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  Um, You Can’t Build an MMO For the 3DS’ Browser, Can You?

  Asked straight up most people’s response would be “no, stupid”, especially since it doesn’t have java or flash. Where you or I would see that as an impediment, however, the folks behind Project Triniate see it as a challenge. While crude, it appears they’ve got the basics up and running, and while you may never…

  By Luke Plunkett Published May 8, 2012
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  Zynga Likes to Act Like it Owns the Word “Ville”

  Social gaming giant Zynga, the team behind FarmVille, is taking a French developer to court because it released a game called PyramidVille “Facebook users are likely to believe, erroneously, that PYRAMIDVILLE is a member of Zynga’s ‘VILLE Family of Games,” Zynga’s complaint says. It then admits that it doesn’t actually own the rights to the…

  By Luke Plunkett Published May 8, 2012
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  Today’s Best Video Involves Heroes Landing Beautifully

  If you do’t know what a three-point landing is, it’s when someone jumps, or falls from a great height and lands not just on their feet, but with one hand helping to break the fall as well. It’s not exactly a textbook safe landing, but it does look rather heroic, which is why you’re about…

  By Luke Plunkett Published May 8, 2012
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  Why I Play Mount & Blade

  Because it gets me, that’s why. To be specific, this is from a tutorial sreen for Mount & Blade: Warband’s Napoleonic expansion, which has all the tea, flutes and muskets you could ever want in a multiplayer shooter. Here’s the recently-released expansion’s trailer. It’s as fun as it looks. Provided you can stomach the reload…

  By Luke Plunkett Published May 8, 2012
• Culture

  The Wonderful Place Where Diablo III Meets Robots

  Phroilan Gardner spent a few years at Blizzard as a concept artist, working on stuff like World of Warcraft and Diablo III, as well as spin-off projects like trading cards and novels. He’s not there anymore, but his art – and the stuff he’s come up with since – lives on! Gardner, who now works…

  By Luke Plunkett Published May 8, 2012
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  This Apple Robot Can Kill With an iPad

  This is AP-PEL “Steve J” Caesar, a tribute to the late Apple co-founder put together by toy company threeA. It’s based on a piece in the company’s existing World War Robot line. It is not screwing around. AP-PEL ships with all kinds of tips of the hat to both Jobs and Apple, from a Mac…

  By Luke Plunkett Published May 8, 2012
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  The PlayStation Vita Will Come in a New Color. This Is It.

  The PS Vita doesn’t only come in Crystal Black. Today, Sony revealed that the handheld is getting a new color. Say hello to Crystal White. Going on sale in Japan in June, the Crystal White PS Vita is priced at ¥29,980 (US$375) for the WiFi/3G model and ¥24,980 ($313) for the WiFi only model. Also…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published May 8, 2012
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  See What a Cosplay World Record Attempt Looks Like

  In October 2011, Wisconsin set a cosplay world record by gathering 425 people together in the one spot, all of them dressed up as someone else from a video game. It’s a record that didn’t stand for long. The world mark is, pending an in-the-mail approval from Guinness, now held by Melbourne, Australia, with 470…

  By Luke Plunkett Published May 8, 2012
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  Holy Crap, This Transformer Toy Can Transform Itself

  No more weird instruction manuals, no more bleeding thumbs, no more broken Transformers. This custom figure from Japan transforms itself. Just like a good robot should. It was designed by Kenji Ishida and JS Robotics, and while it won’t win any awards for its looks, it wins two awards from me, one for the transforming,…

  By Luke Plunkett Published May 8, 2012
• CultureTotal Recall

  Before Menu Screens, we Adjusted Consoles With Buttons

  These wonderful shots are courtesy of Bleeping Relics, and show the control boards of a trio of old Pong consoles. These old analog systems weren’t adjusted via menu screens or fancy UI systems. If you wanted to change something, well, there was a button right there on the console. Bleeping Relics [Flickr]

