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The Maker Of Mario Kart Justifies The Blue Shell
I’d like to think that I made a reasonable request of the man behind Mario Kart. Hideki Konno has been the director of Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64, the producer of Mario Kart DS and Mario Kart Wii. Get this guy in a room and you’ve got to ask him something about one…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 9, 2011 -
Blizzard’s Next MMO Is ‘A Total Ball To Play’, Follows Diablo III
There’s this guy who says that Blizzard’s next massively multiplayer game is “a total ball to play.” He says the game, code-named Titan, is “the type of game that will have a very long life, much like World of Warcraft has.” This guy is biased. He’s Paul Sams and he works at Blizzard. He’s the…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 8, 2011 -
The Many Ways To Kill In The Darkness II
The Darkness II is a grisly video game. The bad guys nail the lead character’s hands to a board. The good guy spikes people in the head with parking meters. One day, the mother of one of the game’s creators looked at her son’s e-mail inbox and noticed her son would be gathering with his…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 8, 2011 -
Ms. Splosion Man Creator Dreams of Miyamoto. Disturbing, Personal Dreams.
In Josh Bear’s happy dream, Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Donkey Kong and Super Mario, was sitting on a toilet. “I don’t dream of hot girls,” Bear told me as he recalled the dream last week at Game Developer’s Conference, “I dream of Miyamoto taking a dump.” In the dream, as Bear tells it, Miyamoto gets…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 8, 2011 -
Indie Gaming’s Weird Winner Nidhogg, Acted Out For You
What is Nidhogg? It’s an orange man vs. a yellow man. It’s a fencing football game. It’s about dragons and it’s the winner of the 2011 Nuovo Award, which means its great at being experimental/artsy/peculiar It’s an abstract fighting game and a lot of fun (proven at the four-minute mark of the video at that…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 7, 2011 -
The Dark Knight, Too Triumphant?
Batman can’t fly. Not in the comics. Not in the movies. Not even in the upcoming video game Batman Arkham City, despite what you might infer from some of the game’s screenshots. The Dark Knight of Arkham City nevertheless seems like a more powerful Batman than the one we last played in Batman Arkham Asylum.…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 7, 2011 -
The Trials HD People Believe They Can Bring Online Innovation To, Get This, The Wii
The follow-up to a hit Xbox Live Arcade game isn’t usually a downloadable Wii game. And the test-bed for novel features in online gaming tends not to be Nintendo’s home console. Bucking these trends bravely are the creators of Moto Heroz, the new WiiWare game from Red Lynx. WiiWare gets few significant games these days,…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 7, 2011 -
Nintendo Won’t Back Down On 3D—It Makes Games ‘Easier to Feel’
I’ve played video games in 3D but, last week, I still thought 3D might just be an attractive gimmick, a buzzword, a special effect. I’ve been a skeptic about this stuff. It looks nice on the 3DS, but is it just a cosmetic effect or can it actually affect how video games play? Answering my…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 7, 2011 -
Talk Amongst Yourselves
This is Kotaku’s official forum, where you can talk about video games all you want. Watch out for the Assassin’s Guild. Thanks to reader KingOfAwesometonia for today’s fine Photoshop. Submit your image to #TAYpics (Read this thread for directions on how to do a TAYpic.)
By Stephen Totilo Published March 7, 2011 -
Video Game Wizards Are Re-Fighting Vietnam For Comedy’s Sake
Bewildered gamers were not the only people who thought that setting the first expansion to the satirical sorcery game Magicka in the Vietnam War was crazy. So did Mattias Lilja, a top man at game publisher Paradox Interactive who is in charge of working with Arrowhead Game Studios, creators of this spring’s Magicka Vietnam. “That’s…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 5, 2011 -
Peter Molyneux Has A Lifetime Achievement Award And A Message For His Haters
Game designer Peter Molyneux, he of Populous, Fable, Black & White, Kinect’s Project Milo and lots of really great promises, won a lifetime achievement award at the Game Developers Conference this week. I’ve always found Molyneux charming and refreshingly full of enthusiasm, but he and I both know that plenty of gamers feel he over-promises…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 4, 2011 -
Hybrid Turns Shooters Upside Down With A New Way To Deathmatch
The next great innovation in shooting video game bad guys is focused not on our virtual guns, but on our virtual feet. The remarkable and unusual new twist replaces walking and running with something harder to describe, something that is just as surprising as the fact that the game in which it debuts, is a…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 4, 2011 -
Minecraft Maker Promises No Minecraft 2, Rejoices In Fake Awards
The truth of the matter is that Minecraft maestro Markus “Notch” Persson won five awards at the Game Developers Conference this week: an audience choice award, an indie grand prize, a best downloadable game trophy, another for innovation and one for best debut game. That’s truth. Most of the interview I did with him after…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 4, 2011 -
A Key Is A Bridge In This Magical Game
Hanford Lemoore’s experimental game sounded bad at first. He was showing it today in San Francisco at Game Developers Conference and got as far as saying that it is a first-person game in which the only thing you can do is pick things up and put them down. A few minutes later, after he was…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 3, 2011 -
Kinect Can Control Octodad, The Octopus Who Puts On His Pants Two Limbs At A Time
Octodad is the video game tale of one suit-wearing dad whose wife and kids don’t realize he is an Octopus. Despite what its developers from DePaul University told me today at the Game Developers Conference, I’m sure it’s not a documentary. I’m also sure that they’ve created a Kinect demo of the game, because otherwise…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 3, 2011 -
A Plea For Games To Grow Up
After David Cage’s speech at the Game Developers Conference yesterday, I heard the chatter of people whose minds have been opened, lives possibly changed. There was a room full of video game creators and press, buzzing about Cage’s big ideas. One woman said her hand had cramped, she’d never written notes so furiously. Admirers swarmed…
By Stephen Totilo Published March 3, 2011
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