SimCity: Now With $9 Balloons

If your $50 copy of SimCity is lying unused, would a $9 piece of DLC adding a few balloons get you playing again? Of course not, but that’s the plan at EA regardless, the new “Airships” set adding two new types of hot air balloon park and an airship mass transit option. That’s it. For…

Start Your Week With Terrific Cosplay

Maybe it’s because we’re approaching some of the biggest conventions of the year, maybe it’s just a lucky week, but there has been some incredible cosplay on show over the past seven days. The highlights for me are probably the League of Legends and Odin Sphere (yes!) outfits, but really, everything below is from the…

Animal Crossing’s Pretty Good At Blocking Naughty Sex Words

As a Nintendo game, it’s no surprise that Animal Crossing: New Leaf contains some form of control over what you can name your characters. What is surprising, though, is how extensive the list of blocked words is. The obvious culprits are, well, obvious, from curse words to copyrighted terms, but when alientonx tried to get…

Help These Guys Make A New Syndicate Game

As expected after the tease earlier this year, Satellite Reign is the name of a game that really just wants to be a new Syndicate. A proper Syndicate, not a shooter bearing the franchise’s name. It’s being developed by 5 Lives Studios, based in Brisbane, Australia, and really just sounds like the kind of Syndicate…

Can You Play a Game Without the National Anthem? I Do It All The Time.

Hat in right hand, right hand over heart, I raised my beer cup with my left and took a sip. Dad chided me for that, so I put it down. The singer was behind the beat on The Star-Spangled Banner. My thumb tapped against my cap’s bill. A distinctly video-game thought came to me: Can’t…

What if movies were reviewed in the same way as video games? Something Awful has an idea of what that would read like: “The film runs at a steady 24 frames per second with very few frame drops.” And a 9.6 means we’re guaranteed a World War Z sequel right?

The Week in Games: No Fireworks Show

It’s another lackluster week for new releases. The eShop title Crash City Mayhem comes to the 3Ds on Tuesday. Otherwise, it’s a collection of PC and Mac titles to get you through Independence Day. Monday • Sword of the Stars: The Pit—Mind Games (PC) Tuesday • Crash City Mayhem (3DS) Wednesday • Mortal Kombat Komplete…

The Moneysaver: New Leaf, Infinite, Amazon Summer Sale, Godfather

Waiting for Monday for the Moneysaver, ain’t nobody got time for that! Sometimes we have one-offs over the weekend, but today there was easily enough content to put together a full post. My Twitter feed is basically nothing but Animal Crossing: New Leaf at the moment, which means you should probably grab that one for…

A Crappy 1980s Cartoon Makes My Favorite Panel From Last Week’s Comics

FF #8: The tricky thing (sorry, that was totally unintentional) about picking a standout moment from reading a bunch of comics every week is that I try to defy my own expectations. And while, I loved sequences from Daredevil, Hawkeye and some of the other comics that came out last Wednesday—more on those in a…

The 3DO and the Neo Geo are still the most expensive consoles ever—including when adjusted for inflation, but you’d be surprised how ridiculous the Intellivision’s price looks now in this chart prepared by Ars Technica. The feature also examines price drops over all consoles’ lifespans.

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Hairy Situations

Video game-themed tonsorial stylings constituted a mini-trend in the news this week—from a kid with a bangin’ Mario shaved tattoo-like into his head to, well, that guy and … the thing he did. Get out your scissors and your clippers, it’s time for another ‘Shop Contest. Source Image: Mario hair win. Source Image: Pac-Man beard…

Nintendo Loses Case to Take Control of ‘WiiU.com’ [Update]

Normally when video game companies go into Internet name court to take over domains using their trademarks, they walk out a winner. So you’d think that Nintendo would be easily successful in the effort to get control of WiiU.com from a cybersquatter. You’d be wrong. Astonishingly, Nintendo’s complaint before the World Intellectual Property Organization has…

Sunday Comics: Take a Bow

Welcome to Kotaku‘s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics, chosen by our readership. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon in the lower right corner. Virtual Shackles by Jeremy Vinar and Mike Fahmie. Published June 26. Read more of Virtual Shackles Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Burn This Villager: The Winners

The menace of Animal Crossing‘s Villager is upon us, lurking around every corner with his mirthless grin and vitrified eyes. We asked for your worst nightmares and you gave them to us, eighteen in all, including overall No. 1 Anshin above! Honorable mentions this week go to DonCopal, Insomnis, mrdark and double finalist MrEck0. Oh,…

Ride to Hell is a Bad Game, but I Still Bought It for a Good Reason

Last year saw the glimmer of a movement to get a video game based on Sons of Anarchy, FX’s biker gang series and a vicarious lifestyle fantasy for many viewers, one of them me. The possibility seemed to go no further than series creator Kurt Sutter’s own hopes. Still, he vowed anything the show licensed…

All-Time Greats Will Be Featured in NBA Live 14, Designer Says

Hall-of-fame stars from the NBA’s past will be a part of NBA Live 14, though exactly how isn’t known, as one of the game’s designers took to Twitter to roll out some early details of a title that will have a lot to prove when it arrives. The details came out of a Thursday afternoon…

Arguing Console Specs is Pointless, Says Xbox Exec, Who Does It Anyway

Debating which console’s guts are more powerful is “a pointless argument,” says one Xbox executive, “because people are debating things which they don’t know about.” By and large, he’s right. He then went on to tout his console’s innards. They [Sony] actually go out and they talk about how proud they are about their off-the-shelf…

Following stops in Las Vegas and then Paris, Minecon 2013, the annual gathering for Minecraft fans, will be held in Orlando, Fla. Dates, ticket and hotel information will be announced in July.

Aaron Hernandez might not make it back in time for the next Madden, but if you want to play a topical video game (not about a crack-smoking mayor), try Snowden’s Leaks: The Game. It was made by Dutch developers in 72 hours. No, it won’t report your high scores to the NSA.

A Beer With a Clean, Crisp Taste That Says ‘Anomaly: Warzone Earth’

Why would a tower defense “offense” game be the perfect inspiration for a beer? Because “warzone,” spelled exactly that way, in Polish means “brewed.” And the guys behind the Polish-developed Anomaly: Warzone series like to hoist a pint, too. This is Tower Offense Stout—”the very first brand of beer in the world created by game…