How China’s Biggest Expo Polices Booth Babes

At this year’s China Joy expo in Shanghai, booth companion Li Ling was booted from the show after appearing in a revealing outfit. This was the latest China Joy crackdown on companion outfits—a crackdown that swung into full force last year. But what are the booth companion regulations Chinese game makers must adhere to? And…

Resident Evil 6 Creators Talk About Ada Wong, And Warn Players Not To Get Too Gung-Ho In Agent Hunt Mode

With the release of Resident Evil 6 only two months away, more and more information and footage is being released, I may not even need to play the game to find out all the “mysteries…” With the latest information of Ada Wong as one of the playable protagonists, the producers sat down for an interview…

Japan Has Human Tetris. China Has Human Dominoes.

At a Shanghai shopping mall, over a thousand volunteers recently participated in the a human dominoes stunt organized by a Chinese mattress company. In total, there were 1,001 human mattress dominoes that were toppled—a new world record. Unlike human Tetris, which spread from Asia to the West, human mattress dominoes is already a thing in…

Dragon Quest X: The Kotaku East Live Stream [Completed]

Dragon Quest X, the first online iteration of the Dragon Quest series, was released earlier today in Japan. But how exactly does this MMO from Japan’s most popular RPG series play? Find out alongside Kotaku East as we play the first few hours of the game live for your enjoyment. We will be happy to…

Earth Defense Force 3: Portable Is Bringing A Bunch Of New Toys To The Defense Of Earth

Earth Defense Force 3: Portable, the portable version of the 2007 Xbox 360 game, Earth Defense Forces 2017 is coming to the PSVita at the end of next month, and with 5 years since the original release, there’s been a lot of time to refine and add a bunch of new goodies into the battle…

Leaked Screens Show How FIFA 13 Works with the Wii U Controller

While Kotaku previously provided the nitty-gritty on how the Wii U version of FIFA 13 interacts with Nintendo’s new controller, this batch of new screen shots explicitly show how the Wii U’s tablet controller will work. WiiU Screens [FIFA Play via VG247]

The Wonderful World of Custom Sculptures

At the recent Wonder Festival in Japan, there was an array of figures. Heck, there was even fake food. There were also peculiar—odd, even—custom sculptures that were both strange and totally wonderful. Ever wanted to see miniature teeth and gums? Here ya go. Stereotypically, custom sculptures in Japan often refer to sexually explicit works. Sure,…

Dragon Quest X Install Times Are Really, Really Long

Dragon Quest X was released in Japan today and is an important milestone for several reasons. Not only is it the first MMO in the Dragon Quest series, but it’s also the first MMORPG the Wii has ever had. To make a game like this even possible on the Wii, DQX requires a 16 Gig…

Sony has lowered forecasts for its handheld gaming machines, but kept them steady for the PS3.

When Taiwan Puts on Fancy Costumes

It’s that time of year again. Time for the summer Fancy Frontier. The geek event is held at the elite National Taiwan University and attracts tens of thousands of visitors. Not all of them are dressed to the nines in fancy pants! However, there’s always a sizable number of cosplayers, showing off their dazzling outfits…

Even Blue Slimes Line Up for Video Games

When Mr. Sato isn’t eating whoppers with a thousand pieces of cheese, he’s eating whoppers with a thousand strips of bacon. And when he’s not doing that, he’s patiently lining up for video games. Last night, he did just that: He lined up in Shibuya for Dragon Quest X, dressed as a DQ Slime (even…

Turning Women’s Thighs into Billboards

Literally, the Japanese phrase “zettai ryouiki” (絶対領域) means “absolute territory”. But for Japanese geeks, it means something else—but something nonetheless absolute. The term refers to the area of exposed flesh between high socks and a hemline. This is a location that’s often fetishized in anime and manga—and soon, it’ll be a fetishized for advertising. The…

Link Sure Does Have to Lug Around a Ton of Stuff

There’s a very simple secret at the heart of Zelda’s success. The games have always been about showing you things you can’t do, making you work to get an item, then granting that item the power to do the thing you previously couldn’t do. It means that, as time has gone on, the game’s developers…

It Takes an Action Figure to Bring Red Dead’s Jack Marston to Life

If you haven’t finished Red Dead Redemption, and one day plan to, don’t read any further Still with me? OK, good. John Marston’s son, Jack Marston, is a whiny little punk. Even at the “end” of the game, where he’s supposedly a grown man, he’s still a whiny little punk. This custom Jack, made from…

Not Every MMO Has to Make You Get 10x Stupid Animal Tails

This is Forge. Pencil me in as mildly interested, if only because it’s promising to be an online game that brings some of the baggage of an MMO – like progressive stats and a string of special abilities – while leaving much of the boring stuff behind. Pitched as a game that’s all about player…

Uncharted’s Art Director Can Also Draw Cool Spaceships

Robh Ruppel is the art director at Naughty Dog, the developers of the Uncharted series. Before that, he spent over a decade working at Disney’s animation studio. This gallery of his work includes examples of both concept art and matte paintings from across that period, and features pieces from the Uncharted games, personal projects, Disney…

Destroy Satan and Escape From Hades? Sounds Simple Enough.

I remember Ghosts ‘N Goblins being about two things: underpants and skeletons. Mostly about underpants. It’s easy to forget amidst all the cheesy humour of the game, then, that it had a fairly brutal premise. I mean, it’s not like destroying Satan himself and then escaping the netherworld of Hades is tough enough. No, there…

Show Today’s Kids a 1980s Computer and, Well, Yeah

The Commodore 64 turned 30 this week. As the firs video game platform my family ever owned, it will always have a very special place in my heart. But I was born in 1980. What do kids born in the 21st century think of the machine? The BBC and C64 fan Mat Allen went to…

You Might Soon See Paradox’s Big PC Games on an iPad (But Probably Not a Console)

As someone who spends most of his time on an iPad playing strategy games, and as someone who when not playing them on an iPad is playing them on a PC, when I had the chance to speak with Johan Andersson, the Studio Manager of Paradox’s internal development team, there was one thing I needed…

The Average Age of a “Gamer” Just Dropped by Seven Years. Um, What?

As video gaming has become more popular, thanks to platforms like Facebook and mobile phones, the industry (and passionate fans) took a lot of pride in seeing the average age of a “gamer” climb out of the teens, into the 20s and then the 30s. So it’s a bit weird, then, to see that the…