Let’s Go Shopping For Video Games! (In the 1980’s and 1990’s)

Ah, paper catalogues. They still make them, but they’re not what they used to be. What are now glossy prints highlighting only a select few items from a store used to be informational tomes, full of almost everything you could ever want. And we all wanted video games, right? These catalogues, mostly from US retailer…

The Best Gears of War Book You’ll Ever Read

In anticipation of the upcoming Gears of War 3, Microsoft and Epic contracted novelist and Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter author Tom Bissell to take a deeper look into the design and history of the Gears franchise. Titled “The Art and Design of Gears of War,” it covers most every aspect of the Gears…

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations Gets a Multiplayer Beta This Saturday

In preparation for the November 15th launch of Ubisoft’s upcoming open-world stealth/action/swarthiness-simulator Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, the publisher will be running a multiplayer beta for the game from September 3-11th. However, the beta is exclusive to Playstation Plus members as well as “select Playstation 3 Uplay members.” Multiplayer in the new title will be much the…

You Probably Won’t Play This PSP Game

Unless you live in Japan or import it, that is. The last Yakuza spin-off PSP title, Black Panther: Like a Dragon New Chapter, wasn’t localized for the West. With the PS Vita coming out, smart money says this one won’t be either. If there’s one thing that makes me happy about a new Black Panther…

Checking the Pipes at Dragon Con 2011

It’s not every day you find a Kotaku editor in downtown Atlanta. Normally I’m about 10 miles north, but for Dragon Con 2011 I’m making an exception. I’ll be hanging out at one of the world’s largest science fiction and fantasy conventions this weekend, taking photos, taking names, and taking whatever gaming news might pop…

Sony Says PSN has Added 3 Million Users Since Attack

Howard Stringer, the chief executive of Sony, said at a Berlin electronics show that the PlayStation Network has recovered from this spring’s attack and 23-day outage by adding 3 million new users in the three months since. “This year, we at Sony have been flooded, we’ve been flattened, we’ve been hacked, we’ve been singed,” Stringer…

EA Sports Seeks Ex-Football Players for Games Development Fellowship

EA Sports, in collaboration with NCAA Football, will this winter begin offering paid fellowships to former college football players seeking experience in a games development or sports entertainment career. The players will work in the EA Tiburon studio, where the NCAA Football and Madden series are developed. The fellowships begin in January and will be…

Riddles and Penguins and Cats and Bats: Just Another Night in Arkham City

Of all the things that Batman: Arkham Asylum had going for it—and there were a lot of them—my favorite thing was the Riddler challenges. Placed throughout the game, these optional side-challenges ran the gamut from extremely easy to borderline impossible, and provided a welcome incentive to go off the path and explore. Last weekend at…

Retro Game Master Episode 11: The Wing of Madoola

This week on Retro Game Master the Kacho takes on The Wing of Madoola Released in 1986 for the Nintendo Famicom,The Wing of Madoola is a side-scrolling action adventure tale of the Kingdom of Badham (nothing more dangerous than bad ham) and a magical statue that can bring peace to the world. So of course…

Create Your Own Dragon Ball Z Character That Looks Like Every Other Dragon Ball Z Character

For the first time in any Dragon Ball franchise game, Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Tenkaichi lets players build their own custom fighters to battle online and off, proving once and for all that every Akira Toriyama character is the same guy with different hair and accessories. This is why I could never get into Dragon…

Rings and Coins

COLOGNE, GERMANY – Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario hash a few things out at Nintendo’s Gamescom booth. (Photo by Michael McWhertor) Contre Jour: It’s Unlike Anything You Haven’t Seen Contre Jour came home from E3 with a chest full of ribbons from major league critics and became a lot of people’s most anticipated indie game…

Official Portal Socks Are Awesome, Not For Long Falls

Is this the best summer for video game-themed socks… ever? It’s looking that way, now that J!NX has released officially licensed Portal 2 knee socks, footwear based on the Aperture Science Long Fall Boots from Valve’s first-person puzzler. While your sock drawer may already be over-encumbered with excellent Minecraft-inspired socks, I don’t know how any…

The Jamestown Video Game Set on Mars Seems Historically Inaccurate

They grew corn and tobacco in colonial Jamestown on Mars back in the 1600s. Sir Walter Raleigh took up arms, via a spaceship, to fight the Spanish-Martian alliance. I don’t think any of this is true, but this was history as described to me by Tim Ambrogi, one of the developers of the four-player shoot-em-up…

That Weirdly Racist NPC in Deus Ex: Human Revolution

For the most part, the characters in Deus Ex: Human Revolution stick to the middle of the road. There’s the tortured, hard-to read protagonist, the brilliant woman with a secret, the sassy British tech guy, and so on. But among them, one character sticks out—Letitia, a street informant that Adam Jensen meets in Detroit. Letitia…

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Screen Shots

The Splatters is About the Cheerful Suicide of Blobs (But You May Have Known That Already)

Before I saw The Splatters this month at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, our own Brian Crecente saw the game, then called Confetti Carnival, at the DICE convention in Las Vegas back in February. We don’t quite have the situation here as described in the great Jorge Luis Borges story about the man he…

Watch Your Friends Watching You Beat Them at Starfox 64 3D

Nintendo has uploaded a new trailer video from Starfox 64 3D, which highlights what battle mode will look like in the game. Of course, the video is only in 2D here, but it already looks so damn pretty that I’ll take it. Like so many other Nintendo games before it, Starfox will let you battle…

Monaco, the Multiplayer Heist Video Game We Need, Looks Prettier Than Ever

With so few great heist video games out there, the wait for Monaco has seemed especially long. A couple of years in the making and promised by creator Andy Schatz only for some time in 2012, Monaco is at least a consistent presence at shows like this past weekend’s Penny Arcade Expo. That’s where I…

Pac-Man Dumplings Make for Adorable Dim Sum

Newly opened dim sum joint

The Paperboy is now a ‘Smut Peddler’ in Retro City Rampage, Coming Soon for People With Memories

Retro City Rampage, the top-down Grand Theft Auto-looking game that pays homage to old-school video games when it’s not having some fun at their expense, is nearly done. At last. RCR‘s lead creator, Brian Provinciano, showed me a new bit of the game this past weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo. He highlighted the in-game…