• Kotaku East

  Japanese Poll: Most Gamers Plan To Buy A 3DS XL, Even Though Most Already Own A 3DS

  The Nintendo 3DS upgrade, the 3DS XL (“3DS LL” in Japan) will be hitting stores in Japan later this month and in the US in August. Looking at what will hopefully be a bigger launch than the launch for the original 3DS (Granted, they had to deal with a weak launch lineup and a major…

  By Toshi Nakamura Published July 12, 2012
• Kotaku East

  Phantasy Star Online 2 Hacked as an Alleged Prank

  Free-to-play online game Phantasy Star Online 2 was hacked, and non-playable characters were moved about as, it seems, some sort of prank. In the game’s Ship02 location, non-playable characters were moved out of players reach, making it impossible to interact with important NPCs. As you can see in the screenshots, the non-playable characters were placed…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published July 12, 2012
• Kotaku East

  The Porn Star Had a Perfect Name, But She Still Didn’t Win

  Sega’s Yakuza gangster games and porn stars are no strangers. A few years back, adult film star Rio made it to the final selection process to see which hopefuls would appear in the game. Then, there was the Yakuza hostess who starred in an adult movie after appearing in Yakuza 4… This go round another…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published July 12, 2012
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  Kotaku East

  Your Anime Eyes Are Freaking Out Japan. Stop It.

  Back in 2009, Lady Gaga’s eyes got huge in her “Bad Romance” video. That, along with a Hello Kitty photo shoot, helped spawn a series of YouTube videos on anime eyes make-up tips. Not sure where Japan was during all this, but it clearly was not paying attention. This week, a Japanese site posted some…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published July 12, 2012
• Uncategorized

  This Sega Arcade Is Ridiculously Over the Top

  Sega’s Tokyo Joypolis is not Sega’s best arcade. That does not matter. What it is, however, is Sega’s biggest spectacle. It’s less a game center and more a video game inspired theme park. Still, for a hyperbolic arcade experience, few can compete. And as of this week, Tokyo Joypolis has a new coat of paint.…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published July 12, 2012
• Kotaku East

  Kotaku East Starts Now!

  Kotaku East runs from 4am to 8am Eastern. For more info about Kotaku East click here

  By Brian Ashcraft Published July 12, 2012
• Uncategorized

  I’m in Love With the Sexiest Woman at San Diego Comic-Con

  So Sideshow Collectibles’ half-scale Catwoman statue isn’t technically alive. I’ve dated worse. She’s not available for preorder. She’ll likely cost you or me an arm and a leg once she is up for sale, but when you’re dealing with Batman’s finicky female counterpart, a certain amount of financial loss is to be expected. You pay…

  By Mike Fahey Published July 12, 2012
• Uncategorized

  Video Games Remind Us That Cigarettes Will Kill You

  Ukrainian designer German Ljutaev has come up with this design that uses traditional video game imagery like life hearts and drops them on a cigarette. The further down the cigarette you smoke, the more hearts you burn though until you hit the inevitable “CONTINUE?” screen. It’s cute, but yet, urgh, so morbid at the same…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 12, 2012
• Uncategorized

  BioWare is Making a New Ultima RPG. I’m Serious.

  Not content with digging up the corpse of classic RPG series Ultima once, EA – who now hold the rights to the franchise – are doing it all over again. The publisher has tonight announced Ultima Forever, a cross-platform, free-to-play RPG that’s being developed by BioWare and which will be published under EA’s Play 4…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 12, 2012
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  Uncategorized

  FarmVille Guys Publishing a Serious, Hardcore Game, With Swords and Monsters and Stuff

  If I say the word “Zynga” to you, you probably think stories of shoddy work practices, of ruthless non-games like FarmVille, or allegations that they essentially rip other people’s games off So it’s understandable that the social games juggernaut is looking to broaden its horizons a little, and move into more serious territory. That’s why…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 12, 2012
• Uncategorized

