movie. “Super Mario Bros. created a much more insidious template, one that’s never been as prevalent as it is now: the simultaneous money-grub brand exploitation and fan-base slap in the face.”

Tales RPGs Are Like Gumdrops, Says The Guy Who Makes Them

I like to compare the longrunning Tales action-RPG series to fast food: they’re not particularly nutritious and you always know what you’re gonna get, but when you’ve got the craving, they can’t be beat. Hideo Baba, on the other hand, says they’re more like gumdrops. I had asked Baba, the man who directs and produces…

Sega Cancels Aliens: Colonial Marines On Wii U

Sega has just confirmed to Kotaku that Aliens: Colonial Marines is no longer coming out on Wii U. We first heard a few months ago that the Wii U version of the disastrous shooter had been “indefinitely postponed,” but Sega denied that. Since then, the publisher has refused to comment on this version of Aliens:…

The Xbox Listing For Double Dragon II Looks Like It Came Straight Out Of Google Translate

Does anyone actually read this stuff before it goes live? This is the actual listing for the Double Dragon II remake that hit Xbox Live today. It’s… quirky. Microsoft’s translation robots need some new batteries. “Also, characters are undressed from 80’s style, and recreated with modern sexy and beautiful style that amaze you and feel…

Before It Was Cancelled, Star Wars 1313 Was Going To Be About Boba Fett

We’ve learned a great deal about Star Wars 1313 over the past few months, and today we’ve got one more huge detail thanks to a reliable Kotaku source: last year, just before E3, LucasArts shifted focus and turned it into a game about the masked bounty hunter Boba Fett. This happened last May. Star Wars…

“It will always be Lucasfilm Games(tm) to me, never LucasArts.” Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert writes a eulogy to the studio he helped build

Disney Shuts Down LucasArts, Cancels Star Wars 1313 And Star Wars: First Assault

Disney has laid off the staff of LucasArts and cancelled all current projects. Staff were informed of the shutdown this morning, according to a reliable Kotaku source. Some 150 people were laid off, and both of the studio’s current projects—Star Wars: First Assault and Star Wars 1313—were cancelled. Disney will still use the LucasArts name…

Five Years And Nothing To Show: How Doom 4 Got Off Track

Doom 4 is in trouble, and has been for quite some time now, according to multiple sources. Though publisher Bethesda tells Kotaku they still plan to release the highly-anticipated first-person shooter, Doom 4 has gone through at least one major reboot over the past few years, and sources say even today, five years after development…

Oh Wow, Amazon Really Hates Nintendo Consoles

The conflict between Nintendo and Amazon just keeps getting stranger. For almost two years now, Amazon has not been selling Nintendo’s gaming hardware first hand. You can buy a 3DS or Wii U from the massive online retailer, but it will be sold through a third party. Amazon won’t sell Nintendo hardware themselves. And neither…

Transistor, the next game from the people who made Bastion, will have some sort of Dark Souls-styled multiplayer, director Greg Kasavin tells Rock Paper Shotgun. “Something we’re more interested in is a sense of feeling connected to other people who are playing in a subtle way… You can still have your personal experience around the…

Here’s The First Trailer For The Thief Reboot [UPDATE]

This is the first trailer for Thief, coming next year for next-gen consoles and PC. An earlier teaser suggested that this trailer would be out on April 2, but it appears to have leaked early. The folks at publisher Square Enix seem to have a leakage problem. UPDATE: Wow, the trailer was pulled the second…

Watch A Bunch Of Game Developers Eat Pie

In what is most assuredly not an April Fools’ joke, the folks at Volition (Saints Row) and a number of other video game development studios are live-streaming themselves eating pie. Volition designer Ryan McCabe told me about this tradition last week. Here’s his full explanation: What is Pie Day? The history of Pie Day is…