New Caps, Old Parks Welcome You Back to The Show

Do sports video games deserve a spoiler alert? If I don’t put one here, I’m sure someone will complain about it. Over the weekend I heard various reports of MLB 13 The Show being sold before it’s supposed to hit shelves next week. Someone got their hands on a copy and have been feeding Operation…

‘You’re not a bad person if you play a shooter’ – Keighley, Crecente and Totilo On The Fear of Violent Video Games

I appeared on this week’s episode of Game Trailers TV with host Geoff Keighley and former Kotaku Editor-in-Chief and current Polygon news boss Brian Crecente. You’re not going to see any of us attacking violent video games, but I think you might enjoy seeing and hearing some level-headed discussion about the topic. Take a look…

The Angry Birds Cartoon is Launching Next Month. Take Cover.

You know what the most recognizable characters in mobile gaming are lacking? Character. Debuting March 16 and 17, Rovio’s Angry Birds Toons series will define Red, Black, Blue, White, Yellow and the pigs by their story arcs instead of their parabolic arcs. Yeah, I’ve been waiting to use that forever. As much as many of…

I Used To Smoke Pot Every Time I Played A Video Game. Here’s Why I Stopped.

I started smoking pot during my junior year of college, after a loud and messy breakup with my first girlfriend that sent me into an absolutely manic rage. It was shortly after she left, bawling, that one of my roommates asked if I wanted to get high. I guess that was his way of trying…

The Wii Mini—aka the “most pointless console upgrade of all time“—goes on sale in Europe next month.

Conan O’Brien Wants to Protect the New Lara Croft (from Throat Impalement)

Conan O’Brien’s breezy “Clueless Gamer” review of Tomb Raider begins and proceeds predictably enough, with the late night host remarking on Lara Croft’s physique and a camera optimized for showing it off. Then he gets to one of the game’s infamous sequences, the spike-filled flume ride, which ends in a cringe-inducing death if you choose…

This Week’s iPhone Charts: Cheating is Charting

The free iPhone word game 4 Pics 1 Word is pretty damn popular. So popular that an app that allows players to cheat in the game debuts this week at number six on the free iPhone game charts. Sheesh. Mobile gaming is a wild and unruly frontier. One week you’re the game that copied that…

You Are Over-Encumbered. Drop Your iPhone.

I don’t own an iPhone anymore. I suddenly wish I did. This case costs $40, but the joke makes it almost totally worth it. iPhone Stats (Skyrim) by SkinnyJoe [Red Bubble] Skyrim [All The World’s A Stage, via Gamefreaks]

Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals is a Lot Worse Than I Remember

Anime and games are intimately tied together in Japan: popular games tend to get anime adaptations and popular anime tend to get game adaptations. Thus, over the years there have been a myriad of game-inspired anime—some good, others borderline unwatchable. I saw my first game-inspired anime right at the dawn of my anime watching career.…

Irrational’s Ken Levine tells IGN that BioShock for the Vita isn’t happening until funding is secured. (via VG247)

Thank AMD for the Best Video Game Hair Ever

Video game hair, generally speaking, looks awful. It really does. But computer giant AMD is changing all that with some fancy new hair tech. Oh yes, hair tech As AMD points out, making realistic hair is really, really hard. You need a bunch of math and calculations to make it happen in a natural and…

How I Fell in Love With JRPGS

Almost as far back as I can remember, I’ve been a gamer. At the age of four, my family got an original Nintendo with the Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and the World Class Track Meet combo game—light gun and power pad included. Until I was in middle school, that Nintendo (and the aging Atari…

Japan’s Coffin Apartments Are Not for Claustrophobes

Tokyo is dense. Packed. And crowded. If you don’t have much money and want to live in places like Shibuya, you could live in a box. Literally. A Japanese news program recently showed off an “extremely cramped share house” (“geki-sema share house” or 激せまシャアハウス in Japanese). There’s a communal toilet and bath for the residents,…

Famous Anime Girls Brawl in This Fan-Made Game

Guardian Heroes is often considered one of the best of the Sega Saturn library. It is an excellent brawler complete with a robust story and branching paths. But you know what it needed? Famous anime heroines. That’s where Guardian Heroines: Final comes in. This fan-made game gathers girls from popular visual novels like Kanon, Tsukihime…

Make a Gummy Snack of Yourself. Because That’s Romantic.

March 14 is a special day in Japan. It’s White Day. On White Day, men are supposed to give chocolates to the women who gave them chocolate on Valentine’s Day. But why give chocolate when you can make a gummy version of yourself? As website Spoon & Tamago points out, Shibuya’s FabCafe is doing a…

Japan’s Advice for the Next Xbox

Japan loves foreign products—Apple, BMW, and even Red Wings shoes are popular here. Yet, there’s the Xbox 360. Gathering dust on store shelves in cities like Tokyo and Osaka. Unloved. People in Japan just don’t care! Poor Xbox. The original Xbox was a failure in Japan. The Xbox 360 was a failure in Japan. Microsoft’s…

Famed manga artist Mari Yamazaki is doing a biographical manga series on Steve Jobs (via ANN).

Delight in How These Photos Totally Look Like Anime and Video Game Characters

Sometimes, people look familiar. You know you’ve seen them before. Maybe they look like a friend from college. Or an animal. Or an electrical appliance. In the West, there are websites such as Totally Looks Like that compare images which… totally look like each other. On web forums, Japan does the same thing, finding images…

Your Crazy Childhood Nerd Arguments Are Now A Card Game

“I’M OPTIMUS PRIME AND I SHOT YOU IN THE FACE”, “WELL I’M A NINJA TURTLE AND I BLOCKED IT THEN KICKED HIII-YAH”, “WELL I USED MY FORCEFIELD TO STOP IT THEN TURNED INTO A TRUCK AND VVRROOMMM DROVE OVER YOUR LEGS”. That’s how I remember most playground lunchbreaks beginning, and ending, when I was a…

The Cold, Mechanical Terror Of A LEGO Robot That Can Draw Things

Inspired by the work of famous 18th-century automata builders Pierre Jacquet-Droz and Henri Maillardet, Italian engineer Daniele Benedettelli built this LEGO robot called LEGONARDO. He is programmed to draw. And he will not stop until you are dead (or stop giving him drawings to draw). It is as impressive as it is unnerving. LEGONARDO [Site,…