Owen Good

Protest Against Video Game Army Recruiting Ends in Arrests

Yesterday in Philadelphia, a crowd of 100 marched on a mall demanding the shutdown of the “U.S. Army Experience” – a video-game based recruiting station. Seven were arrested for cosplaying Shyguys wearing masks. GamePolitics tweeted the showdown, which began back in March with ideas of gathering in the mall as ordinary shoppers and then descending…

Survey Says …

Faithful Kotaku reader Beaver apparently takes marketing surveys over at something called Play Insights, which assures visitors in fine (and grayed) print “Please be assured this is a legitimate research study.” Of course it is. Their surveys must be frequented by A-list developers all the time, because here they felt the need to offer a…

Forza 3 Event Spits Out Another Perfect Dark Tease

Last week’s Xbox 360 event in Sao Paolo, which teased Forza 3, also spun off another rumor tidbit: That pic, sent over to Destructoid, which is the second in-the-wild sighting of Perfect Dark on XBLA. The image, says D’toid, comes from someone who attended the Brazilian showing and quickly snapped the image. A video of…

Housers Named to Time’s ‘100 Most Influential’ List

Time’s latest issue is its “Time 100” in which they name the most influential people in the world, for this year anyway. Rockstar rockstars Dan and Sam Houser are in the “artists and entertainers” category. I couldn’t tell if Sam and Dan together count as one influential person, or if they took two whole spots…

Pokémon Remakes Take Gold, Silver?

Adding it all together, a teaser by Japan’s Pokémon Sunday TV program points to an announcement next weekend that Pokémon Gold and Silver will be remade. The tease, offered this weekend, said simply that Pokémon Sunday would have a “world-exclusive first announcement,” on May 10 during the program’s Pokémon Game Arena segment. Oh, but there’s…

360 Controller Meets this Sniper

This helicopter-borne robot sniper can fire 7 to 10 aimed shots per minute, and does so using a modified Xbox 360 controller plugged into a laptop. Each trigger squeeze costs $4 (320 Microsoft Points). Wired wrote up the ARSS (stop snickering, those in Commonwealth nations) – which stands for Autonomous Rotorcraft Sniper System, and imagines…

Another Pic of Wolverine’s Secret Areas

Friday, Fahey dug up a screenshot of X-Men Origins: Wolverine’s homage to Warcraft. A reader sent us a screengrab of another crossover marvel, one of two mentioned in the game’s achievement list. Obligatory spoiler alert. The first hidden area is understandable – Activision/Blizzard publish both Warcraft and Wolverine. Although it’s not specifically invoked, and Valve…

The Red, the Dead …

The concept for the Red Dead Redemption box art got me to thinking – I know I’ve seen that somewhere before. No, I’m not accusing Rockstar San Diego of ripping off The Good, the Bad & the Ugly. But the style here does seem somewhat inspired by Clint Eastwood’s freeze-frame pose at the end of…

Video Game Hall of Fame Gains Momentum, Support

Barely a month old, the movement to place a video game hall of fame in Ottumwa, Iowa has formed a city-backed committee and is hiring legal services to incorporate itself as a nonprofit venture. “We’re going to step carefully and make sure we don’t screw this up,” said Terry McNitt, the executive director of the…

Rumor: Call of Duty Moving on to Vietnam?

Citing a confidential source, That VideoGame Blog says Activision is pursuing licenses for Vietnam War-era music, as well as Cuban, Soviet Union and African music. They also infer that Treyarch will be the developer. TVGB says that Noah Heller is involved with this supposed CoD 7; he was the senior producer on World at War,…

For Some Reason, I Want to Jump on this Cake

You know? Like both feet together, straight down, off a brick ledge from a height about three times my own. I bet it’s super smooshy, just like a Goomba should be. Reader Joe M. sent in this gamecake – it was the wedding cake for his friends’ recent ceremony. It came with just a minimalist…

A Tribute to Corewar

There is no way in hell I could ever “play” it – my programming days ended with BASIC. But Corewar always intrigued me, because it was the closest thing to real-life Tron I could imagine. Corewar, a game which celebrates the 25th anniversary of its public debut this month, was pure gladiatorial combat in the…

Apple Getting More Serious About Mobile Gaming?

Forbes looks at some of Apple’s latest maneuverings and concludes the company is muscling up on its mobile gaming business. This week, Apple picked off two guys with heavyweight résumés – Richard Teversham, Microsoft’s former Xbox strategy-mans, and Bob Drebin, who at Advanced Micro Device created the Gamecube’s graphics processor. Those developments, added to Apple’s…

Zeno Clash Dev Tries Reasoning with Torrenters

Like stages of grief, game-makers’ response to file sharing goes in stages. ACE Team, the Zeno Clash developer, skipped rage and grief and moved on to bargaining – directly with would-be copiers. Developer Carlos Bordeu went to the comments of BitTorrent sites sharing Zeno Clash and posted the following: I’m one of the developers of…

Left 4 Dead Means Close-Knit Zombies

What is it with gamer girls sewing gifts for their guys? Sounds like arts-and-crafts meets Stockholm syndrome. Reader Alex K’s sis-in-law crocheted these adorable Left 4 Dead guys as a token of her (alienated) affection. Says Alex:”I just received the following as a birthday gift from my sister in law. She’s been a mere spectator…

Two More Boxers On Punch-Out!! Card

Go Nintendo’s a little ahead of the curve with a small pic, of unspecified origin, confirming two original Punch-Out!! pugilists’ presence in the forthcoming Wii-make. No surprise we’d find Great Tiger and Pissin’ Hurricane Piston Honda in this version, but as the official site remains stuck with Glass Joe, Von Kaiser, Disco Kid and Coming…

Warcraft is So Over this Swine Flu

IRL Swine Flu sounds like just a nighttime-sniffling-sneezing inconvenience when you read that it’s been going around Azeroth since the Lich King beta, and pops you for 120 natural damage every two seconds. Escapist points out that Swine Flu, a spell cast by undead hogs, isn’t some sneaky-snarky add-on to capitalize on the latest public…

High Voltage: New Wii Exclusives Can Handle … Tens of On-Screen Enemies

High Voltage, the studio behind the (latest) bacon-saver for Wii core gamers, The Conduit, says his house will show off two more Wii exclusives at E3, capable of five dozen onscreen foes, minimum. HV exec Eric Nofsinger says they’ll be showing “two big ones” at E3 – no, not that – both of them FPSes…

Weekend Coupons: Hordes of Money

Left 4 Dead at 40 percent off for PC is the A-list deal; tipster Gantz told us they extended the multiplayer freeplay, too. What other values can be found this weekend? Hardware: • Want to buy an 80GB PlayStation 3 for $360? Oh, the irony! Best of all, you can get it through the Home…

Analyst: Next Gen Begins After 2013

Everyone’s favorite industry analyst, Michael Pachter, says that, rumored Wii HD upgrade not withstanding, this current console generation is gonna be with us at least four more years. In an industry newsletter (as reported by Edge), Pachter wrote “We do not expect the ‘next’ generation to begin before 2013, if at all.” The “if at…