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Catch the Pokémon World Championships Live This Evening
For the first time in tournament history, the Pokémon World Championships will livestream the both its trading card and video game final rounds in the Masters’ Division. You can see the action here, beginning at 8 p.m. EDT, and you can check the final round pairings here. Pokémon World Championships 2012 [Official Site]
By Owen Good -
Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: The Kitchen Sink
Gang, we’ve gotta save this marriage. The Kotaku ‘Shop Contest has been publishing every week for more than 2 1/2 years, and let’s face it, the thing is in trouble. We haven’t had a full 20 in the finalist pool for more than a month. I can blame myself for uninteresting exploitables; you can blame…
By Owen Good -
This ‘Airport Virtual Assistant’ Looks Like the Ancestor of Avina from Mass Effect
Meet AVA, a hologram projected onto a human-sized piece of plexiglass. The idea is that AVA, at some time, will respond to questions, offer answers, and provide reliable guidance in multiple languages to travelers who have just landed and need help orienting themselves and understanding local services. Sound familiar? Sounds to me like Avina, the…
By Owen Good -
Culture
Sunday Comics: It’s Not Stealing, It’s Copying
Welcome to your Sunday read of the week’s best in web comics. Make sure to click on the expand button in the bottom right to enlarge each comic. Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik published Aug. 6.—Read more of Penny Arcade Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich published Aug. 6.—Read more of Awkward Zombie…
By Owen Good -
Team Fortress 2‘s Gray Mann Surfaces as Signs Point to All-Robot Faction [Update]
Diehard Team Fortress 2 fans have spent all weekend sleuthing out Friday’s tease, in which a “Gray Mann” is revealed to be the brother of Redmond and Blutarch Mann, owners of the game’s RED and BLU teams. Tons of evidence suggest this is going to mean the introduction of a robot faction, which Valve itself…
By Owen Good -
Crowning King Gary: The Winners
Decked out in plate mail fashioned from Nintendo 64 consoles and cartridges, Gary, King of the N64, certainly looked regal at Otakon 2012. His background, however, seemed kind of stale and bland. We handed Gary over to our smart ‘shoppers to put him in more heroic, noble or leaderly circumstances, and we’ve got this week’s…
By Owen Good -
All-Star Athlete Rehabs Knee by Using a Leg Press as a Video Game Controller
Wiihabilitation is so 2008 and, yes, Adrian Peterson of the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings is doing some of that as he tries to come back from a devastating injury in American football—the torn anterior cruciate ligament. But what’s more interesting here is Peterson has a custom set of exergames to go along with ski jumping on…
By Owen Good -
Fake Gun, Fake Currency, Real Jail Time Figure in Alleged Runescape Robbery [Corrected]
A 19-year-old Fordham University student is looking at 15 years in the slammer after allegedly putting a BB gun to the head of a classmate Fordham University student and demanding that 4.7 billion Runescape coins be transferred to his character, reports the New York Post [Correction] An earlier version of this story misidentified the suspect…
By Owen Good -
Zynga Tries to Prevent a ‘Mass Exodus’ with More Stock Options
Zynga’s stock has gone down, and gone down hard, plunging to $2.95 a share since late July, a drop that spawned a shareholder lawsuit and gave a top executive the heave-ho. Sensing that some employees might follow him out the door willingly, Zynga took the unusual step of offering free stock to everyone, Bloomberg reports.…
By Owen Good -
Paul Steed, Artist on Wing Commander and Quake Series, Dies
Paul Steed, an artist whose video game career spanned design, publishing and even console development, died unexpectedly, according to The Jace Hall Show. Steed was perhaps best known for work on Wing Commander and Quake and also for controversies arising in his time ad id Software. Steed was most recently the executive creative director of…
By Owen Good -
Google’s Olympic Doodles: The Kotaku Sort-of Review
As the 2012 Olympics come to a conclusion this weekend, Google this week released four playable versions of its famous doodle, the company’s logo on its minimalist front page. The doodles today returned to static illustrations of Olympic events, apparently ending the series of games. So I figured I’d give them all a good playthrough…
By Owen Good -
After Learning It Was Copied From Another Game, Dota 2 Gives a Mace the Axe
Some 25,000 players who had bought a community-created weapon within Dota 2 discovered a new item in their inventories after Valve learned it had been copied directly from the MMO Aion Valve brought this up on its Steam Workshop blog, probably because 25,000 people noticed they no longer had “Timebreaker,” a popular user-created mace that…
By Owen Good -
The Moneysaver: New Dogs and Old Tricks
Sleeping Dogs arrives on Tuesday along with Darksiders 2; the only considerations these two games are getting are bonus credits. NCAA Football 13 led the retail sales lists in July but not enough, and now is cut to $41. Those three plus more than 50 other deals, bonuses and savings await in this week’s Moneysaver…
By Owen Good -
Job Opportunity: Unpaid Internship With Startup Superhero
This listing hit Craigslist in Raleigh, N.C. a week ago and immediately went to its best-of archive. As a former resident of North Carolina’s capital city, I can tell you that this guy is neither the hero we deserve, nor the one we need right now. I am preparing to make my debut as Raleigh’s…
By Owen Good -
Will New Physics Make a Better Madden? Find Out When the Demo Hits Tuesday.
The Madden NFL 13 demo arrives on Aug. 14, two weeks before the game’s release, offering a rematch of last year’s NFC Championship Game, and a Seattle-Washington matchup that showcases Redskins quarterback (and NCAA Football 13 cover star) Robert Griffin III. Players will get a full game of four five-minute quarters will commentary from the…
By Owen Good -
Yesterday’s Blizzard Hack Makes This Guy Almost Eat His Battle.Net Authenticator
I had to watch this about four times just to be completely sure that Internet video game rage comedian Francis did not, in fact, eat his Blizzard keychain authenticator during this rant about yesterday’s breach of Battle.Net. Obviously, this video is loud and its language is NSFW. He’s fast. I don’t think Francis actually chewed…
By Owen Good -
Did You Buy a Borked Silent Hill HD on Xbox 360? Here, Have Frogger on the PS2
Konami’s considerate decision not to patch the broken Xbox 360 version of the Silent Hill HD Collection (read: because it costs money) has led the publisher to offer a free game to those who complain (read: because it costs less money). You just have to send an email to Konami to get the offer, according…
By Owen Good -
Kinect-Supported Cussing is the Hip New Thing in Video Games Now
Well, well, look at this. FIFA 13‘s developers experimented with the concept but found there was no fair way to assess it within the rules of football. NBA 2K13, however, can take advantage of basketball’s technical foul rules to sanction you for cussin’ into the Kinect sensor after a total bullshit call. Basketball allows for…
By Owen Good
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