The Week In Games: Ivalice Homecoming 

Eleven years later, fans will once again be able to return to Final Fantasy XII’s vast, MMO-inspired fields and dungeons in HD and with a lot less jagged edges. You wouldn’t know it from this list, but the series twelfth outing was actually pretty phenomenal. Final Fantasy has always tried to do two completely incompatible…

Fan-Made Mega Man Game Will Let You Create Your Own Levels

There’s a trailer out for a fan project called Mega Maker that aims to do what Nintendo’s Super Mario Maker did for Capcom’s little blue bomber. It’s aimed for release on July 15, if it somehow doesn’t get shutdown before then. The project uses assets collected from Mega Man 1 through 6 and boasts over…

Quake‘s Rocket Jumps And Railguns Are Still Satisfying In 2017

Ah, the sights and sounds. Rocket jumps and railguns, even that grimacing marine, bringing me right back to those good ol’ days of Quake Quake Champions may still be in the throes of open beta, but qualifiers for the 2017 World Championships are running throughout the day, where the modern Quake best compete to earn…

Bidding War Over The Player’s Name In Earthbound Speedrun Goes Down To The Wire

This year’s Summer Games Done Quick speedrunning marathon finished with Earthbound. In part a charity event raising funds for Doctors Without Borders, viewers were allowed to bid on naming stuff at the beginning of the game. Ness’s favorite thing, for instance, was almost Bepis, beat out just barely by R.N.G. instead thanks to $25.12. The…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Christie On Vacation, Winners!

Last week I asked you to take Governor Chris Christie on vacation, and man does that guy get around. Pleasance13’s entry didn’t just take Christie to another beach or alternate universe, it took him inside a game that refused to release until it was something entirely different. I’d be about as likely to play something…

The Coolest Techniques From Arms‘ First Major Tournament

Nintendo’s shiny new Switch fighter had its first major outing this weekend at 2GGC’s Arms Saga, where 50 entrants showed up to throw hands (or controllers, depending on your preferred playstyle). The top eight play was tense and diverse, with many different approaches and fighters. Two Byte & Barq players made the playoffs, and Spring…

Podcast: Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy XIV, And… Other Games

Today’s Kotaku Splitscreen is made just the way you like it: heavy on the Fahey and the Final Fantasy First, Kirk regales us with stories from his backpacking adventures before settling down with me to talk Destiny 2 soccer (9:58), Mass Effect: Andromeda’s lack of DLC (15:43), and Zelda’s new content (24:44). Then we bring…

Splatoon 2 Looks Noticeably Richer In Head-To-Head Comparison With The First Game

We’ve heard it a bunch. I’ve said it a bunch. “Splatoon 2 looks like more Splatoon.” But side-by-side it’s clear the sequel is a lot more polished looking. In his latest video, YouTuber NomComms took a look at both games based on their lobbies and the results are a bit jarring. While Splatoon 2 doesn’t…

Sunday Comics: Beware The Hat

Welcome to Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics that usually occurs on Sunday except when it doesn’t. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published July 9. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published July 3. Read more…

Summer Games Done Quick 2017 Breaks Last Year’s Record, Raises $1.7 Million For Charity

Seven days later, this year’s Summer Games Done Quick speedrunning marathon has come to an end, but not before raising $1,760,400 for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Last year’s event raised around $1.3 million for the organization, making SGDQ 17 a record breaking year (AGDQ 17 was earlier this year and broke its own…

Seven Neo Geo Games That Need To Get Ported To Modern Consoles 

Every month a smattering of classic Neo Geo games comes to modern consoles thanks to Hamster Corporation’s Arcade Archives program, but some of the system’s most unique and unusual games have yet to make the leap. I pour over the lists of upcoming games every week, and I know full well how easy it is…

Man Carrying Stack Of Beers Is The Unofficial Winner Of This Weekend’s Counter-Strike Tournament 

There have been a number of great matches at the event, and Cloud9’s push to the grand finals has fans hyped, but nothing will top this guy’s bold decision to carry a shitload of beers back to his seat all at once. Taking place in Germany, the ESL One Cologne Counter-Strike tournament has a ton…

The Counter To Doomfist? Take A Seat

As players flood into the public test servers of Overwatch to find uses and counters for the new villain Doomfist, one player has found a rather interesting one: sitting down. In a highlight posted on the Overwatch subreddit, after popping off a four-kill ultimate, McCree player “Quesogard,”decides to walk onto the point and take a seat…

Tetsuya Nomura’s Character Designs For Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Were 20 Years In The Making

Last month, fans following the development of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 spotted something strange. Tetsuya Nomura, Square Enix artist and director of Kingdom Hearts III, was being listed in the game’s credits. It turned out that the creator of some of Final Fantasy’s most iconic characters was designing Xenoblade Chronicles 2‘s Torna organization, a mysterious group…

We’re locked and loaded with frying pan in hand as we try to win a few rounds of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds right now on Twitch

The Weekend In Esports: ESL One Cologne, Dota 2, And ARMS

Evo 2017 hasn’t even started, DreamHack Atlanta is weeks away, and Dota 2‘s TI7 is next month, and yet this post-4th of July weekend is still packed. North America’s Cloud9 have done the unthinkable and won a spot in the ESL One Cologne grand finals, a premier, $250,000 Counter-Strike tournament that’s usually dominated by European…

This 8-Hour Run Of Final Fantasy VII Is A Masterwork Of Planning

Most runs at Games Done Quick events fall in the one to three-hour range. Last night, Final Fantasy speedrunner “Ajneb174,” or Ben, put on an almost eight-hour speedrun of Final Fantasy VII, an endurance run of memorization, routing and insane game knowledge. Joined on the couch by fellow Final Fantasy runners Davesterio and J2_JATWo, the…

Looking Back On A 2013 Tournament Featuring Tekken‘s Bowling Mini-Game

When Tekken Tag Tournament came out in 2000, the game included a bowling mini-game called Tekken Bowl that became a cult favorite among Tekken players. Unlike Tekken, the bowling mini-game isn’t deep or complicated. You just choose a Tekken character and aim your bowling ball down the lane. But it’s still a competitive game… albeit…