• 

  CultureTotal Recall

  Remembering Sega’s Exiled Mascot

  Nintendo has Mario. Microsoft has Master Chief. And Sega, well, for a long time Sega has had Sonic the Hedgehog as its mascot. Thing is, Sonic is an usurper Before the blue, spiky hero with the red shoes burst onto the scene in 1991, Sega already had a mascot: Alex Kidd. A character we have…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 6, 2011
• Uncategorized

  Valve Tied To Vast Potato-Based Conspiracy, May Be Portal 2 Related

  As of last Friday, April 1, Half-Life and Left 4 Dead developer Valve has been dropping cryptic clues in its own games (Team Fortress 2, Portal 2) and games made by others (Super Meat Boy, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, AudioSurf). The common thread? Potatoes What appears to be a complex alternate reality game, or ARG,…

  By Michael McWhertor Published April 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  What Are Ya Buyin’?

  Hola, Kotaku. Let’s put this Tuesday to bed with a question, as we tend to do on Tuesdays. As a consumer of goods and services myself, I’m wondering, what have you been buying lately? Surely you’ve picked up some comic books, some video games, some action figures, a car or house or two. Maybe you’d…

  By Michael McWhertor Published April 5, 2011
• 

  Uncategorized

  This Is What The Mysterious Pandora’s Tower For Wii Looks Like

  Earlier this year, Nintendo of Japan unveiled Pandora’s Tower, a new Wii game slated for an overseas release this spring. We didn’t know much about the title beyond its use of classical piano music and large upper back tattoos. But now we have video of this high-speed action game. Pandora’s Tower appears to be a…

  By Michael McWhertor Published April 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  Why Hasn’t Rockstar Made A Grand Theft Auto Movie Yet?

  The makers of Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption and the upcoming L.A. Noire haven’t hopped on the “transmedia” bandwagon yet, meaning they haven’t tapped their best known franchises for movies, television shows or comic books. Why not? Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser tells the Hollywood Reporter, bluntly, that “Virtually all movies made from games are…

  By Michael McWhertor Published April 5, 2011
• 

  Uncategorized

  How will the Ender’s Game movie shoot the book’s infamous Zero-G training sequences? Bob Orci explains

  The most memorable moment from Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game novel is easily the zero gravity training that the child genius must endure. But how in the hell will the movie version include this? We asked producer Roberto Orci. In Card’s novel, the young prodigies learn about the art of war in giant zero gravity…

  By Meredith Woerner Published April 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  Indie Fighting Game Skullgirls Beats Lag With GGPO

  The all-girl brawler Skullgirls will fight for lag-free online battles with the implementation of latency-hiding tech GGPO, which enables the play of classic, old-school fighting games over the internet. Developer Reverge Labs officially announced that Skullgirls would be the first commercial fighting game to use GGPO today.

  By Michael McWhertor Published April 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  A Chubby Mario Of More Accurate 8-Bit Proportions

  The super hefty plumber Mario leaps into action thanks to Mike Mitchell’s cleaned up illustration from back in the day. Related Rampages: I Am Not a Sith | Sasquatch | NOFATCHX (More) Fat Mario by Mike Mitchell (deviantART) (Store) (Tumblr) (Twitter) Via: sirmitchell Need your daily fill of geek eye candy? If so, head over…

  By Michael McWhertor Published April 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  Call of Duty: Black Ops‘ ‘Escalation’ Add-on Pegged For May

  Activision’s massively successful Call of Duty: Black Ops appears set to expand in May with the “Escalation” Content Pack for Xbox 360, according to a retailer listing from the Australian arm of GAME. What’s in Escalation? According to that purported listing, spotted by VG247, Escalation looks to feature four multiplayer maps and one new level…

  By Michael McWhertor Published April 5, 2011
• 

  Uncategorized

  Light Writing With Kinect Comes To Nordstrom

  High end retailer Nordstrom is using Microsoft’s hands-free Kinect controller for Xbox 360 in its window displays to give the fashion conscious a chance to play with light. At Nordstrom’s downtown Seattle flagship store, the company’s Interactive Development, Visual Merchandising and Operations Teams installed Kinect cameras to let passersby toy interact with displays with the…

  By Michael McWhertor Published April 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  Till All Are At Least Ten

