- Kotaku East
Why You Won’t See a Super Robot Wars Game Outside of Japan
This week, Dainiji Super Robot Wars Z: Saisei-hen, the latest in the Super Robot Wars series, came out for the PSP making it the 64th Super Robot Wars related game in a series that is nearly 21 years old. The Super Robot Wars series was born from the most basic mindset of any fanboy: “What…
By Toshi Nakamura Published April 5, 2012 - Kotaku East
Taiwanese Man Destroys Finger While Playing Video Games
According to a broadcast on Shenzhen satellite television, a Taiwanese man damaged the cartilage in his finger while playing mobile phone games. The man would apparently play mobile games for hours and hours on end each day, swiping and tapping his phone. As a result, his hand is now injured, and he cannot bend his…
By Brian Ashcraft Published April 5, 2012 - Kotaku East
Namco Bandai Ready to Meld Games and Anime with New “Hybrid Discs”
This week in Weekly Famitsu, Namco Bandai Games CEO, Shin Unozawa sat down to discuss the company’s 2011 performance, and some plans for the future. Despite a shaky start last year, Namco Bandai managed to pull in massive sales totaling ¥440 billion by the end of the fiscal year. Most surprising, Unozawa pointed out, were…
By Toshi Nakamura Published April 5, 2012 -
Kotaku EastTen Totally Insane, Totally Bloody Japanese Flicks
During the 1970s, Japan made some amazing grindhouse flicks, like School of the Holy Beast and Terrifying Girls’ High School: Lynch Law Classroom. The country’s exploitation filmmakers have been going through a Renaissance in the past decade, concentrating on outrageous splatter flicks like Tokyo Gore Police and The Machine Girl. And it does not look…
By Brian Ashcraft Published April 5, 2012 -
UncategorizedStupid Pigeons are No Match for a Man in a Paper Hat
If you’ve played SNK fighting game Fatal Fury, you know Terry Bogard’s Power Wave. Over the years, it has evolved—into chopsticks, apparently. Watch as Japanese comedy site Megwin has Terry Bogard takes on some pigeons with the Power Wave. 木製パワーウェイブで鳩を追い払えるか？ [Kotaku Japan]
By Brian Ashcraft Published April 5, 2012 - 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