Nintendo’s Official Rules On What Color Mario Must Be

Press the Buttons (via Fast Co.) recently got their hands on something very special: a copy of Nintendo’s Style Guide, a 1993 document that sought to formalise all kinds of weird Nintendo-related mascot matters, like what exact colour Mario’s and Samus’ outfits have to be. It’s as obsessive as it is fascinating. Mario’s famous overalls,…

11,414 Reasons There Are Too Many iPhone Games

This pocketgamer chart — showing how many games are submitted to Apple for release on the App Store every month — was mentioned in a chat at GDC earlier today, and it’s been dropping jaws pretty much everywhere it’s been passed around since. It shows that last month (February 2015), 11,414 games were submitted to…

Pregnancy Puts Players Inside The Head Of A Teenage Rape Victim

The interactive short story Pregnancy, released todayon Steam, begins with 14-year-old Lilla Sandor purchasing a pregnancy test. It’s a painful moment for the teen. She feels ashamed and awkward. At home, waiting for the test results, she recalls the horrific act that brought her to this point. Developer Rodrigo Silvestre holds nothing back describing Lilla’s…

The Hidden RPG Inside Resident Evil: Revelations 2

The first episode of Resident Evil: Revelations 2 wasn’t very good. Maybe it’ll get better, maybe not. What I didn’t expect, however, was to be spending so many hours with the game’s RPG-influenced Raid Mode. It’s not usually my thing, but when I have a few minutes to spare, I’ve found myself booting up Raid…

So That’s How League Of Legends’ Bard Got His ‘Meep’ Minions

When Riot unveiled its new League of Legends champion “The Bard,” the developer claimed that the heavily bearded fellow hailed from somewhere “beyond the physical universe in realms unknown to men.” Fair enough. But could they be known to…pikmin? (Pun very much intended). YouTuber GingerPale put any and all questions about the Bard’s origin story…

Are you a retail employee? We want to hear your stories. We’re hoping to run some round-ups of the funniest, dumbest, most horrifying, and most entertaining retail stories out there, so if you’ve got a tale you think Kotaku readers would enjoy, let us know. We’re mostly looking for video game retail stories, but we’re…

Sci-Fi Video Games Pay Tribute To Leonard Nimoy

Following the passing of Leonard Nimoy last week, space games like Star Trek Online, Elite: Dangerous, and Star Citizen all have heart-warming plans to memorialize the man who brought Spock to life. Nimoy lent his voice to, you guessed it, Spock in Star Trek Online—players hear a short blurb voiced by him whenever they enter…

World of Warcraft Will Start Selling Subscription Time For Gold

World of Warcraft will soon introduce a whole new economy, allowing players both to spend in-game gold on real-life game time and to exchange real-life money for tokens that can be sold for in-game gold. The system is simple, and best summed up in this graphic (via battle.net): The new system will launch “in an…

An Embarrassing Way To Lose In League Of Legends

Developing “map awareness” is crucial to playing at your best in League of Legends. Otherwise, you might suddenly find yourself wondering: “How the hell did we lose when I was kicking so much ass?” YouTuber SSF4MANIA recently showed how these worst-laid plans of League players can end up going seriously awry: As one fellow League…

Your Choice of Gaming Headsets, EA Digital Sale, and More Deals

If you’ve been meaning to get a new gaming headset, it seems that today’s your lucky day. PlayStation Silver Wired Stereo Headset ($34) | Amazon Turtle Beach Ear Force PX22 Amplified Universal Gaming Headset ($47) | Amazon HyperX Cloud Gaming Headset ($67) | Amazon Turtle Beach Ear Force XO Four High Performance Gaming Headset ($60)…

How To Spot A Pokémon Trainer At School

Don’t be fooled by the Substitute dolls. You are currently visiting Pocket Monster, a Kotaku blog dedicated to all things Pokémon.

I Picked The Wrong Time To Buy A Used PlayStation 2

During January’s sojourn to Kotaku headquarters in NYC, I stopped by the fabled Video Games New York, where I picked up a scratched but serviceable PlayStation 2 for $80. Today GameStop announced it is once again accepting trade-ins of the best-selling game system of all time. My timing sucks. A haven for fans of old…

A Video Game Has Launched A Service Called Killstagram

If my most anticipated big-budget video game this year is Bloodborne, my most anticipated indie video game might be Superhot. As part of an alpha version of the time manipulation shooter going out to backers, Killstagram is also a thing now. Admit it: it’s a clever name. The game jam version of Superhot, which is…

Today’s selection of articles from Kotaku‘s reader-run community: NotGoodForReview – Resident Evil: Revelations 2 (Episode 1) • Anime Opening/Ending Song Roundup by Ani-TAY – Week 9 • Grex’s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Review TAY Classic—TAY Open Forum—Beginner’s Guide To TAY Follow them here.

Mortal Kombat X is coming to iOS and Android next month as a free-to-play fighting/card-game, shades of the mobile version of Injustice: Gods Among Us. The mobile MK will link to the console version for unlockable goodness. I don’t know about you, but “Swipe! Finish Him” doesn’t have quite the same ring.

Mr. Awesome: Champion Gamer, Playgirl Model

Picture a world-beating gamer. Take your time. Done? Whatever you pictured, you probably did not picture Mr. Awesome. Mr. Awesome, aka Roy Shildt, may be familiar to some of you from his cameo in the 2007 documentary King of Kong, in which he plays a minor, background role. Which was a shame. If you’re sitting…

How To Get World of Warcraft‘s New Super-Rare Mount

The “Voidtalon of the Dark Star” is a new mount added to WoW with patch 6.1, but the patch notes don’t mention anything about how to obtain it. A few days have passed since the update and people are finally figuring out the process. It’s not that easy. The official survival guide only says that…