ESL Lifts Lifetime Ban On Counter-Strike Match Fixers

Esports organization ESL announced on Monday a number of changes to its rules regarding cheating, doping, bribery, and most notably, match-fixing. In accordance with these changes, four former players from iBuyPower who were lifetime banned for fixing a match will be allowed to compete in ESL events After consultation with “a number of” Counter-Strike: Global…

Saying Farewell To Three Decades of Weird Sonic the Hedgehog Comics

Remember that time Sonic cried because changes to the timeline caused his children to never be born? He had previously been king of the planet, but in the new timeline, Shadow the Hedgehog was actually king and had married Sonic’s longtime love interest, Princess Sally (Sonic the Hedgehog #166)? No? What about when he would…

Fans Turn Butt-Bumping Wrestling Anime Into Real Sport

Today in “anime was a mistake,” fans of the anime Keijo, in which women in swimsuits fight with their boobs and asses, are making the anime sport a reality. Yesterday, anime site Goboiano reported that Portuguese fans of the Fall, 2016 anime are merrily registering participants for Keijo training sessions. Women are testing out its…

First Look At The Latest Pokémon TV Anime HD Remaster

Last night, a digital remaster of the first Pokémon episode debuted on Japanese television. The episode originally aired on April 1, 1997. The episode has been remastered before. Below you can see how the 2012 remastered version compares with a 2014 Kids Station re-airing of the original. That remaster celebrated Pokémon’s 15th anniversary. In the…

Final Fantasy XIII‘s Lightning Is Now Selling Nissans In China

Last year, Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII was moonlighting as a Louis Vuitton model. Now in 2017, she’s back with another gig. This time, she’s selling cars in China. She’s joined by Snow Villiers in a somewhat perplexing TV spot. People are wearing VR in Nissans? So they can take car trips with FFXIII characters?…

“Hamburger Straws” Are Japan’s Newest Online Meme

For the past week, some people in Japan have been buying McDonald’s hamburgers and piercing them with drinking straws. The name of this meme is called “drink x hamburger” (ハンバーガーxドリンク or hanbaagaa x dorinku) or “hamburger straw” (ハンバーガー ストロー or hanbaagaa sutoroo). Everyone isn’t doing this (yet!), but there are enough for the trend to…

Triple Digits. San Antonio, Texas. By Phil Lewis. 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!

The Art Of Strike Vector EX

Strike Vector EX is a dogfighting game that’s fresh out on Steam (it was released on console last year). And it has some of the best art you’ll see on this feature in 2017. EX is actually a re-release of Strike Vector, a game we featured on Fine Art in 2013. This new version came…

A Brutal Recap Of The Very Bad Pokémon Go Fest

So Pokémon Go Fest was a disaster. If you were lucky enough to not be there, and want to catch up on just how awful the whole thing was, this video recap by bobvids will get you up to speed. Spoilers: there is a lot of booing.

Now Here’s Demon’s Souls Running On A PC

In case seeing Persona 5 wasn’t impressive enough, here’s footage of another big PS3 game—Demon’s Souls—being entirely playable on a PC courtesy of an emulator. It’s running through a fresh update of RPCS3, the same emulator that was powering Persona 5 the other day. And while it’s not a perfect emulation—and has some hefty hardware…

The Week In Games: Come On Baby Light My Pyre

The creators of Bastion and Transistor are coming out with their latest and it shows how times have changed. We likened it last fall to a “mystical sports RPG.” Unlike Supergiant Games’ previous focus on story and exploration, Pyre shifts the focus to arena style-showdowns. Which I’m looking forward to, personally. An esport you play…

The Hunt For An SNES Classic Is Already A Mess

A lot of people just want to preorder a damn SNES Classic. But nothing’s ever easy with Nintendo The SNES Classic isn’t scheduled to come out for another few months but everyone is already furiously trying secure a preorder. As a result, when Walmart appeared be accepting them late Friday night, people swamped the site…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Sonic Crossover

Did you hear? Sonic the Hedgehog got picked up by comic book publisher IDW. That means it’s only a matter of time until the furry blue runner’s first really weird crossover. The new partnership was revealed last week after Sega announced Sonic comics would no longer be coming via Archie. Naturally, everyone’s wandering what this…

‘Dicks Out 4 Winston’ And Other Signs At The Overwatch World Cup Qualifiers

If you’re headed to one of the Overwatch World Cup qualifiers and thinking of bringing that letter ‘D’ and a white picket fence scrawled on poster board, don’t. After all, Overwatch is a game built on around bizarre characters that encourage a sometimes frightening level of fandom. Nothing demonstrates that more clearly than taking a…

Counter-Strike Team Caps Off Dominant Run With First-Ever Majors Win

Nine of the ten players in today’s PGL Major finals had never made it to a Valve major finals before, with one team having never qualified for a major ever. Only Danylo “Zeus” Teslenko had competed in the finals of a major prior, and he’d been snubbed twice. In a tense match between the two…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: The Last Of Hot Dogs, Winners!

One of the greatest video game openings of all time made somehow even better. Last week’s contest was to take the dancing hot dog and dump him into your favorite gaming locales. The enthusiasm seemed to be somewhat lacking and for a hot second I thought maybe I’d introduced one of the worst prompts in…

Some Pokémon Go Players Are Having Trouble Capturing Lugia and Articuno

Pokémon Go players now have a chance to capture two rare birds, Lugia and Articuno. Some players attempting these raids are finding that adding legendaries to their compendium is a tough prospect, partially because of Niantic’s design, and partially due to good ‘ol network issues. The first hurdle is having a suitable and strong enough monster.…