Culture

How Yoshi’s Island Got Its Beautiful, Hand-Drawn Look

Prior to her interview at E3 this week with Splatoon 2 producer Hisashi Nogami, Kotaku’s Cecilia D’Anastasio asked me if there was anything I wanted to know. “Yeah,” I said. “Ask how Yoshi’s Island got its hand-drawn style.” Nogami, you see, was credited as a character designer on that legendary 1995 Super Nintendo game, which…

Track: I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend | Artist: The Ramones | Album: Hey Ho Let’s Go Anthology Disc 1 Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Take-Two’s E3 Booth Has No Red Dead And Is Incredibly Chill

The Take-Two booth at E3 makes all other publishers look sweaty and sloppy. No insult to the others, really, because they’re just doing what game publishers do. They’ve got their games and their logos and their trailers and lines of people wanting to play stuff. Take Two’s got four walls of serenity. Compare that top…

The Art Of Frostpunk

Hi there. Fine Art has taken a little break this week with all the E3 madness, but now that things are quieting down it’s time to bring it back. And it’s a pleasure to be coming back with art from one of the year’s biggest surprise hits, Frostpunk It’s a game about death, drudgery and…

Podcast: Let’s Talk About Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Did you know Nintendo just unveiled a new Smash Bros. game for Switch, and that it features every fighter in the history of the series? You say you did know that? Oh, okay. At E3 in Los Angeles, my colleague Jason Schreier sat down with Kotaku senior reporter (and Smash expert) Cecilia D’Anastasio to talk…

The Best Video Game Fashion From E3 2018

This year’s E3 looks were all about one thing: cool jackets. The game offerings at E3 this year were kind of slim. While I saw a lot of things I was excited about, it seemed like too few games are actually going to be playable soon, and many of them are hypothetical at best. The…

How Cyberpunk 2077 Quests Will Be Different From The Witcher 3

It’s hard to talk about CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 without talking about the studio’s last game, The Witcher 3. And so it came to be that a lot of our E3 interview with Cyberpunk’s quest designer involved discussion of both games. As part of Kotaku Splitscreen’s ongoing coverage of E3 2018, my colleague Jason…

My Friend Pedro Is Like A More Violent, 2D Max Payne

Before I knew anything else about it, I knew My Friend Pedro looked cool. I first came across the solo-developed indie game while going through the Screenshot Saturday hashtag on Twitter several years ago. Among all of the images of games in development shared by their makers was a masked man pirouetting through the air…

Two Long-Lost Nintendo Arcade Games Are Heading To Switch

Nintendo kicked off the final day of Treehouse Live with a huge announcement for fans of its classic games: Two arcade games that have never been officially released on home consoles are coming to Switch’s Arcade Archives: the original Donkey Kong, which is available now, and Sky Skipper, coming in July. Donkey Kong is a…

Track: Lippy Kids (Live at Blueprint Studios) | Artist: Elbow | Album: Build a Rocket Boys! Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Taste Test For Coca-Cola Clear And More

Recently, Coca-Cola Japan released a clear Coke. But it’s not the only drink maker in the country that is going see-through. Anyone who remembers the 1980s and 90s can recall how clear—and white—drinks became en vogue. In Japan that meant, vodka, shochu and white wine. In America, clear liquor was popular, but we also got…

It Is Bayek, Of Siwa

This is Aussie cosplayer Yeliztaking on the star of Assassin’s Creed Origins, Bayek. If you’re wondering why the photos make it look like she’s in the desert, that’s because she was; they were taken in Kuwait by local photographer dawoodblog You can see more Yeliz’s cosplay at her Facebook page

A Plague Tale Is A Gross Game About Billions Of Rats

First announced at last year’s E3, A Plague Tale: Innocence is back this year to remind us all that rat fiction is super disgusting. Like, of all the terrible things that happen in The Witcher 3, the tale of a woman who can’t scream because rats have crawled down her throat was easily the most…

Ooblets Is Here For The Cute Animal Business

E3’s guns and action and death got you down? Here’s some Ooblets, jacking into your eyeballs with bright colours and cute lil’ animals. I like Pokemon and Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon and so I’ve been looking forward to this game for a long time. I am still looking forward to it. Ooblets is out…

Please, More Games Where We Eat Humans Like Snacks

I am absolutely terrified of sharks, among many other things, and that’s always been a hassle when trying to play games with underwater sections. I’m down for Maneater, though, because in this game I am the shark. I know that there have been other games where you can be a shark, but they haven’t looked…

We’ve seen plenty of Horizon Zero Dawn cosplay, but never a full-blown music video where the cosplayer—in this case Fenix Fatalist—is singing her own song she wrote about the game.

Greedfall, A New RPG Where The 17th Century White Man Runs Into Some Problems

French studio Spiders, creators of bad-but-also-good RPGs like The Technomancer, have a new game coming called Greedfall. It’s an alternate universe take on what a 17th century European invasion of the New World would look like if the colonizers ran into magic and giant monsters. It’s aiming for a release on PC, Xbox One and…

Ninja Takes Two-Day Break, Loses 40,000 Subscribers

Tyler “Ninja” Blevins might be on top of the streaming world right now, but even he’s not immune to being yanked back down to earth by the sometimes absurdly demanding realities of the job. For the past couple days, Ninja’s been living it up at E3, retweeting several thousand pictures people have taken with him…

Grim Fandango Was Performed Live On Stage, With Jack Black, And It Was Magical

One of the absolute highlights of this year’s E3 has been the idea Double Fine had to perform classic adventure game Grim Fandango live on stage, complete with original voice actors and band. While of course they weren’t acting it out—this is E3, not Broadway—it’s still a beautiful thing to watch, with art shown behind…

Beyond Good And Evil 2‘s Plan To Crowdsource Art From Fans Prompts Backlash

Ubisoft is asking fans to contribute art and music to its upcoming game Beyond Good and Evil 2, with the promise of monetary compensation if their work is chosen. Fans are already diving in with gusto, but critics quickly pointed out the issues with asking people to do work for only the possibility of payment.…