Awww, how sweet! Wet Productions has set Virtual Girlfriend and Virtual Boyfriend for iOS free for Valentine’s Day.

New Nintendo Direct coming your way at 9am Eastern. Watch it live here, or check Kotaku for news as it happens.

An Actual Urban Planner Takes On The Original SimCity

In this guest editorial, John Reinhardt, a member of IBM’s City Forward team, compares the actual job of urban planning with that found in the Super Nintendo version of SimCity There’s an urban legend that my mentor once told me: “There are two piles when you apply to a top urban planning school. If you…

Star Driver: The Movie Sucks You In and Leaves You Wanting More

Star Driver: Takuto of The Radiance is a 25-episode anime series that aired from 2010 to 2011. The show aired early evenings on Sunday, which allowed for a bigger budget and overall higher quality animation, but the show suffered from the fact that while it was geared more towards a young adult audience, it aired…

A Japanese tech journalist tweeted that his Sony email for the Feb. 20 event said “PS4 Meeting.”

This Week’s Pokémon Was Unexpectedly Sexy

Tonight, like every Thursday night in Japan, the Pokémon anime was broadcast across the country. This week, however, there was apparently some (accidental?) sexy time captured in this GIF and uploaded to 2ch for internet infamy. Gotta screw ’em all! 今週のポケモンエロすぎｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗ [2ch] Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest…

Kirby‘s Creator Isn’t Thrilled with Video Game Storytelling

“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…

An Elderly Woman Thrashing Dragon Quest X on Japanese TV

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.

It Felt Cheap at First, But Demon Gaze Is a Solid Vita RPG

“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,…

The Batmobile, Totally Geeked Out

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…

Aliens: This Time It’s an Amazing Ice Sculpture

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…

A Superhero Movie Unlike Anything You’ve Ever Seen

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…

This Child’s X-Men Valentine Is Just the Most Adorable Thing

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]

Resident Evil: Revelations: Now Console-Sized

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…

Get A Load Of Remember Me‘s Futuristic Paris

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…

Vergil Slices It His Way In DmC‘s First Downloadable Add-On

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…

You Can Now Buy Ryu’s Head. If You Want.

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…

You’ll Kill Giants For This Skyrim Shield + Coffee Table Combo

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…

Sadly, This Is As Close We’ll Ever Get To A Video Game Based On A 1982 Corolla

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…