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  Watch Peter Jackson Finish Filming The Hobbit

  Principal photography has finished on The Hobbit, and the team has entered post-production (which mostly means editing together the footage they’ve got). To celebrate, watch director Peter Jackson’s eighth production diary, which shows him heading to Comic Con and wrapping up production on the set of the upcoming film, which will be out this December.

  By Jason Schreier Published July 24, 2012
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  The Discordant Horror Lurking in Sonic the Hedgehog‘s Soundtrack

  Sonic the Hedgehog‘s Green Hill Zone track is the pinnacle of upbeat, energetic video game music, enthusiastically propelling the player headlong into a fantastic adventure. Slow it down, however, and it’s something straight out of an experimental horror film. This video, upped by Rob Crossley over at CVG, grants us insight into the motivation behind…

  By Mike Fahey Published July 24, 2012
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  I Finally Beat Diablo III. What A Letdown.

  This is the ending of the biggest PC game of the year? What a bummer. Congratulations! You’ve defeated Diablo III. Greater challenges and epic items await you in Nightmare Difficulty! I guess I saw it coming. The story up until this point had been an undercooked mess of arch codswallop. It almost couldn’t help but…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published July 24, 2012
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  Insomniac’s Twisted Take on Pokemon is Ready to Play

  Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac ventures out into the wilds of Facebook today, inviting players from across the known galaxy to capture and battle the exotic alien beasts of Outernauts. I’m going to catch them all, this I swear. Outernauts is what happens when a AAA game studio sets its sights on the world’s most…

  By Mike Fahey Published July 24, 2012
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  Diablo III’s Invincible Wizards Not so Invincible Anymore

  A “god mode” exploit recently found in Diablo III, which allowed gamers using the Wizard class to effectively play without fear of dying, is in the process of being shut down. Blizzard has said that it is “currently rolling out a hotfix for a recent bug regarding invulnerable Wizards”. You can read the full statement…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 24, 2012
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  Street Fighter LEGO so Good You’ll Think it’s Official

  Custom LEGO builder Julian Fong has, after over a year of hard work, put together a set of Street Fighter LEGO minifigs that look for all the world like actual, official pieces. They’re not, of course, he’s painted and customised themselves, but the level of detail, craftsmanship and adherence to LEGO’s own style is remarkable.…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 24, 2012
• Kotaku East

  The Vita’s Samurai and Dragons is Free-to-Play (…For About an Hour a Day)

  More and more these days, companies are making games with a free-to-play model—focusing on micro-transactions to finance the game. While these have been popular for various PC-based MMORPGs, the Vita gained its own free-to-play MMO with the release of Samurai and Dragons earlier this year. But is this curious mix of a dungeon crawler and…

  By Richard Eisenbeis Published July 24, 2012
• Kotaku East

  Can’t Wait For Phantasy Star Online 2? Here’s How to Play the Japanese Version.

  Phantasy Star Online was a trail blazer of a game, bringing the MMORPG experience to home consoles for the first time. Starting on the Dreamcast, it later had releases on the Xbox, GameCube and PC. Less than a month ago, its sequel Phantasy Star Online 2 was released as a free-to-play MMORPG on PCs. It…

  By Richard Eisenbeis Published July 24, 2012
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  Barbarian God-Like Exploit Discovered in Diablo III

  On the heels of the Wizard god mode exploit, here’s reportedly another god-like mode. This one is for the Diablo III’s Barbarian class. According to the Blizzard forums, the exploit doesn’t technically make you invincible, but it does allow you to get 8 percent of your HP back with every hit. Here are the steps,…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published July 24, 2012
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  Kotaku East

  See the Vita’s Free-to-Play Dungeon Crawler in Action

  Earlier this year the Vita got its first free-to-play MMO title in the form of Samurai and Dragons. While the game had a rocky launch that required it to be taken offline for the better part of a month, it is now online and running strong. Samurai and Dragons presents a strange mix of gameplay.…

  By Richard Eisenbeis Published July 24, 2012
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  Kotaku East

  You Cannot Escape Internet Infamy. Not Even in Japan.

