To help get players interested in Dead or Alive, Tecmo Koei is also releasing Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate as a freemium “base pack”, Siliconera reports. There will be a handful of playable characters and a free online mode included. Story mode and more characters will be available for a fee. To contact the author…

Chinese Health Study: Video Games Making Children Dumb

China has released various studies in the past about the adverse effects of video games on the development of young people. Over the weekend the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Wuhan, Hubei province released a report showing that more than half the city’s teenagers have less understanding about life and death than primary school…

Parents Donate Dead Gamer Son’s Organs To Save Sick Patients

We’ve seen this story many times; a Chinese gamer partakes in a grueling marathon of Internet gaming and then passes away. These stories rarely have a good ending. But for five people in Guangzhou, China, the untimely death of one young man means a new life. Reported on Sunday by the New Express paper, 18…

Truly Surreal Paintings of Japanese Celebrities

Forget canvases. Forget dull poses. Forget all that. That’s exactly what artist Hikaru Cho is doing, so you should, too. Here, you are looking at Beat Takeshi—well, a painting of Beat Takeshi. In case you are not familiar with Takeshi, he’s a famous movie director, actor, and comedian. He also starred in a notoriously difficult…

Expect more about Bayonetta 2 in next Nintendo Direct, hints Bayonetta creator Hideki Kamiya via TwitterUPDATE: Never mind. It turns out this is a generic response Kamiya gives to lots of questions; no news. The next Nintendo Direct kicks off June 11 am at 10am EST.

Popular Plastic Surgery Apps Cause Concern in South Korea

Plastic surgery? That’s an app for that! In South Korea, there are apparently many apps for that. And according to Korean newspaper Kyunghyang Shinmun, their popularity is making some individuals worry. As The Economist (via KoreaBang) pointed out last year, South Korea is the most surgically enhanced nation on Earth, passing countries like Greece, Brazil,…

If you watched tonight’s Game of Thrones, and had previously read the books so knew what was coming, take pleasure in scrolling throughthis Twitter feed collecting the reactions of those who did not know what was coming. Needless to say, serious spoilers ahead

Frontiers, that “Elder Scrolls at a leisurely pace” game we showed you last month, now has an IndieGoGo campaign. If you saw the clip and felt like giving someone money to get the game finished, now’s your chance

A Vib Ribbon Music Video. It’s Glorious.

Kiwi band Delete Delete and effects house Effective…Effects teamed up on this clip for the group’s song What Do You Take Me For? It’s not so much a thinly-veiled tribute as a flat-out homage, and makes me wish this was actually a Vita game so bad. Delete Delete – What Do You Take Me For?…

The Vultures Circle To Pick At The Carcass Of Used Game Sales

Responding to a report last week that claimed Microsoft would be taking a cut from all pre-owned game sales on the Xbox One, Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick chimes in with the inevitable follow-up. It’s equally hard to imagine used game sales surviving attitudes like this. Even if they technically make it past this generation of…

Predator Action Figures! You Son Of A B**ch!

Many companies have released many takes on the Predator franchise over the decades, but sadly, none has ever given us what we really wanted: little plastic renditions of the entire assault squad from the first movie. So thank you, djblizzard, for finally delivering the goods. The custom toy builder has made his own squad of…

Kick Down Doors, Shoot Terrorists, Just Like The 90s Never Ended

Once was a time you could actually play games that involved planning an attack against terrorists/criminals, then swiftly executing it. SWAT, Rainbow Six, they were good times. Times that were seemingly long gone as games like Rainbow Six become more about shooting than planning, but nope, Door Kickers is bringing them back. And using just…

This Week’s Cosplay Is So Furry Even Ezio Can’t Resist

I don’t normally showcase too many furries here on Fancy Pants, but I’m making an exception today. Actually, two exceptions. One for some amazing Guild Wars cosplay (Charr), the other for what is easily the best Skyward Sword costumery you’ll ever see. Also, that Zant? Spell-binding. To see the larger pics in all their glory…

The Future Meets The Past: Playing N64 Games In Virtual Reality

Reader Chris, who was kind enough to share with us some footage of Skyrim running on the Oculus Rift, has been kind enough to humanity to build Nintendo 64 game support for the virtual reality headset. He’ll be opening a beta in July, but for now, check out some footage of N64 games like Goldeneye,…

Red Dead Redemption Movie Is Looking Just About Perfect

A group of fans are putting a Red Dead Redemption movie together, and smartly, they’re not doing the obvious. They’re instead drinking from the same inspirational well as the series’ developers (especially from the first Red Dead), combining a love for Spaghetti Westerns and a bit of the old ultra-violence into something that’s as much…

The History, And Evolution, Of The Star Wars Logo

It’s one of the most iconic logos in all of pop culture, right up there with – ahem – Disney’s branding, but for the longest time, Star Wars enjoyed a mish-mash of logos and title fonts, a mess that, believe it or not, wasn’t locked down by Lucasfilm until the last minute. Changing names from…

Screw Racing, This Driving Game Is About Getting Stuck In The Mud

One of the best things about driving games on the PC is that they’re not all about racing sports cars. There’s stuff like Euro Truck Simulator. And now this, Spintires, which is basically a game about trying to keep trucks on the road on some of the world’s worst roads. It’s a hardcore all-terrain simulation,…

For $900,000, They Want To Build A Crysis Suit For FPS Gamers

This is far from the first idea for force feedback clothing we’ve seen over the years, but it is the most ambitious. What you’re looking at here is the ARAIG Exoskeleton (As Real As It Gets). It’s made up of three layers (a hardware decoder, undersuit and exoskeleton), and is designed to accurately provide feedback…

This is What Happens When Two Mute Video Game Characters Go on a Date

Much has been inferred or made of a continuity overlap between Portal and Half-Life. Here, Chell and Gordon Freeman are able to tell us what they really have in common—without saying a word. YouTube Video uploaded by MikeNgary To contact the author of this post, write to [email protected] or find him on Twitter @owengood

Oh, By the Way, Don’t Count on a Curtain Call for Video Games’ MVP

Getting an Internet signal inside LA’s Orpheum Theater is always a crapshoot. For years, it’s been both a daydream and a nightmare that I’d be liveblogging Electronic Arts’ E3 keynote as Andrew Wilson or Peter Moore finished EA Sports’ segment and then, pretending to forget something, turned and said, “Oh, by the way.” Then the…