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  Kotaku East

  Girls in Fluffy Outfits Singing and Dancing for Pokémon

  Yep, it’s super sentai inspired pop group Momoiro Clover Z singing Mite Mite☆Kotchitchi, the ending track for the new Pokémon animePocket Monsters: Best Wishes! . ポケモン着ぐるみで踊る姿が可愛すぎる！ ももいろクローバーZ『みてみて☆こっちっち』のふりつけ動画が公開 [Kotaku Japan]

  By Brian Ashcraft Published June 20, 2012
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  Kotaku East

  Google’s Virtual Idol Spot Wins Cannes Prize

  You might’ve seen those Google Chrome ads that feature Lady Gaga or Justin Beiber. Virtual idol Hatsune Miku also got a Chrome commercial, which Kotaku posted before. That commercial recently won Bronze Lion Award in the Direct Lions category of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. That festival is in the same city that…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published June 20, 2012
• Kotaku East

  Foxconn Honcho Slams Koreans

  Terry Gou, the dude who runs Foxconn’s parent company, has gotten in trouble for shooting off his mouth in the past. Once, he compared to managing the Foxconn workers as simply managing “animals” and lamented how those animals give him a headache. This time, Gou’s apparently catching heat for remarks he made about Koreans. While…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published June 20, 2012
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  Kotaku East

  You Know What’s Missing from The Last Guardian? Dubstep.

  Upcoming PS3 exclusive The Last Guardian gets a dubstep remix for shits and giggles, courtesy of Mike McWhertor of Meat Bun (and more recently, Polygon) fame. If this year’s E3 gaming convention taught us anything, you can never have too much dubstep. No, actually, you can. So knock it off, world. You know what else…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published June 20, 2012
• Kotaku East

  When Getting Married Means Goodbye Fan Club and No More Sexy Pillows

  For years, Japanese voice actress Rie Tanaka hasn’t been afraid of fan service: she’s cosplayed characters, she’s released hug pillows, and she even had her own trading cards Those days, it seems, are long over. Rie Tanaka just got married. Earlier this week, 33 year-old Tanaka revealed on her official blog that she tied the…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published June 20, 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 June 20, 2012
• Uncategorized

  Why the Days of Copycat Video Games Might Soon be Over

  There are few things more heart-breaking in this world than a cloned video game. A game that takes something someone else has done and, with little effort, shamelessly copies it in the hopes of riding some coattails to a cash register. This industry is full of them, across all genres, from first-person shooters to strategy…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 20, 2012
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  Uncategorized

  Destroying a Room Can be a Beautiful Thing in This Video Game

  This gorgeous video was put together using some new maps for multiplayer shooter Battlefield 3. They’re part of a pack called “Close Quarters”, which will emphasise combat in…close quarters. So your face will be close enough to appreciate all that debris and damage that’s going to be flying around those rooms once the bullets and…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 20, 2012
• Uncategorized

  Hey, Darth Vader, Stop Being so Dramatic

  It’s the lowest point in Darth Vader’s career, and possibly the lowest point in any of the six Star Wars movies. But we don’t need to be so sad, for unintended reasons, when the Sith Lord screams out in anguish. There’s still room for a laugh. These shirts show that such cries are actually pretty…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 20, 2012
• Culture

  One Does Not Simply Draw Into Mordor

  Ilya Nazarov works as an artist and illustrator at Bethesda. Before that, he’s worked at places like Warner Bros. and Nintendo, and has provided art for series like Metroid Prime, Donkey Kong, Tribes and, as you may have guessed by that headline, Lord of the Rings (in this case, War in the North). Ilya’s fantasy…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 20, 2012
• Uncategorized

  Murderous Game Developers Have a Soft, Two-Wheeled Heart

  You think Rockstar Games, you think about mean things. Angry men, drugs, dingy bars, fast cars, explosive firearms. Which is totally understandable, since the company’s most recent games are about a drug-addled hitman, a vengeful cowboy and a Puerto Rican who shoots up half of New York. But that murderous veneer hides a secret. Co-founder…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 20, 2012
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  Uncategorized

  The Shooter That Changes Every Time You Die

  Indie developers Wolfire built this shooter, Receiver, in seven days. But that’s not the cool part. Or parts Instead, Receiver is interesting for two things. One, it focuses on a single weapon, the Colt 1911 A1, and takes it very seriously, using “high detail gun mechanics”, which means you can “manipulate each part of the…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 20, 2012
• Uncategorized

  Here Are Your Official Nominations For The Best Games of E3 2012

  Every year, representatives of the world’s biggest video game websites (this one included) get together and nominate which games they thought were the best ones they played at E3 (or in the week before E3, at special judge’s events). Note that condition: according to the awards’ rules, in order to be nominated for a major…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 20, 2012
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  CultureTotal Recall

  1981 Video Explains Activision’s “Overnight Success”

  Activision may be heralded/hated as one of the world’s biggest video game companies today, but in 1981, it was a much smaller company. A very different company, in a very different time. Which is the only reason I can think of to explain this bizarrely wonderful promo video the company put together in 1981, which…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 19, 2012
• CultureTotal Recall

  Serve the Public Trust. Protect the Innocent. Smash up Old Arcade Games.

  Hey, RoboCop, you’ve got mechanical arms and a gun in your leg. Why’d you have to go and smash a perfectly good arcade game? And it was pretty good. If you couldn’t make it out beneath all the broken glass and criminal hair, it’s Sly Spy, Data East’s 1989 side-scroller that took more than a…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 19, 2012
• Uncategorized

  I’m Not Sure I’d Pay $30K for the Iron Throne, Even Though Joffrey Left a Positive User Review

  Greetings, Kotaku, and welcome to the Tuesday open thread. You may have heard that HBO is selling a real, life-sized replica of the Iron Throne for #30,000. What you may not have heard is that the characters from the show have begun to leave user reviews of the Throne. I saw that today on The…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published June 19, 2012
• Uncategorized

  It’s a Damn Shame This LEGO Movie Never Got Made

  A little while ago, LEGO and Blur Studios – you’d be familiar with their work – sat down to talk about the possibility of making an animated LEGO film. So Blur’s Jeff Fowler and artist Sean McNally got to work on a concept for their pitch, which revolved around a young LEGO minifig leaving his…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 19, 2012
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  Uncategorized

  This is Why Everyone Was Hating on Steel Battalion Today

  Maybe you’re thinking to yourself, “Geez, Evan, you sure made Steel Battalion sound like a terrible experience in your review today.” Damn right I did and deservedly so, might I add. And it wasn’t just me. Over at Polygon, Justin McElroy rounds up a few other game critics who related just how unplayable this Kinect…

  By Evan Narcisse Published June 19, 2012
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  Uncategorized

  We Are Definitely Getting a HD Version of Okami. Oh Yes. [UPDATE]

  Capcom and Sony have just confirmed earlier reports that Clover’s classic Okami will be getting a HD re-release. It’ll be made available as a digital download on the PlayStation Network for $20, and will be out sometime this “Fall” (it’s out in Japan on November 1). Okami HD will boast “HD graphics”, display in 16:9,…

  By Luke Plunkett Published June 19, 2012
• Uncategorized

  Pokémon Conquest Poses Triumphantly Over the Battered Bodies of Game Reviewers

  Collecting all the Pokémon in a normal installment of Nintendo’s beloved role-playing series is a daunting enough task for your average game reviewer. Pokémon Conquest asks them to conquer an entire continent while they do it. Man, Nintendo, cut some critics a little slack. Pokémon Conquest combines colorful cartoon creatures of joy and wonder with…

  By Mike Fahey Published June 19, 2012