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  Kotaku Originals: Still Pocket Size

  Until PAX East kicked in Nintendo’s new handhelds – the upcoming 3DS and the arrival of the DSi XL – told the tale of the week’s big news. Paid DLC, as always, also pushed buttons among the week’s top stories. Kotaku’s PAX East Coverage Kotaku Talk Radio Top Stories Kotaku Census 2010: The Results (In…

  By Owen Good Published March 27, 2010
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  PAX East Creates A Game Of Cold-Blooded Journalism

  Pen and paper role-playing game designer David Hill tasked a theater packed with PAX East attendees to create an RPG in sixty minutes, resulting in a thrilling game of journalistic intrique – with talking dinosaurs. The Design an RPG in an Hour panel at PAX East was already underway when I arrived, the room overflowing…

  By Mike Fahey Published March 27, 2010
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  They Brought The Gamers To Boston

  Not everything the men behind the massive PAX East convention here in Boston told me this weekend is true. But most of it was funny and/or illuminating. Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, better known to the millions of fans of their Penny Arcade comic strip as Gabe and Tycho, have brought their giant Penny Arcade…

  By Stephen Totilo Published March 27, 2010
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  Weekend Talk Amongst Yourselves

  Mornin’ gang. Anyone else have an unusual Friday evening? Then again, what the hell is your usual Friday evening? If it includes video games, gab it up here while I make coffee and power on the weekend news-o-tron. Confused about commenting on Kotaku? Read our FAQ

  By Owen Good Published March 27, 2010
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  The Argument For (And Against) Buying a DSi XL

  It’s easy to misjudge Nintendo’s often fanciful video game system redesigns. When the Japanese game maker first unveiled the Game Boy Advance SP, a fancy iteration of the Game Boy Advance that folded in half, people loved the concept. And their initial impressions proved dead on, with the SP selling nearly 44 million units in…

  By Brian Crecente Published March 27, 2010
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  Kotaku Census 2010: The Results (In Full)

  As you know, the results of our little Kotaku Census are in. And while infographics are pretty, I also promised I’d give you the results in full. So here they are! On the whole, they’re great reading. While some questions presented predictable results, and some didn’t really tell us much (the “genres” question was multi-choice,…

  By Luke Plunkett Published March 27, 2010
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  Nintendo’s New DS Will Still Force You To Re-Buy Your Digital Games

  Lagging behind standards maintained by competitors Sony, Microsoft and Apple, Nintendo is launching its second portable gaming system capable of downloading video games, without letting those who downloaded games on their first DS to transfer them to the new one. Nintendo is currently operating a pay-for-it-twice system for its DSiWare line-up, something that will be…

  By Stephen Totilo Published March 27, 2010
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  The Behemoth: The Timeline

  As seen at PAX, a timeline of the work of the people behind Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers — with an important hint about the future.

  By Stephen Totilo Published March 27, 2010
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  Crackdown 2 Screens, Only 492 More To Collect

  Crackdown’s Pacific City sure ain’t what it used to be. The buildings got crummier, and the cop’s armour got better. Those delicious green orbs, however, look unchanged. Just goes to show, you can’t improve on perfection.

  By Luke Plunkett Published March 27, 2010
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  Yakuza Flexes Its Muscle On PS3 Sales In Japan

  The PlayStation 3 had a big week in Japan, thanks to the success of Sega’s Yakuza 4, the country’s bestselling game for the country’s bestselling console. It was just a little over a year ago that the previous entry, Yakuza 3, pushed the PS3 to the top of the Media Create hardware chart. It was…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 27, 2010
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  There Once Was A PS2 Assassin’s Creed Game

  The first Assassin’s Creed, much like the second, only came out on three systems: the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. But did you know that, alongside production of the original game, another was in development for the PS2 & Xbox? So says Eidos’ Jonathan Jacques-Belletete, who told 1UP that the last-gen game, like Assassin’s Creed…

  By Luke Plunkett Published March 27, 2010
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  What If Tron Were Released In 1962?

  If Disney’s computer generated sci-fi epic appeared a couple decades earlier and title sequence master Saul Bass got the job, well, it would probably look just like this, requiring a massive farm of PDP-1s to render. Oh, sure this Bass-inspired Tron send-up is positively ancient in internet terms—creator Hexagonall uploaded the parody to Vimeo some…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 26, 2010
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  Kotaku Off Topic: Junkyard Dogs

  Thank goodness it’s Friday, when the off-topic conversation occasionally steers toward the gastronomic. Let’s ring in the weekend by talking about anything we want, as long as that anything is about hot dogs. See, the PAX East festivities happening this weekend made me pine for a Spike’s Junkyard Dog, the “German Shephard” to be precise.…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 26, 2010
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  Halo: Reach’s Commendations, Credits & Your Concerns Explained

  Bungie is mixing up Halo: Reach multiplayer with all new rules, adding the concepts of Credits, Rank, and Commendations; it’s all part of the Xbox 360 game’s new “Player Investment” system, which sounds way more exciting than the name implies. In Halo: Reach, Bungie is throwing out much of the old way of doing things,…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 26, 2010
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  Killer Origami

  Origami Mega Man and Mettaur. Some 1,250 pieces were needed to construct Mega Man, another 250 for Mettaur. By DeviantArt user DreamMyst, as seen on Nintendo Everything

  By Owen Good Published March 26, 2010
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  Review Round-Up: Steely Damned

  It was a week in which new Wii games were reviewed and old Nintendo 64 games were reviewed, as well as one that could’ve have passed for a Super NES game. It was a week’s worth of Kotaku reviews. Get yourself caught up on our weekly batch of scoreless reviews, including new Dante’s Inferno downloadable…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 26, 2010
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  Whenever the Next Half-Life Comes Out, It Had Better Be Scary

  Games have “gotten away from genuinely scaring the player,” and Half-Life, whenever it deploys its next episode, needs to get back to doing just that, the game’s boss said. Gabe Newell, the Valve honcho, was asked if the game’s tone has matured along with its audience’s over the past 12 years. He told Edge Magazine…

  By Owen Good Published March 26, 2010
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  The iPad Launch Games, Now More Expensive

  With Apple’s “magical and revolutionary” iPad hitting next week—April 3, to be exact—expect a flood of apps and video games to saturate iTunes at launch. Specifically, expect these games, unearthed from the iPad’s app store. The first wave of iPad games appear to mostly be upscaled upgrades of their iPhone and iPod Touch counterparts, according…

  By Michael McWhertor Published March 26, 2010
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  Netflix on the Wii Features Some Nice Long Load Times

  The Netflix discs enabling streaming video over the Wii are already in the mail and one reader’s uploaded this video, showing us what we can expect – in this case, 30 second loading times to browse the catalog. By this video, booting up the service takes 33 seconds. After registering the device, it’s another 33…

  By Owen Good Published March 26, 2010
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  PAX East Cosplay Gallery: Day One – Feeling A Bit Tingly

  It’s been a busy first day at PAX East, and we’ve only managed to capture a handful of cosplayers in our mad dash about the convention area, but what they lack in quantity they make up in quality. Okay, maybe not, but they try really hard, and win points for originality? The Tingles are cute?…

  By Mike Fahey Published March 26, 2010