While video game collecting is a popular hobby, video game art collecting is a more rarefied avocation. That’s probably because there are so few pieces to go around. There are thousands of copies of Battletoads In Battlemaniacs for the Super Nintendo, but only one original painting of its box artwork—and that’s owned…
A few years back, an official Contra mobile game was released in China. Konami isn’t stopping there, and teaming up with a Chinese media giant for a live-action Contra movie and TV drama.
Today is the 31st birthday of the Konami Code. The memorable cheat first appeared in 1986's Gradius and has been a fixture of games ever since. Here are ten great uses of this legendary code
Figure maker Neca has been doing great things with their video game appearance line over the past couple of years. Lance and Bill from Contra might be the best yet. It’s all about those bullets.
There’s a new Contra game! According to 4Gamer, it’s a side-scrolling-shooter for iOS and Android and aimed at the Chinese mobile market. No word on when this “newest” Contra, a collaboration between Konami and China’s Tencent, will be released.
Aliens! You can always feel good about killing aliens! Too bad imaginary Contra clone Hanoi Strike is set duringthe Vietnam War. It's a different kind of hard. The soul-crushing kind.
We've rounded up some of the best highlights from the past two days in the gaming world and put them all together in one place for you. This week: An inventive new way to clear outposts in Far Cry 3, a very silly Skyrim joke and more!
Custom Metroid sneakers made as a commission by Shannon Kordek, who has also made these Portal and Contra sneakers:
Digital artist Steph Caskenette picked a couple of iconic NES moments from games like the Castlevania, Contra or Metroid, and made them look like it's all curved paper.
"What if the classic arcade game Contra had been made into a live action movie back in the 1980s?" asked action-figure maker Mint Condition Customs. Interesting question, since Konami practically built the game with spare parts from 1980s action flicks. These custom figs are still outstanding. [via MTV Multiplayer]
Veteran gamer EquinnoxX documented how he modified an old Contra cartridge with a proposal message to his girlfriend at the end of the game. Knowing that Contra is not necessarily the easiest game to beat, it feels like a somewhat cruel—but nevertheless fantastic—way to do it.
For some reason, dinosaurs wearing high-fashion hats slide across the screen if you enter the Konami Code on the British Vogue website. Hail Rule Britannia, I guess.
Konami's classic run-and-gunner is hitting iOS next Thursday, but it's not Contra as we know it. This is Contra Evolution, the a retooling of the original using CocoaChina's open-source game engine, and it's rather fetching.
Video games from the 8-bit and 16-bit era mixed with real life environments look awesome, and it's a technique that lets anyone's creativity shine. It's something that Kotaku has covered before but it would be a mistake to not share the new ones.
Video game endings back in the 80s and the early 90s were never really all that complicated. A short animation or a few screens, sometimes text only. But, hell, it still felt so rewarding when we were able to experience it for the first time after beating a hard game.
We often look back fondly on the games of yesterday, especially when it comes to the purity of their design. In the days before DLC, before always-online, before microtransactions, they were things that you bought, once, they were complete, and you could enjoy the entire experience.
This week in 1986, the release of Gradius ushered in the era of the Konami Code, a series of button presses that would become synonymous with not just gaming on the NES, but gaming in general.
The influence of American action movies in Japan has been huge. Shortly after the success of all the 1980s Hollywood action flicks with dudes like Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Chuck Norris, Japanese gaming created an entire library of different action titles with one common feature: Kill everything on the screen. Oh,…
A video game's opening stage or starter zone has an extremely important role: it sets the tone for the rest of the game. Getting it right is essential. Below, we've collected some of the best-looking and most iconic starting zones, first stages and opening missions.
