Culture

The Week In Games: Mario Brothers Of Days Past

Not one but two older entries into the Mario Bros. canon resurface this week, because in the world of video games what’s old is eternally new again. And I do hope you like new old games, because otherwise you’re out of luck. In a test of just how many Nintendo fans will buy games they…

Track: Fade Into You | Artist: Mazzy Star | Album: So Tonight That I Might See  Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Pink Boat Towards Happy Beach. Mactan, Cebu. By Martin Tan. JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

Red Carpet Superstar

JungAh Lee is a senior concept artist at Blizzard, and has worked on stuff like Overwatch You can see more of Lee’s work at her ArtStation page

The Best-Reviewed Steam Games Of 2018

More so than perhaps even playing them, Steam is a place where people go to yell about games. Here are the games they yelled most positively about last year. Steam reviews are kind of a mess. The positive/negative binary squelches nuance and doesn’t translate well into an overall percentage score, and the system is easily…

Every Christmas, There’s A Cosplay Spectacular In Florida

Holiday Matsuri has quickly grown to become one of the biggest and best cosplay shows in the US. And it’s not hard seeing why: who wouldn’t want to escape the winter chills for a resort in Orlando in the middle of December? Below you’ll find a selection of video and photos taken by Mineralblufrom the…

The Internet Reacts To Soldier 76 And His Ex-Boyfriend

Tracer is no longer the only canonically LGBTQ hero in Overwatch. Today, Blizzard released a new short story focusing on steely sniper grandma Ana and grumpy military dad Soldier 76. The latter, it turns out, used to be involved with a man named Vincent. In the short story, titled “Bastet,” Ana encounters Soldier for the…

Middle Eastern Fortnite Players Start Massive Protest For Dedicated Servers

Alaa “DvLZStaTioN” Ebrahim has been missing his sniper shots. The popular Fortnite YouTuber, who has three million subscribers, says it’s not his fault. Nor are the times when his opponents’ shots hit him even as he moves away from the rain of bullets. Ebrahim, who lives in Bahrain, a small island country in the Middle…

The Eternal Castle Is A Great Throwback To Classic Cinematic Sidescrollers

The Eternal Castle is a love letter to old cinematic platformers of the late 80s and early 90s, a throwback to games such as Another World, Flashback. It capitalizes on their virtues without the weight of their technological limitations. It just came out on Steam over the weekend. I haven’t even finished it yet, and…

Track: Wintertime | Artist: Noah Jones with Jeff Tweedy | Album: Wintertime single Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment. 

The Climb. Bonn, Germany. By Aria Khoshsirat | Instagram JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

Ladies And Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

Eric Pfeiffer is a concept artist and illustrator based in Seattle. You can see more of Eric’s work at his ArtStation page

Warner Bros. Pulls LEGO Lord of the Rings Games From Steam, Doesn’t Say Why

Bad news for fans of LEGO, Lord of the Rings, and buying things: Warner Bros. has taken The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit away from us—possibly forever. The saga seemingly began when the two games were free on the Humble Store last month, sparking debate over whether new games were on the horizon—or…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for going to Norway, to live out my bizarre lifelong dream of turning a birthday in the Arctic Circle. My boss dubbed it “a real-life The Long Dark,” which is pretty on-brand for a Riley dream. I will be unable to play very much The Long Dark before I leave, but I…

Twitch Re-Suspends Alleged Domestic Abuser After Fan Outcry

Last month, Twitch streamer Luke “MrDeadMoth” Munday was arrested by Australian authorities after a Fortnite stream during which he seemed to be hitting his partner. Twitch suspended his account shortly after. At the start of this week, however, Twitch viewers were surprised to find that Munday’s channel was already back. His suspension, which some presumed…

Wolf Is One Of Competitive Smash Ultimate‘s Most Popular Fighters So Far

Some of the winter’s biggest esports tournaments are still a ways off, but Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which ended 2018 on a Donkey Kong smackdown, begins 2019 strong with a handful more events taking place across the globe this weekend. Last weekend, I noted that the still-evolving meta around Smash Ultimate meant the Let’s Make…

How I Killed My Switch Charger

It was 11:54 p.m. on New Year’s Eve when people started screaming at me to put the big ball drop in Time Square on my TV. It’s sort of the “you had one job” of throwing a New Year’s party, and I had completely forgotten about it. Many gin and tonics deep, I made my…

Track: Linger (Acoustic Version) | Artist: The Cranberries | Album: Something Else Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

The Deadly Japanese Food That Kills At New Year’s

During the New Year holidays, Japanese people traditionally eat mochi, which is typically translated as “rice cakes” and is incredibly dangerous for older folks. In the West, people might know mochi ice cream, which uses thin pieces of mochi, but in Japan during the New Year’s holidays, people might put bigger (and stickier) pieces of…

The Eternal Castle [Remastered] is a new game based on an old game lost to time. As a kid, one of its creators fell in love with a label-less game he found in his dad’s office, but then it broke. Eternal Castle is an homage to “what could be remembered” about that game, as well…