Luke Plunkett

A Transformer to Light a Big Mac’s Darkest Hour

This is a customised Transformers action figure that gives Autobot leader Optimus Prime a day job. No longer can he just drive around as a giant truck for the hell of it. No, now he’s got deliveries to make. Deliveries of sesame seed buns, all beef patties and, if he can find the room, special…

57 Street Fighters, All in the One Place

How many Street Fighters are there? There’s loads. Unless you’re a hardcore fan, likely way more than you thought there were. Considering Street Fighter II started with only eight playable characters, you can blame the later games, when Capcom went a little crazy This awesome poster by artist Ken Wong puts 57 of them in…

Fallout 3 is Suddenly One of The Best-Looking Games on Earth

Fallout 3 was released in 2008. In that time, all kinds of gorgeous video games have come and gone, including Bethesda’s own Skyrim. But you wouldn’t tell by looking at these screens. You’d think they were for Fallout 4, a thing I’m pretty sure doesn’t even exist yet. That’s the power, and the beauty, of…

Thank Your God The SNES Didn’t Actually Look This Hideous

The North American Super Nintendo looked…OK. The Japanese and PAL version looked hot. Oh, how things could have turned out differently, had early concept art become reality. These two early designs for the SNES, drawn at a time when they were still calling the machine the “Nintendo Entertainment System 2”, were hideous. Where the final…

A Robot Sex Doll. From The Future.

This incredible animated gif doing the rounds this week (though first published in February) is taken from Paragon Sexa Doll (パラゴンセクサドール Doll), a Japanese “visual novel” developed by Heart Soft and released in the early 80s on the NEC PC-8801, a primitive PC that was pretty big in Japan. Visual novels are barely games; like…

Phone Controls Suck. Let’s Use a PS3 Controller Instead.

Unless the game has been designed with touch-screen (or tilt) controls in mind, moving around in mobile game is often an exercise in pain and frustration. So much so that I want to find the man/woman who first invented the virtual d-pad and set their hands on fire. Not to worry. There’s always the GameKlip,…

A Computer Made These Polygon Faces. Warning: Nightmares Ahead.

These images are what happens when you combine a a random polygon generator with a “facial recognition algorithm”. Which means the generator keeps generating until the recognition algorithm detects a face. Then it keeps running while it tries to automatically improve it. To…mixed results. In short: it’s a million virtual chimps drawing a million virtual…

What a Real Mario Brother Would Look Like

Mario has a giant cap for a reason: so Nintendo didn’t need to animate his hair or eyebrows. That was back in the 1980s, though; if Mario was being designed now – or, heaven’s forbid, being redesigned – there’s every chance he’d look a little more realistic. Maybe not this realitic, though, which would be…

Minesweeper and Solitaire Now Have Achievements. Sigh.

Well, this is depressing. In preparation for the release of Windows 8, Microsoft is updating some of the platform’s stalwart titles, like Minesweeper, Solitaire and Majong. Updating them with achievements. Minesweeper, for example, has four of them. Four. One is for finishing a board, and one is for losing a round. Solitaire has 3. Presumably…

Some of the Greatest Video Game Pictures You’ll Ever See

If you’ve been reading Kotaku for a while, you may already be familiar with the name Genzoman. Or, as his mother knows him, Gonzalo Ordoñez Arias. The Chilean illustrator, part of the illustrious Udon Crew, is responsible for some of the most amazing video game images on the internet. Some of them were clearly drawn…

This Guy Reckons He’s Made Over $10,000 Playing Diablo III

As soon as Blizzard announced its real-money auction house for Diablo III, no doubt millions of gamers around the world began fantasising that they’d be able to make some serious money on the service. Well, this guy claims he already is. Reddit user WishboneTheDog has posted screencaps of his transaction history, which if legit show…

Those Wii U cover designs we looked at yesterday? According to Ubisoft, they’re the real deal

On August 19, Scott Pilgrim (a game released in 2010) will get online multiplayer and a new character

DayZ is Officially Being Turned Into a Standalone Game

It’s been discussed before, but now it’s official: smash hit zombie survival mod DayZ is being turned into its own game. Dean Hall, the mod’s creator, will be overseeing the game as project lead, and it’ll be published by Dean’s co-workers (and ArmA creators) Bohemia Interactive. Hall says the game will “follow the Minecraft development…

Hey, Go Check Out The New Attract Mode, OK?

Once a cute little shop with a blog, Attract Mode has been reborn (after a lengthy hiatus) as a “video game collective”, made up of “game makers, film makers, designers, artists, and journalists”. If you need more specific information, some of the people lending a hand include artists Cory Schmitz and Maré Odomo, indie developers…

This RPG Will Star History, Not Orcs and Monsters

When you think of an RPG, you think of dragons. Loot. Fireballs. Goblins. Worlds where entire ecosystems change every two miles. Basically, a whole load of stuff that’s make-believe, and despite the frequent “medieval” setting, about as far from actual history as you can get. So an in-development RPG at Czech studio Warhorse, which is…

These Guys Built a Fake Submarine to Play Submarine Games in

Let’s say you want to play a Submarine game. No harm in that, it’s a classic genre. You could just sit in front of a monitor. Maybe, if you were feeling up for it, slip on some headphones. Which is fine, but it’s a little pedestrian. Especially compared to these guys, who built a replica…

LEGO Zelda, You Look So Good, Why Can’t I Buy You?

Artist Wes Talbott combines two of his – and, well everyone’s – favourite things with this imaginary poster for imaginary Zelda LEGO. I look at this, and the more I look, the more it feels like a real thing. Then I look away, and remember it’s not, and I get upset. I should really blame…

A Game Where You Do Nothing But Design And Build Starships

Is this a dream? Am I lying in a coma somewhere imagining this is the trailer to a game I fantasised about throughout my childhood? No! It’s Starship Corporation, a game where the design of big spaceships (and “planetary installations”) isn’t just something tacked on, it’s what the entire game is about. Players are tasked…

Pelé and Pete Rose Should Have Stuck to Sports

Athletes still do a pretty poor job in commercials in the 21st century. So as you can probably imagine, in the 1970s, they were terrible This Atari clip from 1978 featured baseball star Pete Rose, football legend Pelé and…Don Knotts. OK, so Don did just fine, but he was an actor, not a sportsman. 1978…