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Can an Oculus Rift Game Make You ‘Genuinely Horny?’ They’re Gonna Try.
Somehow, porn managed not to be the first thing folks started putting on the Oculus Rift when the VR simulator headset started going out to developers. Well, wait no longer. Someone is building “the world’s first erotic virtual reality adventure game” for it. Jeroen Van den Bosch and his startup studio are building a game…
By Owen Good -
Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Roll Out the Barrel
Mr. Iwata, Reggie (in particular) and Miyamoto have been great friends to the Kotaku ‘Shop Contest over its three year history, so we’re going back to them again with this pic from E3, which I’d like to think Nintendo shot just for your amusement. This one one was a mortal lock for the contest from…
By Owen Good -
Here’s a Look at One of the iPhone’s New Game Controllers
With Steve Jobs no longer around to tell us these things aren’t elegant enough for his device, it appears we’ll finally get a proper gamepad for the iOS this year. This will be one of them, made by Logitech. Can’t tell you who gave it to us or where it was seen, but we can…
By Owen Good -
Culture
Sunday Comics: Smash Brothers
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. Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published June 12. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik. Published June…
By Owen Good -
Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: The Power of Wub: The Winners
For the first time in history, we had a three-time finalist in the latest edition of the Kotaku’ Shop Contest, which sought to make Saints Row IV‘s “Dubsteb Gun” even more ridiculous than it already is. But he wasn’t the overall winner. Who was? Menome! (above) Duck season! Wabbit season! Wub season! Fire! First, the…
By Owen Good -
Inside EA Sports, Why Madden Must Be Called ‘American Football’
Once upon a time there wasn’t much of a dispute over the word “football.” Over here, it meant cheerleaders, instant replay, and concussions. Over there, it meant relegation, riots, and flopping. Then came the Internet, and commenters stomping around in one another’s mud puddles. Football. Soccer. Handegg. Communist Kickball. Whatever you call your version or…
By Owen Good -
LEGO Figures Not as Happy as They Were 25 Years Ago, Says Research
Years ago, all LEGO minifigures had a placid, happy expression and a pointedly non-ethnic skintone that fit their role in the larger LEGO universe: They were props, the same as a tree or a fire hydrant. But as LEGO has made more movie tie-ins—and video games—its minifigs have become more brooding. Darker. Angrier. Christopher Bartneck,…
By Owen Good -
Are These Real Answers, or Fake Questions, in This Xbox One Document?
This past week a 100-question internal FAQ on the Xbox One, purportedly official communications guidance from Microsoft, landed on Pastebin. It’s not the usual laundry list of wishful thinking you get in most video game fakes. That said, there’s no way to know if this is true or total B.S. Oh, we’ve asked Microsoft. Their…
By Owen Good -
NBA Live‘s E3 Demo Doesn’t Sound Much Better than NBA Elite‘s
In 2010, EA Sports brought NBA Elite 11 to E3 as a shootaround demo only. I remember this vividly. You played as one player in a practice setting, learning the timing of the new stick-shooting controls. If you still have the ill-fated NBA Elite 11 demo, go to its practice mode, that’s what we saw…
By Owen Good -
Forty-Five Mods Were Needed to Bring Man of Steel to Skyrim
Melding story elements of the first four Superman films—except the one where Richard Pryor recreates Kryptonite out of cigarettes—here is Skyrim at the Movies: Man of Steel, featuring Supes, Throthgar Luthor, Terence Stamp Zod, and Nuclear Man. It’s got Eve Teschmacher, too, just not as hot as Valerie Perrine. “Oh shit, it’s Zod.” Why it…
By Owen Good -
What Will It Take to Get EA on the Wii U Again? ‘Sell More Boxes.’
The most glaring indictment of the Wii U’s poor performance to date is the fact that FIFA—one of the biggest-selling franchises worldwide, in any genre—is publishing for everything but Wii U. FIFA 14 will come out on the PSP. It will publish on the original Wii. There’ll be a version on the PS Vita, for…
By Owen Good -
If You Can’t See Man of Steel Tonight, Here’s the Budget Version
For comic-book movies, the bigger the budget, the bigger the expectations, the bigger the letdown. Table 8 Productions, makers of “Iron Man 3 on a Budget,” and “The Avengers on a Budget,” know the key to exceeding expectations is to kill all hope of them in the womb. Thus this trailer for “Man of Steel”…
By Owen Good -
The Witcher‘s Anti-DRM Studio Finds Itself in a Bind with Xbox One
Few major developers could be as publicly anti-DRM as CD Projekt Red, makers of the Witcher series. Yet there they were with The Witcher 3, getting a good five minutes of stage time with the Xbox One, the face of console DRM going forward. The studio is committed to releasing on Xbox One but none…
By Owen Good -
Here’s Why Sailing Took So Damn Long in Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker
There’s a reason sailing the sea in the GameCube version of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was so slow and tedious. If the boat moved any faster, you’d sail off the edge of the ocean. Flat-Earthers smell a conspiracy! No, really, the GameCube didn’t have the power necessary to render the entirety of…
By Owen Good -
Mario’s Creator Likens Game Ownership to Toy Ownership
It’s clear what Microsoft thinks of game ownership—the Xbox One’s policies don’t communicate much of a belief in it. Sony scored a lot of points on Monday, but to be fair, it was a defense of the status quo. Where does Nintendo come down on the subject? Shigeru Miyamoto, the creative face of the company,…
By Owen Good -
A Glimpse of E3 With Their Own Eyes, Far From the Lights of L.A.
In line for Nintendo’s booth, Terence Polk checked his smartphone and chitchatted about what he’d come to review. “Super Mario 3D World,” he said, because he was skeptical—not because he was thrilled by what he’d seen in Nintendo’s presentation. It was the second day of E3. In Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Polk, 30, is not an…
By Owen Good -
EA ‘Didn’t Make It Easy’ to Understand Its Wii U Intentions, Says Exec
The boss of Electronic Arts’ games labels admits the company has sent vague, if not conflicting messages about its intentions on the Wii U, but with the BBC he wasn’t going to be more specific about what games, if any, they’d be making for the console in the future. “We didn’t make it easy for…
By Owen Good -
Command and Conquer‘s New Militant Faction Underlines an Old Problem
No longer will Command and Conquer‘s militant “Global Liberation Army” feature generals of obvious Middle Eastern descent, once the game goes free-to-play. Polygon reports that Victory Games made the decision because some folks didn’t like the implication that Middle Easterners were a bunch of militant terrorists. “Anyone who knows this series will know the Global…
By Owen Good