Culture

How’s It Going? It’s Not Cheating Edition

It’s not like I did it on purpose. Welcome back to our daily open thread. So I was playing Fall Guys last night, as I do, and in the middle of one of those damn team tail grabbing games I tried to squeeze past a spinning hammer at the top of the arena and was…

The Second Fan-Made Animal Crossing Quality-Of-Life Update Video Makes My Heart Ache

Back in May, YouTuber Nick Ha and friends put together a faux quality-of-life update video for Animal Crossing: New Horizons featuring dream changes that would make the game so much nicer to play. Now they’ve released part two, with even more outstanding changes. Buying multiple Nook Miles Tickets at once? Calling NPCs in chat? Setting…

The Ultimate Neo Geo Home Arcade Machine Is Coming To North America

The Neo Geo sure has been enjoying a real retro renaissance over the past couple of years. We’ve gotten the Neo Geo Mini arcade machine, the Neo Geo Arcade Stick Pro, and now we’re getting the SNK Neo Geo MVSX, a full-size arcade cabinet with 50 games for $500. Maybe they should have led with…

Faxanadu Sounds Equal Parts Dark, Mysterious, And Catchy

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s new, daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today we’re listening to Hudson’s Faxanadu for the NES. It’s dark and moody, like 2020, but in a more endearing way. Faxanadu was a NES/Famicom action-RPG that hit Japan in 1987 and the U.S. in…

EA Executives Blocked From Receiving “Exorbitant” Awards

Earlier this week, investors shot down EA’s proposed payment plans for their executives. It’s not like EA has had a bad year — far from it, in fact. The coronavirus has been good to most listed gaming companies and EA in particular. Their stock is trading at $US143.99 at the time of writing, a sizeable…

Red Dead Online Is So Busted Horses Are Flying And It’s Raining Alligators

For much of the week, Rockstar’s Red Dead Online has been all kinds of broken for players, with folks reporting everything from deserted landscapes to magical horses to the presence of a lone, mysterious bald man, sometimes the only NPC on the map. The cause appears to be related to the game’s recent 1.21 title…

Tiny Sega Consoles Are For Action Figures, Not Action People

What are these, Sega consoles for ants? figmaPLUS, a line specialising in accessories and settings for figma action figures, is releasing this line of Sega consoles that includes the Master System, Mega Drive, Game Gear, Saturn and Dreamcast, all in a scale so tiny that any figmas you might own can hold them in their…

Sniper Elite’s Board Game Has A “Hitler Shot In The Balls” Miniature

Like every other video game ever made that has sold more than four copies, Sniper Elite is being turned into a board game and sold on Kickstarter. And If you pay a little extra for the “Deluxe Upgrade Kit”, you get a plastic miniature of Adolf Hitler getting a bullet in the ol’ meat and…

Fantasy Football Champion Disqualified Over Allegedly Racist Comments

Aleksandar Antonov, the winner of this season’s official Premier League fantasy football competition—the world’s biggest, with over 7 million players worldwide—has been stripped of his title after comments he made about a black player were forwarded to the game’s organisers. As The Guardian report, Antonov was told by the Premier League on Tuesday morning that…

Fall Guys’ Worst Mini-Game Will Appear Less Frequently After Update

Chaotic battle royale Fall Guys is getting its first big update tomorrow, which will reintroduce a stage from the beta, fix a few bugs, and most importantly change the frequency of Royal Fumble’s appearance as the final round. Jump Showdown is a mini-game returning from the Fall Guys beta. It’s like a more aggressive version…

Xbox Series X Launches In November

Until today, we only knew that the next Xbox, the Xbox Series X, was coming out sometime later this year. Now we’ve got a firmer date: November. Microsoft made the announcement as part of a post also acknowledging Halo Infinite’s delay to 2021. “We have plenty to keep you busy until Chief arrives: There will…

Halo Infinite Delayed To 2021

343 Industries has announced that Halo Infinite will launch in 2021, missing its original “holiday 2020″ release window. “The decision to shift our release is the result of multiple factors that have contributed to development challenges, including the ongoing COVID-related impacts affecting us all this year,” studio head Chris Lee explained via Twitter. “I want…

Post-Mixer, Popular Streamer Shroud Is Returning To Twitch

Last year, noted man with godlike aiming skills Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek was among a handful of top Twitch stars who shocked viewers by departing the Amazon-owned platform for Microsoft’s Mixer. In June of this year, Mixer suddenly died. Now, after a couple months of silence, Grzesiek is returning to Twitch. Grzesiek spent the past couple…

Inscryption Is The Next Game From Pony Island Creator Daniel Mullins

This morning, Pony Island and The Hex creator Daniel Mullins unveiled his next trippy video game, Inscryption Mullins described the game as an “inky black card-based odyssey that blends the deckbuilding roguelike, escape-room style puzzles, and psychological horror into a blood-laced smoothie.” Watching the reveal trailer, I find it hard to disagree with any of…

Fall Guys Has A Hacker Problem, But Developers Are Starting To Issue Bans

The struggle against hackers is never-ending even for mega-studios like Epic, Valve, Blizzard, and Riot, so when Fall Guys kicked down the doors to the zeitgeist treehouse, it was inevitable that hackers would worm their way in, as well. Now developer Mediatonic is dealing with one of the downsides of overwhelming success. Hackers, at this…

After a year of Apple Arcade exclusivity, Cornfox & Brothers’ Zelda-riffic sequel, Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm, is coming to Nintendo Switch this fall. Where the original Oceanhorn is more of a Windwaker-esque affair, Oceanhorn 2 is a full-on open-world action RPG shades of Breath of the Wild.

Maneater Players Get To Be Garbage-Munching Tiger Sharks For Shark Week

Not only do players of completely accurate aquatic murder simulator Maneater get to mutate into the garbage-munching tiger shark for Shark Week, they get to do so with a skin that makes them look like the tiger shark member of the band KISS. Look at that mighty beast. The tiger shark is one of the…

Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 Delayed To 2021

What’s another year to the eternal undead? Last night, under the cover of darkness, Paradox Interactive and Hardsuit Labs delayed the long-awaited follow-up to Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines once again, this time from 2020 to 2021. According to the message shared on the game’s official Twitter last night, it’s the developer and publisher’s pesky quality bar…

Sega Mega Drive Super Medley Leaves You Wanting More

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s new, daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today we check out an album of energetic Sega Genesis / Mega Drive medleys that hit 15 years ago, almost to the day. I happen to own a copy of Sega Mega Drive Super Medley…

Sibling Rivalry

Jessica Oyhenart is an artist at Riot Games, developers of League of Legends and Valorant You can see more of Jessica’s stuff at her ArtStation page