The Backroads of Akihabara. Tokyo, Japan. By Derek Bulner. 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!

This is @shift_cosplay (Black Cat), @becky_taka (Spider Gwen) and @disquietcosplay (MJ) recreating an Amazing Spider-Man cover. No Spider-Men required. Photo by @herohotties

Custom Women’s Armor Is Practical, But Also Cool

Melissa Ng is the creator of this outfit, which is called “Sovereign Armor”, the result of a quest to “create a practical and versatile Medieval-inspired fantasy armor for a woman.” Ng says it took over 500 hours to build the suit, most of which is 3D-printed and which weighs around eight pounds, with that time…

Sacred Fire is an RPG where combat is dictated by emotions and psychology, rather than weapons, attacks, or damage types. Anger might make you strong, but it’ll leave you open to a punishing riposte. Fear can turn enemies into a shell of their normal selves, but it can leave you quaking too. The game is…

Computer Learns To Create Its Own Pokémon, And They’re Great

You can train a Neural Network—basically a machine that learns—to do all kinds of things. The best thing, though, is to create a list of its own fake Pokémon. Please welcome Stangute, Tortabool and Ronch to the Pokédex. “I decided to train [a] neural network to randomly generate Pokemon names and abilities based on this…

V-Commandos: The Kotaku Review

V-Commandos is, in everything but name, a board game adaptation of 1998’s stealth strategy game Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines Kickstarted back in 2014, the game has recently been released to retail, and over the last few months I’ve been enjoying the hell out of it. It works like this: players choose from one of a…

The Hardest Things About Trying To Speedrun Breath Of The Wild

When you cover speedrunning for a while, you start to ask: “can I do that?” This weekend, I started doing my own runs in Breath of the Wild to see how far I’d get. As you might imagine, the results were messy. I’ve always been interested in the kinds of glitches and tricks that speedrunners…

Sometimes It’s Best To Quit A Game While You’re Still Having Fun

Typically when I sit down with a video game, I play until I’m either a) bored, or b) teeth-grindingly furious. Lately, though, I’ve been trying something different: quitting when I’m feeling goddamn fantastic. I recommend it! Here’s an example: the other day I was playing Overwatch (shocking, I know), and I was just on. I…

Ark: Survival Evolved Horse Taming Is Almost Exactly Like Zelda‘s

In a new update Friday, Ark: Survival Evolved added horses, aka the Equus, to its vast menagerie of tameable creatures. The way you tame them is familiar, to say the least. It’s borrowed from Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Or “pays homage to,” if you’re feeling more generous. In case you didn’t already…

Valve Says They’re Making Big Changes To Steam To Stomp Out ‘Fake Games’

Recently, Valve had two popular YouTubers, John “TotalBiscuit” Bain and Jim “Jim Sterling” Sterling, visit their offices. Over the course of a day-long series of meetings, the company laid out a roadmap for the future of Steam. Both Bain and Sterling posted lengthy videos about their descent into GabeN’s mystery dungeon. You can watch those…

You Are A Mortician In This Upcoming Game About Death

“Death positive” was a term I’d never heard before I saw the trailer for upcoming indie game A Mortician’s Tale. It describes the movement to embrace and understand death instead of fearing and hiding from it. For morticians, the philosophy isn’t exactly voluntary. In A Mortician’s Tale, you’re a mortician prepping corpses and soothing the…

Why Kirby Is Low-Tier in Super Smash Brothers

Kirby is a controversial character, especially among competitive Super Smash Brothers players. Even if you don’t play games, you probably know who Kirby is. You know his deal. He’s cute. He’s pink. He says “hiiiii” in falsetto. He looks like a marshmallow. And he swallows his enemies whole, which is weird and humiliating and would…

In Their War With The Wall Street Journal, Top YouTubers Just Played Themselves

Over the last couple of weeks, anger has been bubbling on YouTube over the news that major brands pulled advertisements on the platform in an effort to avoid being matched with objectionable content. The reports, which were published by the Wall Street Journal, were met with such skepticism that they sparked scandalous conspiracy theories among…

Attack on Titan’s Season 2 Opener Is More Of The Same

Attack on Titan’s new season began on Saturday with more of the same, along with a few bombshells that failed to make up for the show’s poor pacing. If you’re already into Attack on Titan, you’ll love what the first episode is doing. If you aren’t a fan of the series, it doesn’t offer a…

Five Ways Nintendo Could Fix Breath Of The Wild‘s Clunky Interface

Nintendo’s latest Zelda game ​Breath of the Wild has garnered deserved praise for presenting users with an immense, emergent open world full of discovery, surprise, and charm. However, as I’ve been digging deeper into the game, I started to notice some areas that could benefit from a few quick user experience (UX) design improvements to…

Persona 5 Is A Great Entry Point For Series Newcomers

The most common question we’ve gotten, when talking about how much we love the new video game Persona 5, is whether there are lots of people to kiss. The second most common question is: Can you play it without playing the other Persona games? The answer to both of these questions is yes. Persona 5 is…