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Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Burn This Villager
The Villager’s haunting, dead-eyed look has gotten a lot of treatment since his introduction as a new Smash Bros. fighter, but he hasn’t yet gotten the Kotaku ‘Shop Contest treatment. Let’s take care of that this week. While The Villager already has a submission pending on Know Your Meme, and there’s a ton of crap…
By Owen Good -
Ding! FAA May Roll Back Stupid Restrictions on Electronic Device Use
Good news for the flying, gaming public: The Federal Aviation Administration’s bullshit, insulting-to-the-intelligence rules for the use of “approved portable electronic devices” are due to be relaxed, allowing for gate-to-gate use of your iPad, 3DS, Android phone or whatever. This could come as early as September. That’s according to reports by the Wall Street Journal…
By Owen Good -
Culture
Sunday Comics: A Pocket Full of Whoopass
Welcome to Kotaku‘s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics, chosen by our readership. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon in the lower right corner. Brawl In The Family by Matthew Taranto. Published June 21. Read more of Brawl In The Family Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and…
By Owen Good -
Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Roll Out the Barrel: The Winners
Plenty of great entries for this week’s ‘Shop Contest, drawing on a dynamic trio photo-op comprising Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata, Reggie Fils-Aime, and Shigeru Miyamoto. How do you win with that exploitable? I’ll give you advice: Go to E3, screw up like I know you will, and wind up in a barrel, like dystopika! If you’re…
By Owen Good -
Mind-Controlled Pong is One Step Toward a World Cup Kickoff
Controlling games with brainwaves is a vogue research subject—Patricia Hernandez herself tested out a demo that involved tossing trucks telekinetically—but a team of researchers have applied it to a competitive game—Pong—with the goal of allowing a paralyzed person to make the ceremonial kickoff of the 2014 World Cup. Duke University showed off its work to…
By Owen Good -
‘Tactical Marketing Decision’ Means It’s Just Dragon Age: Inquisition
What was Dragon Age III: Inquisition has now got rid of the eye-eye-eye. Losing el numero three-o may seem like a minor thing, but to Electronic Arts, it was a “tactical marketing decision.” Frank Gibeau, the boss of EA Games, acknowledged to IGN that there’s a debate over whether numbers in sequels work, don’t work,…
By Owen Good -
Again, NBA Live Quietly Distances Itself From Past Failures
Reading between the lines of an open letter by NBA Live‘s new executive producer, one understands that whatever comes next in that franchise is really no continuation of last year’s effort, which, like its 2010 predecessor, was aborted a few weeks before its assumed date of release. Remember, at the time, EA Sports said it…
By Owen Good -
Alaskan Tribe Starts Video Game Studio
They could have put their money into more traditional businesses, like a funeral home or a dry cleaner or real estate development. Instead, the Cook Inlet Tribal Council of Alaska chose to fund a video games company. They say it’s the first one in the United States owned by indigenous people. Upper One Games announced…
By Owen Good -
Flash Game Says Nintendo’s Console Manufacturing Supports Slave Labor
Nintendo is again being chastised by activists for not ensuring that minerals mined by slave labor in African conflict areas are not used in the manufacture of their electronics. Nintendo is criticized annually for this, but this time the activists have made a Super Mario game to underscore their point. It’s the work of something…
By Owen Good -
Download Multiplayer or Singleplayer First for Games Bought on PS4
This morning Sony put up this video showing off the PlayStation 4’s interface, and if you can tune out the fake gamers and their overreactions, it offers a few interesting tidbits of what life will be like with it. The big deal would seem to be the option to download a game’s multiplayer or its…
By Owen Good -
A New Camera Angle Steals the Scene in NCAA Football‘s Running Game
The biggest breakthrough for your running game in NCAA Football 14 may not be smarter line blocking, the return of a speed burst, or the introduction of real-time physics. It may be as simple as a new camera angle, available today in the game’s demo. You should see it. You should play with it. It’s…
By Owen Good -
People Flip the Hell Out When the NCAA Football Demo Doesn’t Show Up
Today, one of the year’s most hotly anticipated video game releases was delayed with no word when it will come out. Frustrated gamers spewed anger over social media, some even vowing to cancel their preorders. This afternoon after a whole nine hours, the world finally got the NCAA Football 14 Demo. That’s right, a free,…
By Owen Good -
If You Liked the Text-Only Flash Game Candy Box, Check Out A Dark Room
Candy Box, the quirky, text-only flash game that got a lot of attention last month, now has a rival: A Dark Room, which begins just as simply before unfolding into a much larger game of commerce and intrigue. A Dark Room is made by a one-man outfit called Doublespeak Games, which registered its domain around…
By Owen Good -
NCAA Football 14 Demo Offers Three Matchups for a New College Try
NCAA Football 14 offers three different matchups—Alabama vs. Virginia Tech, Oregon vs. Texas A&M, and the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry—when the game’s demo arrives on Xbox Live and Playstation Network tomorrow. Alabama-VPI will be the preseason Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game at the Georgia Dome; Oregon will play at Texas A&M and Ohio State-Michigan takes place in the…
By Owen Good -
Saints Row is About to Get a Whole Lot Weirder Thanks to Mod Support
The Saints Row series never supported modding, but now that it’s under new ownership, that is about to change. Developer Volition will release “what is essentially a full [software development kit]” for the most recent game, and says this year’s sequel is likely to get one, too. The upshot to all this is the PC…
By Owen Good -
Caught Flatfooted by Xbox 360, EA Sports Vows It Won’t Happen Again
Few sports video games are truly timeless. Even the best—MVP Baseball 2005, NFL 2K5—show their age and shortcomings immediately, and more than their contemporaries in other genres. It’s the special burden of sports titles, tasked with reflecting both the state of the art and the state of reality inside a one-year snapshot. But eight years…
By Owen Good -
Police Blotter: Magic: The Burglaring
Crime is a constant feature of video games writing. Somewhere, someone is doing something illicit with them—sometimes comically stupid, sometimes tragic. Games and consoles are currency, objects of dispute, sometimes even weapons themselves. Kotaku‘s Police Blotter is here to round up the latest in games crime. Disappearing Magic Act SALINA, Kansas—Twenty-eight Magic: The Gathering cards,…
By Owen Good
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