The puck dropped an hour ago on the Stanley Cup playoffs, and NHL 13's official simulation has the New York Rangers winning the whole thing, beating Chicago in six in the finals. Get your bets down now. C'mon. No way you can lose.

The constant progression of annual sport titles has another advantage besides the games getting more and more realistic every year. It creates moments where the players go nuts—suddenly, our ordinary game turns itself into Dragon Ball Z or Super Smash TV. We selected below a few of these from the last few years' FIFA, …

Rarely considered for overall video-game-of-the-year honors, the uncommon diversity of sports video games, and the unique demands placed on them to recreate both a real-world sport and the real-life experiences associated with it, support their own class of awards more than any other genre. These are Kotaku's Stick…

A two-day-only sale, currently into its second hour, offers a super card pack in NHL 13's Ultimate Team mode, comprising 32 cards in all, 18 of which are guaranteed rare items. I don't think you get any actual ethereal players, as shown in that trailer above, nor any enormous Zdeno Chara. He's already large enough.

The National Hockey League is frozen in a labor impasse that so far has canceled opening night festivities scheduled for today, and shows no sign of ending any time soon. So, in steps EA Sports, using NHL 13, to provide a simulation and highlights for how the season would play out. Here are highlights from the first…

Last week brought us the "Hercules Check," evidently a glitch in which a skater could park his man six rows deep in the stands if he hip-checked him by the door during a line change. EA Sports, in an oh-fish-ee-al video, has now stepped forward to say, "Yeah, we meant to do that."

This is a glitch video to end all glitch videos, and not just because that's a player getting checked over the glass and into the fourth row of a hockey arena. It's also Sidney Freaking Crosby, the Pittsburgh Penguins superstar who has lost, like, an entire season's worth of games due to concussions, going back to…

Brian wanted to go to Boise State. I remember that much. Eight years ago, captivated by NCAA Football 2004, I asked my closest friends from grad school to give me their preferred position and college. I was going to create all of us as blue-chip prospects in the game's recruiting engine and see where we ended up.

My ice hockey knowledge comes primarily from being an obnoxious and uninformed fan. When Nashville came to San Jose for the 2007 playoffs, I was the guy trying to start the "Child Predators" chant. In Raleigh, before the Carolina Hurricanes arrived, my friends and I would go to IceCaps games and try a stunt called…

Last year, when NHL 12 allowed you to create a female hockey player in its superstar-fantasy "Be A Pro" mode, the only real difference was the face on the player in the video game. Underneath a helmet and the hulking pads, moving fast on ice skates, it's hard to instantly tell if someone's a man or a woman. And the…

In what appears to be a first, two women's hockey stars will appear as playable athletes in a sports video game simulating a professional men's league. NHL 13 will feature Hayley Wickenheiser (above, left), of the Canadian women's national team, and Angela Ruggiero (above, right) of the United States national team,…

News and notes from around the world of sports video gaming:

Claude Giroux, a pivotal figure in the Philadelphia Flyers' run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2010, was named the star of the cover of NHL 13 at the league's annual awards banquet on Wednesday night, prevailing over Pekka Rinne, the Nashville goalie, in a fan-voted contest.

News and notes from around the world of sports video gaming:

Going on about five years now, EA Sports' FIFA and NHL series have been reliably acclaimed, strong-selling titles, a remarkable run for a video game genre and publisher so henpecked by hardcore gamer criticism. Both games have smart, motivated, multinational communities that greatly value evangelizing for their…

News and notes from around the world of sports video gaming:

News and notes from around the world of sports video gaming:

• The New York Post profiled Wade McGilberry and Brian Kingrey, the two previous winners of the Million-Dollar Perfect Game challenge in the MLB 2K series. McGilberry and his wife, Katy, have an 8-month-old son now, named Braxton. The couple chose to start…

News and notes from around the world of sports video gaming:

• With every cover for every game coming out of EA Sports Tiburon being put up to a vote, now their siblings in EA Sports Canada are getting in on the act. NHL 13 will also choose its cover star through a fan-voted contest. Not only that, they're adopting…