Today in the New York Times Magazine there’s a pretty great storyabout the Minecraft phenomenon, approached deftly by Clive Thompson in a way that offers new insight into a story we’ve all heard thousands of times before. Among the revelations, for example: Minecraft sells 10,000 copies a day—10,000 a day!—which is an astronomically ridiculous number…
Shin Megami Tensei IV: Final will come to North America this summer as Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, Atlus announced today. This is a totally new 3DS game that is set in the same world as 2013’s SMTIV but tells a different story. It’ll be $50—that Atlus tax!
Nintendo’s handling of the Virtual Console has been, by any measure, horrendous. But they’ve still got the rights to some of the greatest games ever made, including Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Metroid, which both come out for New 3DS today. Also on the docket is Donkey Kong Country 2, which isn’t…
Everyone is sick on this week’s JRPG-packed episode of Kotaku Splitscreen, but hey, that’s just part of the fun. Today we’re talking about Final Fantasy XV and the newest demo, which isn’t so great as a standalone experience but makes for a tantalizing taste of what’s coming later this year. (God I hope it’s good.)…
Players couldn’t log into games like World of Warcraft and Diablo III for several hours last night thanks to a series of DDoS attacks that flooded Blizzard’s servers, the developer said. Blizzard says they’ve since thwarted the problem, though some login issues could linger this morning. DDoS, which stands for Distributed Denial of Service, refers…
Homestuck, an interactive comic that spawned a massive, dedicated fan-base, came to an end today after seven years. You can watch the last animated episode of Andrew Hussie’s sprawling series right here (h/t Elanor): It’s a fitting end-date for the longrunning project—Homestuck first launched on April 13, 2009. Since it went live, the comic has…
You might think that by now, most Earthbound fans know everything there is to know about the iconic SNES game. You’d be wrong. Even the most hardcore of hardcore likely don’t know about this tiny easter egg, brought to my attention this week by Clyde “Mato” Mandelin (best known for leading the fan translation of…
Today marks 2016’s first major update in Destiny, a video game in which players travel through space watching their weapons get nerfed. For the first time in a long time, there’s new stuff for PVE players to do. Also, there’s a Taken sword, which you can get by beating the main quest in this update…
On Sunday night, thousands of World of Warcraft players gathered to say goodbye to Nostalrius, the fan-run server that hosted a vanilla version of the iconic MMORPG until Blizzard shut it down. Nostalrius, which we profiled last year, used World of Warcraft v1.12, otherwise known as the game’s latest incarnation before 2006’s Burning Crusade expansion.…
In 2014’s Bravely Default, there was no real explanation for the random encounter slider, a toggle you could use to reduce or amplify the rate of invisible enemy attacks. It just kind of existed. The sequel, Bravely Second, does things a bit differently. Early in the 3DS role-playing game, which comes out on Friday, there’s…
Here’s a fun way to amuse yourself on this sleepy Monday afternoon: Supper Mario Broth, an old tumblr page that’s full of cool Nintendo art, screenshots, and trivia. For example: did you know that Super Mario Bros. 3 has an animation that you can only see if you get the Hammer Suit when you’re in…
Nearly three years ago, while showcasing what we now know was a game that had barely even started development, the people behind Final Fantasy XV demonstrated a flashy fight between the hero Noctis and a Final Fantasy stalwart, the hulking Iron Giant. We only got bits and pieces of the battle, but what we saw…
Like reading behind-the-scenes stories about what it’s like to make games? Good news: I’m writing a book full of them! The book, which will be published by HarperCollins in the fall of 2017, will be a compilation of stories not unlike the Destiny piece we ran in October. You’ll hear much more about it next…
“Hellooooooo world!!!” wrote Microsoft’s new AI bot in its first tweet yesterday morning. By the end of the day, it had declared that Hitler did nothing wrong Tay, launched yesterday, is an artificially intelligent bot that’s designed to appeal to teens and younger 20-somethings. Its Twitter bio reads “Microsoft’s A.I. fam from the internet that’s…
By this time next year, we could be playing PS4.5 at home and NX on the go, with VR goggles strapped to our heads the whole time. Who’s ready for the future? On today’s episode of our podcast, Kotaku Splitscreen, Kirk and I take a deep dive into virtual reality, the Nintendo NX, and the…
A few weeks ago, Marcus Lindblom logged onto TwitchTV. He found someone playing Earthbound, and he watched them stream for a while. Every time they smiled in the right place or laughed at the right joke, he felt a jolt of vindication. Validation. Eighteen years later, he could finally see people enjoying his work. This…
Who really designed Ark: Survival Evolved? A lawsuit, filed late last year, alleges that there’s a messy story behind the development of one of Steam’s biggest hits. The players involved are Trendy Entertainment, the company behind Dungeon Defenders, and Studio Wildcard, the start-up game dev behind Ark, which launched in Early Access last year on…
This spring’s big Destiny update will offer new bounties, quests, and a new mission set after the fall of Oryx. It’ll also take us all back for a ride on the Light treadmill, bumping the level cap up to 335. On a Twitch stream today, reps for Bungie talked about the new update, which goes…
A series of new photos, posted two different places and purporting to show the controller for Nintendo’s next console, reveal a controller without buttons, one that’s shaped like a football. Update – 10:39am, March 25: It was a hoax, as we noted it might have been. Sorry for wasting your time. Original story follows. I…
In Northern California, Star Wars creator George Lucas has a sprawling complex called the Skywalker Ranch. If you found your way inside, you might stumble upon a big room full of concept art, design documents, and files for all sorts of old games. When working on Day of the Tentacle Remastered, Double Fine boss Tim…
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