Video arcades are a dwindling business in Japan. Since the peak of the market in 2006, the number of arcades and scale of individual arcades has been dropping steadily. Kiyoshi Kameyama, the owner of the Amnet Gotannda arcade described the current video arcade climate in an interview with website Online Player EX. Arcades used to…
Mario, the Italian plumber with a kidnap prone girlfriend is the poster child of Nintendo. But is there hidden sexual innuendo in the world of Super Mario? Some Japanese players seem to think so. Consider the following: Mario: The size of his nose as a metaphor for a large member. Luigi: His name in Japanese…
Scrolling and swiping. Flat on her back, a young girl in Taiwan was playing with an iPad on her bed. When she got tired, the iPad slipped out of her hand and hit the girl in the mouth. The corner of the iPad hit her front teeth, causing them to chip. Cracked smile aside, the…
On Twitter, just because you follow someone, that doesn’t mean that person will follow you back. That’s just how it works. Aoi Sola is one of Japan’s most popular adult video actresses. She also has a huge following in China. No wonder she has over 300,000 Twitter followers. People love Aoi Sola. A 40-something man…
The anime scene in Japan, while not exactly booming in recent years, has certainly kept up appearances, starting over 50 new anime series in the month of April alone. Most are sequels or are based off of existing properties, like manga or light novels. Among some of the recent popular shows based on light novels,…
It’s like best of both worlds made better—way better. Japanese model builder mashed Gundam Wing with Pokémon to create this Pikachu Wing. Brilliant! Have a look at more pics in the above gallery. Pikachu Wing Version [Modelers Gallery]
Hatsune Miku is a Japanese virtual idol. She is not the first Japanese virtual idol, but she’s the most successful. And China, well, China now has its own virtual idol, which recently apparently on television. Online, people are calling this Chinese virtual idol a Hatsune Miku rip-off, complete with a Vocaloid sounding voice. I’ll just…
Hearing complaints lavished on the use of chopsticks. People praising your Japanese after you utter an “arigatou”. The endless and repetitive questions. In Japan, some find these remarks and questions irritating—a form of “soft racism” called “microaggression”. But are they? As Derald Wing Sue, Ph.D. and David Rivera, M.S. pointed out in a 2010 Psychology…
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Complaints about certain parts of Mass Effect 3 may be more contemporary, but let’s not forget the first game had a more serious problem: the Mako tank drove like shit on wheels. Which presented me with a problem, because I loved to look at it, but hated to drive it. Yet I had to do…
Sure, you could smash one open, but these are pieces of consumer electronics, not Easter eggs. Why do you always have to go for the violent option first? In a post over on Behance, industrial designer George Schnakenberg explains the design process behind the last Guitar Hero peripheral, that used for Warriors of Rock, and…
Can you believe it’s Famicase time already? That time of the year when indie Japanese store Meteor holds an exhibition showcasing a bunch of incredible, one-of-a-kind fake video game cartridges. The goal of the exhibition is simple: artists submit a cartridge for a fake Famicom game. It can be whatever they want, basically, meaning some…
Total Recall is Kotaku’s nightly look back at the history of video games. Think you know where video games come from? You might know a little, but our aim with Total Recall is to dig a little deeper and shine a light on some of the more bizarre and interesting elements of this medium’s past.…
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Metal Gear franchise, Square Enix and Konami have teamed up to release a bunch of figures based on the venerable stealth series. Today, we’re taking a look at two of them. I’ve got two figures on my kitchen bench with a camera in their face: Solid Snake and…
Currently in development (sort of) at New York-based indie outfit Attack Mountain, Legend of the Time Star is a love letter to old 16-bit, side-scrolling RPGs, particularly those coming out of Japan. Thanks to the input of Jake “virt” Kaufman it’s already sounding like its inspiration, but it’s thanks to Brazilan artist Dudu Torres that…
Kotaku reader “Michael” was taking a look through the pre-owned section of his local EB Games (read: GameStop) in Australia when he started noticing things weren’t quite right. Lara Croft had a marble dong. Old Snake had become a vet. Hulk Hogan had started attending Hogwarts. So he started looking through the section and found…
Broken Rules, the indie studio behind And Yet it Moves, is currently working on a game called Chasing Aurora. It looks lovely. Calling it an “explorative 2D aerial action game about the dream of flight”, anyone who perfected the “bombing” flight-and-glide technique from the Batman games should be at home with riding the wind across…
Reader Adam has an idea. An idea for old-timey bottles of rum, bottled by Valve Corporation, and named for Admiral Kunkka, a hero from the DOTA series. It is a wonderful idea. Those wondering, um, why rum, Kunkka’s Rum is found in both the original and Valve’s upcoming sequel, with units doused in it receiving…
Take a look at this commercial, for the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis). It’s for the Indian market, and while it’s a little rough around the edges, it’s mostly what you’d expect from the mid-90s. Except for that weird “Shaw Wallace” business. That’s not a YouTube uploader’s watermark, it’s the name of the company that handled…
Nothing will make you realise just how old this console generation is than today’s Total Recall, which looks at the very first concept art ever put down on paper/computer for the project that would become Assassin’s Creed It was put down in 2004 That’s eight years ago, and while a lot has changed for the…
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