Owen Good

DJ Hero’s DJ AM Found Dead in New York

DJ AM, a playable character in Activision’s forthcoming DJ Hero, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment Friday. Adam Goldstein, as he was known in real life, was a performer with a well-known history of drug addiction, and recovery from it. He was 36. Tim Riley, the Activision vice president of music affairs, released a…

Here’s Your NBA Live 10 Tracklist

NBA Live 10‘s tracklist was revealed today, showing the scratch-my-back nature of EA Sports soundtracks. Some tunes are from superstar artists, making the game look good. Some are from acts on the move, giving them a feather in their cap. EA first gave the set to gaming/hip-hop site The Koalition. And with Snoop, Mos Def,…

Kotaku’s Top 5 List of Top 10 Lists

Each week throws off several new video game lists ranging from the humorous to the trivial. What’s better? A list of those. Here’s a roundup of the rundowns out there. •Advertising 101: 10 Awesome Game Trailers to Learn From [The Bits, Bytes, Pixels and Sprites] Game trailers have emerged as a kind of art form…

Nananana nananana — ARKHAM!!!!

Danny Elfman can piss off. I roll with Neal Hefti’s theme from the 1960 TV show, and here someone’s set it to Arkham Asylum gameplay in an attempt to mimic the show’s opening. It doesn’t get good until the POW SOCK OOF sequence, and the onamotapoeics are replaced with wirdy-dirds, so I guess this gets…

EyePet Brings the Dawwww Nov. 17

Sony’s given a release date and two pricing schemes for EyePet, its augmented-reality, cute widdle fuzzy wuzkins-ownership sim. North America gets it Nov. 17, price is $39.99 without PlayStation Eye, $59.99 bundled with. The announcement on the official PlayStation blog yesterday was accompanied by a developer demo vid, embedded below. It’s a pretty sharp inducement…

Fansites Get the First Gay Tony Screens, and They’re Fabulous

I don’t see much differentiation in these four screens versus the rest of Grand Theft Auto IV. GTA4Net got these, and IGN says fansites were given them first. Looks like you’ll have a gay old time blowing up lotsa crap. First Gay Tony Screenshots [GTA4.net]

Fashion Model Says Beaterator’s Coming to iPhone

We break rumor without prejudice to the source, and this one comes from Vogue. Model Jacquetta Wheeler is friends with Sam Houser’s wife, Anouchka, and during a visit, she says Sam showed Beaterator to her – on an iPhone. Now, we already know that Beaterator, produced with Timbaland, is on the way to the PSP…

Fallout 3 Trophies Pop Up; DLC Soon?

The last word on when Fallout 3’s PS3 DLC would arrive was Bethesda “hoping” to have it out by “the end of of September.” Trophies pegged to all the expansions have shown up. Perhaps they indicate a sooner release? Earlier this week, tipster Dan M. snapped that screen pic of the 22 trophies. Tipster Player…

Brütal Bus will Race in Soap Box Derby

A team of three college friends is building one bad-assed model of Brütal Legend’s Ironheade Tour Bus, and will race it in a soap box derby in Los Angeles. Holy catfish, they have actually cast molten metal for this thing. The team, Christine Phelan, 25, Andrew Cook, 25, Sean Feeley, 26, and Luke Nalker, 30,…

Sex as a Commodity, Women as Achievements

Mass Effect is a sophisticated, acclaimed video game. It took uninformed flak for its sex scene, which gamers defended as a mature portrayal of the act. But it’s not that different from the depiction of sex in many other games. Video games, on the whole, perpetuate a transactional model of sex, argues Alex Raymond at…

CCP Boss: Dust 514 for Those Who ‘Blow Sh— Up’

DUST 514 takes the prize for most intriguing hybrid – console FPS/RTS/MMO that performs in the persistent EVE Online universe. Here, the CCP Games CEO explains the concept more, including the fundamental difference in EVE and Dust characters. Hilmar Pétursson drew a familiar analogy – EVE Online players are the air force; DUST 514 players…

The Art of Calling an Unseen Game

The scene is familiar: Midway through the first period of an NHL game, and the shot knots up the score. Randy Hahn considers the action for a split-second and leans into his microphone. “The Sharks have come right back and tied this one up,” says the television voice of San Jose hockey. “That goal is…

Weekend Coupons: In Which Owen Damn Near Buys an Elite

Coupon assemblage is, routinely a yeah-yeah task. I mean, really, who the hell wants a pink Guitar Hero guitar. But this weekend, there’s some 360 hardware values you need to see. Hardware • If this is to be believed, Play.com has an Xbox 360 bundle that reads like a Ronco But-Wait-There’s-More ad, except it actually…

Kotaku Originals: Follow That

Meaty news week here in Kotakopolis. Last week’s PS3 Slim announcement fairly forced Microsoft to do two things: 1) Declare there’s no 360 Slim following suit and 2) announce a comparable price cut is on the way. Reviews of Wolfenstein and Batman helped you decide if you want to play ’em. Ditto the news about…

Bank Deficit Freezes EVE Accounts

From the MMO-as-IRL file, EVE Online’s biggest bank has frozen accounts for anyone who invested any kredits with it, after it was discovered that the bank is 380bn kredits in the hole, without the funds to cover player withdrawals. EBank, the institution in question, was also hit by a naked fraud scheme earlier this year,…

Cryptic: Microsoft’s Behavior Means No Champions This Year

Jack Emmert, the Cryptic chief creative officer, says Microsoft has a “baffling” issue with MMOs, and it’s holding up the console release of Champions Online. In a VG247 podcast, Emmert says Cryptic has a 360 version of the game “ready to go,” but it’s not likely to arrive this year. “It just takes time for…

Motorstorm PSP Dated, Timed for PSPgo Release

MotorStorm: Arctic Edge will release in UMD format on Sept. 29 – delaying the downloadable version of the game until Oct. 1, just in time for the PSPgo’s debut. For those uninitiated, this MotorStorm takes the festival up to the land of the midnight sun, adding sno-cats and snowmobiles (sigh, snow machines) to the vehicle…

EA Exec: ‘PS 3.5’, ‘Xbox 560’ will Precede Next Gen

Electronic Arts’ Chief Creative Officer (pictured), in an interview, said that Sony and Microsoft, “nearly expired crossing the finish line as they launched their consoles,” and don’t want to build the next generation any time soon. “I expected we’ll see a PlayStation 3.5 before we see a PlayStation 4 and an Xbox 560 before we…

GameStop Robber Demands Madden by Name

“Small, unmarked bills” is the clichéd demand of an armed robber. Not in Jacksonville, Fla. A holdup artist told a GameStop employee to fill his bag with games – Madden NFL 10, to be precise. According to a Jacksonville cop report. a robber went into a Gamestop on Monday night, pretended like he wanted a…

Approval Ratings: Batman Positive, by 2-to-1

The second round of Kotaku Approval Ratings returned few surprises – especially for a title of Batman: Arkham Asylum’s eminence. But they continue to build a baseline understanding of who we are and how we game. Last Saturday’s survey covered your attitudes about the latest Batman title, from Rocksteady and Eidos, as well as your…