  Farewell, Old Friends | One last transformation before they hit storage. (Photo by Michael Fahey) Bedtime Stories World Exclusive First Look Under the Hood of the Next Unreal Engine You’ve seen the sexed up trailer showing what games based on Epic’s Unreal Engine will look like in the coming generation. Now join Kotaku and Gizmodo…

  By Mike Fahey Published April 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  PlayStation Store Update: Red Faction: Battlegrounds, SOCOM 4 and StarDrone

  What new treasures await PlayStation 3 and PSP owners this week on the North American PlayStation Store? One Red Faction spin-off, a game called StarDrone, a multiplayer demo for SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs and cheap-cheap Angry Birds. Look for plenty of downloadable content for games like Yoostar 2, Test Drive Unlimited 2, ModNation Racers…

  By Michael McWhertor Published April 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  Sega Teases ‘Something Big’ For Sonic The Hedgehog On His 20th Anniversary — Is It Sonic Generations?

  Hard-working Sega mascot Sonic the Hedgehog turns 20-years-old this summer. Surely Sega must have grand plans for the “Blast Processing” pioneer, right? Right. And we’ll find out what those plans are this week—or have we already? Sega has begun prepping us for exciting announcements, warning that “There’s something big coming this week to the Sonic…

  By Michael McWhertor Published April 5, 2011
• 

  Uncategorized

  Sequence Lets You Kill A Yeti With Dance

  How the hell do you mix an RPG with a rhythm game? Iridium Studios’ Jason Wishnov shows us how upcoming Xbox Live Indie Game Sequence works. I’ve been looking forward to Iridium Studio’s Sequence since I first heard about it earlier this year. I’ve also been a bit confused. How does dancing cast a spell?…

  By Mike Fahey Published April 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  Fan-Made LEGO Mega Man Leaps Into Action

  Now that he’s created renderings of LEGO Mega Man and the evil Robot Masters, 3D artist Raphael Phillips lets our blocky robot hero exercise his newfound power against a series of unfortunate training dummies. Curse 8-Bit Cubist’s Raph for making a crossover between LEGO and Mega Man look so damn appealing. Mega Man isn’t a…

  By Mike Fahey Published April 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  EA Sports’ NBA Elite Takes The Year Off, New NBA Jam Coming This Fall [Update]

  After the disastrous, last minute cancellation of NBA Elite 11, Electronic Arts is keeping its basketball sim video game on the bench for another year, saying that it won’t ship a new entry in the NBA Live/NBA Elite franchise until the fall of 2012. “As planned, our next NBA simulation title is in development at…

  By Michael McWhertor Published April 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  Buy Two Video Games, Get One Free At Amazon Today

  Want to buy three (or more) video games today on the cheap? Hit up Amazon.com’s “Buy Two Games, Get a Third Free” sale. Great games featured in that offer include Killzone 3, Epic Mickey, Bulletstorm, Gran Turismo 5 and Donkey Kong Country Returns, plus more great and not-so-great games.

  By Michael McWhertor Published April 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  If You Buy One PC Upgrade This Year…

  …Make it an SSD. I am not making spurious claims or waving my silly little e-willy around here. It’s the single most immediately noticeable system upgrade I think I’ve ever done, and as such I’m keen it isn’t stranded in a techhead and rich-gonk ghetto. This is an upgrade for any PC gamer, not purely…

  Alec Meer | Rock, Paper, Shotgun Published April 5, 2011
• 

  Uncategorized

  This Great Inversion Trailer Has No Gameplay But Still Succeeds

  Remember Inversion? If not, it’s the gravity flipping shooter that Namco Bandai first announced way back in 2009. We last saw the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game in action at last year’s Gamescom. Now we have a new look at Saber Interactive’s third-person shooter… sort of. This mood-setting, gameplay-free teaser for Inversion, now slated…

  By Michael McWhertor Published April 5, 2011
• Uncategorized

  Live Virtual Life To The Fullest With The Sims 3 Generations

  EA Play adds life to The Sims 3 this spring with the Generations Expansion pack, letting players explore the stages of virtual life on a much deeper level than ever before. With the Generations Expansion, childhood and the teenage years become much more than stepping stones toward adulthood in The Sims 3. Children will be…

  By Mike Fahey Published April 5, 2011