The Reason Behind Street Fighter‘s Iconic Button Layout

This week twenty-nine years ago, the first Street Fighter was released in arcades. There was Ken, Ryu, and some very different buttons. As pointed out on Event Hubs, the first cabinets had giant pressure-sensitive pads that you were supposed to POUND WITH YOUR FIST. Which is nuts. Problems arose from players punching the buttons, such…

Matsumoto Castle by Night. Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture. By Martijn Koetsier JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line!

Developer Decides To Pull Game From Steam After Just Three Days

It’s not easy being a Steam developer these days. Even once-successful creators are falling on hard times. Since 2009, Arcen Games has released 11 games on Steam. They’ve done pretty well for themselves, despite mixed reception of games like A Valley Without Wind—which, at best, can be called an ambitious mess—and its sequel, which, at…

“Its super effective!”, by Guerrilla Games artist Luc de Haan.

I Played Battlefield 1‘s Beta, And Got Run Over By A Horse

Battlefield 1 is having a beta on the Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC. For now, it’s available to Battlefield Insider members before opening to everyone else tomorrow morning, August 31st. I was very skeptical heading into things; the entire series feels tired and the World War One setting didn’t interest me. But after getting…

That Final Fantasy XV Mobile Pinball Thing Is Out

Justice Monsters Five, the game that’s supposedly wildly popular in the fictional world of Final Fantasy XV, is now available as a downloadable free-to-play mobile game for iOS and Android. From what I’ve played so far, Justice Monsters Five is a higher-end collectible hero game with a pinball twist. Elementally attuned enemies appear on te…

A Year’s Worth Of Articles About The Witcher 3

Today, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt gets a Game of the Year edition. It comes with all the updates, patches, DLC and expansions released over the last year. It’s also the rare “Game of the Year” edition that is appropriately named. Here at Kotaku, many of us loooooove The Witcher 3. Love it like, “have…

Who Even Watches Their Overwatch Kill-Cam?

We’re back with the second episode of our new weekly video series where —you guessed it!—we hang out and talk about Overwatch. Working title is “Let’s Talk Overwatch.” We’ll probably change that soon. This week I’m joined once more by Cecilia and Nathan to talk about failure, death, and all that fun stuff. Do any…

Scraps From Covering Video Games A Decade Ago

This past weekend, I found a couple of small box in my apartment full of memories from when I was writing about video games for MTV News a decade ago. They might as well have been a buried time capsule. I had little memory of what I’d saved in those boxes, which I don’t think…

XCOM, Your Ice Cream Looks Delicious

We’re returning to the art of XCOM 2 today for a third time, because artist Dongmin Shin has shared some of his cute-as-hell poster art that adorns the walls of the game’s world. As shown off on the game’s blog, these cute little designs of the game’s bad guys were originally intended as posters for…

Super Paper Mario Is A Role-Playing Game About Nintendo

Super Paper Mario has the typical hallmarks of a 2D Mario platformer—stomp on enemies, jump over pits, and avoid obstacles—but failing carries minuscule stakes. If you fall into a pit, you only lose a single health point. The enemies are weak, by and large, and powerups and Shroom Shakes are plentiful. That it’s nearly impossible…