- Kotaku East
Heroines Are A Dangerous Drug: Japanese Users Spend Massive Money On Imaginary Idols
Namco Bandai’s idol simulator is taking the Japanese mobile game market by storm and burning holes in players’ pockets. The Idolmaster game series is well known among Japanese gamers for its cute virtual girls and plethora of costly DLC. Now it seems the mobile phone version of the game, Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls, (better known among…
By Toshi Nakamura Published April 5, 2012 - Uncategorized
Missed the New Lupin Anime Debut? Here’s a NSFW Recap.
A brand new Lupin anime is airing in Japan. Dubbed Lupin the Third: A Woman Called Fujiko Mine, It’s centered on Lupin heroine Fujiko. The show is the first televised Lupin anime series in 27 years—and the first to feature a female director. If the teaser poster, which featured a topless Fujiko, didn’t clue you…
By Brian Ashcraft Published April 5, 2012 - Uncategorized
This Concept Art Will Kill You Dead
Goichi Suda’s next game is called Killer Is Dead. The game isn’t a sequel to his cult hit Killer7, but it does feature No More Heroes style swordplay. The concept art does make the title look quite different from his other work. It’s like salarymen plus the future plus stabby-stabby. For more about Killer Is…
By Brian Ashcraft Published April 5, 2012 -
Kotaku EastIt’s Not Just Weather, But Women’s Underwear
This week, a typhoon hit Japan. It snapped telephone poles in half. It overturned trucks. It killed people. Footage of the storm in action showed just how powerful it was. Yet, when Japanese news station TV Asahi did its report on the typhoon, it also didn’t hesitate from showing a close-up of a woman’s skirt…
By Brian Ashcraft Published April 5, 2012 - Uncategorized
If Video Game Box Art Hadn’t Changed in Thirty Years…
There was a certain charm to video game box art from the 1970s and 1980s. The graphics were so terrible that often quite abstract, quite amazing art had to be used to sell a game in its stead. These days everything is “better”. Read: more airbrushed, photoshopped, boardroom-approved. Wouldn’t it be great if instead of…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 5, 2012 - Uncategorized
There Won’t Be Another Skywalker if You Use Star Wars Condoms
While it can’t be that long until we see something more official along these lines, for now, artist Benedetto Papi’s ideas for Star Wars condoms are as close to Galactic contraception as we’re going to get. Not sold on the quotes, though. May I suggest (and these will be abbreviated to fit on the packaging):…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 5, 2012 -
UncategorizedThe Nightmare Fuel of Skating Game Bugs & Glitches
Sure, laugh at some of these if you want. Others will haunt your dreams tonight, so terrifying are their deformations of the human form. It’s been a while since we shared some physics mishaps from EA’s Skate series, something that needs to be amended this evening. Here, then, are enough glitches, bugs, errors and just…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 5, 2012 - Culture
Original, Badass Zelda Art By Katsuya Terada
Katsuya Terada is a Japanese artist you may not know by name, but you may definitely know him for his work. He’s done character design for the Blood: The Last Vampire movie. He’s helped out on Western cartoons like Hellboy. He’s even done illustrations for Nintendo Power magazine. Which leads us neatly into this gallery…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 5, 2012 - Uncategorized
If Nintendo Had Made Angry Birds. In the 1980s.
Swedish artist Giorgio Cantù has imagined what it would like if Nintendo had come up with the idea for Angry Birds and, instead of releasing it on a phone in the 21st century, had released it on a Game & Watch device in the 1980s. It looks way easier, even with the series’ revolutionary new…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 5, 2012 -
UncategorizedI Can’t Believe This is an Indie Adventure Game
I lost my shit a little while ago when I first saw Stasis, an upcoming indie sci-fi horror game on the PC. I’m losing a little more today, because there’s a new trailer for it. While it looks like an isometric Dead Space, it’s actually an adventure game. A proper, old-fashioned, point-and-click adventure game. That…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 5, 2012 - Uncategorized
Imagine Your Balls Are a Control Pad And You Can Beat Cancer
This poster is part of a new series of ads put together by the Liga Contra el Cancer in Peru, urging men to play with their balls more often in an effort to help stop testicular cancer. Not that many men will need the encouragement, but the “give your fingers a better use” motif is…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 5, 2012 - Uncategorized
Commander Shepard Hasn’t Recorded Any New Mass Effect 3 Dialogue. Yet.
So Bioware is giving us a “modified” ending to Mass Effect 3. While details are scant, the safe money is on not a changed ending, but an epilogue of sorts. Something more If you were hoping that would mean something more from a certain Commander Shepard, well, it doesn’t sound like it will. Speaking with…
By Luke Plunkett Published April 5, 2012 - CultureTotal Recall
Thirty Years in a Loft and This Console Still Looks Gorgeous
It might be dusty, and the games might be more than a little dog-eared, but according to the photographer it all still works, despite having sat in a loft for over thirty years. They sure don’t make ’em like they used to. True Vintage [sj9966 @ Flickr, via it 8-bit]
By Luke Plunkett Published April 4, 2012 - Uncategorized
You Can Call Me Fletch
Aloha Kotaku and welcome to the mid-week open thread. It’s all downhill from here! Gathered from around the web are a bunch of things that you may or may not want to read and/or talk about. Up to you! This Samantha Brick thing has gotten firey – I liked this take on it. Whatever happened…
By Kirk Hamilton Published April 4, 2012 - Uncategorized
Microsoft Registers Several “Halo Infinity” Domains, but haloinfinity.com Remains in the Hands of a Japanese Baldness Clinic
The domain registry watchdog Fusible reports that Microsoft’s brand protection partner snapped up the full monty of HaloInfinity-dot-whatever domain names—except for a big one—which likely tips off some kind of activity or release involving that title. Joystiq hilariously notes that haloinfinity.com, not among them, is from the looks of it a placeholder site that for…
By Owen Good Published April 4, 2012 -
UncategorizedMarvel Pinball Tries to Control the Raging Spirit That Dwells in World War Hulk
Revealed about three weeks ago, Avengers Chronicles is the next series of tables that Zen Studios is making for its Marvel Pinball and Pinball FX 2 downloadable games on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, respectively. Here’s the first trailer for one of those tables, World War Hulk It looks absolutely huge, which is intentional, I’m…
By Owen Good Published April 4, 2012 - Uncategorized
Now These Here Are Some Rockin’ Mass Effect Leggings
Chicagoan Alexandra Threw has posted the above Mass Effect-inspired N7 Leggings to Etsy, where you can buy a pair for $75. As video-game themed leggings go, these are pretty damned cool. I wonder if Threw could get an endorsement from the Commander. “I’m Commander Shepard, and these are my favorite leggings on Etsy. Wait, what’s…
By Kirk Hamilton Published April 4, 2012 - Uncategorized
Homophobes Slam EA With Thousands of Letters Over Same-Sex Romance
The past year has seen a great deal of discussion about the existence of same-sex romance options in EA and BioWare’s Mass Effect franchise and their MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic One recent, particularly irrational anti-gay “family values” campaign has kicked off a wave of thousands of letters to EA disapproving of the addition…
By Kate Cox Published April 4, 2012 -
UncategorizedStealthy Divorcés and Killer Astronaut Bears: Some Peter Molydeux Game Highlights
Since writing it up on Monday, many more games have been added to the full list of playable prototypes from the goofy, high-energy Peter Molydeux game jam. I haven’t had time to play even a fraction of the nearly 300 game prototypes available for download, but I have had a chance to play some of…
By Kirk Hamilton Published April 4, 2012