Culture

My New Exercise Regimen Is A Plastic Taiko Drum Controller

Stuck in bed most days due to an ongoing medical condition and paralyzed from the chest down, I don’t have a lot of options for cardio exercise. Hand bikes, weights, and tension bands are boring. You know what’s not boring? Beating the hell out of Hori’s drum controller for Bandai Namco’s Taiko No Tatsujin games.…

What’s Great About Bowser

How do you evolve a franchise with an almost-static main character? You look to his antagonist: Bowser, King of the Koopas. Also known by his objectively superior Japanese name: Great Demon King Koopa. Super Mario’s World is a look at the characters that turned the Mario franchise into a household name for 35 years. Based…

The Week In Games: Werewolves

Another quiet release week. One of the biggest games coming out later this week is the Switch port of Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest. As usual, the first few weeks of January are mostly empty. Consider this a good time to dig into your backlog, read some books, or do what I…

Some Of 2020’s Nicest Screenshots

As I’ve done for the last few years, when a year comes to an end I like to look back on some very nice screenshots by one of my favourite screenshot artists, and 2020 was no different. Andy Cull’s 2020 was spent like the rest of us, playing stuff like The Last Of Us Part…

Unfinished Japanese PS1 Game Completed, Released Two Decades Later

In 1998 a small team of Japanese developers spent eight months working on a game called Magic Castle, which they sent off as a pitch to seven major publishers, including Sony. It never went anywhere, but thanks to emulators and the efforts of one member of the original team, we can now play it and…

Cyberpunk 2077 Gets “Working” Third-Person Mod

There’s now a mod available that lets you play Cyberpunk 2077 in third-person on the PC—but be warned, while it works in the most basic, functional sense, it’s not something you’re going to want to be using for any real stretch of time. The mod, created by Jelle Bakker, can be downloaded here. It lets…

Track: Happy New Year | Artist: ABBA | Album: Super Trouper

Sunday Comics: Almost Done

Hello! It’s time for Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Corpse Run by Alex Di Stasi. Published Dec. 31. Read more of Corpse Run Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published Dec. 28. Read more of Awkward Zombie Clueless Hero by…

‘Shop Contest: 2021

It’s a new year. We are in the futuristic-sounding year of “2021!” How exciting. Let’s have some fun… in the future! (Which is now.) Your challenge this week: Make Some Games More 2021-y. This is a more freeform and open contest than usual. I figured this could be a fun way to start the year…

Nier: Automata’s “Final Secret” Has Been Found And It Lets You Skip The Whole Game

A new secret cheat code has been found in Nier: Automata that lets players skip the entire game after only beating the first boss. This new discovery has also been confirmed to be the “final secret” that the game’s developers teased a few years ago. Released back in 2017, Nier: Automata is a game with…

How To Watch Awesome Games Done Quick 2021

Awesome Games Done Quick, back for its 12th year, startstoday. After a terrible 2020, these fun and impressive speedruns might just be the best way to kick off 2021. Like last year, all donations will go to the Prevent Cancer Foundation. However, because of covid, the event is being held virtually, to help keep everyone…

‘Shop Contest: Miyamoto In A Pipe, Winners!

2020 is over. But we got some unfinished business to take care of: one last 2020 ‘Shop Contest needs to be judged. So, let’s get to it. Let’s see what you assholes did to Miyamoto. Our winning image this week comes from Arai-the fly on the wall who has decided to curse 2021. We just…

Look, The Spider-Signal!

This week on Snapshots we start the new year with some great new screenshots! Welcome to 2021! Good news, folks are still taking cool screenshots in a bunch of games, including Spider-Man, Alan Wake, No Man’s Sky, Cyberpunk 2077, and more. “Same spider-time, same spider-place!” Kotaku Snapshots is a weekly look at some of the…

The ‘Shop Contest Awards: 2020

Hello everyone and welcome to this year’s ‘Shop Contest Awards. This year, like last year, we will be looking back at the best, worst, funniest and weirdest images you all created over the course of 2020. And as always, I’ll be handing out some awards! No, these awards aren’t called the ‘Shoppies. Stop trying to…

Hariyama Slaps So Hard They Stop Trains And Send Trucks Flying

Every Pokemon is interesting and worth talking about. I don’t play a ton of Pokemon, but I do enjoy the universe and I love learning more about the creatures in it. So, Here’s Another Pokemon! It’s Hariyama! Hariyama Details Type: Fighting Average Height: 7′ 07” Average Weight: 559 lbs First Added In Generation III When…

The Robot Apocalypse Looks Like A Lot Of Fun

Happy new year! This week we check in on the best games released in 2020, hang out with Dunkaccino, learn what this month’s PS Plus games are, mourn the lack of people playing Dreams and watch some robots dance like nobody is watching. Great Kotaku Content From The Past Week Just add Half-Life: Alyx, my…

Both Sides Claim Victory In Massive EVE Online Battle

Ragnarök, the death of the Norse gods, played out in EVE Online in the wee hours of New Year’s eve. Hundreds of the game’s mightiest vessels gathered together in the M2-XFE system, and Titans from the game’s two largest factions spent over 12 hours exchanging fire and unleashing their incredibly devastating doomsday weapon systems. In…

Princess Peach Floated So Rosalina Could Fly

35 years on, Princess Peach’s lot is somehow still primarily about being kidnapped and rescued. But is there hope on the horizon? And might it have taken the introduction of—gasp—a second female regular into the cast to bring in the changes? Super Mario’s World is a look at the characters that turned the Mario franchise…

How I Gave In To Temptation And Started Boosting In World of Warcraft Classic

Months ago, I wrote an elegy for the lost traditions of World of Warcraft Classic for Kotaku. After a long hype cycle touting it as a perfect recreation of the game’s provincial culture in the mid-2000s—those halcyon days before it was thoroughly brutalized by Blizzard’s egalitarian approach to server identity, difficulty scaling, and mobile game-like…

With Xbox Game Pass I Am Too Powerful

Through a bit of luck, I managed to acquire an Xbox Series S for the holidays. I’ve only had it for about a week now, but the slim, be-speakered machine—and, more specifically, the Game Pass subscription I purchased for it—has utterly changed my gaming life in ways I’m still trying to process. For those of…