Culture

The NES Was Once So Rare You Could Only Get It In Two Cities

It’s easy to forget now, given its enormous success, that the NES was once seen as a risky proposition. Coming on the heels of the great video game crash of 1983, into a market unsure if games were a fad that had already died out, the system didn’t just magically appear in stores across North…

What Books Are You Reading These Days?

Here at Kotaku, we don’t just play video games all day and night. Sometimes, we read. Sometimes we even read books! Wild, I know. I’ve read a few good books lately, and wanted to check in to see what you all have been reading. For my part, I recently finished Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, which…

Welcome…To Besiege’s Jurassic Park 

On today’s Highlight Reel we have poorly-constructed dinosaurs in Besiege, Battlefield carpooling gone awry, asexually reproducing trucks in Far Cry 4 and more! Watch the video above, then link any of your favorite highlights in the comments, and be sure to check out, like and subscribe the original videos via the links below. Carpooling –…

Team Fortress 2 Player Sounds Like T-Pain

Not new-school, amazingly talented R&B-singing T-Pain either. No, I’m talking the T-Pain of yore—egregious amounts of auto-tune and all. This Team Fortress 2 player keeps the gag going, completely straight-faced, through an entire match, and it’s glorious. TwilightWolfVidjaGames stumbled across the mysteriously musical player in a random TF2 match, and he knew he had to…

Cosplay Boobs, Reinvented

Not everyone has enormous boobs. I don’t, for example. And not everyone with large breasts is keen to show them while cosplaying. Fair enough! So here’s a smart solution via one industrious cosplayer. Cosplayer Nameko Children has come up with what she calls the “fluffy bust.” Her creation does a fine job of capturing the…

If StarCraft Was A Kid’s Cartoon

Johannes Helgeson is an artist at Activision’s Beenox studio. His idea for a StarCraft cartoon, with cute/terrifying Kerrigan here, is very cool. You can see more of Johannes’ work at his personal site and ArtStation page To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them…

War Never Changes, Except Sometimes When It Does

It looks like Fallout and seems to taste like Fallout (although that might just mean my monitor tastes like Fallout—which is… ominous), but it’s not Fallout. CreepBOOM made this gorgeously mournful piece in Garry’s Mod, along with copious others. Here are a few Garry’s Mod shots based on the excellent STALKER Chernobyl survival FPS series,…

Track: Heart Attack | Artist: Flight Facilities | Album: Down To Earth Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

Not Even Gabe Newell Death Threats Can Keep This Game Off Steam

You might remember that roguelike FPS Paranautical Activity was yanked—with a large cane of plus 12 unceremoniousness—from Steam after its developer threatened to kill Valve head Gabe Newell. Now, amazingly, it’s back. I imagine it helps that the dev in question is no longer involved. It all went down after Valve accidentally mis-classified the finished…

Sherlock Already Knows You’re Into His Cosplay

God, this Sherlock cosplay is so good. It’s a great example of how replicating an expression can make you look as much like your subject as any amount of make-up or prosthetics work. Cosplay is by Myrddin Emry, photo by Silhouette

Torrents are suddenly allowed in Steam chat again. No disappearing messages, no block pages. At worst, you’ll get a warning that you’re venturing beyond Steam’s gilded grayblue cage. Valve has not explained why they made this sudden about-face after their recent spat of arbitrary blocks. Welp. As you were, then.

Battlefield Motorbike Believes It Can Fly

On today’s Highlight Reel we have more zombie dropkicks in Dying Light, Last of Us glitches, an explosive motorbike launch in Battlefield Hardline and more! Watch the video above, then link any of your favorite highlights in the comments, and be sure to check out, like and subscribe the original videos via the links below.…

Final Fantasy Speedrun Includes 28 Minutes Of Walking Up Stairs

This video features about half an hour of a guy doing nothing but walking up and down stairs in Final Fantasy for the NES. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Speedrunner gyre_, who set a new “any%” world record on Sunday by “completing” Final Fantasy in 59 minutes and 10 seconds, used a save-corrupting glitch…

Princess Mononoke Cosplay Blows The Head Off The God Of Cosplay

Well, not literally. I mean, these are just cosplayers. Hangin’ out, takin’ photos. They’re not really up to extreme acts of deicide. But if they wanted to pick thar up, maybe they could, because they’re so good at the whole cosplay thing that I’m sure they could do anything they put their minds to. What…

Cosplay Journalism

Oh dear.

Besiege Dog Forgot How To Dog

First Grand Theft Auto V‘s dog forgot how to dog, and now this Besiege dog is having serious trouble being a dog too. When will this horrific time of national crisis end? Steam user Katsutomo breathed hinge-and-suspension-based life into this clearly, um, confused creature, and the results are damn entertaining. (Protip: watch the video with…

Steam Chat’s Torrent Blocking Is Entirely Arbitrary

This is curious. Recently Steam users (myself included, after a few tests) discovered that certain torrent links no longer work in Steam chat. Some have even reported messages disappearing altogether. Here’s the thing, though: it only applies to some popular torrent sites, but not others like The Pirate Bay. Steam, as frequent users are likely…

Nintendo’s Ballsy Star Wars Knock-Off

Nintendo had a pretty strange relationship with Star Wars in the early years of its video game enterprise. We’ve already seen the weird shit that went down when Star Wars came to the NES, but a 1979 arcade game was even weirder. This is art for Nintendo Space Launcher, one of the company’s earlier arcade…

Cyberpunk Diablo & Studio Ghibli’s Star Wars: An Artist’s Impressions

Stormtroopers are comical at the best of times. Turn them into bearded Studio Ghibli sidekicks and they become downright slapstick. And yeah, Diablo is a fantasy series, but close your eyes and try for a second to imagine it as a cyberpunk thing instead, with neon lights, hacking and sweet future motorbikes. These images, and…

The Week In Games: A Large Order Of Kirby

Why wait until Friday for Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, when you can wait until Friday for Kirby and the Rainbow Curse and The Order: 1886 as well? No Sony. No, no no. Friday is Nintendo’s day. Why you gotta encroach? Tuesday, February 17 Dead or Alive 5: Last Round — PS3, PS4, Xbox 360,…