• Kotaku East

  Here’s Some Shin Megami Tensei IV News To Whet Your Appetite While We Wait For A Release Date

  Shin Megami Tensei IV, the latest new game in the Shin Megami Tensei series is headed for the 3DS next year, and developer Atlus has released some new information on the game. As can be seen in the trailer that was released last month, the game characters are from a middle-ages sort of world and…

  By Toshi Nakamura Published November 15, 2012
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  Here’s How Metal Gear 2 Predicted the Future

  Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake was released way back in 1990. Yet, the game was set in the late 1990s, when a major oil crisis impacted the world economy. Okay, that’s fiction. But one element of the game’s plot—namely a fuel producing algae that’s an alternative energy source—is not. This week in the San Francisco…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published November 15, 2012
• Kotaku East

  Screw Homework! There’s One Piece To Draw.

  These Japanese kids covered their school’s chalkboard with this truly epic One Piece art. It took these three students about a week, drawing each day after class to complete the work. And hot damn, was it ever worth it. The drawing is from the last chapter of the One Piece manga arc* “Vivi’s Adventure”, in…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published November 15, 2012
• Kotaku East

  Nintendo Shows Off its Latest Club Nintendo Goodies for Japan

  Today, Nintendo unveiled its latest collection of Club Nintendo goodies for Platinum Members in The Land of the Rising Sun. There’s a Pikmin bag, “Premium Mario Playing Cards”, a calendar, and a DSi game called Nintendoji. A Club Nintendo Exclusive, this downloadable game is a dungeon-based role-playing game with card elements. My favorite thing about…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published November 15, 2012
• Kotaku East

  If Cats Watched Porn, I Guess They’d Watch This

  Cats and porn. These are two of the biggest juggernauts on the internet. And a Japanese company called Soft On Nyanko has figured out how to bring them together, like never before. The Soft On Nyanko movies feature an array of cats, doing all kinds of things, like playing with cat toys, stretching, sitting in…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published November 15, 2012
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  Yup, the Secret Nintendo Song is in the New Animal Crossing

  Kazumi Totaka, a sound designer and musician at Nintendo, is responsible for one of the sweetest traditions the company has in its arsenal: Totaka’s Song, a ditty he first composed in 1992 and which has featured in every game he’s worked on since While the song has appeared in many games, it’s perhaps best-known for…

  By Luke Plunkett Published November 15, 2012
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  Bring me the Head of Mass Effect’s Mordin Solus

  My Mordin died a rather pathetic, and entirely unintentional death at the end of Mass Effect 2. Seeing as a little plaque on the Normandy is hardly a fitting tribute to a “man” of so many talents, I might look into this bust for a memorial instead. Priced at $40 and being sold from BioWare’s…

  By Luke Plunkett Published November 15, 2012
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  The Furious Scribblings of a Games Writer, Mid-Review

  Apologies for getting a little inside baseball here, but I figured it was worth it. Games writer Taylor Cocke has started up a site called Fuck This Stupid Game, where notes taken while reviewing (or previewing) video games are displayed in blessed isolation. I’m sharing them here because I feel his pain. I’ll never say…

  By Luke Plunkett Published November 15, 2012
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  Report: GameStop’s Black Friday Xbox 360 Bundle Seems Too Good to be True

  There will be Black Friday specials everywhere, but for many of you, GameStop’s will likely be the most important. So here, courtesy of discount specialists CheapAssGamer, are what’s reported to be the specialist retailer’s deals. The standout deal is obviously the pair of home console bundles offered on Friday, in particular a 250GB Xbox 360…

  By Luke Plunkett Published November 15, 2012
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  Fan Makes His Own Stylish Grand Theft Auto V Trailer

  Rockstar sure knows how to make a good clip—loads of gameplay footage sure helps—but for those after something a little more stylish, check out Russian artist Ilya V. Boykov’s custom trailer for Grand Theft Auto V Slicing together and animating GTAV’s official artwork, it doesn’t do the greatest job of selling the actual game, but…

  By Luke Plunkett Published November 15, 2012
• Culture

  The Haunting, Beautiful Art of Peter La

  Canadian Peter La is a former user interface specialist who’s recently shifted over to concept art. He’s done work for mobile games like Sushi Smash and the gorgeous puzzle game Nuculus, but really, saying he’s just a casual games artist is really selling his talents short. Those more ethereal sci-fi pieces below are some of…

  By Luke Plunkett Published November 15, 2012
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  Spin the Bottle for the Wii U Makes You Get Close. Sexy Close.

