Growing Up, Learning Kanji

To: Crecente From: Bashcraft RE: Kinect Flood Incoming Busy nite! Loads of Kinect coverage. Nice work Team Kotaku. My 7-year-old son Mini-Bash is in first grade, which means he’s learning kanji. All first graders are required to learn certain characters each year. Kanji are the Chinese characters used in Japanese. They are used in combination…

The Many Reviews of Kinect and Its Games

The Xbox 360’s Kinect launched today with more than a dozen games. We played through half a dozen of them. Here’s a run down of the reviews for quick reference. Click on the game’s name to go to the full review which is much more detailed and packed with videos of us playing the games.…

Do Gaming And Game Characters Help Political Campaigns?

During the political campaigns for the recent election, some candidates made promises. Some candidates talked trash. And some candidates used video games to make their point. Did gaming give those politicos a 1Up in office? Website GamePolitics has a round-up of some of the politicians that used gaming in their campaigns. Take Missouri Congressman Russ…

Cops Nab Man For Sharing New Pokémon

On September 1 at approximately 8:00pm, 27-year-old Makoto Sekiguchi from Yokohama uploaded images of unrevealed characters in the new Pokémon game Pocket Monsters: Black & White via his mobile phone. He is now in police custody. According to 47 News (via ANN), Sekiguchi uploaded six images of unseen Pokémon, such as Chaoboo. The characters appear…

360 Gets Old-School Role-Playing For A Buck

“West” is a new indie game for the Xbox 360 that looks right up the alley of anyone who has ever played (and enjoyed) games like Pokemon or Mother It of course lacks the polish of those top-down, role-playing Japanese classics, but then, you can’t get them for $1 on an Xbox console, either. West?…

Dead Space 2, You Are Creeping The Hell Out Of Me

Everything I’ve seen so far of Dead Space 2 has been about making the game bigger, more expansive, more explosive. Not much on whether the game’s gotten any creepier. Well, this trailer is pretty freakin’ creepy. Dead Space 2 will be out on PC, 360 and PS3 in January 2011. Click to view

Setting Up and “Tuning” Your Xbox 360 Kinect

Setting up your Kinect array of cameras and microphones doesn’t take too long, but it’s much more involved than setting up the Wii or Playstation move. This video walks you through the initial set-up process and then some of the fine tuning you can do if you run into problems.

Video Game Ads Were Better In The 1930s

One of the best things about early 20th-century transportaton was the advertising. Cruise ships, airlines and car companies all used bold, iconic ads to sell their vision of the future. It’s a vision that transfers easily to classic video games. IGNs art team whipped up this line of ads showing how video game vehicles would…

Five Games That Were, And Should Be Again

Wolfire, the charitable types developing kooky PC action game Overgrowth, don’t just make games. They imagine what it would be like if people went and remade someone else’s old games, making them as awesome in 2010 as they were originally. Wolfire’s team has posted examples of five classic games that “could still be milked, along…

In Two Years, Gears Of War Might Chainsaw A Phone

Donald Mustard, creative director of Chair Entertainment (Shadow Complex), sees a bright future for gaming on a mobile phone. One so bright that in 2-5 years we’ll be playing Gears of Wars on something that fits in our pockets. Chair, who are currently working on Infinity Blade for the iPhone, say that at first doing…

9 Days With Kinect, My Video Diary

One man lives with a Kinect for nine days. What happens? How does his mind change? What are the surprises? And where in the world does the guy go on Day 7? This is my Kinect Diary, in video.

Club Mario Makes Us Want To Forget The 1990s

It’s easy to forget these days with Nintendo trying so hard to look all adult and stylish, but in the early 1990s, the company was anything but. Allow this montage of footage from Club Mario (a short “comedy” section of the The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!) serve as a reminder that not only did…

Beat The Foreign-Looking Dude With A Japanese Name

Soccer franchise Winning Eleven (AKA Pro Evolution Soccer) is facing increased competition from foreign-based developers. The game’s latest television spots also show heavy competition from a sauve non-Japanese-looking fella with a Japanese last name. And they’re some of the most popular ads on Japanese television. The first ad opens with actor Fuku Kondo talking to…

The Sights, Sounds And Dancing Armies Of Kinect’s NYC Launch

While Kinect launches all across the US tonight, the peripheral’s official bash was in New York City, where Marky Mark, Microsoft and an enormous army of purple-shirted dancers overran Times Square.

Configuring A Room For Kinect: A Tale of Two Homes

Kinect needs a lot of room, more room than any video game control device before it. But where there’s a will to move furniture or rotate TVs, there is a way. This is how we made room in two homes. From Stephen Totilo, deputy editor, based in Brooklyn: Space is tight in my Brooklyn condo.…

Virtual Idol Shoplifter Gets Really Punchy

Hatsune Miku, the popular star of Yamaha’s Vocaloid, doesn’t only appear in video games. Japanese politicians also use her to improve election chances. Miku is virtual, but has very real fans. One of them pocketed a Hatsune Miku plastic figurine, which ended in fists flying. MSN Japan reports that earlier this month outside Tokyo in…

The Cursed Crusade Screen Shots & Artwork

Review: Kinect Joy Ride

Combine racing video games with air guitar and you’ve got Kinect Joy Ride, a game that just might be the closest we get to a Wii Sports of the Kinect launch. Kinect Joy Ride is a simplified racing game, the first in the genre for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Kinect sensor. You have little control of…

Review: Your Shape: Fitness Evolved

At last, I have a way to exercise in front of my TV without any contraptions (or other people) near my body but still with a way to get yelled at if my form is bad. No joke: Your Shape: Fitness Evolved has the potential to be a huge breakthrough in home fitness. This workout…

The World May End Before We Get Darksiders 2

Apocalypse simulator Darksiders was released in January 2010. The action/RPG game will be getting a sequel, but we hope you’re willing to wait, because it might not be here until 2013 Brian Farrell, CEO of the game’s publisher THQ, said this morning during an earnings call that the sequel to one of 2010’s sleeper hits…