From “Penis” to “Horse Salmon”, Foreign Names Can Be Funny in Japanese

You might think your name is normal in your family’s native tongue. Maybe it is. But put it in a different language, and sometimes, all hell can break loose. In Japanese, foreign words and names are written in a writing system called katakana. Unlike most Japanese names, which use kanji characters that have intrinsic meanings,…

Hong Kong Residents Supposedly Can’t Live Without Their Phones

Many people have called the dawn of the smartphone the death of manners and conversation. Some people are often too busy checking their phones to mind their manners. While it’s not really a huge deal, Hong Kong’s Ta Kung Newspaper says otherwise. Ta Kung Pao, a Beijing backed Hong Kong based newspaper, put out a…

Hey Children, Here’s a $20,000 Mecha Just for You!

The mecha wizards at Japan’s Sakakibara Machinery Works are back. Previously, the factory rolled out the Landwalker, a large mecha you could buy. And now? It has a newly revamped mecha for little kids. How sweet. As pointed out by sister site Gizmodo Japan, the Kid’s Walker Cyclops has a claw to grab things and…

Larian Studios teamed up with Let’s Play purveyor quill18 to produce this hour-long walkthrough of Kickstarter-funded RPG Divinity: Original Sin’s pre-alpha. Looks a lot more like a sequel than the actual sequel—a bit like Neverwinter Nights 2 and the original Divinity had a baby. [Thanks, DSOGaming.]

This JRPG Team Is Niche, Even for Japan

Screw the West! This new role-playing brand certainly does not explicitly say that, but you have to admire a tagline that says it’s aiming at a specific type of player in Japan. A niche within niche! The tagline, which you can see in the above image, reads, “An RPG made for ‘Japan’s particular customers.'” Compile…

Famed Japanese Anime Leads to Ridiculous Hamburger

To mark Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo‘s Blu-ray and DVD launch, burger chain Lotteria is unleashing a jumbo hamburger in Japan. It’s called the “Q-Story Cheese Burger”, because, in part, the movie’s Japanese title is Evangelion Shin Gekijouban: Q. It’s also wordplay: The burger has nine patties, and the Japanese word for nine is…

If BioShock’s Rapture Was An Extreme Tourism Destination…

French artist Laure-Marie Torre has come up with just about the best BioShock-related idea I’ve ever seen. She’s imagined that Rapture still exists, but that alongside the crazies, there are still regular folks down there alive as well. Instead of fighting over the place and killing everybody, she figured, wouldn’t they instead just want to…

Batman Is Teaching The US Army Safety (Hilariously)

Somehow, the US Army is getting away with these official, amazing training videos for personnel serving on active duty in Afghanistan. Bagram Batman is ever vigilant for violations of protocol, and when he sees somebody screwing around, he is a man with little time for excuses. Bagram Batman Educates Soldiers in Series of U.S. Army…

The Works Of NCSoft Artist Park Jong Won

Park Jong Won is a Korean concept artist who currently works for NCSoft, the MMO giant behind games like Lineage, Aion and Guild Wars. The art you’ll see below are my favourite pieces from his portfolio, because to me, they’re the covers to books I’ve never read, but if I saw them staring back at…

Nintendo’s Wii U Advertising Reaches For The Panic Button

These are so terrible I’d tell you not to watch them, but screw it, if I had to, you have to as well. If time travel is invented anytime soon, giving us the chance to atone for past mistakes, I like to think the first person in line will be the man who signed off…

Screw Maps, Let’s Play An RTS Across An Entire Planet

Because it’s being made by guys who made Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation, you expect a sense of scale from upcoming RTS Planetary Annihilation. And that’s exactly what we’re getting here in this very first look at gameplay from the Kickstarter success story. Who needs levels or maps when you can get an entire planet…

Here’s Skyrim Running On The Oculus Rift VR Headset

Reader Chris has one of the early development releases of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. He has done what the people want, and recorded himself playing Skyrim on the thing. I’m trying to think of a better way to spend a rainy day, and I’m finding it hard. Skyrim on Oculus Rift [YouTube]

World of Tanks Has Been Hacked, Hide Yo’ Wife, Hide Yo’ Passwords

User accounts for World of Tanks, one of the biggest games in the world, have been comprised following what the game’s publisher calls a “security incident”. While stating “no financial information was accessed“, operators Wargaming does say “some password hashes and email addresses may have been affected by the compromise”, and as a result is…

The remixed Fez soundtrack is now out. Get it here. At $5, you’d be crazy not to, especially since it features tracks by the composers behind games like Minecraft, Mirror’s Edge and…Fez.

A Terrific Week In Cosplay Pays Tribute To Games Both Old And New

‘Twas a strange week in cosplay. We’ve got your expected tributes, yeah, like Mass Effect. But I can’t say I’ve ever seen someone from the West dress up as a character from Zangeki no Reginleiv, a Wii RPG that was never released outside of Japan. Also featuring this week is some Watch Dogs cosplay, always…

What Final Fantasy VII Would Look Like If It Was Made In France.

TBT: The Black Tower is an unashamed tribute to the late-1990s, when Final Fantasy games weren’t afraid to toss polygonal characters on static backgrounds and your text backgrounds were a very rich blue Imagine Final Fantasy VII, then – or, on second look, maybe Final Fantasy VIII – made for the PC and developed in…

Someone Now Owns Homeworld. But Who?

Last week, the rights to Homeworld, a beloved old RTS series by Relic, went under the hammer as part of an auction following the closure of former publisher THQ. A winner was found. They now have the opportunity to create new entries in a series that’s lain dormant for a decade. It’s just…we don’t know…

The Circle Pad Pro, the second analog gamepad making Monster Hunter 3 and other titles more accessible on the 3DS, is now shipping in a 3DS XL configuration. But Nintendo has no plans to offer it at retail

NCAA 14 Brings Back the Halftime Show—Yes, They Know NFL 2K5 Had It

Last year, in a visit to Electronic Arts Tiburon, the NCAA Football development staff told me about plans to introduce more lifelike broadcast presentation to the game. It was going to be a tiered thing all along. NCAA 13 got the studio cut-ins, where ESPN’s Rece Davis—in voice only—updated you on scores from around the…

Still Traveling the Road to the Show, Even After Flunking Out of It

Ten years ago I was demoted in my job at the now-dead Rocky Mountain News. The subject is not something I talk about much, but it happened, and I worked with plenty of people who knew the score. The situation wasn’t handled well, by either me or my bosses. Ultimately, it ended my newspaper career.…