Japan Has Too Many Penguin Bars

Recently, a “penguin bar” opened in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro. It’s not the first. There are at least three others. Does Japan really need all these penguin bars?! Besides booze and food, these establishments have live penguins that swim, waddle, and eat dead fish—as penguins do (though, usually not in bars). According to MyNavi, the newest penguin…

Street Fighter Takes On Wrestling. It Gets Messy.

Street Fighter was real. At least, it was for one night earlier this year, as Oakland’s wrestling crew at Hoodslam took on Capcom’s fighter and put it in the ring. In case the embed above doesn’t start at the right spot for you, you’ll want to begin at 3:12. Because while some of the action…

Reminder: Real Pirates Were Awful

Making a pleasant change from the usual pre-release drivel, Ubisoft has teamed up with VICE to make a series of short documentaries about the golden age of piracy. So that when you’re playing Assassin’s Creed IV, you can…I don’t know, appreciate the piracy some more. Really, though, screw the game. They’re just great little clips…

A Game About Hunting Monsters, And It’s Not Made In Japan

On paper, Monster Hunter should be one of the biggest games on Earth. It’s about nothing but fighting giant monsters, then gutting them for loot. For whatever reason, though, Monster Hunter is only really big in Japan, leaving others free to steal its thunder elsewhere. Enter Canadian studio Tetrahedral Interactive, who are working on Canto,…

No, Evil Soldier Man, I Was Not Making Fun Of Your Raspy Voice

Efgeni Bischoff is a freelance 3D artist who has previously worked for companies like Crytek and Guerilla Games. In between that, he’s also worked on Halo 4. So, yeah, if you want to see gorgeous images of armoured soldier men with fancy guns, you’ve come to the right place. You can see more of Efgeni’s…

Over 15 Minutes Of The PS4 Dashboard. Menus, Menus, Menus! [Update]

Whoever said “shoes are the window to the soul” was full of crap. Because system menus are the window to the soul. They’re the first thing we see every time we boot a system up, and are the tools by which we do pretty much everything to do with a console outside of actually playing…

Man Falls From Space, Takes Nine Minutes To Land

Remember last year, when Felix Baumgartner jumped out of a balloon at the edge of space? Well there’s a new documentary coming out about the feat, and part of it is this amazing video showing his descent in real-time. In first-person view. You might want to blow it up to full-screen to get a better…

The Creepiest Things People Have Said To Cosplayers

Most people enjoy cosplayers for what they are: folks hangin’ out in cool outfits paying tribute to their favourite characters. Sadly, some like to totally miss that, and get all creepy Buzzfeed went to the New York Comic-Con with a ledger and pen, and asked some cosplayers to write down the worst thing someone had…

Total War: Rome II: The Kotaku Review

**Updated with final verdict** Oh dear. I wanted to love this game. I really did. I am, as anyone on staff here will tell you, a tragically obsessive Total War fan. I’m also a history nut, who was looking forward to conquering the known world at the head of some thundering (and in this game’s…

After Six Generations Of Pokémon Games, Snorlax Finally Stands Up

It had to be intentional. Surely. He looks so proud Six generations later, Snorlax is finally up and ready! [Reddit]

The Xbox 360 Version Of Battlefield 4 Has A Crazy Recommended Install

Look, it’s pretty clear that Battlefield 4 – a game designed to sing on powerful PCs and next-gen consoles – was always going to struggle on current-gen hardware. So if developers need to go to extremes to find a workaround, well, they gotta do what they gotta do. The Xbox 360 version of the game…

The Latest ‘Clues’ We Might Get A Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire Remake

We’ve gotten remakes for some of the older Pokemon games…but not for third gen, Ruby and Sapphire. It’s not for a lack of passionate fans, though—so passionate in fact, they’re willing to read into anything that might confirm a game they love is being made. Cue Pokemon X & Y, which released last Saturday. Since…

Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate celebrates Halloween with 28 costumes for $25. Along with a free “Haunted Lorelei” stage on both the paid and free Core Fighters versions of the game, fans can purchase a massive costume pack that gets every fighter in the game geared up for tricking and/or treating. Some are better than…

Xbox One Game Tweet Backfires Badly

Next-gen kicks off this November. That means there are a ton of developers out there busting their butts off to get launch games out on time—and Ryse: Son of Rome, an Xbox One exclusive developed by Crytek, is no different. Today, the Ryse Twitter account boasted about feeding the developers working on the game through…

Remembering a Miracle in the Early Days of Sports Video Games

The score was 4 to 3, two outs in the ninth, when I woke up on the couch. No one was on base. “I don’t need to see this,” I said. “Nah, stick around,” Dad said. I had two games that day, the World Series on TV, and Hardball! on my Commodore 64. If the…

Zebras Made My PS3 More Beautiful

One of the key games used by Sony to demonstrate the graphical prowess of the PlayStation 3 prior to its North American release, Majesco’s safari simulator Afrika came out three years after the console launched and wasn’t very good. It’s dynamic theme, on the other hand, is exquisite. This was originally to be a post…

Double Fine’s Newest Game Lets You Run Your Own Space Station

Shades of Theme Hospital in the newest game from Double Fine, Spacebase DF-9, which tasks you with running your very own space station and trying to prevent everyone from dying. You can play the new space simulator on Steam Early Access right now. It looks… amazing. And if that trailer hasn’t piqued your interest, check…

Check Out The 2DS’ Single Giant Screen

New hardware means a few surefire things here on the internet. Someone will blend it. Someone will microwave it. And naturally, someone will take the hardware apart and dive into its guts. The 2DS is no exception! Behold, the handiwork of Rose Colored Gaming: What you see in the middle there is the 2DS screen—yes,…

Steam Early Access Is Making Games Better

Early Access on Steam gives us the opportunity to buy games before they’re even finished, but more importantly they allow us to take an intimate look into how games are created. Before Steam began selling games as Early Access, Notch set the standard by selling Minecraft in early alpha, to a huge success. Now this…

Bee and Puppycat Will Become A Series…If They Can Raise $600k

Hooray! It seems that the two videos we got earlier this year of Bee and Puppycat—the charming and kind of eccentric cartoon by Natasha Allegri, character designer and storyboard artist for Adventure Time—aren’t all of what we get to see of the show. Well, not if Frederator Studios can raise enough money on Kickstarter. The…