Mario Goes Hatless In Leaked Super Mario World Sprites

Apart from his prodigious jumping abilities, Mario’s key defining feature is his hat. He’s been wearing that thing since the days of Donkey Kong. Another little slice of the ongoing Nintendo leaks, however, reveals that the iconic red cap wasn’t always glued to the plumber’s head in Super Mario World Nintendo Metro, a fantastic resource…

How To Capture The Legendary Birds In Pokémon Sword And Shield’s New DLC

Pokémon Sword and Shield’s latest DLC, The Crown Tundra, rains an army of legendary Pokémon on you. You stand a chance of encountering your first within minutes, and much of the main plot involves tracking down iconic legendary Pokémon from generations past. Longtime fans will be happy to hear that remixed versions of Moltres, Zapdos,…

Gears 5’s Next Update Lets You Recast Marcus Fenix As Dave Bautista

Back in the summer of 2019, the internet was pushing to get former wrestler Dave Bautista cast in the recently announced Gears of War movie. It doesn’t seem like that will happen, with Bautista saying on Twitter last year that he had “tried everything” to be in the film. But an upcoming update will at…

Street Fighter Competitor Begs For Mercy, Receives None

Street Fighter League is, well, an official league for Street Fighter V players, one that makes more room for player personalities to shine thanks to its limited format. Take, for instance, a match from its most recent broadcast, wherein one competitor made a show of begging for mercy from his opponent…to no avail. Ryusei is…

Pokémon Sword and Shield’s Latest Expansion Doubles Down On Legendary Pokémon

I captured a Suicune ten minutes into playing The Crown Tundra, the second part of Pokémon Sword and Shield’s expansion pass that released late last night for Nintendo Switch. Everyone knows what a Pikachu is, but Suicune is another mascot of the series, albeit an understated one. While the expansion is unafraid to introduce some…

The Division 2’s Summit Mode Is Now Easier To Actually Finish

Last month, The Division 2 received a new action-focused mode called The Summit. It was good, but some bugs and other issues soured the experience. Ubisoft made some changes to the mode in a recent update, and now it’s a much better experience, especially for casual Division players like me. In The Summit, players fight…

One year after its initial release, The Outer Worlds is finally on Steam Obsidian Entertainment’s “class struggle simulator” will be 50% off—or 37% off if you bundle it with the expansion pass—through November 6.

How To Quickly Level Up In Ghost Of Tsushima’s Co-Op Mode

Before last week, Ghost of Tsushima, Sucker Punch’s open-world samurai action game, was a single-player game. Following a free update, Ghost received a robust cooperative mode called Legends, which is really two modes—a two-player narrative-driven campaign and a four-player wave-based survival challenge. A third, a three-part raid called “the Tale of Iyo,” is coming next…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for transforming into an airplane. Possibly a truck. I don’t know much about Transformers: Battlegrounds. I know it’s a tactics game that’s out today for the PS4, Switch, Xbox One, and PC. I know it features characters from the Transformers: Cyberverse cartoon. I know it’s developed by UK developer Coatsink, which is…

Sayonara Wild Hearts’ OST Is Basically Chvrches From A Parallel Vniverse

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool sounds they make. Today, let’s shine a dreamy neon purple light on one of the most confident video game soundtracks in recent years: Sayonara Wild Hearts, the arcade rhythm game that developer Simogo even describes as a “pop album…

Surviving The Aftermath Is A City-Builder At The End Of The World

It’s not enough these days for a city-builder to just be about building a city. There’s always a catch, or a weird setting, and I like it, because it’s giving us all kinds of new and weird ways to enjoy the genre. The latest example: Surviving the Aftermath Now out in Early Access on Steam,…

So Far, Immortals Fenyx Rising Is More Than Just Ubisoft’s Take On Breath of the Wild

I like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey quite a bit; in fact, I think it’s the second-best game in the entire franchise. Immortals Fenyx Rising seems to be a natural evolution of Odyssey, and also makes it seem like some folks at Ubisoft have played a lot of Breath of the Wild. After spending an hour or…

Guilty Gear Strive will feature crossplay between PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 but not PC Arc System Works also announced that players who purchase the game on PS4 will be able to upgrade to the PS5 version free of charge.

The Art Of Hades

Ah, this is exciting. Welcome to The Art of Hades, a look at the work that went into what’s easily one of the best-looking video games of 2020. The team at Supergiant were kind enough to send in a ton of pieces from the development of the game, from early sketches through to the character…

Xbox Brazil Host Says She Was Let Go In Part Due To Fan Harassment, Though Microsoft Denies

Last Friday, Xbox Brazil video host Isadora Basile announced that Microsoft had severed ties with her. In a tweet, she said she’d been regularly harassed by members of the local Xbox community since being hired in early September, and that that mistreatment was part of the decision to end her contract. Kotaku has been in…