Alien Crush Made Pinball Weird, Squishy, Gross

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s new, daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today we’ll hit our first PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16 chip soundtrack, the brief but memorable Alien Crush. Weird pinball! (That was my nickname in high school.) In theory video games and pinball are a great…

Japanese Hotel Chain Has Pokémon Rooms

The Mimaru hotel chain has locations in Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo. While most of its rooms are apartment-type hotel rooms, some also include special rooms that are covered in Pokémon Not only are there Poké Balls emblazoned on the walls and beds, but there are also Pocket Monster plushies, dishes, mugs, clocks and snacks! These…

If Fall Guys Took Place In Real-Life Japan

On Twitter, folks have been using footage of people in Japan cramming into trains or racing through stations as tongue-in-cheek, real-life Fall Guys tributes. Below, Twitter user Genchariino used footage of rush hour on the Seibu Shinjuku Line for this clip, which is titled “This Is Japan’s Fall Guys”: Back in late August, Twitter user…

Behold, The Famicom Model Tank

Talented Hong Kong-based model-maker Sean P. Yung has created a tank with a mock Famicom on it, trading a military paint job for the console’s burgundy and gold. The result is surprisingly cool. As you can see, Yung created a faux Famicom, apparently out of Styrofoam, and placed it atop a model Panzer, before then…

Track: Fade Away (War Child ver.) | Artist: Oasis | Album: Help!

A Very Dashing Han Solo

Yeeky Zhang is a Chinese student who has re-imagined Star Wars from the ground up, taking inspiration from both the middle ages and steampunk, and ending up with something that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Final Fantasy XII You can see more of this idea—and of his work in general—at his ArtStation page

Unpacking, A Very Chill Game About Moving House

Unpacking,coming next year to the PC, is “a zen puzzle game about the familiar experience of pulling possessions out of boxes and fitting them into a new home.” It looks very relaxing. You get a ton of boxes to unpack, you unpack the stuff, you put the stuff where you want it, and then best…

I Love The Xbox Series S “Speaker” Grill

With Microsoft’s smaller next-gen console finally official, there’s not much to do between now and its release but talk about how excellent the machine’s one defining visual feature is. And I’m not talking about its diminutive size. I’m talking, of course, about the console’s eye-catching “grill”, which you’ve all spent the last 24 hours making…

Overwatch Team with 4-17 Record Could Somehow Win the League Playoffs

Over the weekend, the Washington Justice became the embodiment of Overwatch League playoff chaos. They are other teams’ spoilers and the playoff Cinderellas. They’ve gone from one of the worst regular season performances to knocking out one tournament champ and almost knocking out another. And although their chances of ultimate triumph are still mathematically slim,…

Joy-Con Fighting Game Character Is So Accurate, It Constantly Drifts Left

Smash-like platform fighter Rivals of Aether allows players to create custom characters and put them up for download through the Steam Workshop. One such character, modeled after the Nintendo Switch’s ubiquitous Joy-Con controllers, is pretty dang accurate. So accurate, in fact, that it even drifts like a real Joy-Con. The fighter, simply named Joy Con,…

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How To Make The Most Of Avengers’ Endgame

Marvel’s Avengers becomes a different game once you wrap up the campaign. Though the fundamentals—punch evil robots while on a never-ending quest for better gear—are unchanged, the game shifts from narrative-driven, third-person action game into a never-ending feedback loop: find better gear to level up enough to find better gear so you can level up…

I Can’t With These Confusing Xbox Names

With the price of one of the next-generation Xbox consoles confirmed and the other one likely forthcoming as Microsoft and Sony’s big game of next-gen pricing chicken drags on, there needs to be a frank discussion about the names of these consoles. A discussion wherein I sit down with Mr. Microsoft and ask a simple…

EA Sports Adds Colin Kaepernick To Madden NFL 21

Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL quarterback whose political activism made him a divisive figure, has today been added to Madden NFL 21 as a free agent after being left out of several previous iterations due to his status with the league. “Knowing that our EA Sports experiences are platforms for players to create, we want…

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How’s It Going? Young Wallander Edition

Younger is not always better, especially when it comes to rough-and-tumble Swedish police inspectors. Welcome back to our daily open thread. I am a big fan of Kurt Wallander. He’s a detective whose adventures were chronicled by Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell. He’s the star of a series of novels, a bunch of films, a…

New Hyrule Warriors Is A Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Prequel, Arrives In November

Nintendo’s not ready to tell us more about the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but they’re fine springing a surprise prequel on us. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, due out November 20 for the Switch, is a hack-and-slash RPG set 100 years before Breath of the Wild. Developed by Koei…