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The Latest Castlevania Game Originally Had Simon Belmont In It
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, released last year, ended up starring Gabriel Belmont, and was let’s say…different from most other games in the franchise. Fans will be interested to see, then, that developers Mercury Steam and publishers Konami originally had other plans for the game, with series legend Simon Belmont cast in the lead role. The…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 15, 2011 -
The Assassin’s Creed 3DS Game is Dead (But Some Parts Live On!)
When the Nintendo 3DS was first unveiled, one of Ubisoft’s first games for the handheld was supposed to be Assassin’s Creed: Lost Legacy. It won’t be any more, because that game’s been shitcanned. Speaking with Joystiq, Ubisoft writer Darby McDevitt has said that Lost Legacy is no more. Rather than being wasted, though, he says…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 15, 2011 -
CultureTotal RecallLet’s Watch Old Japanese Nintendo Commercials
July 15, 1983. If that’s your birthday, happy birthday! If it’s not, that’s cool. It’s still a very special date in history. Because it’s the day the Nintendo Famicom first went on sale in Japan. Later released in the West as the Nintendo Entertainment System (or NES), the Famicom is where things really got serious…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 15, 2011 -
Culture
Where Does Batman Get All This Wonderful Concept Art?
There may be over seventy years worth of Gotham City imagery to draw from, but that doesn’t mean the developers of Batman: Arkham City were allowed to get lazy. Continuing on from their work on Arkham Asylum, the artists at Rocksteady Studios have again drawn on the inspiration of famous comics, awesome cartoons and the…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 14, 2011 -
It’s Minecraft, (Sort of) Running On the Nintendo DS
A DS homebrew developer by the name of smealum is taking indie smash Minecraft and bringing it to Nintendo’s portable system. Unofficially, of course. At this stage there’s not much running but the world itself and the ability to smash blocks around, but it’s a start! Hopefully he can get some other stuff, like random…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 14, 2011 -
Where Zelda Meets…Magic Cards?
A Games Radar contributor by the name of KREATIVEassassin has built an entire 242-card deck of Magic cards. Out of characters and locations from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past What’s great about these is that it looks like you could actually use them, as he’s gone to the trouble of not…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 14, 2011 -
The Horror of Mario’s Enemies
It’s a good thing the early Mario games were so low-fi. If they’d shown your enemies in as high a resolution as they appear here, we’d have all been crapping our childhood pants. These, uh, interpretations of some of Mario’s foes were drawn by Mike Puncekar. Some of them, like Lakitu, are just cool. But…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 14, 2011 -
Watch Ezio’s Dad at Work This November
Assassin’s Creed: Lineage, the series of short, live-action films serving as a prequel to Assassin’s Creed II (and its own to “sequels”), will be out on DVD this November. To be released by New Video, they’ll be collected into the single volume on DVD and Blu-ray and released on November 15. Included with the set…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 14, 2011 -
The Strange Studio Born of Two Rival Companies
The Ridge Racer game for Sony’s upcoming PlayStation Vita will be the product of a unique studio: one that was established not by one major publisher, but as part of a partnership between two Cellius, the developer in question, is a joint venture between Sony Computer Entertainment and Namco Bandai, born of 2007 negotiations between…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 14, 2011 -
Yup, Another Obscure Japanese Game is Coming to the PC
Carpe Fulgur, the same guys who brought 2010 surprise hit Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale to the West, is back with another obscure Japanese game soon to be an obscure Japanese games with English language localisation. Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone will be CF’s next title, their third (the second being Chantelise) since…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 14, 2011 -
Two Million People Signed Up to Test a Call of Duty Community Feature
The beta test for Call of Duty Elite kicks off tomorrow, with invitations to be sent out to those selected for the the first run. Does that mean you? Maybe. Depends if you signed up to test something that’s not even a game! The first emails for successful applicants (of which there were around two…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 14, 2011 -
CultureTotal Recall
The Mario Movie Could Have Been so Much Better
The Mario movie we ended up with in 1993 was nothing like the games it was based on. An earlier draft for the film, however, was a lot more faithful. It’s impossible to tell whether it would have been any good, of course, but in sticking to the basics of the Mushroom Kingdom it at…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 14, 2011 -
Culture
The Stunning Video Game Art of Thierry Doizon
Thierry “BARONTiERi” Doizon is something of a legend in the world of video game concept art, having been in the business since 1995. In that time, he’s worked for companies like Ubisoft, Eidos and Acclaim, while contributing to series and games such as Assassin’s Creed, Prince of Persia and Deus Ex: Human Revolution In addition…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 13, 2011 -
Nintendo Fans, This is Way Sexier Than a Petition or Letter
Hey, Nintendo. If you won’t take heed of polite letters and emails from fans asking for Japanese games to be localised, maybe listen to this guy instead. I’m a big supporter of Operation Rainfall. But even if I weren’t, I’d still listen to this. Hell, I’d pay to listen to this guy read the phone…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 13, 2011 -
The StarCraft Tournament Where Facebook, Microsoft and Google are Competitors
Well now this is interesting. Sean “Day[9]” Plott, who we’ve featured here before on Kotaku, has helped put together a StarCraft II tournament. Only, instead of it being man versus man, it’s company versus company. And the companies are big ones Inspired by an internal Facebook competition, the “After Hours Gaming League” is billed as…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 13, 2011 -
Put Mass Effect’s Normandy On Your Shelf (Again)
That little toy replica of Mass Effect’s Normandy we showed you a few months back will soon have a twin. But not an identical twin. While the first ship is in Systems Alliance livery and will be out in November, there’ll be a second version of the Normandy available a month later. This time in…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 13, 2011 -
These Tank Battles Look Awfully Gratuitous
Gratuitous Space Battles is one the unsung heroes of PC strategy gaming. Especially given its wonderful name. But if Gratuitous Space Battles don’t tickle your fancy, then perhaps Gratuitous Tank Battles will. While Positech’s new game retains the top-down view of its predecessor, things sound a little more involved this time; GSB’s “send them all…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 13, 2011 -
StarCraft II Brings its Players Closer Together
Blizzard’s strategy smash StarCraft II will soon be “linking” many of its regions together, in a move that will give its players a whole new world of people to kick ass with/against. Beginning July 25, Battle.net will link the following servers together: • Europe -> Russia • Korea -> Taiwan • North America -> Latin…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 13, 2011
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