This Shenmue Statue Is Ready for Forklift Races

Announced a while back, First4Figures’ excellent statue of Shenmue’s main character looks like it jumped straight out of your old TV and into the real world. The Ryo Hazuki piece comes with a Phoenix Mirror stand and measures 12 inches tall. You can get this tribute to the classic Dreamcast game later this year for…

‘Anyone Who Thinks Games Are Bad For You Is a F—ing Idiot’

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon may be a violent, gleefully-stupid video game, but it also has a Serious Message about violent video games. Here’s a chat between two of the game’s characters, captured above if you want to watch, transcribed below if you don’t want anyone nearby hearing this profane insight: Doctor Elizabeth Darling: Rex,…

A well-argued post over at the r/games subreddit laments the supposed “wasted potential” of Minecraft‘s survival mode. You know, the part with monsters. Agree to disagree or disagree to agree. Or… just read it.

After Vandalism Rampage, Schoolgirls Blame It on a Comic Book

All the chairs and desks were over turned. On the chalk board, the kanji character “shi” (死) or “death” was scrawled. But that wasn’t all. According to reports, police picked up two thirteen year old schoolgirls for the school’s vandalism as well as breaking and entering. On the night of February 4, both of them…

Chinese Restaurant Offers “Wife” Instead of “Wifi”

This restaurant in rural China isn’t bathed in Wifi. According to the above sign, it’s covered in Wife. Online in China, people are apparently amused by the above sign, spotted at a rural restaurant. It reads (via MIC Gadget), “Our Farm Has Been Covered With Wife.” While English isn’t the country’s official lingo, “Wifi” is…

Korean Politicians Want to Regulate Video Games Like Drugs and Alcohol

This week, South Korean politician Shin Eui-jin announced a bill that stipulated alcohol, online games, gambling, and drugs need to be strictly regulated. The reasoning? They are a source of addiction, the legislation argues. Rep. Shin Eui-jin, a member of the conservative Saenuri Party and former medical professor, is backed by fourteen other representatives in…

Report: Nintendo Didn’t Make the Famicom Red Because It Was Cheap

Ever wonder why the Famicom (née Family Computer) was red, gold and white? It was glorious color scheme, but the story goes that cheap plastics were responsible for the console’s iconic hue. That story, says one of the console’s main designers, is wrong. In a recent interview with Weekly Playboy, former Nintendo hardware designer Masayuki…

Tengami, the Japanese papercraft inspired game, is heading to the Wii U, NintendoLife reports.

In Japan, Ice Cream Sushi Exists

That is not wasabi. You are looking at green tea ice cream…sushi. No, really. That’s vinegared sushi rice (aka “sumeshi” or 酢飯), dried seaweed (“nori” or 海苔), and ice cream. The ice cream sushi is served “gunkan maki” (軍艦巻) or “battleship roll sushi” style. This week on Twitter via Byoukan Sunday, photos of ice cream…

Defense of the DotA Cosplay

It’s Wednesday. And Wednesday is as good a time as any for some DotA cosplay. Who doesn’t like DotA and Dota 2 cosplay? DotA or Defense of the Ancients was originally a multiplayer mod for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion. Subsequently, other modders added more content to DotA, creating a thriving and…

Hand-Drawn Wreck-It Ralph Test

Disney animator Eric Goldberg shows off a traditional animation test for Wreck-It Ralph that never made it in the film, reports Bleeding Cool. The character is King Candy, who did make it into the final film, of course, but in CG form. In case you missed it, here is Kotaku‘s review of Wreck-It Ralph. Eric…

BioShock Infinite: The Dreamworks Cartoon

The other day we saw what BioShock Infinite might look like as an anime. Today, let’s look at a similar treatment, albeit one that’s a bit more Western. Argentinian artist Feli Tomkinson has done these incredible mock-up posters for an animated BioShock Infinite movie, with a very Dreamworks style, and the more I look at…

Space Shooter Uses Kickstarter As Appetiser, Stuffs Face Via Website

Kickstarter has proven to be a boon for independent game development, especially if you’re an industry veteran making games publishers don’t want to bankroll anymore. Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts certainly falls into that category, with his Star Citizen game making over $2 million during its Kickstarter campaign. Which might sound like a lot of…

A Hollywood Director Has Ideas On How To Make Better Video Games

James McTeigue must be an interesting man to talk video games with, seeing as he’s had experience both directing movies (V For Vendetta) and working in the games business. So it’s nice reading this interview with him on GI.biz, where amongst talk of video game movies and video games based on movies, he offers a…

Humans Create Program That Builds Its Own Super Mario Bros. Levels

Manuel Kerssemakers, Jeppe Tuxen, Julian Togelius and Georgios Yannakakis have done something cool. They’ve created a computer program that does Nintendo’s job. Sort of. For their 2012 paper called A procedural procedural level generator generator, blogged today by Gamasutra, they built a system that’s able to randomly generate level generators that generate their own levels…

Amazing Mech Designs Hint At The Future Of Warfare (And Dogs)

Vitaly Bulgarov works at Blizzard, on the company’s world-renowned cinematics team. But we’re not here today to look at art for Blizzard games, or indeed for their fancy trailers and cutscenes. Instead, we’re looking at an amazing collection Bulgarov recently put together called the “Black Phoenix Project”. Teaming up with photographer Maria Skotnikova, the challenge…

Dragon’s Dogma Update Corrupting Files, Preventing Saves

Following complaints from users, a Capcom rep has issued a statement on the company’s forums urging people to backup their save data before downloading an update for RPG Dragon’s Dogma. Seems people have run into issues where, after downloading the update, they’ve found their save files corrupted, with the game unable to save (or load)…

Wii Owners, Nintendo REALLY Wants You To Buy A Wii U, OK?

Readers are letting us know that Nintendo has this evening taken the very direct step of sending out messages to Wii owners. Not to tell them that their system is being updated. To tell them their system is now out of date. Continuing a recent exercise in the company finally realising “holy shit we really…

A Mod That Tries To Save Duke Nukem

Poor Duke. Once an A-list star of the FPS world, his long absence during the hellish development of Duke Nukem Forever – andthe even more hellish end result of that – has tarnished his name. As regretful as his latest title was, though, there are many who still harbour a soft spot for the man…

Now Everyone Can Make Out With Assassin’s Creed III’s Connor

Action figures? Little desktop statues? Those are for coward collectors. Those who really want to make a statement – and scare off home intruders (particularly British ones) – spend over $3000 on a giant statue of Assassin’s Creed III’s Connor Kenway. Standing nearly seven feet tall, he’s available for preorder from French (I guess that…