  Now this looks neat. Spin the Bottle is a Wii U title from KnapNok Games and Redgrim that looks like the perfect way to show the new system off to friends… if you’re at a party and have had a couple of drinks. It’s a multiplayer game designed to be played with the TV off.…

  By Luke Plunkett Published November 15, 2012
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  Get Inside the Nintendo 3DS XL

  The New York Times has a great little piece up breaking apart the Nintendo 3DS XL and showing how it—and its 3D technology—work. A Look Inside the Nintendo 3DS XL [New York Times]

  By Luke Plunkett Published November 15, 2012
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  Metal Gear’s Stealth is Creepy, Annoying in the Real World

  It’s entirely acceptable behaviour in desolate military installations and remote jungles, but busting out Snake’s repertoire of stealth moves in public places is a little less advisable. Metal Gear Solid in Real Life (Public Trolling) FINAL CUT [YouTube]

  By Luke Plunkett Published November 15, 2012
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  User Uncovers Dodgy Russian Trading Scheme… in Team Fortress 2

  Steamrep forum user base64, having noticed a strange spike in transactions for a rare in-game item, decided to do a little private investigating. And uncovered some very strange happenings. Picking up on a weird increase in trades for “earbuds”, a rare item in the game, his investigations led him to discover a closed Steam group…

  By Luke Plunkett Published November 14, 2012
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  Rumor: 2013’s Call of Duty is Another Modern Warfare Game

  According to a report on Siliconera, next year’s Call of Duty game will take place in the same universe as Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare titles. The site’s source, related to the game’s voice acting, is the same one who accurately leaked a ton of Sleeping Dogs info over a year before that game’s release, so…

  By Luke Plunkett Published November 14, 2012
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  Kixeye Thinks Zynga is After Its Trade Secrets, Files Cross-Complaint Against Social Gaming’s Minivan

  Look at that face. It’s the face of Kixeye chairman and CEO Will Harbin. That is a face that means business. Now imagine it saying “Claiming that (Zynga’s) failed business practices could inform ours further establishes their complete lack of understanding of the gaming business.” And then he orders their execution. Last month Zynga filed…

  By Mike Fahey Published November 14, 2012
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  Behold The Cosmic, Comic Beauty Of The World

  I don’t quite know how to describe this alternately beautiful, sad, funny, stupid, and transcendant video, so I’ll just leave it here. Its author, Travis Green, prefaces it on Reddit thusly: “I made this after smoking 3.5 marijuanas. Don’t do drugs.” Yeah, pretty much. Go ahead and give it a watch, if you’re in the…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published November 14, 2012
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  Unsuccessful Nintendo Counterfeiter Gets Almost Three Years in the Slammer

  A counterfeiter who made about £600,000 selling cartridges and discs loaded with pirated Nintendo games will do at least a year of hard time in the U.K. after being sentenced last Friday. Justin Success-Brooks—turns out Success is not his middle name, just part of his hyphenated last name—got a 28-month prison sentence that will likely…

  By Owen Good Published November 14, 2012
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  ArenaNet Adds ‘Ascended Gear’ To Guild Wars 2, Upset Players Grab Their Pitchforks

  Oh, you like that Exotic weapon you’ve got? Yeah, but is it Ascended? That’s the name of the newest sort of gear in Guild Wars 2, another addition to extend the MMO’s endgame and give hardcore players more to do in the already gigantic game. In a new post at the ArenaNet website, ArenaNet’s Linsey…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published November 14, 2012