Owen Good

This Mesmerizing Version of Tetris Can Draw Anything You Want

Two years ago, the Internet stumbled across a guy who would work upwards of two hours to create virtuoso sprite patterns within Tetris. Well, anything humans can do, a computer can do better, right? Here’s the Tetris Printer Algorithm. Showoff … The creation of Michael Birken, this algorithm uses eight different-colored tetrominoes plus the empty-space…

Why is the PSP Getting Pro Evolution Soccer, and not the Vita or 3DS?

Pro Evolution Soccer won’t have Xbox One or PlayStation 4 versions. No surprise there. It won’t have a Wii U version. Even less of a surprise there. It won’t publish on the Nintendo 3DS or the PlayStation Vita, either. So why is it still coming out on the PSP? That’s right, the PSP. Of the…

High-Definition Fable Anniversary Coming Later This Year to Xbox 360

Fable Anniversary, an HD remake of the original Fable, is coming this year to the Xbox 360, according to this podcast, released this morning, from Major Nelson and Lionhead Studios’ Ted Timmins. In addition to the visual upgrade, to include better lighting and textures in high definition, the game will get an updated control scheme…

Police Trainer Tells Cops to Quit Throwing Guns Like It’s a Video Game

Today’s cops are, apparently, throwing their guns all over the place, says a police training expert. One guy threw it behind cover before diving after it. Another guy ditched his weapon in a struggle for a rifle. These are poor decisions, says the expert, and he thinks he knows what’s behind them. Yup, video games.…

Tell Us What You See in this Map of Los Santos [Update]

Rockstar has—probably deliberately—been doling out snippets of the Grand Theft Auto V map for some time. The ultrafans on GTAForums have been collecting them and finally stitched all of them together, giving us what appears to be a map of Los Santos and its surrounding area. [Update: This is not an official map; it’s the…

EVE Online publisher CCP said in a statement that “at no time was customer data compromised or accessible,” during a DDoS attack that brought down EVE and Dust 514 this weekend. “We will be looking at ways to compensate players in both EVE and DUST for the outage,” CCP added.

This is What Happens When Two Mute Video Game Characters Go on a Date

Much has been inferred or made of a continuity overlap between Portal and Half-Life. Here, Chell and Gordon Freeman are able to tell us what they really have in common—without saying a word. YouTube Video uploaded by MikeNgary To contact the author of this post, write to [email protected] or find him on Twitter @owengood

Oh, By the Way, Don’t Count on a Curtain Call for Video Games’ MVP

Getting an Internet signal inside LA’s Orpheum Theater is always a crapshoot. For years, it’s been both a daydream and a nightmare that I’d be liveblogging Electronic Arts’ E3 keynote as Andrew Wilson or Peter Moore finished EA Sports’ segment and then, pretending to forget something, turned and said, “Oh, by the way.” Then the…

EVE Online says it has taken down its Tranquility server cluster—housing the MMO itself and companion game Dust 514—because of “a significant and sustained distributed denial-of-service attack.” Tranquility has been down for 16 hours. At this time, not even EVE‘s web site is reachable. Follow EVE‘s Twitter for more. [Update] The outage is over. “At…

Police Blotter: Sorry I Slashed Your Throat, Bro

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. The Most Gears Apology, Ever GLASGOW, Scotland—The teenager accused…

Steam Sends Indies Who Got Publishing Offer Back to Greenlight

Shortly after opening their Steam Greenlight campaign for the game Paranautical Activity, the two-man studio Code Avarice got a phone call that would have made any indie’s day: It was Adult Swim, offering to publish their game on Steam. Yeah, well, not so fast. As Code Avarice’s Mike Maulbeck and Travis Pfenning explain in that…

The Future has Arrived: Print Your Own Mechwarrior Toys

You can’t buy this six-inch tall, posable Atlas battlemech from any toy or collectible maker, and it isn’t a Comic-Con exclusive. It’s exclusively from the 3D printer of a Mechwarrior fan. The Atlas has (by my count, anyway) 11 points of articulation, and creator Valcrow says that from the torso up, just two parts were…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Rolling Wonder

Maybe I was a little hard on the “X-Box,” a cozy, if insane, contraption being sold for $2,500 in Youngstown, Ohio. It does come with an A/C unit, though I’d be glad to ditch that for a wet bar (and just open the fridge if it got too hot.) Anyway, I know how I can…

Sunday Comics: Can’t Touch This

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. Corpse Run by Alex Di Stasi. Published May 27. Read more of Corpse Run Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik. Published…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Dog Duty: The Winners

Without a doubt, Call of Duty Dog stole the show at Microsoft’s big Xbox One reveal, and not for all the right reasons. The law of unintended consequences dictates that one of them is appearance in the Kotaku ‘Shop Contest. Who’s a good ‘Shopper? Who’s a good ‘Shopper? Yes you are, Sciteach! Yes you ARE!…

Dark Souls II Coming March 2014, Says E3 Sign

This big billboard going up over the L.A. Convention Center, as spied by reader Norm the Alligator, pegs Dark Souls II for an early spring 2014 release. Does this mean it’s coming to PS4/Xbox One? To contact the author of this post, write to [email protected] or find him on Twitter @owengood

MIT’s OpenRelativity engine, designed to model Einstein’s special theory of relativity in a video game, now is being released as an open-source toolset. It is available for download here.

Oh Man, You Are Not Gonna Believe What You Can Do in Watch_Dogs

We may be coming to the twilight of the current console generation but these old dogs can still learn some new tricks, as this making-of video for Watch_Dogs shows. That’s right, hero Aiden Pearce will be able to walk with his hands in his pockets. This is actual gameplay, folks, NOT PRE-RENDER. Skip ahead to…

Trivialize an Anti-Gay Riot With This Bizarre Facebook Game

Two weeks ago, priests in Georgia (the former Russian state independent republic, not the US state) led a mob that attacked about 50 gay rights demonstrators, hurling rocks and, ifthis YouTube video is an indication, swinging furniture. Someone’s cooked up a nearly unplayable side-scroller lampooning the chaos. This is Call of Taburetka, the latter word…

Joining last year’s miracle Half-Life 3 onion ring, @joshpav just found this Borderlands logo/Vault symbol in his meal. (As retweeted by Gearbox Software president and CEO Randy Pitchford.)