Japanese Gamers’ Worst Game of 2012 Is…

I think it’s safe to assume that popular opinion rankings are viewed by most people as just that: Popular opinions, not holy writ carved into stone. That’s partly why I enjoy when people reflect on the year past and rank their favorite and least favorite entertainment. While the West has Metacritic for its game rankings,…

This Restaurant Is a Nerd Paradise

Toys. Figures. Statues. For the past ten years, designer Woong Cho has collected memorabilia. And he decided he wanted to share his passion with the world. So, Cho created a restaurant with an amazing museum. It’s dubbed “CW Restaurant”, which is short for “Cinema World”, and is in Daegu, South Korea. The chic eatery is…

Flashback Re-Release Trailer Sees Conrad Jumping to Modern Consoles

Ubisoft has revealed a trailer for a “re-imagining” of the 1992 cinematic platformer, Flashback. The game is coming “soon,” according to the trailer itself, to PS3 and Xbox 360.

Street Fighter‘s Greatest Fight Visualized

You’ve seen it. You know it. You love it. The Daigo Umehara versus Justin Wong Street Fighter III: Third Match is the stuff of fighting game lore. And now, you can see it again. Visualized. The image below has the iconic match’s move input and damage output in visual data form. It’s fascinating stuff and…

These Superhero Suits Cost US$200,000

Famed Japanese anime Science Ninja Team Gatchaman is coming to the big screen. And it’s bringing new Gatchaman suits with it. Those G-suits don’t come cheap! According to Japanese site Sanspo, the suits took one year to make, from concept to final outfit. The filmmakers needed costumes that not only looked good, but also that…

The Most Obsessive Vending Machine Blog I’ve Ever Seen

You know those people who take pictures of themselves everyday? Now imagine that, but with a Japanese vending machine. Since August 5, 2005, Japanese site I take a picture of the vending machine every day (or so). I’m very sorry. has uploaded well over two thousand photos of the same Coca-Cola vending machine. Photos go…

Bravely Default‘s Surprising Japanese Idol Influences

For several weeks after its release, every game store I went to was sold out of Square Enix’s 3DS game, Bravely Default: Flying Fairy. The game has proved to be a hit in Japan, thanks in part, indirectly, according to producer Tomoya Asano, to Japan’s biggest pop idol group, AKB48. According to Asano, in an…

The Rebel Alliance’s Secret Weapon Is This Giant Space Kraken

You can’t go wrong with space kraken. I’ve only ever seen two in my lifetime. One was the steed of Mon*Star, the most badass 80s cartoon villain of them all. The other is this one, made out of LEGO by builder Iain Heath, that would make people whimper “that’s no moon….it’s a space-faring giant squid”.…

Your Chance To See A Portal Gun Show

Synthetic Picturehaus, who floored us last year with their Portal short film Lab Ratt, are back with another instalment in the adventures of Doug “Ratman” Ratmann, a cult figure in the Portal universe. Aperture: Shadows [YouTube]

EA Didn’t Force Things Onto BioWare Games, Says Co-Founder

Given the publisher’s track record in buying studios then seeing them fail, there’s an understandable assumption that it’s always EA’s fault when a formerly successful studio falls on hard times. And hey, in many cases, maybe it is. But in the case of BioWare, the RPG powerhouse bought by EA in 2007 and which has…

The Oculus Rift Might Be The Future Of Video Games. Here’s What Its Insides Look Like.

Against all the odds, the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset could emerge in the coming months to be the most exciting new peripheral in video games. And that’s even when you get bad flashbacks to the early 90s and VR’s prior failings. Those curious to see just what makes the headgear tick, well, here you…

The Very Best Art From The Mass Effect Series

Regular readers of my concept art feature here on Kotaku would know that, yeah, over the years I’ve shown my fair share of work from the Mass Effect trilogy. The guys at BioWare (and, in some cases, beyond) did amazing work building the series, and that began at the ground level, with the design of…

Tiny Team Fortress Guns Mean Certain Death For This Pepsi Can

They say good things come in small packages, but that’s assuming this amazing little Team Fortress 2 sentry gun even comes in a package. It’s a custom job, so it may just come bubble-wrapped! Either way, it’s the work of the supremely-talented Psychobob, a whiz with the 3D printer whose work we’ve featured here before…

The Most Ridiculously Over-Sized Screenshot I Have Ever Seen

Here’s how a screenshot normally gets from a publisher to a website like this. They’re either hosted on a press site or sent via email. Sometimes, if a company is crazy/lazy, they’ll only send the versions that print magazines can use, meaning we’ve got a little resizing to do to get it to a size…

I’m Sorry, Miranda, My Shepard Just Doesn’t Love You Anymore

Mass Effect is about a lot of things. Shooting. Flying. Driving. Talking. Space magic. It’s also a series about relationships. Life, love, loss and all the wonderful – and terrible – emotions that go along with them. I love romance in video games. It fascinates me. Developers are able to implement the acts of shooting,…

Rayman’s Wii U Delay Might Have Been Worth It After All

When Rayman Legends’ Wii U release was delayed by months so 360 and PS3 editions could be put together, owners of Nintendo’s console were pissed. Maybe this will ease the pain. In an interview with Britain’s Official Nintendo Magazine, Ubisoft’s Senior Game Manager Michael Micholic, said “Trust me, the things we are adding aren’t minor.…

What are the 100 greatest TV episodes of all time? Funny you should ask! IMDB users have ranked them according to their own hive-mind preference, and Pajiba has pulled out the list of the top 25, along with some helpful gifs and images. While my own top 25 is pretty different, a lot of these…

The Countless Characters of Mass Effect

The Mass Effect franchise has introduced a huge amount of characters; an incredibly diverse cast of aliens, humans and synthetics who served to make our adventure in the Mass Effect universe memorable, who made us laugh, made us cry, who amazed us, scared us and sometimes even made us think. So let’s talk about them!…

Mass Effect’s Hilarious, Unintended Subtitles

This article was originally published on June 6, 2012. We’re bumping it up for Mass Effect week Like almost every other game, Mass Effect 3 has official subtitles. But that’s not what we’re looking at today. No, what you’re about to see is what happens when people record themselves playing Mass Effect 3, upload videos…

Have you ever considered the political situation in the Mario universe? Over at the Slate Quora blogs, Domhnall O’Huigin dives into the question, concluding that the universe is in a “ever-ending condition of war within and war without, fraught and constantly changing as one faction or another vies for control.” Yeah, it’s intense.Read the rest…