Mario Maker Is Getting A Big New Update

Nintendo’s sending a big new patch down Mario Maker alley next week, adding checkpoints and more complicated power-ups among other features. On November 4, when the patch goes live for Nintendo’s wonderful new level creator, you’ll be able to add checkpoint flags to your level (by shaking the arrow sign in the editor). You’ll also…

2,500 World of Warcraft Gnomes Raid The Orc Capital

The end of October is a time when everyone in WoW is busy doing all the Halloween events, but it’s also a time when thousands of level 1 Gnomes meet up in Booty Bay every year and they all run to the other faction’s capital to have some fun. Around 2,500 people showed up for…

Every Big Video Game Coming Out This Fall

The meteorological Fall kicked off on September 1 with the release of a new Metal Gear Solid and an open-world Mad Max game from the Just Cause people. And that’s just the beginning of three months stuffed to the brim with games. Here’s a list of what came, and what’s coming. There’s over fifty items…

That’s A Big LEGO Star Destroyer

Star Wars’ giant, 3730 feet long Venator-class Star Destroyer, a ship mostly used during the Clone Wars, compressed into a similarly huge 6 feet long LEGO version by builder Alec_D Gotta love all the tiny turbolaser turrets and the engine units, very nicely designed. To contact the author of this post, write to: [email protected]

Today, We Lost a Great Japanese Illustrator 

Respected artist Noriyoshi Ohrai died earlier today, reports the Japanese media. You might not know his name, but you should know his work. Born in 1939, Ohrai illustrated a wide variety of works—from pulp fiction covers and history books to Hollywood blockbusters and video games. He first really made a name for himself with his…

GTA 5 Hulk Mod is Better Than Actual Hulk Games

You can keep your Batmans and your Deadpools: I want another Hulk game. He doesn’t need the dark, emotional veneer that’s been painted over Batman, just a big city to leap over and smash into rubble. This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK We’ve been starved of good Hulk games since Ultimate Destruction from 2005,…

The Tokyo Hostel That Looks Like a Bookstore

At Book and Bed Tokyo, you can fall asleep with any of the books the hostel has. Or manga, if you prefer those. According to Inside Games, hostel Book and Bed Tokyo was built with idea that this is a bookstore you can sleep at. The books aren’t actually for sale, but during your stay,…

Japan’s Geeky New Trend: Strange-Looking Heads

In Japanese, they’re called “igyou-atama” (異形頭) or, literally, “strange-looking heads.” They are oddly wonderful. This trend is directly connected to a series of anti-piracy public service announcements that play in Japanese movie theaters. Over the past few years, cosplayers would sometimes dress as these anti-piracy characters. There was also the inevitable fan art. [Photo: kameeeeeeeeen]…

Gangsta Has Crime, Drugs, and Super Soldiers

What it doesn’t have is anything that even comes close to being called an ending. Gangsta is set in a world much like ours, but with one major difference: the Twilights. By using a special performance-enhancing drug, soldiers from the recent past were endowed with nearly superhuman strength and speed. The problem is that said…

Star Doge

Remember Menchi, the cute little Chiba Inu we featured last Halloween? Menchi is back, and this year he’s kicking ass as Fox McCloud Before you ask, yes, he can barrell roll.

Half-Eleven? Time For Horse-Drawn Fisticuffs, My Good Man

“We’ll no doubt have more stuff from Syndicate to show off in the weeks ahead as more of Ubisoft’s artists share their work on the game.” That was me, yesterday. Maybe “weeks ahead” was being overly-pessimistic. Because only a day later, here’s a bunch of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate work from Hugo Puzzuoli, a senior concept…

Microsoft just announcedthat both the “New Xbox One Experience” (ie, a new dashboard) and limited Xbox 360 backwards compatibility will start rolling out to all Xbox One consoles on November 12.

The Witcher 3 Mission That Just…Went To Hell

Heart of Stone, the new expansion for The Witcher 3, basically consists of three long, experimental and amazing new quests. Kirk spoke the other day about the first one, but I now want to talk about the second. USE YOUR WITCHER SENSES TO AVOID THE SPOILERS BELOW. The second major quest—Open Sesame—begins in the auction…

SXSW Cancels Online Harassment, GamerGate Panels Due To Unspecified Threats

Two gaming-related panels for the upcoming South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas have been unexpectedly cancelled because of “numerous threats of on-site violence.” In the week since both panels were confirmed for SXSW, they’ve been widely discussed in the context of GamerGate, as one was publicly supportive of it. Word began to circulate on…

Destiny Snuck Into The Simpsons’ Halloween Episode

You’d have missed it if you split before the end of the episode, but tucked away in the credits of Treehouse of Horror XXVI was a little shout-out to the most horrific game of all: Destiny As is tradition with the show, the cast and crew get their names shown with a dumb Halloween nickname…