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  Decorating Your Home in Early Video Game Crap

  In today’s well-designed edition of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter Monsieur.Froid wonders if anyone else has a home full of useless video game crap, or if it’s just him. Does anybody else decorate their abode with video game ‘swag’? I have, from the Bioshock 2 Collector’s Edition, the lithographs framed and matted, along with a…

  By Mike Fahey Published September 23, 2011
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  Exploring the Tiny Differences Between the Original and Final PS Vita

  The Tokyo Game Show didn’t just give us a chance to check out nearly three dozen games, it also gave us our first look at what Sony says is the final design for their PS Vita The changes between those first images released of the Vita and these final ones are pretty subtle, but if…

  By Brian Crecente Published September 23, 2011
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  Conan O’Brien Shows Us a Kinder, Gentler Gears of War 3

  Last night on TBS’s Conan, Mr. O’Brien touched on game reviewers’ fears that the more mature, emotional storyline for Gears of War 3 might alienate hardcore gamers. I say he knows nothing of French cinema! I don’t see what the audience finds so funny. Seems like a typical Gears of War 3 match to me.…

  By Mike Fahey Published September 23, 2011
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  Talk Amongst Yourselves

  It’s Friday, let us rejoice! The end of the work week is always worth celebrating, I say. There are some big games coming up soon, but I’m sure there are more than enough already to get you through this weekend. A lot of Gears 3 to be played, I’d wager. Many thanks to NotTheOtherBob for…

  By Matthew Buzzi Published September 23, 2011
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  Here’s Your Full First Season of Retro Game Master, Why Not Have a Viewing Party?

  Last week we wrapped up our first experimental season of Retro Game Master Sure this is the Internet, but we thought it would be fun to run a full season of the first official U.S. airing of the popular Japanese television program, known as Game Center CX in Japan, as if it were airing on…

  By Brian Crecente Published September 23, 2011
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  The Beautiful, Mysterious Classic Another World is Reborn on iOS

  Silence and danger; stark, foreboding mystery, and the wonders of a truly alien world. Eric Chahi’s Another World stands as one of the great video games of the 1990’s, a testament to the power of one man’s creative vision. It was a game that was so far ahead of its time that many of today’s…

  By Kirk Hamilton Published September 23, 2011
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  Blizzard: Diablo III Hits Early 2012

  Looks like we’re going to have to make do with a beta for longer than some of us had hoped, Blizzard this morning said that Diablo III won’t be hitting computers until early next year. “With every game we make, the temptation is always very strong to launch as soon as possible. However, we didn’t…

  By Brian Crecente Published September 23, 2011
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  New World Order

  The BRIC group of nations – that’s Brazil, Russia, India and China – have never looked cuter than in this pixel art. | by Dave Wilson Dark Souls: My First 24 Hours in Hell I’m now 24 hours into Dark Souls, the successor to 2009’s brilliant and challenging role-playing game Demon’s Souls. I have, of…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011
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  An Xbox, a PlayStation and Batman Walk Into a Bar…

  Actually, it’s not a bar. It’s a Chinese market, where this abomination hails from, bringing together the very worst in Xbox, PlayStation and ill-advised superhero movie sequels. Called the Battman, there’s something that looks a lot like an Xbox, only it’s in a hideous “Christmas Tree” colour scheme. There are also two controllers that look…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011
• Culture

  We may Never Play the Aliens RPG, but we can Look at its Concept Art

  There once was a time Obsidian was making an RPG based on the Aliens universe. That game has since been cancelled, but today we’re looking at some art done for the project by Charles Lee. We’ll also be looking at some of his other stuff, as he’s also recently been involved in the production of…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011
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  Play the Layton RPG, From Some guys who Made Mother 3

  Nintendo studio Brownie Brown helped make Mother 3. It also, quietly, made a Professor Layton role-playing game, available only in the Japanese and American versions of DS game Professor Layton and The Last Specter It’s called Professor Layton’s London Life, and while it was a “mere” unlockable in the Japanese version, in the US edition…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011
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  Let Mr. Zelda Walk you Through Zelda’s Most Notorious Dungeon

  The earlier Zelda games were tough, but ask most people on the street what the toughest dungeon in the entire series is and they’ll probably say it’s Ocarina of Time’s Water Temple. Even over a decade on, it still hurts to say it out loud. Water Temple Ungh. I never thought it was that hard…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011
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  Don’t Blame Team Ninja for Metroid: Other M’s Story

  The latest Metroid game, Other M, took some…liberties with the universe’s story, and what it did to hero Samus in particular didn’t go down too well. Many people blame the game’s developers, Team Ninja for this, but that’s not very fair. You need to blame someone from Nintendo instead. Something Team Ninja is only too…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011
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  The Snatcher Radio Drama has Been (Unofficially) Translated

  Reader Peter was “sick at the end of last week and had a few days off work”. So he did whatever a good man does and translated the first two episodes of the Snatcher radio drama, Sdatcher

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011
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  Remember, Electronic Arts Won’t let you Sue Them, Either

  While Sony’s new “don’t sue us” terms of service are terrible, let’s not focus just on Sony. Other companies are now free to do the same thing One example: Electronic Arts. If you scroll down to the bottom of EA’s most recent terms of service, which includes both accounts made for the publisher’s online services…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011
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  This Looks Like the Worst (and yet Best) Game On Kinect

  You might watch this trailer for Michael Phelps: Push the Limit on Kinect and wince. At the awful acting, the uncomfortable hand gestures, at the sight of a man in speedos bending over more than once. You might then, and this is entirely reasonable, decide never to watch it again. But then you’d be missing…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011
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  Uncharted Once had “Elements of Tolkien” In it (wha?)

  Uncharted, Naughty Dog and Sony’s sexier, more contemporary take on Romancing the Stone, was at one stage a little more Romancing the Grail/Maiden/Orcs, according to a former developer. Speaking with NowGamer, ex-Naught Dog environment modeller Don Poole reveals “We were talking about a more ‘realistic’ game in terms of how it was modelled and rendered…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011
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  Deus Ex Mod Removes “Gold” Filter, Game Suddenly Looks Even Better

  Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s “gold” filter may be a visual trademark, but it also affects the way you see the game world. A new mod for the PC version removes this (and makes a few other changes), and boy, do things look different. The ENBSeries mod for the game, made by the same community responsible…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011
• CultureTotal Recall

  It’s the end of the World as This Game Knew it (and Nobody Felt Fine)

  Our younger readers won’t have lived through it, but the 1980s were in in many ways a bleak time, the spectre of nuclear holocaust hanging over the world for much of the decade. For such a dominant political topic, however, few games chose to address the subject head-on. Ground Zero was one of the few.…

  By Luke Plunkett Published September 23, 2011
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  Is MMO Loot a ‘Jackpot’ Under the Law?

  Video games regulators in South Korea say MMO publishers there have obstructed an investigation into “jackpot items,” predicated on the idea that players risking in-game currency for random-item payoffs is in fact a form of gambling. While publishers have cooperated so far as to provide the virtual items’ names and virtual costs involved, they haven’t…

  By Owen Good Published September 22, 2011