Stephen Totilo

Rock Band Creators Gone From MTV, Taking Hits With Them

The people who make Rock Band and the breakout Kinect dancing game Dance Central have been sold by MTV’s parent company Viacom. But they can keep making sequels to those series, if they want to. The new owners, investment group Columbus Nova, have purchased Harmonix for an undisclosed sum, according to a Viacom statement this…

Why The Wii Cooled Off

Remember when the Wii was the hottest thing? It’s cooled off and the people at National Public Radio needed to figure out why. I tried to help, but it was a lady named Elizabeth Bewley who made the best point. The 57-year-old Arizona woman had enjoyed her Wii and Wii Fit the way so many…

Talk Amongst Yourselves

This is a Metro 2033-styled Talk Amongst Yourselves, in case you didn’t catch the reference at first (I didn’t.) So do like they do in Russia, and talk about video games. Thanks to boopadoo for today’s image. Submit yours to #TAYpics

Review: The Game Boat Is Not The Inflatable Gaming Raft You’ve Been Waiting For

There are some problems with the year’s most useless video game peripheral, the Game Boat, I can explain with words, others I can depict in video. But there’s one thing you’ll just have to trust me on: it smells bad. The box for the inflatable red Game Boat boasts such gaming-irrelevant features as the fact…

A Visual Guide To The Game Boat

I Got This Mask

To: Ash From: Totilo Stories you may have missed from the day shift Call of Duty Publisher’s Accusations Are ‘Deliberate Misdirection,” Rival Says What Ever Happened To The Christmas Video Game? Do Video Games Really Need To Be Immersive? Are Game Companies Doing Enough To Avoid Funding War In the Congo? The Year She Stopped…

The Year She Stopped Arguing Whether Video Games Are Art

What was 2010? Maybe it was the year we got past the “are-games-art” debate. Game developer Kellee Santiago hopes so. She was in the thick of it, as she discovered one very early morning back in the spring. The Santa Monica-based game developer was in Baltimore last April, booked on the first flight out of…

Super Meat Boy Is Tougher Than N+

Science has not told us whether notoriously hard video game Super Meat Boy is tougher than notoriously hard N+. So we must rely on a second-best method. MTV Multiplayer’s Russ Frushtick has studied the two game’s Xbox Live Arcade statistics for both side-scrolling, curse-inducing games and declared Super Meat Boy as the more rigorous experience.…

Sunday’s Wildest NFL Play Immortalized In Tecmo Bowl

The Philadelphia Eagles beat the New York Giants on Sunday with a play that just should not have happened. It defied logic in real life; it defies logic when it’s recreated in the classic video game Tecmo Bowl. The video game version is here. Tecmo DeSean Jackson even runs along the goal line properly. Well…

The Fallout Neon Sign Goes To….

Four Kotaku readers had tied in our Fallout New Vegas sign post yesterday. Each submitted all the proper materials at the same minute. So we voted. There could only be one winner of our neon sign ipottersmith, you win! This is ipottersmith’s winning entry that met all the required criteria. Correctly identified my favorite video…

QWOP Is One Of Life’s Hardest Activities

The guy in this video curses a lot. Can you blame him? He’s trying to play QWOP, one of the worst video games I’ve ever played. This game made the guy playing it exclaim in the clip: “You’ve got to be licking my nipples with the tongue of an elephant.”(Warning: Lots of Not Safe For…

Call of Duty Publisher’s Accusations Are ‘Deliberate Misdirection,” Rival Says

Yesterday, Activision accused rival games giant EA of all sort of skullduggery while suing them for $400 million for allegedly trying to “hijack” the Call of Duty franchise. Today, EA fired back. “This is a PR play filled with pettiness and deliberate misdirection,” EA’s head of communications Jeff Brown told Kotaku. “Activision wants to hide…

The Year’s Biggest News In One Short Video Game

Oil in the Gulf. A cat thrown in a garbage bin. Chilean miners rescued. Prince William engaged. Top Gear driver unmasked. This is a very British view of the 10 biggest news stories of the year, turned into video games. The people at NGamer made this interactive montage in Nintendo’s WarioWare D.I.Y. I get most…

Talk Amongst Yourselves

If you were stuck in a cave with E.T. cartridges you’d be unhappy too. Cheer up and talk here about video games. Thanks, verno77, for today’s image. Creative readers, submit yours to #TAYpics

Portal 2 In Stores April 21

Portal 2 will be in stores on April 21, according to a press release from EA today. We’ve known the game is coming out the week of April 18. Now we’ve got a date.

Warning: Wii Wheel Used For Real Driving

Do not melt your Wii Wheel into a hunk of more useless plastic yet. Brave inventors have found a way to make the Wii Wheel steer… what’s this? A small car? Hooray! kurukuru Kart [Vimeo]

Call of Duty Giant Suing Rival Over Modern Warfare Meltdown, Paints Uglier Picture

The nasty lawsuits between Call of Duty publisher Activision and the ousted lead creators of that hit series got nastier today with accusations that the president of rival EA was instrumental in trying to “hijack” the Call of Duty developers. And there’s more mud being slung. Activision also says the makers of Modern Warfare gleefully…

No Lost Zelda Here

To: The Night Crew From: Totilo Video got clipped off at the end, but you get the idea! Stories you may have missed How To Turn Someone Into A Gamer The Kotaku Guide To Winter Video Games Is It Wrong To Hate Shadow Of The Colossus? Your Choice Of Giant Killer Worm Games The Tester…

Your Choice Of Giant Killer Worm Games

We’ve got two giant-killer-worm games for you to consider today, each available cheap for an iPhone/iPod/iPad. Death Worm is based on the 2007 original of the same name. Super Mega Worm Vs. Santa is a newer elf-slaying take. Decisions, decisions. Both games went on sale in the iTunes store in recent weeks. Death Worm has…

The Kotaku Guide To Winter Video Games

Winter used to be the worst time of the year to look for great new video games. Not anymore. Here are some of the most promising and most interesting video games slated for release between now and late March 2011. Late December The standalone downloadable short Dead Rising 2: Case West (Xbox 360 download, Dec…