Imagination and The Secret History of Video Games

To be a gamer in the 80s and early 90s required a special kind of perseverance, especially if you were a computer owner. Whether it was the superhuman patience needed to load a game off a cassette tape, the willingness to soldier on when the floppy disk containing your favourite game corrupted or the ability…

Assassin’s Creed Publisher Could Copy EA’s Downloadable Content Model

Answering a question about downloadable content during their fiscal year 2009-10 fiscal earnings call, Ubisoft indicated it would likely they would adopt EA’s Project 10 Dollar DLC plan sometime in the future. Ubisoft’s earnings were down for the year but strong for the final quarter of fiscal year 2009-10, riding on strong sales of Wii-exclusive…

Beware This Ruinous Prince of Persia Glitch [Spoilers]

I was enjoying playing Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands as I played it this weekend for review. That doesn’t mean I wanted it to glitch near the end and force me to start over. Too bad for me. This post contains videos of the inescapable room I found myself in while playing a finished…

BlizzCon 2010 Tickets Ready To Sell Out In June

Mark your calendars, Diablo, StarCraft, and Warcraft fans, as Blizzard lays out two dates in early June for you to attempt to spend $150 a ticket to BlizzCon 2010. Like last year, Blizzard is selling tickets to its immensely popular fan gathering in two batches. The first batch goes on sale on Wednesday, June 2,…

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands Review: Help Yourself

In the month of the first Prince of Persia feature film we also have a new Prince of Persia. This isn’t your standard movie game nor your standard sequel. It’s a successor to a fractured lineage, an often-enjoyabe product of a sandstorm of decisions that couldn’t please everyone. The Forgotten Sands is a swashbuckling adventure,…

PixelJunk Shooter 2 Is Full Steam Ahead

PixelJunk Shooter will be the first title in Q-Games’ series of PlayStation Network games to get a proper sequel, with “everything and the kitchen sink” going into PixelJunk Shooter 2. Q-Games president Dylan Cuthbert outs the shooter sequel in a post on the PlayStation blog today, indicating that PixelJunk Shooter 2 is currently in full…

Lara Croft And The New Addictive Game

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is the sort of game that we need to see more of on the PS3 and Xbox 360: Easy to play, hard to put down, but not a throwaway side project or appendage to some bigger effort. Unlike any Tomb Raider game before it, the Guardian of Light…

Dead Space 2 Screens

Reminder: Alan Wake Creators Live On Kotaku Talk Radio On Wednesday

Kotaku Talk Radio will be recording live on Wednesday. 11am Kotaku Time. 1pm ET. 10am PT. Host: Me. Guests: Matias Myllyrinne and Oskari Häkkinen of Alan Wake studio Remedy Entertainment. Call-in and live-streaming details will be on Kotaku at showtime.

Guild Wars 2 Fashion Is 250 Years Ahead Of Its Time

When the world is in turmoil, fashion is everything. Guild Wars 2 character artist Kristen Perry discusses the process of creating the clothes the races of Tyria will wear 250 years after the first game. Guild Wars 2 is a completely different animal than Guild Wars. Rather than having to create styles for the handful…

The Importance Of Writing

It was recently announced that God of War writer Marianne Krawczyk will be lending her talents to the upcoming game Shank. I thought the God of War games were above-average in the video game narrative department and Shank looks like a well-done update to one of my favorite games, Metal Slug. However, instead of making…

Unofficial Super Mario Sequel Out Now

Super Mario Galaxy 2 will be out for Nintendo Wiis in America this weekend, but why wait several days to play a new Mario game? Super Mario Star Scramble 2 is out now, for now. The new Mario game is a side-scrolling Mario adventure from Dutch developer Kenney Vleugels, a Nintendo fan who has already…

Talk Amongst Yourselves

Let’s not be too impatient, but let’s talk here about video games. Confused about commenting on Kotaku? Read our FAQ

Distilled To A Purer Substance

Have you ever played a game where the minigames or secondary goals were more exciting and compelling than the rest of the entire game? It doesn’t happen often, but it happens. Through extensive research (asking my friends), I’ve found that this varies in a highly personal way. I had a friend in high school who…

The Mumps

To: Crecente From: Bashcraft RE: Am I A Wake? Mini-Bash just got over a case of the mumps. Was really worried because, you know, the mumps can cause hearing loss. Really bad luck on getting them as we had scheduled him for a shot, and right before he was supposed to go, he…got the mumps.…

Final Fantasy XIII, Batman Selling Millions (Millions!)

Square Enix just reported its best year ever, on the back of super-strong sales of a handful of key titles. Like Final Fantasy XIII. And Batman: Arkham Asylum. And Dragon Quest IX. All of which sold millions. Final Fantasy XIII, despite some up-and-down review scores, has sold 5.5 million copies worldwide since launch, with the…

Truly Great Cinema Comes To The PS3

From Fellini to Ford. From Clouzot to Capra. And everything in between. Online movie site Mubi.com is making its way to the PS3 and bringing its fantastic library of cinema with it. From the PlayStation Europe Blog: “We are MUBI and we are basically transforming your PS3 console into your own online cinema. (You can…

No, YOU Listen

Genzoman illustrates the deepest desires of anyone that has played Ocarina of Time, via Go Nintendo

Sony Calls For Aussie Game Rating Changes

Michael Ephraim, boss of Sony Computer Entertainment Australia, has spoken out against the country’s continued lack of an adults-only rating for video games. “Gaming has moved on, the choice of content has moved on and I think it is time Australia gets in step with the rest of the world and has an R rating…

This Spartan’s Greatest Challenge

As seen by reader Chris. Thanks!