“As a long time gamer, I often find the stories told by games to be bothersome.” Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai writes in his Weekly Famitsu column. Indeed, many games seem to take their time laying out the beginning of their stories, showing long (and sometimes unskippable) cutscenes, or limiting what actions the protagonist can take…
It’s not everyday you see senior citizens talking role-playing games. It’s not everyday you see them thrashing one of them on Japanese television. In primetime. Famed Japanese actress Keiko Awaji, with credits in movies like Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, is a huge Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy fan. Did I say “huge”? I meant HUGE.…
Here are twenty reasons why Japanese people are glad they were born in Japan.
“What the hell is Demon Gaze?” was my first response when I heard about this new game for the PS Vita from Kadokawa Games. The game was released on January 24th in Japan under the genre of “dungeon RPG,” and almost immediately sold like crazy. Well… relatively crazy. It is a Vita game after all,…
Hong Kong toy company Hot Toys recently held an “itasha” competition to see who could cover its Batmobile/Tumbler model in nerd cool the best in hopes of winning Batman figurines. In Japanese, the slang “itasha” (痛車) literally means “painmobile”. These sticker-covered cars have become a way for Japanese geeks to show their nerd pride while…
Fish and animals are typical ice sculpture fodder. This isn’t your typical ice sculpture. It isn’t that at all. According to Obvious Winner, Japanese ice artist Koji Kareki and Ottawa’s Kei Sakugawa carved this Queen from Aliens for the annual Winterlude winter festival in Canada. Very impressive! If you dig their work (and really, why…
Bare man ass. Panty mask. Spinning crotch attacks. WTF? The newly released trailer for HK is really unlike any other superhero movie you’ll ever see. Scratch that, it’s like anything you’ll see. Ever. First teased this past fall, HK is short for Hentai Kamen (“Masked Pervert”), a parody manga featuring a sexed up superhero, who…
Happy Valentine’s Day, Kotaku! May you have a lovely, romantic, and very red February 14. FranklyMyDearest at Reddit uploaded this cute Cyclops drawing. Wish I could have gotten a valentine like this… [FranklyMyDearest@Reddit]
I really liked the 3DS game Resident Evil: Revelations. So did Stephen. So it was cool to hear that it’d be coming to consoles and PC so that people could play the game—which really does feel like a “proper” console Resident Evil game—on their TVs. At the Capcom press event on Tuesday, I played a…
After yesterday’s preview event, Capcom sent along some cool new concept- and landmark-art from their upcoming adventure game Remember Me. I was impressed by my time playing the game, but I didn’t have time to include all the art, so I thought I’d toss it up here. Take a gander, and check out some of…
While at Tuesday’s Capcom press event in San Francisco, I got to take a brief look at Vergil’s Downfall, the first story-based downloadable content for DmC: Devil May Cry. Capcom producer Alex Jones told me that the full DLC, which will be out at the end of February, will last 3-4 hours, and will pick…
This is a 1:1 scale bust from Pop Culture Shock collectibles. For those who always wanted to see how the size of their head matched up with that of Ryu’s. If the size and design aren’t creepy enough, the eyeballs can be moved, so that he is always watching No word on price or release…
Prop master Harrison Krix has outdone himself this time. What begins as a replica Skyrim shield—and an impressive one at that—soon evolves into something a lot more practical. Built originally for a convention, the shield— which we’ve briefly seen before—soon became a problem when it couldn’t easily be stored. Rather than bin it, or sell…
This great little video was made last year for Toyota Canada, and tells the story of Tim’s 1982 Corolla. I love it, not just because it’s close to home (my first car was an ’83 Corona), but because they really went to town with the pixel art. TOYOTA / TO THE MOON [Toyota, via it…
You’d think with all the vintage rock and classic films and iconic imagery that Vietnam would be the easiest war to if not make a decent video game out of, then at least capture the essence of the conflict. But nope. We’ve had the God-awful pastiche that was Black Ops’ attempt. Battlefield tried, but Vietnam…
Anthony Eftekhari works at Blizzard as a digital matte painter, environment designer and concept artist. You probably saw some of his most recent work in the amazing Heart of the Swarm trailer for StarCraft II In this gallery you’ll see his work for that trailer, as well as similar pieces (most of them matte paintings)…
As you’ve seen in our regular Miiverse Moments feature, Nintendo’s online community is a place where people don’t just chat, but doodle. Like their lives depended on it. I’ve seen some good sketches over the weeks turning up on various game pages, but nothing like this epic Zelda image, which spans four panels and has…
I know it has flaws. Some of them completely alienating for most people. But damn it, I don’t care. The Yakuza series is just about my favourite thing on the PS3. They just do so many things that other games aren’t doing. They are (sorry Sleeping Dogs) the single best way to indulge in virtual…
Avalanche, the Swedish team behind the Just Cause series, are currently working on three games. Two are licensed properties, while the other, code-named “Project Mamba”, is likely to be a new Just Cause game Especially when you look at this blurry screenshot posted by studio founder Christofer Sundberg. While the outfit and setting could be…
Love is complicated enough on its own, but the internet tends to make it even trickier. It can be hard to tell when someone is tweeting @ you out of kindness and friendship, or our of an interest in something more. It’s true of people, and it’s true of video games. Writer/romantic/roustabout (and erstwhile Kotaku…
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