• Uncategorized

  Do You Prefer Your Heroes Pretty, or Pretty Ugly?

  With last week’s release of Mass Effect 3 birthing a new generation of Commander Shepards, commenter TheForgetfulBrain wonders how ugly custom-made characters can get. Show him your ugly side in today’s Speak Up on Kotaku. I scoured the internet yesterday for some truly hideous player-made characters. To my surprise, it was a bit harder than…

  By Mike Fahey Published March 13, 2012
• Uncategorized

  The Best 26-Minute Argument that Game Consoles Are Dying

  Ben Cousins, who works for a company called ngmoco that makes video games mostly for cell phones and tablets, has a vested interest in telling you that PlayStations, Xboxes and Nintendo Whatevers are a few pistons away from horse-and-buggy obsolescence. It would be so easy to dismiss him, because game consoles are such impressive and…

  By Stephen Totilo Published March 13, 2012
• Uncategorized

  Talk Amongst Yourselves

  It’s Tuesday, the day when we battle to the death! Welcome to Kotaku’s official forum, known affectionately as Talk Amongst Yourselves, where we gather on a daily basis to discuss all things video game and existential. Today’s TAYpic is another stellar contribution from TAY maestro pan1da7, as he turns the Hunters into martial arts warriors…

  By Evan Narcisse Published March 13, 2012
• Uncategorized

  GameStop Debunks Wild Donkey Kong 3D Rumors

  GameStop has shut down rumors that a new Donkey Kong game is headed to Nintendo’s 3DS, telling Kotaku that display cases for the alleged “Donkey Kong 3D” were not official. “The displays were not supplied by Nintendo and have been taken down,” a GameStop representative told me this morning. “It’s definitely not in the system…

  By Jason Schreier Published March 13, 2012
• Uncategorized

  Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter Passes $3 Million Dollar Mark

  The crowd-funding for the upcoming adventure game project from Tim Schafer’s Double Fine Studios already broke all kinds of Kickstarter records weeks ago, when it reached its funding goal of $400,000 in eight hours. It’s passed $3,000,000—which was the budget for Schafer’s classic Grim Fandango—making it one of the highest funded projects ever on the…

  By Evan Narcisse Published March 13, 2012
• Uncategorized

  The $150 Guild Wars 2 Collector’s Edition Comes with All This Plus a Three-Day Head Start

  Fans clamoring for a chance to put down money on ArenaNet’s massively multiplayer sequel get their chance on April 10, when NCsoft begins taking preorders for Guild Wars 2 standard, digital deluxe, and collector’s editions. What do they get for putting their money down? How about access to all beta events leading up to the…

  By Mike Fahey Published March 13, 2012
• 

  Uncategorized

  Modern What? No, Look at this Battlefield 3 Expansion Trailer. Over Here.

  By sheer coincidence, total accident and obvious happenstance, today, on the day that three new maps are made available for Modern Warfare 3‘s Xbox 360 Elite subscribers, we’ve been given a trailer to show you for some new Battlefield 3 DLC. It’s just amazing how this happens. It’s like, no sooner do we tell you…

  By Stephen Totilo Published March 13, 2012
• Uncategorized

  PlayStation 3 Connects Murder Suspect to a Burned Body

  On Feb. 25, a fire broke out in a Las Vegas condo. In it, the body of James Lacella, 48, was discovered. According to investigators, Lacella had been dead for days prior with a bullet in his head. The fire was apparently a cover-up. ABC Las Vegas affiliate KTNV reported that police were able to…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published March 13, 2012
• 

  Kotaku East

  Come for the Movie, Stay for the Awesome Free Game

  Games have long been included as extras on Blu-rays/DVDs—though the quality of said games tends to rank somewhere between the worst Facebook game and shovelware flash titles. But when Macross Frontier The Movie: The False Songstress was released on Blu-ray in Japan back in 2010, Artdink and Bandai-Namco went a few steps further to create…

  By Richard Eisenbeis Published March 13, 2012
• Kotaku East

  If You’re Gonna Make Cookies, Make ‘Em Cute

  Tomorrow is White Day in Japan. I’m supposed to give sweets to women who gave me chocolate on Valentine’s Day. Feeling proactive, I made cookies this weekend for my wife, my mother-in-law, and my sister-in-law—only to discover that my sister-in-law had made cookies for me and my family! These are some of them. You can…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published March 13, 2012
• Kotaku East

  These PlayStation Certified Games Are Xperia In-Bound!

