Some of the best gaming stories from our overnight shift: Which One Of These Images Is A Photo, And Which Is A 3D Render? Let The Xbox One Pranking Begin This Man Designed The PlayStation 4 Pokémon Family Portraits Are The Best Family Portraits

DeviantART artist David De Leon Luis has a slightly different notion of Bowser, Yoshi and Super Mario A Yoshi with T-Rex jaws and of that size would stomp through Mushroom Kingdom with ease, leaving only completely destroyed Koopa castles behind. Dayshot is an image-based feature that runs every morning, showcasing some of the prettiest,funniest game-related…

Wrist-Slitting Doesn’t Need To Be Glamorized

Kill La Kill, the newest anime by the creative minds behind over the top mecha hit Gurren Lagann, is all about a girl searching for the person who killed her father. To do this she has a giant scissor-blade and a transforming school uniform. That’s where things get troubling. In the series’ lore, she slits…

Rapper Says GTA V Stole His Music

Grand Theft Auto V is packed with tunes. But according to rapper and music producer Daz Dillinger, the game uses two of his without permission. Now, he wants Rockstar to pay up or to destroy all unsold copies of the game. Dillinger’s tracks “C-Walk” and “Nothin’ But the Cavi Hit” appear in the game. But…

Watch Us Play the Visually Stunning Arcadias no Ikusahime

Going into Arcadias no Ikusahime (The Warrior Princess of Arcadias) I expected two things: 1) A beautiful-looking game and 2) gameplay like that of an old school side-scrolling brawler. What I didn’t expect was having to control an army in real time while I did it. While there are many levels that are typical of…

“Cosplay Driver’s Licenses” Exist in Japan

Good news if you are a cosplayer! And if you have a car. And if you need to renew your Japanese driver’s license. You can legally pose for your license while cosplaying. Granted, this isn’t a mainstream trend by any means, but owning a “cosplay driver’s license” is certainly possible in Japan, where they’re also…

Okay, This Japanese Fast Food Chain Has Gone Mad

Should I get the rib patty? Or the beef patty? Or the fried shrimp patty? What about the cheeseburger? Screw it, you can get them all. At once. Behold the “With Everything Burger” (“zenbu nose baagaa” or 全部のせバーガー). Priced at 1,130 yen (US$11), it comes with lettuce, cabbage, egg, a slice of cheese, a cheeseburger,…

How To Play StarCraft On A Completely Different Level

On the left: 25 explosive Zerg units controlled by StarCraft II’s AI. Just a few of them would be enough to crush the thirty defenceless marines on the right. But the world’s best player, Innovation shows us how to control and split them properly, with insane speed and accuracy. This terrific moment was part of…

Japan’s Straw Beasts Are Huge, Wonderful, and Highly Flammable

It’s fall in Japan. And like every fall, rice is harvested, leaving behind straw to be hung and dried. In some rural areas, though, the rice straw has a special use: Making giant beasts. Kagawa Prefecture and Niigata Prefecture have the most famous “straw art festivals,” which are large straw sculpture displays. Traditionally, straw was…

A Great-Looking Game with a Beautiful Soundtrack to Match

Earlier this week we took a look at the stunning visual beauty of the backgrounds and enemy sprites of Arcadias no Ikusahime (The Warrior Princess of Arcadias). Of course, visuals are only half of the presentation package. Thankfully, Arcadias no Ikusahime has a quality soundtrack to match. Honestly, the soundtrack of Arcadias no Ikusahime seems…

New Transformers Are Less Annoying With Bad Engrish

Yes, this is based on the Michael Bay Transformers. So there are silly sharp robot designs and stupid humans. But relative to those handicaps, this shooter still looks like a blast. By Sega, it’s called Transformers Human Alliance. It’s an old-fashioned arcade on-rails shooter, but again, relative to that genre, it’s looking impressive and sounding…

The Queen Thinks Kids Play Too Many Video Games

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was born in 1926. She grew up during the Second World War. So it’s perhaps understandable that, given the fact her own kids grew up without them, she’s a little wary about the effects of playing video games at a young age. Author Joanne Harris, who was presented with an…

Let The Xbox One Pranking Begin

You can turn an Xbox One on (and off) using voice commands. Handy for the home, but in the workplace? There’s room for pranks. These tweets by Andreas Fredriksson, a senior engine programmer at the freshly-multiplatform Insomniac, are hilarious, because you don’t need video to imagine exactly how it goes down. Andreas Fredriksson [Twitter, via…

This Man Designed The PlayStation 4

Tetsu Sumii would in most circumstances be a man you’d never hear of. So it’s nice that Sony have given him a shout-out on the PlayStation blog. Why? Because he designed the PlayStation 4. Not the guts, of course, but he is the main man responsible for its appearance. You know, the box that so…

Pokémon Family Portraits Are The Best Family Portraits

This is a family portrait. So in thirty years time, this kid will look on her parent’s wall, see this weird picture and realise that, in 2013, her parents were awesome Note: if you’re wondering why a cosplay portrait, the Bulbasaur is Lindze, who we’ve featured here on Kotaku a few times previously. Pokemon [Benny…

Grand Theft Auto V Is A Bunch Of Movie & TV Homages. Here They Are.

From vehicles to locations on the landscape of Los Santos, Grand Theft Auto V is, like other games in the series, a collection of tips of the hat to works that its creators have been inspired by, or at least enjoyed. You might have seen one or two of the more obvious ones yourself in…

Which One Of These Images Is A Photo, And Which Is A 3D Render?

The answer? Well, they’re both renders, actually. For real. Dan Roarty is a lead character artist at Tomb Raider developers Crystal Dynamics. Before that, though, he worked on the ill-fated Star Wars 1313, modelling and texturing the game’s main character. As you can see below, his 3D modelling skills are off the charts. That old…

Blizzard Thinking Of Charging $30 For Diablo III Expansion

A survey sent out to Diablo III players, as seen by Polygon, talks about pricing for the game’s upcoming expansion, Reaper of Souls. And how it’s not going to be cheap. “Consider two versions of the expansion: a Standard Edition for $29.99 and a Collector’s Edition for $49.99”, the survey says. “The Standard Edition includes…

Valve has confirmed to Maximum PC that Steam Machines won’t only use Nvidia graphics cards, despite that being the only brand announced to go out with their recently-announced prototypes. Valve says Steam Machines will be commercially available with AMD, Nvidia and Intel graphics hardware.

Breaking Bad, Battlefield Edition: so this Indonesian version of season 5 of Breaking Bad posted by SilentNinjaMick on Reddit may not be legit, but boy is it kind of hilarious. And you gotta admit, it’s certainly more epic this way.