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Breakup Advice, from Mortal Kombat
Poor Sub. I guess Mileena was only looking for Friendship. This image made the rounds this past week—maybe you saw it on Tumblr, or via Cheezburger. It’s by the illustrator and photographer Ryan T. Alexander, whose portfolio you can see here. To contact the author of this post, write to [email protected] or find him on…
By Owen Good -
The Video Gamers of the Year
Yesterday, Kotaku kicked off its look back on 2013 with our (and your) nominees for Game of the Year. Just as important as the games, though, are the very real people who play them. For the second year, we’re also naming our Gamers of the Year, people who made contributions on behalf of video gaming’s…
By Owen Good -
YouTube’s Copyright Crackdown: Everything You Need To Know
We’re in the second week of a YouTube copyright enforcement crackdown whose most visible effects have been on the video gaming community. Each day turns up a new example of a video getting thrown in YouTube jail on a ridiculous technicality. The situation seems to defy common sense, but we’ll try to explain it in…
By Owen Good -
The Halo-on-Atari-2600 Game is Going Into the Smithsonian
The Smithsonian American Art Museum yesterday acquired two games for its permanent collection. One of them seems right at home—Flower, the independent title almost universally praised by critics for its artistic flourishes. The other is, basically, Halo if it was made for the Atari 2600. Halo 2600 by Ed Fries (a former Microsoft games publishing…
By Owen Good -
Killer Instinct‘s DRM Check Poses Problem for Its Use in Tournaments
This wasn’t a major event, but it was a tournament streamed yesterday by a pretty big name in the fighting game community, Team Spooky, and it’s not the kind of closeup Killer Instinct was hoping for. The tournament lost its Internet connection and, well, this console couldn’t continue. This occurred in the winners final at…
By Owen Good -
Mario Kart 8‘s Got A New Trailer…Featuring An Airport Level
Nintendo is still not being any more specific than “Spring 2014,” but when Mario Kart 8 gets here, Bowser, Mario, Yoshi and all the rest will be tearing-ass around airport and cloudtop courses with a new buggy-type vehicle. See it in the latest trailer here. In addition to the new courses and car, the trailer…
By Owen Good -
Chibi-Robo Photo Finder Coming to North America in January
Chibi-Robo Photo Finder, which released in Japan in July, will come to the North American Nintendo eShop on Jan. 9, Nintendo said this morning. A free demo will be available on the store on the same day. Chibi Robo Photo Finder is an augmented reality game that requires you to find and photograph items in…
By Owen Good -
The Most Ridiculous Victim of YouTube’s Crackdown is a BASIC Game
YouTube’s content ID match system may be the best way to keep copyright holders happy but it continues to cover everyone else in embarrassment. The latest example: This guy just got flagged for a playthrough video of a game. A game he programmed. In BASIC. This is “the action surfing adventure” Surfshooter, according to its…
By Owen Good -
Garden Warfare Looks Like Battlefield with a Plants vs. Zombies Mod
Here’s a look at about 6 minutes of Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare‘s “Gardens & Graveyards” multiplayer, which PopCap calls “a remix of Rush and Conquest gameplay modes from Battlefield but with a PvZ spin.” The similarities end there, because I’m not sure Rush or Conquest features carnivorous plants that can tunnel underneath you to…
By Owen Good -
Stephen Colbert Spies on the Spies Playing Second Life
Last week, Jon Stewart tackled the absurdity of the NSA spying on World of Warcraft because there might be terrorists playing it or something. This week, The Colbert Report chimed in with a look at spying on Second Life—”a game for people who don’t have a first one!” The action picks up around the 1:10…
By Owen Good -
YouTube Copyright Fiasco Get Wilder, But This Time Someone Admits Error
Being told someone else owns your 2-million-view video is a sure way to ruin a YouTuber’s day. It can also be a real downer for the company supposedly making the claim. Especially if YouTube’s bot scanner is making thousands of these infuriating claims on their behalf, all because of a mistake. Scale Lab, a newcomer…
By Owen Good -
Just Cause 2‘s PC Multiplayer Mod Launches All Kinds of Mayhem Today
If you thought those mass BASE jumps in Battlefield 4 were cool, hum a few bars of the Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod for PC, which just came out of beta and goes live on Steam today. Group parachuting joins boat races, jet combat and demolition derbies among the activities awaiting you in the tropical…
By Owen Good -
PlayStation U.S. Boss Says He Gave Up His PS4 So Someone Could Buy One
When PlayStation’s U.S. chief says Sony isn’t rigging an artificial PS4 shortage, I give him the benefit of the doubt. When he says 12,000 PS4s sold out in half an hour on Amazon, that’s not an incredible thing to say. When he says he has no PS4 yet, telling the company to sell it instead,…
By Owen Good -
Four Have Reached Level 100 on PlayStation Network
Hakoom, one of the more prolific and visible trophy hunters in the PlayStation Network, just broke through to level 100—a rank that requires a user to win some 30,000 trophies. Three others have also breached the 99 barrier, thought to be the limit when PSN instituted trophy support back in mid-2008. Hakoom gets the publicity…
By Owen Good -
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 are being removed from Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network stores—both their digital versions and their DLC. Tuesday is the last day PSN subscribers in North America can get DLC for the game; Thursday is the last day in Europe. Dec. 26 is the deadline,…
By Owen Good -
Culture
The Week in Games: The Walking Dead Begins a New Season
Retail console releases may be done for this year but there still are marquee names waiting for their closeup as we finish off 2013. Chief among them is the next season of The Walking Dead, which arrives Tuesday along with Terraria on the PS Vita. Here’s the week in games. Tuesday, Dec. 17 The Walking…
By Owen Good -
Here’s Stan Bush Rebooting His Iconic Transformers Anthem, ‘The Touch’
Fahey wasn’t too fond of the remixed “The Touch” thatplayed during the credits for Transformers: Fall of Cybertron last year, the credits only offered an excerpt. Today, Stan Bush released the entire thing. Does the additional context make it better? I’m kinda still with Fahey on this. Bush’s title track from the 1986 film is…
By Owen Good -
Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: The Ballad of Greychalk
Not even a day after The Daily Show sent ace correspondent “Greychalk,” a “dwarf paladin” (which is possible!) to report on American spies’ monitoring of World of Warcraft, there were 18 Greychalks created in the game, most of them dwarven paladins. There are 46 now. This sounds topical enough to me to rate a ‘Shop…
By Owen Good
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