Judging MomoCon’s Indie Games Competition

Each year Atlanta-area anime and gaming convention MomoCon selects five independently developed video games to honor in its Indie Games awards, and each year I help pick the winners. Here’s how games like The Banner Saga 2 and Talent Not Included made it into the top five this year. MomoCon (“momo” is “peach” in Japanese,…

The Friday the 13th Game Isn’t Very Good

Friday the 13th has a lot in common with some of the sillier sequels in the film’s franchise: it’s great for a laugh, but not much else. Friday The 13th is an online multiplayer game based on the long-running horror franchise about Jason Vorhees and the teenagers he murders. Up to seven players are counselors…

Overwatch Training Apps Gave Me A Way To Obsess But Not Improve

After a two-week regimen with a pro gamer training app, I’ve made a stunning transformation into… a slightly better Overwatch player. Dojo Madness, an app developer with a whopping $12.75 million in venture capital funding, has put out four different video game training apps for League of Legends, Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Overwatch.…

Brave Players Who Entered Combo Breaker Mystery Game Tournament Had To Play Some Weird Stuff

When you enter a gaming tournament, you usually know what you’re in for. Unless you’re entering a mystery game tournament. Do that, as dozens of people did at the Combo Breaker event in St. Charles, Illinois last weekend, and you’re playing the notorious Dong Dong Never Die. That’s just for starters. Weird picks followed in…

‘Life Is Unfair’: A Q&A With Nier: Automata‘s Director

Nier: Automata is both a wild action game and an introspective look at the things that make us human. We corresponded with director Yoko Taro via e-mail to talk about the game’s themes, what goes into writing memorable characters, and what he’d like video game players to stop doing. Here, in full, is our Q&A:…

Streamer Jailbreaks Super Mario World Cartridge To Run Mods

Streamer and speedrunner Sethbling has taken Super Mario World hacking to the next level. Using a save glitch discovered by Cooper Harasyn, he’s managed to create a “jailbroken” Super Mario World cartridge with a mod-enabling hex editor built right in. Fooling around with Super Mario World code is usually a pretty complicated thing, as Sethbling…

Sony Finally Killed Off The PS3 In Japan 

In Japan, currently there is only one model of PlayStation 3: the charcoal black 500GB version. Make that, was. This article was originally published on March 17, 2017. It has since been updated. March 23 Update – 4:32am: Sony Japan tells Kotaku, “PS3 shipment in Japan is ending ‘soon’ but the production of PS3 itself…

That’s A Good-Looking Pikachu Train

Since 2012, the Pokémon With You train has been making kids happy in Eastern Japan. Now, in 2017, it’s time for the train to get a makeover. Over the years, Japan has seen various Pocket Monster trains, including a Pokémon-covered bullet train. Originally, the Pokémon With You train was inaugurated to help lift spirits in…

Square Enix Announces New JRPG Lost Sphear For PS4, Switch, And Steam

The followup to I Am Setsuna is Lost Sphear, the latest release from Square Enix’s Tokyo RPG Factory. Here’s how Square Enix describes the game: The adventure of LOST SPHEAR begins in a remote town where a young boy, Kanata, awakens from a devastating dream to find his hometown disappearing. To stop the world from…

Merlion. Singapore. By David Teo. 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!

Street Masters Turns Beat-Em-Ups Into A Board Game

Street Masters: Rise of the Kingdom is an attempt to take the underlying design of games like Double Dragon and Final Fight and turn them into a board game (with a lot of miniatures). Designed by Adam and Brady Sadler, it’s for 1-4 players, and features both an “arcade mode” (for quick and random action)…

Incredible Lucio Cosplay Sounds As Good As It Looks

Here’s Neverending Dreamz with the best damn Lucio cosplay you’ve ever seen (or heard). That music you hear in the video below isn’t coming from the con; it’s coming from the gun, which is an 8-inch subwoofer with two 4-inch speakers on either side. It plays music from his phone, and both the gun and…

A Rare Video Tour Of Peak Sega

The Innoventions pavilion at Epcot is still around, but it’s a bit blergh in 2017. In 1994, though, it was the future, and a big part of that was getting to enjoy Sega in its prime. Which we can all do now, thanks to this video. It was shot by iretrogamer’s dad during a vacation…

Neill Blomkamp Is Making Short Movies For Steam

Director Neill Blomkamp, the guy behind movies like District 9 and Elysium (not to mention a very good attempt at Halo), is now heading up a studio that is going to be releasing “experimental short films” on Steam. Here’s the first trailer for the films, coming out of a company called Oats Studios: Steam has…

Some Blue Shells Have Minds Of Their Own

You’re in first place and the finish line is in sight. Everything is going just fine until you hear that weird electronic whirring coming from behind. Someone’s dropped a blue shell and you think you’re doomed when all of the sudden it hits the person just behind you instead. Sacré bleu! If you’ve been playing…

Some Thoughts On Arms After Playing This Weekend’s Open Beta

Arms is hard to pin down, both literally and figuratively. While this weekend’s global testfires offered a good introduction to the house of whimsical party combat Nintendo is trying to build, a quick stroll around inside left me wondering, Peggy Lee-style, if that’s all there is. Across the roughly three to four hours I spent…

Rime Dev Says It Will Drop Denuvo DRM Once The Game Is Cracked

Rime, the indie game caught halfway between Ico and Journey was released last week. With Denuvo DRM. Like a lot of games. But that made some players angry, and prompted the developer, Tequila Works, to state that once the Denuvo DRM is broken, which it eventually always is, the company will release a DRM-free version…