These Cigarette Fighter Planes Are a Highway to The Danger Zone

When you finish that pack of cigarettes, you’re left with more than filters and smelly clothes. There are also empty cigarette boxes—oh, and the possibility you’re getting an awful disease. But let’s ignore the health risks for a minute! Let’s just focus on those empty boxes, and the awesome fighter jets they can become. Recently…

2012’s Best RTS (So Far) Is Already Getting a Sequel

Wargame: European Escalation, released on PC earlier this year, was great. Developed by the team behind RUSE, and very much in the spirit of the just-as-excellent World in Conflict, W:EE took us back to the Cold War with a gorgeous, intimate look at fictional tussle between NATO and the Soviet Bloc. Next year, it’ll be…

For the second time this week, “SuperDae” is trying to offload an alleged Xbox “Durango” development kit

You Can Now Buy Nathan Drake’s Gun Holster

David Vigil, who is a master leathersmith, is taking orders for an item he’s called “UNCHARTED 3: Nathan Drake Inspired Gun Holster”. While appearing to be entirely unlicensed by Sony, official blessing seems to be the only thing it’s lacking. Because it looks incredible. Based on, obviously, Drake’s shoulder holster from the third game in…

How The Walking Dead Helped Win Olympic Gold

Nicola Adams, a boxer and freshly-minted Olympic gold medalist, is currently facing Britain’s media answering countless questions about her preparation, training, state of mind, reaction to winning, blah blah blah. I found one of her answers a little more interesting than the rest, though. Speaking with The Independent, Adams says that the night before her…

There Once Was a Time Grand Theft Auto Wasn’t Quite so “Cool”

These days, Rockstar are known as a publisher with a reputation for very slick marketing, especially when it comes to their flagship series, Grand Theft Auto. Things weren’t always as “cool”, though. As this advertisement from 1997, for the very first game in the series, shows. Run before Rockstar was even known as Rockstar, it’s…look,…

The Machines That Literally Made Atari’s Last Console

Here’s something very cool: a rare look so far behind the scenes of how a video game console is made that you’re seeing the very beginning. The injection moulds used to actually make the plastic components that came together to become an Atari Jaguar. To recap: the Jaguar sucked, it died a horrible death, and…

The Only Place Tonight You’ll Find Oddworld, WoW and Magic Cards in the One Place

If you don’t know Raymond Swanland by name, you may well know him by his work. A veteran concept artist, Swanland has worked across numerous fields, but around these parts will probably look most familiar to people for his Oddworld and Magic: The Gathering images. Swanland spent eight years working on the classic Oddworld series,…

See Sesame Street Take on Mario, Guitar Hero and…Final Fantasy?

There’s a new Sesame Street DVD out that is, according to whichever Muppet writes their press releases, “full of fun video game spoofs”. It appears they are telling the truth. Going a little beyond your clichéd Space Invaders and Pac-Man, there’s a bunch of more contemporary games being reappropriated for the purposes of education, like…

Find Out How a Blind Man Can Play in Mortal Kombat Tournaments

Mortal Kombat can be hard enough at the best of times, but could you play it with your eyes closed? Course you couldn’t. And even then, you at least know what the stage and characters look like when you open your eyes again. James, blind from birth, does not. Which is what makes his story…

Valve Has Been Teasing a Secret Robot Army For Over Two Years Now

Valve’s announcement of a new “Mann vs Machine” game mode for Team Fortress 2 didn’t just come out of the blue. It didn’t even have its hat tipped over the weekend No, the studio that does crowd-teasing like no other has been building up to this moment for over two years The history of the…

“Cans! It Was Only Cans!”

As long as we’re posting dialogue bits that we enjoy, I thought that this fine Monday evening I’d share my favorite line from Speed. Which is saying something! I don’t know why, but my sister, friends and I would repeat this line—Cans! It was cans!—over and over and over again, laughing and laughing. Evidently we…

Could You Record a Song Every Single Day of the Year on Your PSP? This Guy Just Did.

Last year, Kotaku reader Chris Sands went through a bit of a rough patch. Undergoing complex brain surgery to help alleviate a bizarre hiccupping condition (which got him on the BBC as the star of a documentary!), he made PSP game Beaterator an integral part of his rehabilitation. An avid musician, putting beats together on…

Cave Story: Also Known As The Best Rhythm Dance Game Ever

Calm down, calm down. It’s a joke, Internet. But seriously, how DARE that woman take the puppy away. Or back. Or whatever.

The Greatest Sharks In Video Games, Just In Time For Shark Week

Did you feel slightly on edge when you got out of bed this morning? Like your world was just a little bit more dangerous? As you went about your day, did you have the sense that you were… hunted? Well, that might be because IT’S MOTHER EFFIN SHARK WEEK, YO. Shark Week is the Discovery…

Americans Are the Best Pokemon Video Game Players in the World. We Just Suck at Cards.

Just as the U.S. dominated the medal count at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, our boys brought home the golden Pikachu cup in all three divisions of the 2012 Pokémon World Video Game Championships in Hawaii this weekend. The trading card game? Not so much. As expected, 2010 and 2011 World Champion Ray Rizzo…

Team Fortress 2 Now Has a Third Team: Robots. Also, Co-op!

Team Fortress 2 now has a co-operative “horde” mode of its own, allowing five players to team up and take on waves and waves of…angry robots. As expected, Valve’s “Gray” teases have indeed led us to the dawn of the franchise’s war against robotics. The robots are modelled after each of the existing game’s iconic…

This Fantasy Cartoon Webseries Should Really Be On TV

After watching just a single episode of the new webseries Doraleous and Associates I’m already head over heels. Give me more. Hope you’re watching, Comedy Central.

CBS has an interview with “the most famous video game developer in the world”. It’s (probably) not who you think

Hybrid: The Kotaku Review

“Innovative” is a word marketers and developers try to sell us often, but it’s rare to find a game—particularly within the shooter genre—which deserves the label. Hybrid is an exception, but it takes more than a novel idea to craft an engaging, worthwhile experience. Hybrid is a third person cover-based shooter developed by 5th Cell,…