Here’s February’s PlayStation Plus Lineup

February’s PlayStation Plus lineup has you covered if you missed Rime or, like me, heard the jokes about Knack but never actually played it. As always, these games are only “free” if you have an active PlayStation Plus subscription. February’s PS Plus lineup is: PlayStation 4 Knack Rime PlayStation 3 Spelunker HD Mugen Souls Z…

Watch Us Play Yakuza 6: The Song of Life With One Of The People Behind It

Last year, Yakuza 0brought gaming’s best crime thriller and cabaret management series to a new group of fans. Yakuza 6: The Song of Life wants to be accessible to veterans and newbies alike. We took a closer look at the game alongside senior localization producer Sam Mullen to get a sense of what’s next for…

Nintendo’s Hardware Wizard Will Get Lifetime Achievement Honors

Genyo Takeda might not be a familiar name to Nintendo fans, but he’s been the driving force behind the company’s iconic game console hardware and revolutionary controllers, and a few classic games besides. And now, he’s getting a well-deserved lifetime achievement award. The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences has told Kotaku that it will…

BlazBlue Comeback Reversed In Stunning Fashion At Evo Japan

The Evolution Championship Series (colloquially “Evo”) wrapped up its first trip to Japan last weekend. It was full of incredible moments highlighting the best of competitive fighting games, including a mind-blowing moment during the BlazBlue: Central Fiction tournament that saw one entrant completely reverse his fortunes in an extremely dire circumstance. As the BlazBlue bracket…

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT‘s Mobile Spin-Off Is Pretty Chill

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT for the PlayStation 4 is a competitive real-time action game in which two teams of three players each do battle with an assortment of Final Fantasy characters. Dissida Final Fantasy Opera Omnia, NT’s mobile counterpart, is a just a regular old turn-based RPG. Characters from throughout Final Fantasy history converge in…

How To Use Chopsticks

Often foreigners in Japan are complimented on how they use chopsticks. Many, however, are not actually using them properly. Then again, neither are most Japanese people. Go figure. As Kotaku reported in 2012, only 30 percent of Japanese people in their 40s and 50s hold chopsticks correctly. Each year, that number gets smaller and smaller.…

More Anime Art Made In… Excel

Making art in Excel is a thing. Ditto for making anime art in it. Twitter user Maruaba specializes in creating anime drawings using Excel spreadsheets. Like so: Have a look at this work flow: Just doing an eye takes hours. Goodness. But here are the finished results: Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet…

Nintendo Printing Money, Profits Up 261 Percent

Nintendo released its earnings for the three months ending last December, and the Kyoto-based game company is doing extremely well. Revenue reached 482.97 billion yen ($4.44 billion) and surpassing forecasts of 407.86 billion yen. As CNBC points out, Nintendo’s operating profit also jumped 261 percent year-on-year. Nintendo has also increased its Switch sales projections to…

New Year’s Eve. Diver City Tokyo, Japan. By Nelson Diaz. JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

Overwatch Voice Actors Try, And Fail, To Name Every Hero In The Game Under Pressure

The test here, conducted by D Piddy at SacAnime a few weeks back, was simple: name all 26 Overwatch heroes. And do it in 20 seconds or less. A bunch of cosplayers present at the show were asked, but also many of the game’s voice actors, including Anjali Bhimani (Symmetra), Elise Zhang (Mei), Crispin Freeman…

Here Are Some Beautiful Space People

The Vaulters are coming (or coming back) to Endless Space 2, and in doing so they are looking very sharp. These new pieces for the expansion are all done by Thomas du Crest, whose work we’ve featured previously on a big Endless Legend/Space art showcase You can see more of Thomas’ stuff at his ArtStation…

The Last Player From NHL ’94 Has Left The League

In 2013, we were down to three active NHL players who had appeared in NHL 94, a video game released in 1993. It’s taken almost five more years, but we’re now finally down to zero. Just as Kevin Garnett’s retirement from the NBA closed the book on the 16-bit era with basketball games, Jaromir Jagr’s…

When a game owned by Microsoft is available on a Nintendo console, things are sometimes going to get awkward.

Alaska Man Arrested After Hitting Roommate With Zelda Sword

Ancohrage police were called to an apartment near the University of Alaska last Friday after a group of roomates got into a fight involving their fists, a knife and a replica Master Sword. 22 year-old Jeremy Tazruk was arrested after the fight—which Anchorage Daily News reports he did not begin—escalated from some pushing and shoving…

Players Have To Fight To Unlock Dissidia Final Fantasy NT‘s Story Mode 

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT, out today for the PlayStation 4, is a game primarily built for competitive online play. It has a story mode, but each chapter has to be earned in battle. When I hear “story mode” in regards to a fighting game, I imagine a short-ish narrative dotted with battles against AI opponents,…

Guinness Officially Nixes Todd Rogers’ Dragster Records

The Guinness Book of World Records has confirmed to Kotaku that it has removed Todd Rogers’ record Dragster high score from its database, as well as his record for the longest-standing video game high score, following Rogers’ disqualification from the Twin Galaxies scoreboards yesterday. Todd Rogers has long been credited with setting the world record…

Atlantis Cosplay Took Like What? Ten Seconds? Eleven, Tops.

Here’s AtelierMarinerwith not one but two awesome pieces of cosplay from the best movie Disney ever made, Atlantis First up, Vinny: And then Milo: You can see more of AtelierMariner’s cosplay at his Instagram page