Nintendo DS Outsells Game Boy Advance In The U.S.

Nintendo had a very happy holiday in the United States, shattering sales records by selling more than 7 million hardware units in December 2009 between the Wii and Nintendo DS. But Nintendo has a few more records to brag about. The company announced that lifetime U.S. sales for the Wii have surpassed 27.2 million units.…

VVVVVV Micro-review: AAAAAAH!!!

Gravity flipping intergalactic platformer and death by spike simulator VVVVVV has already resulted in heavy casualties at Kotaku. My first playthrough of the game ended with my character dying more than 900 times. Such is the torment of VVVVVV, an old-school platformer from developer Terry Cavanagh featuring simple controls and a smartly explored mechanic. Unlike…

Catan Seems Likely for North American PS3 Release

The ESRB shows a new listing for a PS3 adaptation of Settlers of Catan, the popular resource-allocation strategy board game. A version of this game by the same developer was released in Japan back in 2008. Game Republic developed the Japanese version of Catan; it’s listed as the studio for the new version rated by…

Haiti

To: Owen From: Stephen Re: When I Get To Friday… It feels wrong to be writing about video games all week, disseminating so much information to the public and not personally mentioning the suffering in Haiti once. I considered some Haiti stories to write for Kotaku, reached out to some people in game development with…

You Will Download PS3 Firmware 3.15 And Like It

PlayStation 3 owners, you must download the latest firmware for the console, whether you want to play PSP minis on the thing or not. The previously optional firmware update (v3.15) has been upgraded to mandatory. Download now! [PlayStation.com]

World Of Warcraft Armory Goes 3D

The Armory, World of Warcraft‘s number one stalking, tool is now even stalkier, as upgrades introduce 3D character models, character data feeds, and calendar feeds, allowing players to sync their WoW calendars to their Google calendars. I feel so naked, and that’s probably because the World of Warcraft Armory database now shows my mage, Rande,…

Marble Madness Creator Selected to Hall of Fame

Mark Cerny, a developer known for his work with Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games – and for his 1984 arcade hit Marble Madness – has been selected to the Hall of Fame of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. Cerny joins only Will Wright and Shigeru Miyamoto as developers honored by both the AIAS…

Rockstar Has Some Fun With “Eye Of Sauron” Comparison, Still Won’t Comment

Capping off a week during which Rockstar Game’s New York team was unfavorably described as an Eye of Sauron overlooking its development studios, the company just posted some new editions to its wallpaper series. The company entitled the three-image series: “The Eye Is Watching.” Earlier in the week, an anonymous ex-Rockstar employee described to MTV…

The Cost Of Playing Star Trek Online

Cryptic and Atari have announced the subscription rates for Star Trek Online, finally giving players an idea of the cost of playing the Trek-themed MMO, aside from sleep deprivation and a gradual loss of skin pigment. Cryptic is going with the current paid MMO standard of $14.99 a month for Star Trek Online, but there…

Should Video Games Permit Three-Player Arm Wrestling?

Yesterday, I found the line between reality and unreality that video games would not cross. It involved arm wrestling. I was visiting the offices of a public relations firm in Manhattan on Thursday to check out early builds of upcoming games from the publisher Hudson Entertainment. Among those was Deca Sports DS, the first portable…

Jack Bauer’s Calling

…from his Motorola i880, his mobile of choice. He wants to know if you are ready for Season 8 of 24, which premieres on January 17. What say you? Ping him back. No wonder Jack likes the i880—it has a 2.0 megapixel camera/camcorder, Walkie-Talkie features, GPS capabilities, Internet microbrowser, voice dialing and voice recorder. It…

BlazBlue Portable Strikes Stateside In March

The PSP version of Arc System Works’ BlazBlue comes to North America in March, complete with a new game mode, a shop full of unlockable content, and Unlimited versions of all twelve characters. Check out the announcement trailer. The 2D fighting game that confused the hell out of button mashers everywhere on the PlayStation and…

Kingdom Hearts Does Wonders For PSP In Japan

The release of Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep has given the PlayStation Portable a sales boost, while other platforms faltered this week. The PSP sits atop (and at the bottom of) this week’s hardware chart. The PSP moved nearly 150,000 units this past week in Japan, likely aided by the solid sales of…

Monday Night Combat Might Be The Xbox 360’s Most Violent New Sport

With a trailer that makes it look like a cross between Team Fortress 2 and Monday Night Football, here is Uber Entertainment’s Monday Night Combat, coming to Xbox Live Arcade. From the studio with the parkour-loving game developer. Official description: Monday Night Combat is a class-based, third-person shooter… and the most popular lethal sport of…

Phoenix Rises, Tom Petty Lives Next Week On Rock Band

Rock Band expands next week with a batch of live tracks from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, plus a smattering of new tunes from French rock darlings Phoenix and Southern flavored rockers Silvertide. The following new additions to the Rock Band library of songs will be available on Xbox 360 and Wii starting January 19…

It’s Humans Versus Cats In RISK: Factions

EA reveals the first two factions for its upcoming Xbox Live Arcade title RISK: Factions, with the humans and feline horde bringing an element of wackiness to the game than fans have not been missing for years. Silly factions do battle on the classic RISK map. On one side we have the stodgy, militaristic humans;…

Ken Levine Explains Irrational Switch, “Underwater Horse” Connection

Some time this year Ken Levine will finally let people know what game he and his studio are working on, the creative visionary behind BioShock told Kotaku today. Not yet. Today, he wanted to discuss the re-renamed Irrational Games. As reported earlier this week, 2K Boston, the lead development studio behind BioShock, System Shock, Freedom…

Surprise! Sonic Is The Only Playable Character In Project Needlemouse

Sega’s Project Needlemouse character reveal trivia contest is over, with Sonic the Hedgehog the last man standing, making him the only playable character in the game. The only thing that could make this news better is robot crabs. Sega kicked off a trivia challenge on Monday, with correct answers causing the names of potential playable…

Quantum Theory Screens

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

I’ll be basking in the soothing voiceover work of one Nolan North this weekend as I play an obscene amount of both Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Assassin’s Creed II. I have Game of the Year research to do, arguments about Demon’s Souls to make and opinionated Kotaku editors to debate. Having not had much…