  By Luke Plunkett Published May 7, 2012
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  CultureTotal Recall

  Straight from 1990, One Kid’s Adorable Painstaking VHS Guide for Beating Mega Man

  Before the internet existed, millions of players toiled away in lonely obscurity to find the best way to beat the oh-so-hard games of yesteryear. Lots of us scribbled in notebooks, drew our own maps and called tips lines to figure out how to beat the games we were obsessed with. And then we shared this…

  By Evan Narcisse Published May 7, 2012
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  Is That a Bomb in Your Underpants, Or Are You Just Happy to Be a Terrorist

  Hello there, Kotaku. It’s a new week, and with a new week comes a whole bunch of new stuff to chat about in the Open Thread. Here as always, are some things for you to chat about. These guys have make “frequent flyer” seem like a huge understatement – They also make Clooney’s character in…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published May 7, 2012
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  It’s Time to Take These Old MMO Games Out Back and Shoot Them

  From the disappointment over The Elder Scrolls Online to the steep decline in subscriber numbers for Star Wars: Old Republic, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: the time of the traditional MMO is drawing to an end. It’s not done. There are still ten million people playing World of Warcraft, for example, and millions more…

  By Luke Plunkett Published May 7, 2012
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  The Best Way to Get New Games? By Playing Other Games

  We’ve all noticed that Achievements, Trophies and other game-specific accomplishments don’t mean squat in the real world, right? You can’t go to your local video game store and say, “Hey, I’ve Platinum-ed in Uncharted 3; can I get a copy of Starhawk, please?” They’d laugh at you. But, a new program from gaming social network…

  By Evan Narcisse Published May 7, 2012
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  Play Minecraft in Minecraft, Thanks to Mineception

  People have made all sorts of things in Minecraft. Just recently, we’ve seen cities from both Game of Thrones and Final Fantasy VII But no one has made Minecraft in Minecraft… until now. Welcome to Mineception Created by Codecrafted, Mineception is a game-within-a-game where players hold a “screen” that shows their in-game game of Minecraft.…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published May 7, 2012
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  A Peek Inside the Grinding Gears of an Awesome Angry Birds Clock

  Here’s an entirely made-up figure for you: Every five seconds, 700 people launch an Angry Bird at a hog-lined structure. Sounds pretty good, right? And while that number may not be “accurate” or “factual,” surely there are a good number of people wasting time with playing the game at any given moment. And so, an…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published May 7, 2012
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  Will The Next Star Wars Video Game Star Boba Fett?

  It’s not exactly news that there’s a new Star Wars game coming. (Guess what: There is!) But the name for which Lucasfilm has filed for a trademark actually is kinda interesting, in a speculation-y way. The company has applied for a trademark on the name “Star Wars 1313” for an upcoming video game. This was…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published May 7, 2012
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  Mass Effect 3 Writers Didn’t Want Same-Sex Romance to Be “a Straight Guy Writing Lesbians for Other Straight Guys to Look at”

  Mass Effect 3 became the game in the sci-fi series where BioWare finally opened up the relationship possibilities for players wanting to romance a character of the same gender, with characters Esteban Cortez and Samantha Traynor only available for wooing if you played as a male or female Commander Shepard. Given the level of fan…

  By Evan Narcisse Published May 7, 2012
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  The Actual Singer Of The Actual Pokémon Song Actually Made A Version For Actual Presidential Candidate Ron Paul

  Really. This is Jason Paige, the guy who sang the original theme song back in 1998. He’s a big Ron Paul fan, I guess. I don’t even know anymore. (Thanks, Zack!)

  By Jason Schreier Published May 7, 2012
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  Datura: The Kotaku Review

  Let me tell you about a dream I had. I was walking through a forest filled with butterflies and horseflies. Before me was a tree with the face of a man. I tore away at the bark, to find a pick-axe. Suddenly I was on a frozen lake. I looked down, wiped away an inch…

  By Chris Person Published May 7, 2012