Rest Easy, America. Your Twinkies Have Returned

As promised last month, the relaunched Hostess Brands has brought Twinkies, Cup Cakes and other magical snacks back to America’s store shelves after disappearing last November. I have sampled one of each of these, and the only difference is the sweet taste of relief and an incredibly unnatural freshness. Our national nightmare is over.

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Let’s Make a Deal: The Winners

Who knew at the time, really? The business was so new, the fame so fleeting, no one could possible anticipate that Don Mattrick (above, right) would go from teenage video game whiz kid to, someday, the subject of the Kotaku ‘Shop Contest. At last that honor has arrived, courtesy of overall winner arniejolt! To recap,…

The PlayStation 4 will be hands-on for the public for the first time this coming week at Comic-Con 2013. Good, those lines shouldn’t be soul-crushingly long or anything. If you’re lucky enough to play the thing, Drive Club, Knack and Octodad: Dadliest Catch will be the demo titles.

Street Fighter IV Getting Five More Characters, One Never Seen Before

From EVO 2013 comes news that Street Fighter IV‘s next update will deliver four new characters—and a fifth never before seen in the series. Rolento, Elena, Hugo and Poison will join the roster, plus an unnanounced fifth fighter. The characters, plus six stages and the usual complement of adjustments and balances, will come to PS3,…

Sony Won’t Appeal Fine Related to 2011 PSN Hack

Sony has abandoned its appeal of the fine assessed by the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office for negligence in the infamous 2011 breach of users’ information that brought down all of PlayStation Network for more than a month. In January, the ICO assessed Sony a £250,000 penalty which … subtract 32 … multiply by 5 ……

What in God’s Name is Tekken Revolution Doing With Its Roster?

Tekken 3, way back in 1997, had plans to include a new animal character in the fighter roster—a salmon. It was quickly judged too ridiculous to justify a $1-per-play cost in an arcade. Well, Tekken Revolution is taking suggestions for new characters, and the fish is one of them. And the others are even weirder.…

Moneysaver: Steam Summer Sale Day 3 Breakdown [Updated Sunday 9:45am]

Steaming pile of deals. Steam Sale Day One | Steam Sale Day Two | Current Moneysaver | GTAV PS3 Bundle • Update 2 Tomb Raider ($12.50) | Amazon has Tomb Raider for $10.60, but is currently sold out of keys All of the current community vote options have been cheaper or cheaper in bundles. I…

Sex Bet on Wii Game Ends With Mountie Shooting His Wife

You can’t write headlines much weirder than that, but it is not in dispute that Keith Wiens, a retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, shot and killed his common-law wife after she demanded that he pay up—in foreplay, evidently—for losing to her in a Wii game. Wiens told a jury in British Columbia that he…

Moneysaver One-Shot: Grand Theft Auto V Playstation 3 Bundle

Cheap Los Santos real estate. Get $30 off the Grand Theft Auto V Playstation 3 Bundle by pre-ordering on Amazon. This is a 500GB latest-generation PS3, and this package also includes a free month of Playstation Plus. You were probably going to buy GTAV anyway, so what you’re really looking at here is a 500GB…

Pro Video Gamers are Athletes, Says U.S. Government

Pro gamers may now travel to the United States on the same visas given to professional athletes, thanks to a long lobbying effort by Riot Games, the makers of the eSports staple League of Legends. Riot told GameSpot about the effort in a video interview published yesterday. “It was a lengthy process,” said Nick Allen,…

This Week in the Business:‘The Wii U Feels Like an Offline Experience’

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week … QUOTE | “The Wii U feels like an offline experience right now.”—Peter Moore, COO of Electronic Arts, talking about why the publisher isn’t working on Wii U titles QUOTE | “We’re always so tongue-in-cheek and irreverent about it, that I think people get…

The Best of Kotaku, The Week of July 8th

Oh, hello weekend. How I’ve longed for you. If you’re just catching up on some gaming news and Kotaku articles, you can see my round-up of the highlights over at Kotaku Selects. This week included GTA V new trailer day, as well as Ash’s amazing photoshop post, so there’s definitely some fun stuff in there…

Twenty Things You Might Not Know About The PS4

If you’ve been good about keeping up with all the latest information about the PS4, the stuff in this video by PlayStationAccess might not be a surprise to you. I found a couple of things that were new to me, though—like did you know that the touchpad on the DualShock is also a pressable button?…

What Do You Think About The Newest Season of Dexter So Far?

This is it, people: the final season of Dexter, the show about a serial killer that kills serial killers (and sometimes other people, too). How are you liking the latest season? It’s been nerve-wracking for me—there’s so much in the air for Dexter. Deb hates him—that one scene where she says that he’s the one…

The Greatest Week In Gaming Apps Ever This Week

Remember the other week, when I promised a brand new Week in Gaming Apps that would change everything forever. Forget that. I was contact drunk. Let’s get back to the tried-and-true format of yesterweeks, just in time for some of the greatest games ever. Seriously. Hidden within this week’s apps are some of the finest…

Pacific Rim Game Needs Less Number Crunching, More Kaiju Crunching

Following on the heels of the not-so-great iPhone game, Pacific Rim: The Video Game is out today on Xbox Live Arcade. I have to be honest with you, I hope the movie is more exciting. Watch the video above to see the Jaegers and the Kaiju go at it. Slowly. You can pick up Pacific…

The Screwed-Up Logic Of Participating In A Steam Sale

Come Steam sale time, all logic goes out the window. You’ll buy games even though you already have droves of unplayed games. And, you’ll look at games on sale way differently than when they’re priced normally—Dorkly illustrates how that is perfectly in this comic: Normal Reactions vs. Reactions During the Steam Sale [Dorkly]

Not only is this NPR interview with The Last of Us composer Gustavo Santaolalla interesting and informative, right off the bat NPR’s Emily Reese demonstrates how to pronounce “Santaolalla.” Listen in to learn all about the strange stringed instruments and uncommon orchestrations he used to make one of the best, most distinctive video game soundtracks…

Microsoft Might Bring Back Cut Xbox One Features That People Liked

When Microsoft pulled their Xbox One DRM-reversal, lots of people were happy. Others, not so much, and with fair cause: Microsoft didn’t just remove the console’s onerous internet and used game requirements, they removed some cool-sounding features people that were looking forward to. In a new interview at IGN, Microsoft’s Marc Whitten says that the…

Do you have a Konami ID account? Change your password! They’ve been hacked