  With Sony’s PlayStation Suite, Xperia smartphone owners can enjoy PlayStation titles on their handsets. Starting today, Sony revealed the 21 PlayStation 1 titles that can be downloaded for ¥600 (US$7.30) a pop on the Xperia NX and Xperia acro HD via PlayStation Suite. They are: Addie no Okurimono：To Moze From Addie, Arc the Lad, Bealphareth,…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published March 13, 2012
• 

  Kotaku East

  Never Has Tokyo Looked So Hypnotic

  Photographer Holger Mette created this Tokyo time lapse video over the span of last month with only a Canon 5D mk2. The result is spectacular. Mette aims to shoot other cities as well in timelapse. For more, check out his travel blog Tokyo in Timelapse [Japan Probe]

  By Brian Ashcraft Published March 13, 2012
• 

  Uncategorized

  Boy Band Lasers Inspires StarCraft and Gundam Jokes

  Korean boy band Dong Bang Shin Ki (DBSK or “Tohoshinki” in Japan) unloaded a laser light SPECTACULAR during a broadcast on local television. While the show took place in 2008 (so old!), it’s recently become a meme in Korea, where it continues to amuse the internet—especially of late. The show inspired Photoshops and comparisons to…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published March 13, 2012
• Kotaku East

  These Life-Sized Figures Can Be Yours. Only $5,000 Each!

  Do you like sci-fi anime Neon Genesis Evangelion? Do you have thousands of dollars burning a hole in your pocket? Have I got a deal for you. Gainax, the company behind Neon Genesis Evangelion, is offering life-sized plugsuit wearing statues of Eva characters Asuka Langley Soryu, Kaworu Nagisa and Rei Ayanami Each figure costs ¥430,000…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published March 13, 2012
• Kotaku East

  Defending the Game People Hate

  While it was once one of the most popular and well received series in gaming, Dynasty Warriors seems to receive more and more negative feedback with each iteration. This is not due to radical shifts in gameplay and/or tone—as many game sequels are accused of doing—but rather the exact opposite: Negative comments center around Tecmo…

  By Richard Eisenbeis Published March 13, 2012
• Kotaku East

  She’s Not Just the Tekken Lady. She’s a Bowler.

  To promote Street Fighter X Tekken, Capcom roped in a handful of women to cosplay as the fighting game characters. Dubbed “Miss St. X”, the women are bikini models and starlets. One, however, stands apart when wearing funny shoes and throwing big, heavy balls. See, Rina Ohtsuka, who is cosplaying as Tekken‘s Nina, is a…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published March 13, 2012
• 

  Kotaku East

  This RPG Teaches You Japanese

  As a game journalist living and working in Japan, the question I’m most commonly asked is, “What game can help me learn Japanese?” The answer: Slime Forest Adventure. Set up like a traditional JRPG, you go around the world, battle monsters, and try to rescue a princess. The story is simple and the graphics are…

  By Richard Eisenbeis Published March 13, 2012
• Kotaku East

  Snowboarding Gets All Nerdy

  No wonder a former Japanese Olympic snowboarder is so into otaku (“geek”) culture. It seems there a whole group of snowboarding otaku, decked out in unabashedly nerdy attire. These photos are from the ski slops of Nagano Prefecture. Besides the cosplaying snowboarders, there are geeked out snowboards, called “ita-board”. They feature anime and video game…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published March 13, 2012
• Kotaku East

  The Art of Outselling Skyrim (…in Japan)

  Western games are getting increasingly popular in Japan. But they’re still a small slice of the pie. Just ask ZeniMax Asia’s Tetsu Takahashi. ZeniMax Media, of course, owns American developers id Software (Doom) and Bethesda Softworks (The Elder Scrolls) as well as new Japanese studio, Tango Gameworks, with Shinji Mikami (above). Mikami, best known for…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published March 13, 2012
• Kotaku East

  Underpants! Beer Mugs! Badass Superhero Goes Retail Crazy.

  It’s a period of time in nearly every Japanese boy’s life. Sometime before preschool starts and shortly after it ends, kids become enamored with Ultraman. Some never outgrow their fascination with the towering superhero who flies to earth to kick monster butt. I don’t blame them. Ultraman is badass. Ultraman debuted in Japan during the…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published March 13, 2012