  Andy Warhol once said that in the future, everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. Little did Warhol know we’d spend five minutes discussing if these empheral celebs actually look like their online pics and another five talking about all the stupid crap they said online before they got famous. Over the years, Dakota Rose…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published July 24, 2012
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  It Looks Like the PS Vita, But It Has an Xbox Name and an Android Logo

  This is the Droid X360. It’s an Android powered PS Vita-looking device with a touch screen and nine different emulators for Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color, NES, SNES, Sega Genesis and Sega Game Gear. Phew! It also has HDMI-out, a micro SD slot, mini USB port, 8GB of onboard storage, a…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published July 24, 2012
• Kotaku East

  In the Persona Fighting Game, You Cannot Battle This Old Lady

  Retailer Sofmap’s online site contained the below image for its Persona 4: The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena listing. Notice anything, internet detectives? That’s right, Miss Marple. So does that mean amateur sleuth Miss Marple is joining Atlus’ Persona 4 fighting game, to show those young, fancy JRPG characters the true meaning of an Agatha Christie…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published July 24, 2012
• Kotaku East

  The Hello Kitty Dolls of Your Dreams

  One of the ways Hello Kitty stays relevant is to turn itself into a feline billboard to promote other things. Recently, that’s meant the birth of an array of interesting Kitty-chan collaborations—like a Hello Kitty X Ringu tie-up that was used to promote the horror series’ latest spin-off. Artist Joseph Senior goes one step further—and…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published July 24, 2012
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  Buy Your Own Zelda Staircase, Stick it in Your House

  Sorry if you thought I meant some kind of elaborate staircase from Wind Waker or Twilight Princess. That’d just be silly. No, these are the stairs from the original Zelda on the NES, now available as a decal should your home have the right kind of wooden or tiled surface. Made of vinyl, they’ll apparently…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 24, 2012
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  That’s a Pretty Badass Tattoo For Some Pokémon

  Issa, an artist at French tattoo studio Tin-Tin Tatouages, is to thank for this mind-blowing Pokémon sleeve, which covers this dude’s entire arm with basic critters like Pikachu, Psyduck and…Bearwithguitaremon. Good to see the guy loves Pokémon so much he went to such drastic steps! Let’s hope he loves it just as much in 2032.…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 24, 2012
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  Conan Plays Minecraft, Trolls Graphics

  Only Conan O’Brien could play Minecraft and say it’s like being a Welshman in the 19th century, spending your waking hours digging in a coal mine. Not that he’s wrong. For many players that’s probably a fairly accurate analogy. Only maybe with less singing.

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 24, 2012
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  Man Builds a Real Mass Effect Gun, it’s Used by the Real Samara

  Master props builder Zander Brandt specialises in taking weapons normally found only in video games and bringing them kicking and screaming into the real world. We’ve featured his work here a few times before, with Team Fortress 2 and Mass Effect weapons, and it’s the latter series he’s returned to with this awesome M-25 Hornet…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 24, 2012
• CultureTotal Recall

  Hey Link, It’s Also Dangerous to do Business With Men Who Look Like Toothless Hobos

  Link really is the hero of time, because here he is, in the 1980s, with a take on the Resident Evil 4 merchant meme years before Resident Evil 1 was even a twinkle in Shinji Mikami’s eye. [via VG Junk]

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 24, 2012
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  Square Enix Confirms the Existence of Final Fantasy Versus XIII

  The rumor, it seems, was wrong! Today, Square Enix head Yoichi Wada confirmed that he just came out of a Final Fantasy Versus XIII meeting. According to Wada’s tweet, “There’s someone making a false rumor that Versus was cancelled. Haha…Just a minute ago, the regular Versus meeting ended. If you saw the presentation of the…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published July 24, 2012