Nintendo

Wargroove Is A Very Good Strategy Game

There are two things you should know about the indie game Wargroove, which comes out for PC, Switch, and Xbox One on Friday. The first is that it’s a smart, challenging turn-based strategy game that’s essentially Advance Wars for the modern era. The second is that you get to play as a puppy who wears…

Smash Bros. Ultimate Update Adds Piranha Plant, Features Enormous List Of Actual Patch Notes

Nintendo’s patch notes are notorious for saying pretty much nothing. So the latest Smash Ultimate update—which also marks the release of Piranha Plant—contains a nice surprise: a lengthy and detailed breakdown of everything that’s changing, down to each fighter’s specific tweaks. The 2.0.0. patch notescan be found in full here, and really are enormous. Every…

The Best WiiWare Games To Buy Before They All Disappear

Nintendo’s first tentative steps into the world of original downloadable games came in 2008 with the launch of WiiWare, for the original Wii. It was a weird, eclectic mix of games, and it’s all going away soon. Before that happens, here are the games you might want to load onto your Wii or Wii U.…

Meet The Fan Who Can Beat Mario Games Without Collecting A Single Coin 

Stefan was about five years old when he first played a Mario game. It was the classic Super Mario Land on an old Gameboy. He played the game with his older brother. At the time he found the game too hard. “I don’t think I was ever able to beat the first world back then,”…

Retro Studios Is Now Developing Metroid Prime 4 For Nintendo Switch

Shinya Takahashi, Nintendo’s development head, just announced that Retro Studios, maker of the original Metroid Prime series, is now developing the fourth installment. Make that, restarting development from the beginning. Metroid Prime 4 was announced back in June 2017. At that time, details were scant and only the logo was shown. Nintendo did reveal that…

FutureGrind Is A Trippy Stunt Fest

Tron’s lightcycles are some of most iconic bikes in the history of nerddom, but they could honestly use a few more backflips. The stylish racing game FutureGrind, for PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC, combines all the stunts of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater with the neon looks of cyberspace landscapes. Created by Milkbag Games, FutureGrind takes the…

Silly Doodles Make School Books Fun

There’s doodling in your textbook. And then, there’s elevating these drawings to a wonderfully twisted art form. Previously, Kotaku showed off inventive school text drawings from throughout Asia. Here are some more terrific textbook doodles Chanta is pushing the envelope even further, by erasing and redrawing the textbook images—instead of simply doodling over them. The…

Switch Is Selling Like Wii, Thanks To Traditional Nintendo Games

Nintendo had a wildly successful December in the U.S., the market research company NPD said on Wednesday. Both Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and the Switch hardware itself sold in quantities that could legitimately be called “record-breaking.” Nintendo’s dream of selling Wii-like quantities of the Switch is looking more likely today—and it didn’t have to have…

A Bunch Of New Indies We’ve Been Eager For Are Coming To Switch Soon (Like CrossCode)

CrossCode is coming to Switch this year, so soon you’ll all be able to see what we’ve been raving about. Also in Nintendo indie news: the strategy game Wargroove is out next week, Goat Simulator hits Switch right now, and the people behind SteamWorld Dig are making a new card role-playing game called SteamWorld Quest…

A Catalogue Of Some Of The Rarest Consoles Ever Made

I’ve always had a weird thing for collections of video game hardware. Rare colourways, odd promotional designs, Japanese-only releases with crazy hardware features, I live for it. So I’ve just spent the last 24 hours clicking throughthis website, whose goal is to catalogue every console variant there is and ever has been, from fancy PS2s…

Today Nintendo announced online qualifiers for its upcoming Smash Bros. Ultimate and Splatoon 2 tournaments being hosted at PAX East on March 30. There’ll be three rounds, beginning on February 2, for players to try and earn spots at the live event. Complete schedule and signup info is at Nintendo’s website.

What Made Pikmin Special

The Pikmin series was one of those bold moves by Nintendo that seemed to be going in a different direction than anything else in the gaming industry. It didn’t pay off quite as successfully as the herd-defiant Brain Age, Wii or Nintendo Switch, to name three of the company’s more radical creations, but it did…

Japan’s Most Downloaded Nintendo Switch Games of 2018

Wonder what Switch games were downloaded the most last year in Japan? How about which download-only games did well? Let’s find out! Nintendo has released its 2018 Switch download rankings. There are no publicly revealed figures so we don’t know how many times the games were downloaded, but Nintendo did put them in order. Here…

The Queen’s Golden Wii Has Been Found

Ten years ago, a THQ marketing stunt sent a gold-plated Nintendo Wii console to Queen Elizabeth II. She obviously never received the gift personally, which led People Make Games’ Chris Bratt to wonder: then where the hell was it? If the Queen never opened it, and THQ are long gone, then it was going to…

Nintendo’s Adorable 8-Bit Robot Fighting Game Is Now Playable On Switch

As usual with Nintendo’s classic game services, Switch Online’s NES app now has more games in Japan than it does in the rest of the world. While today’s worldwide update included Blaster Master and Zelda II, Japan also got a very cool fighting game called Joy Mech Fight. Fortunately, since Switch is region-free, anyone with…

Zelda, Banjo Kazooie Levels Modded Into Super Mario Odyssey

Perhaps to give Odyssey that Smash Bros/Nintendo Museum feel, modder ItzSkahas been importing custom levels into the Switch platformer, like Clanker’s Cavern from Banjo Kazooie and the exterior of Wind Waker’s Dragon Roost Island. It’s not just the textures, either; both levels have custom collectables as well. Here’s Clanker’s Cavern: And here’s Dragon Roost: If…

Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes: The Kotaku Review

Goichi “Suda51″ Suda loves video games. Oh, sure, I love video games, and you probably do too. But when you play one of the games from Suda51 and his studio Grasshopper Manufacture, you can’t fail to come away with the impression that he lives and breathes this stuff—the passion for games, players, the culture around…

Let’s Hear It For Really Good Role-Playing Game Battle Music

I’ve got a song stuck in my head that’s somehow not getting old. A colleague recently wrote about a new Mario & Luigi remake, I dusted off an unfinished older Mario & Luigi game, and next thing I know, I’m on the subway and… am I bobbing my head to some boss battle music? Why,…

Super Nintendo Game Names Are Buried In The Switch Online NES App

Switch Online’s NES classics app now has titles and descriptions for 22 Super Nintendo games buried in its code, according to dataminers who have looked at the program. That’s a welcome glimmer of hope for anyone hoping to play Super Mario World on their Switch, but it doesn’t necessarily mean those games will show up…

Bowser Jr. Finally Gets His Due

When Bowser Jr. came onto the scene in 2002’s Super Mario Sunshine, the first words out of his mouth were “Leave my mama alone!” He’d kidnapped Princess Peach because Bowser had told him she was his mother and was trying to stop Mario from rescuing her. After Mario eventually defeated him, Bowser Jr. confessed to…