Classic Video Games as Romance Novels

The fine folks over at Shutterstock and illustrator Echo Chernik teamed up for Valentine’s Day, and imagined what romantic pulp fiction would look like with video game characters. Here’s The Legend of Zelda, Street Fighter, Super Mario, Pac Man and A**hole dog from Duck Hunt, appearing in a romantic novel for the first time. Head…

Sons of Anarchy Creator Says He’s Found a Studio to Make a Video Game

Unlike just about everyone in the series by now, that Sons of Anarchy video game concept will not die. Show creator Kurt Sutter is back at it again on Twitter, insisting “there will definitely be an SOA GAME.” Sutter followed that up to say “no, it’s not a board game. 1st person action adventure. HD…

Guess which game has the most BAFTA award nominations! You get no brownie points for guessing The Last of Us. Naughty Dog’s zombie survival game was nominated for ten awards (in nine categories) by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts—a curiously familiar number. Check out the full list of nominees here

China’s “Cabinet Tribe” Lives in Shipping Containers

For around $30 a month, you too can live in a Chinese shipping container. The monthly 180 yuan ($29.68) rent gets Pan Wei (below) a box… and not much else. There’s no toilet and no bathtub; however, he was able to get electricity. Winters are cold, and summers get hot. The containers are small (18…

Rust Bans Over 4,000 Cheaters [UPDATE: Developer Addresses Concerns]

Over the weekend, the developers of open-world ex-zombie survival game Rust have deployed their newly-created anti-cheat software on the official game servers. The result? 4,621 banned players. The software, called CheatPunch, is similar to Valve’s VAC system in that its bans are permanent and incontestable—if you’re banned, you’re banned. Period. No second chances. As studio…

Strider’s 25-Year History In Just Five Minutes

In 1989, marking the start of the blue-clad ninja’s two-and-a-half decade career, the first Strider game was released in arcades throughout Japan and North America. From then on, it was a road filled with cameos, curious localization decisions, and slashed-up baddies. To celebrate the upcoming reboot of the platformer series, Capcom lovingly crafted a short…

Well, Here’s Disgusting Looking Valentine’s Day Sweets

That might look like a grub. That might look like dirt. But all of it is handmade Valentine’s Day sweets for a very important person. Twitter user Shun_Lock created the dirt by smashing Oreos (sans cream) and chocolate bars with a hammer. Which resulted in realistic, yet delicious dirt. The stag beetle larva was made…

16-bit gaming lives: Here’s the latest trailer for Chasm, the Diablolike Metroidlike Castlevanialike Zeldalike retro-ish indie platformer for PC. It shows off the Catacombs level and is basically thirty seconds of pure awesome. Go watch it. And maybe check out the new website for more info.

Track: Blaze | Album: As The World Burns | Artist: Arsonists Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to—and gaming to—at the moment.

Toys Are Dying, And It’s All Video Games’ Fault

That’s the gist of a great piece in The New Yorker, which looks at falling profits at both Mattel and Hasbro and knows exactly where to point the finger. Rather than angling this as some kind of terrible omen, however, writer Ted Trautman takes the sensible approach, outlining just why kids are leaving dolls and…

Official Game Of Thrones Action Figures…Could Have Been Worse

It’s taken years, but we’ve finally got a range of bonafide Game of Thrones action figures. And while they’re not the world’s greatest figures, given the size of the license they also could have been much worse. They’re $20, have decent detail, and the likeness on some of the faces – the Hound and Tyrion…

Descent Is Now On Steam. Go, Go, Go.

In 1995, a video game was released that was unlike anything else that had ever come before it. And really, anything released since. That game was Descent, which took the vehicle and controls of a space shooter/flight sim and dropped them into the level design of a first-person shooter. But where most first-person shooters only…