  When X-Com Meets Star Trek, Wonderful Things Happen

  Star Command has long been my most-anticipated iOS game. It may now also be one of my most-anticipated PC games, especially since this planned bigger edition will feature more content. Get past the corny intro and there’s a ton of gameplay footage to sift through. STAR COMMAND: Kickstart Part 2 – The PC/Mac Space Adventure…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 12, 2012
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  Uncategorized

  A Beautiful Mech Commemorates the Greatest Robot Movie of All Time

  If you haven’t seen 1990’s Robot Jox, well, stop reading. Go get a copy. Because it’s just about the best thing ever. A combination of Cold War politics and stop-motion giant mech combat, it told the story of a future in which international disputes were settled not with wars, but with gladiatorial battles between…giant mechs.…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 12, 2012
• Culture

  Luscious Game Art Makes Robots and Beasts Look Great Together

  Markus Neidel is a German concept artist who most recently worked on Black Prophecy, a sci-fi MMO. You won’t find too much sci-fi in this gallery, though. What you will find for the most part are some epic fantasy images that look so delicious you’d be forgiven for thinking you could slice them off your…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 12, 2012
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  Uncategorized

  A Wonderful Interview With a Disabled Japanese Gamer Flown Out to the World’s Biggest Fighting Game Tournament

  In one of the most touching stories of the year, the fighting game readers of community website Shoryuken banded together to help disabled Japanese gamer Osamu Ichikawa get to this year’s EVO tournament in Las Vegas. Ichikawa, who suffers from cerebral palsy, only just got to play Street Fighter in an arcade for the first…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 12, 2012
• Uncategorized

  Become an Aperture Test Subject With Your Very Own Portal Jumpsuit

  Toy company NECA, who recently released an official replica Portal gun, is letting people kick their Aperture fantasies up a notch with an entire licensed outfit Going on sale soon will be a pair of long socks fashioned to look like the game’s Long Fall Boots and, for those who really like to get in…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 12, 2012
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  What Kind of Man Sells Over $1,000,000 Worth of Rare Video Games? This Kind of Man.

  A few days ago, an eBay auction offering thousands of video games was listed at over $1.2 million. An obscene figure, but when you consider it included the complete catalogues of every game released on the NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, Virtual Boy, Master System, Genesis, Saturn and Dreamcast (just to name a few), it seemed…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 12, 2012
• CultureTotal Recall

  That Game Where “Hulk Hogan’s” Chest Nearly Exploded

  Wrestle War is a Japanese wrestling game that was released in arcades in 1989 (and on Japanese and PAL Mega Drives a couple of years later). Despite not carrying a single official license, it decided to rip off a number of high-profile wrestlers of the time, like Hulk Hogan (who was awesomely renamed “Titan Morgan”)…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 11, 2012
• CultureTotal Recall

  A History of Video Game Movies That Haven’t Been Made (And Probably Won’t)

  As video game fans, it’s easy to get excited about movie adaptation news because, as video game fans, you expect this means the movie will one day actually get made. It doesn’t. That might be how video games work, but it’s certainly not how Hollywood works. This week has seen three big announcements in the…

  By Luke Plunkett Published July 11, 2012
• Uncategorized

  The Calvinball Theory of Building a Mythological World

  Hi Kotaku, and welcome to the evening Off Topic post. You know Calvinball, right? It’s the game that Calvin and his tiger Hobbes would play in Bill Waterson’s genius comic Calvin and Hobbes. The whole point of Calvinball was that there are no rules other than the ones that have been made up in the…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published July 11, 2012
• Uncategorized

  Need For Speed Flick Gets a Hot Date

  They’re already talking about February 2014 as the release window for Need For Speed the movie, which tells you everything you need to know about this venture, even 18 months away. Movies released in late winter, specifically February, are fucking terrible. Critics expect them to be fucking terrible. Their makers expect them to be fucking…

  By Owen Good Published July 11, 2012