Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Watermelon Warriors: The Winners

China’s latest fashion trend is dressing toddlers in watermelon rinds, a novel way to both cool and protect your little fruit warrior. We’ve got 20 up-armored finalists in this week’s roundup, plus overall winner toolsoldier! Note: Yes, we will be doing Psyduck kid tomorrow. I suppose that spoils the post theme, but you still need…

How Much Is Disney Infinity Going To Cost You?

Disney’s collectible toy video game platform launches tomorrow, which means parents and fans will be raiding video game aisles across the country to score the initial wave of toys and playsets. How much money should they bring? All of it. First thing you’re going to need, whether you’re a curious gamer or a haggard parent,…

Square Enix Puts 3D-Printed Final Fantasy Figures Out of Business

Square Enix consistently protects its trademarks and copyrights. And still people consistently use them without permission. So it’s perhaps not a surprise that an artist selling a Final Fantasy action figure series was shut down when Square’s lawyers told his 3D printer to cease and, yes, desist. CNET has the full story, but what happened…

Free Games: For Xbox Live Gold subscribers, 2010’s Dead Rising 2 and its DLC prequel Case Zero are both free, under the Games With Gold promotion. They’ll be available until the end of the month.

Potato Girl Loves Their Hash Browns: Who knew that Denny’s were such big fans of Attack on Titan? After someone sent the diner chain a picture of “Potato Girl,” calling her “your mascot,” Denny’s Twitter account sent out this scrumptious mash-up. [CrunchyRoll, h/t mr_raccoon]

How Times Change: ‘EA Didn’t Give a S–t About FIFA‘ 20 Years Ago

Today, EA Sports’ FIFA series is critically acclaimed and globally dominant. Internally, football means football, not American football as played in Madden. Twenty years ago, though, the publisher wanted nothing to do with it, according to this retrospective by MCV “EA didn’t give a shit about FIFA,” says the person who was EA’s European marketing…

EA Ends First Amendment Claim to Use Real-World Helicopters in Games

Electronic Arts and the makers of Bell Helicopter, have settled a lawsuit concerning the use of real-world aircraft in Battlefield 3, for which EA did not have permission. The publisher had asked a judge to rule it had a right to the depictions because they were part of a creative work protected by the First…

Gay Wrestler to Make His Video Game Debut in WWE 2K14

In about three hours, 2K Sports will reveal the roster for the “30 Years of Wrestlemania” mode in WWE 2K14. The main roster hasn’t been revealed yet, but 2K has said it will include Darren Young, the openly gay wrestler who this week had one of the most understated coming-outs, especially for a sports figure.…

Minecraft Creator Shelves His Space Game, but Fans Want to Revive It [Corrected]

0x10c (often pronounced “ten to the c”) was for a time the next big thing from Mojang and Markus “Notch” Persson, creator of Minecraft. It was to be a sprawling sandbox space adventure, but Persson put the project on hold back in April, citing creative difficulties, and then this week said he’d shelved it altogether.…

This Week in the Business: Fortune Also Favors the Cautious

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week … QUOTE | “Being too ambitious, as we have seen with THQ for example, is not always a good thing.”—Koch Media co-founder Dr. Klemes Kundratitz, on rapid growth at Koch Media and its publishing arm Deep Silver QUOTE | “GameStop has at least 10…

The Best Of Kotaku, The Week Of August 12

So many reviews this week! Tons of games are out/are coming out to defeat the end of the summer in gaming style. Head on over to Kotaku Selects to read our reviews and other hand-picked articles from the week. The image above is called, “Mario Killed My Friend With My Own House.” 🙁 It’s by…

Mysterious Pokemon Image Might Be Teasing Something. But What? [UPDATE]

Today, the Pokemon Game Show in Japanrevealed a few things,like a new Pokemon anime that follows Pokemon Red and Green. You can watch the trailer for that above. And, according to Serebii, at the end of a different retrospective trailer aired during the show, the following mysterious image of a battle was showcased: Blurry, but…

It’s A Real Gun. A Real Halo-Themed Gun, That Is.

This is nothing like those branded Halo bullets we covered a while back: ucfnate‘s Halo Beretta M9A1 is custom. While I’m not into real-life guns myself, dang if this isn’t well-made.Not only are the grips UNSC, but they also glow in the dark. The grips cost 120 dollars, and they were made by DS Grips.…

Minecraft Creator’s Latest Is…A Zombie Game (And It’s Free)

Game jams are fantastic for short, focused games. Couple that with Notch’s ability to make polished gems for jams, and what you get is Shambles—an FPS zombie game developed for the 7DFPS challenge. Yeah, another zombie game. Fortunately, this one is pretty good! You can play it in your browser here, or download it here.…

Siri Isn’t Happy About Those Sexts You Send

It’s 2013. Some people send sexts; the practice is not abnormal. But if Siri could talk freely, like she does in this sketch by Slacktory, I doubt that she’d be very happy about what people send as attachments in texts, or in Snapchats. With good reason! Welp. You could always play Dungeons and Dragons with…

One of Grand Theft Auto V’s Achievements Is… Surprising

Xbox360Achievements does their thing once again, this time revealing the achievements for the next Grand Theft Auto. If you’d like to be spoiled on what these are, keep reading—otherwise, steer clear! You can read the full list of achievements here, but let’s talk about “From Beyond The Stars.” It’ll require you to collect and return…

The Nirvana of Video Games? Video games need a grunge movement, or at least that’s what Kotaku contributor and 90s aficionado Leigh Alexander argues in this excellent piece over at Gamasutra. It’s a version of a talk she recently gave at a UK games convention, and it involves Paula Abdul.

Biggest fear for Season 2 of The Legend of Korra: so much this. Probably not unreasonable either, given that in interviews, the writers highlighted Mako and Korra’s relationship as a point of tension in the upcoming season. (GIF via avataraang)

This Amazing Life-Sized Mass Effect Party Member Is Made of Paper

You might not be able to have conversations or go into combat with this papercraft version of Jack made by tankball, but you’ve gotta admit, it’s pretty freakin’ cool. I mean, geeze, look at how tall this thing is! Although it makes for a slightly creepy picture, this Jack comes apart, too. It’s for easy…

The Heisenberg Conspiracy: Wired‘s posted a whole bunch of theories about how to read Breaking Bad and predict what’ll happen at the end of the series. Some are way too out-there, but a couple are sharply observed and even a little bit mind-blowing.