Compete In A Halo 4 Tournament For One Of 2,800 Prizes During Spartan Ops’ Mid-Season Break

Today 343 Industries announced a partnership with Virgin Gaming to host their Halo 4 Infinity Challenge, a free-to-enter tournament in lieue of Spartan Ops updates during the almost month-long mid-season break. You can register online for a shot at one of 2,800 prizes, including the grand prize of a 343-designed Ford Raptor truck modeled to…

For the Honor of Grayskull, She-Ra Has the Power, Not That She Deserves It

How does one improve upon the most powerful game in the universe? By unleashing the most powerful game update in the universe, featuring Princess Adora and her magical horse. Princess Adora of course transforms into She-Ra, the marketing product of a much simpler time, when capturing the hearts of little girls was as easy as…

The Year’s Worst Bullshots, aka, Screenshots That Lied To You

It was back in 2005 that Penny Arcade first coined the term “bullshot”, giving a definition to the practice of doctoring video game screenshots to make them look better than the game actually is. You’d think the intervening seven years, the rise of the video trailer and a growing awareness of the practice would have…

Japanese Anime Fans Are Growing Tired Of These Tropes

The anime industry, while not as strong as it was back in 2004-2006, is still booming. During any given week, there will be between 30 to 50 series airing (not counting reruns) on TV, generally during the late hours of night. Most series run for about 11-13 episodes (A few will go between 24-26 episodes).…

Hako! Open Me, AR puzzle game for the Vita, will be out on Dec. 20 in Japan as a download.

Developers Of These Free Games Aren’t Looking for Quick, Easy Cash

Free to play. Free. To. Play. Sounds good, but watch the fine print. With most games these days, when something is free, you tend to get what you pay for. Generally, you’ll end up getting a fraction of the actual game with the rest being either unattainable or incredibly hard to get to without pulling…

What’s Bringing China and Japan Back Together? Pornography, Apparently.

This fall, tensions between China and Japan got serious. A dispute over islands stirred up nationalistic demonstrations in China. Protestors didn’t just take to the streets to voice their anti-Japanese sentiment. Some of them took to their hard drives. According to Japanese daily Nikkan Spa!, during those protests, websites that shared pirated clips and videos…

Sega’s Biggest “Miscalculation” Turned into Viral, Internet Gold

Japanese game maker Sega has screwed up too many times to count. But there’s one thing Sega got so right. But only after it got everything so wrong. At the 2011 Tokyo Game Show, Sega showed a new Hatsune Miku game for the 3DS. It featured a slightly unsettling Miku. Hatsune Miku is a virtual…

In Japan, NicoNico is coming to the Wii U as a free app

Total War’s Studio Will Soon Be Making Warhammer Games

Sega and Creative Assembly have announced today that the British development house, famous for its Total War strategy games on the PC, will be expanding to take on a number of Warhammer video games. Sega says “a new high-calibre development team has been set up at Creative Assembly’s UK studio to work alongside the existing…

Welcome To A House Of Horrors (I Don’t Think This Is How You’re Supposed To Play Animal Crossing…)

So, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m a bit of an Animal Crossing addict. The game continues to be a smash hit in Japan. So much so that even now, almost a month after its initial release, most stores are still sold out with only the download version available. Players clock into…

Beat the Crap Outta People with Comic Book Sound Effects

Pow! Smack! Brass knuckles can mess people up. Japanese designers Shuji Tomishima and Takushi Okina are going more for fashion than violence with these “sound effect” rings. The rings have sound effects that one would typically find in Japanese manga. For example, above there is a ring that reads “do” (ド), but could be used…

Aero-Cross, the HD download version of Metro-Cross, has been cancelled due to “various circumstances”.

How Japanese Police Use the PlayStation Vita To Catch Criminals

Sony brands the PS Vita as more than simply a game portable. Maybe it should call the machine a “crime fighter”, too? This week’s episode of Gekiroku: Keisatsu Micchaku 24ji!! (think Cops, but in Japan) followed the cyber police division in Fukuoka Prefecture. In one scene, the cyber cops were tracking down a criminal for…

That is One Giant, Over-Sized Game Boy You’ve Got There

This is a Game Boy made by MaboroshiTira. It doesn’t work, in so much as you can’t put a regular cartridge in it and play it. Because, uh, it’s made of cardboard. Its buttons do press in, though, which is a bonus, because really, just looking at this thing is pleasure enough. MaboroshiTira [DeviantArt, via…

Want To Play FIFA Against Snoop? Sure Thing, But He Prefers Madden

Considering that Snoop Dogg’s Ask Me Anything on Reddit is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on the internet, I’m truly thankful he talks about video games enough to justify me posting about it in Kotaku The Ask Me Anything wound up earlier today, and it is an absolute must read, mainly because—unlike…

This Video Game Bug Is Truly Terrifying

Ack! With this new horrifying glitch, Phantasy Star Online 2 has discovered a new level of hell. Character skins can accidentally change… for the worse. The much, much worse. *shudder* Players discovered this bug (and others) after a recent update, and it causes the skin of non-playable characters to, under certain conditions, turn a truly…

How Adventure Time’s Creator Beat Up On Small Kids (In a Video Game)

Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward tells Edge magazine about his favourite games. Others listed include Altered Beast and, awesomely, Klik & Play My favourite game: Pendleton Ward [Edge 248, Christmas 2012]

Steampunk Princess Peach is in Another Manor House

Should Nintendo ever work up the courage to really mess with the setting of Mario games, there are worse ideas they could have than to have the plumber fighting his way through some Dickensian clockwork castle. And if he did, well, the lady he was trying to rescue would need to dress the part as…

There’s a Lady Killer Stalking These Lands

I’ve been featuring a ton of Assassin’s Creed III art here lately, so it’s about time I showcase some from its handheld stablemate Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation These images are the work of Nacho Yagüe, a senior concept artist at Ubisoft Toronto. You’ll see not only a selection of his work on the first Vita…