Nintendo

Nintendo Denies It’s Ending Wii U Production Anytime Soon

Respected Japanese newspaper Nikkei published a rumor this morning that the Wii U will soon be ceasing production to make way for the upcoming NX. Nintendo is now denying that report. Nikkei reports Wii U production will apparently end before the year is out. The reasons Nikkei gives are a lack of popularity compared to…

How’s Miitomo doing? Nintendo reports that in the first three days that the app launched in Japan, Miitomo racked up over a million users. In case you missed it, check out Kotaku’s Miitomo walkthrough.

Nintendo Deletes Every Stage By Prominent Mario Maker Speedrunner

Nintendo has a real problem on its hands with Mario Maker. Left and right, creators are seeing their levels removed from the online servers without an explanation. David “GrandPOObear” Hunt, a speedrunner who makes a living streaming games, is the latest victim. All of his levels have vanished. (We last featured Hunt after he pulled…

(Maybe) Your First Look At Pokémon Go

John Hanke, CEO of Pokémon Go developers Niantic, gave a talk at SXSW Gaming over the weekend on the future of AR (Augmented Reality) games. Shortly afterwards, this video showed up. Of course, with no official video of the talk available (or a transcript), we can’t be 100% sure that this is something actually shown…

Pokken Tournament: The Kotaku Review

If you’ve ever wished your Pokemon battles could be more exciting than a pair of Pokemon taking turns making battle animations at each other, Pokken Tournament is your game. This post originally appeared 3/15/16. Basic Pokemon battles haven’t evolved much over the past two decades. The combatants have gotten prettier, the attack animations more elaborate,…

‘Dickbutt’, ‘Shitlord’ and Other Naughty Words Your Character Can Say in Nintendo’s First Mobile Game

Miitomo is brand new, marking the first time that the House of Mario is entering the brave new world of mobile gaming. The game currently has a big rookie mistake: you can swear like the rudest teenager ever in it. Let’s hear how my Mii sounds with a mouth full of filth. Nintendo has a…

A Quick Tour of Miitomo, Nintendo’s First Mobile App

Three years ago, the very idea of Nintendo creating an experience solely targeted at smartphone users seemed like an outlier, bizarro-world possibility. Today, Nintendo released Miitomo in Japan for iOS and Android devices. Here’s what it looks like. Miitomo’s debut is only limited to Japanese storefronts right now, meaning that you’ll need a Japanese iTunes…

The Total Sales for Pokémon Are Staggering 

This year marks Pokémon’s 20th anniversary. Starting in 1996, when Pokémon Red and Blue launched in Japan, the world has purchased millions of Pokémon games and its spin-offs. Over 279 million, that is. Think about that number for a moment. Dual releases aside, it’s incredible. According to Famitsu, that’s the latest global sales figure for…

A Beautiful, Animated Tribute To Satoru Iwata

There are lots of awards and drinks and congratulations going on at the Game Developers Choice Awards tonight, but proceedings were stopped dead in their tracks for a few minutes during a most touching tribute tolate Nintendo President Satoru Iwata It was made by Raber Umphenour,Shawne Benson and Braid artist David Hellman, with some help…

Nintendo Just Made A Maddening Change To Mario Maker‘s P-Switch

When Nintendo updated Super Mario Maker last week, it secretly tweaked the way P-Switches work in the game. It’s causing headaches for everyone. Traditionally, the P-Switch is used to swap solid blocks into coins and vice versa. But more complicated stages have found uses familiar to anyone who’s ventured into kaizo-style levels or the expert…

Terra and co. entering the coal mining town of Narshe for the first time. Orioto’s fan-art captures the moment from Final Fantasy VI’s intro perfectly and brings back some good memories. Dayshot is an image-based feature showcasing some of the prettiest, funniest game-related screenshots and art we can find. Send us suggestions if you’ve got…

Nintendo Still Won’t Explain Why They’re Deleting People’s Mario Maker Levels

Nintendo is still deleting levels from Super Mario Maker’s online community for mysterious reasons. The latest victim? Mario’s youngest fans, apparently. BakeToRise, a Mario Maker creator and father of a designer-in-training daughter, posted a distressing story on reddit today. His daughter spent three hours putting together a level called Maria Cake Yoshi. After receiving a…

Mario And Luigi At The 2016 Kids’ Choice Awards

Nintendo’s favorite son and his brother or whatever took the stage at last night’s Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, followed by a live-action Super Mario Bros. bit featuring that Goodburger guy. Mario was as animated as ever. Luigi sounded a bit tired. Together they passed it on over to Kel Mitchell, who is essentially the Luigi…

Magikarp’s Stage On The Pokémon Fighting Game Is Pure Fire

Magikarp isn’t a fighter in Pokkén Tournament, but damn if it’s not stealing the show anyway. So, there’s a stage in the Pokémon fighting game called “Magikarp Festival,” which you can see below in GameXplain’s video. You’ll note that the stage takes place on a fishing boat, and you can see Magikarp floppin’ about everywhere.…

Nintendo announced that Miitomo, its upcoming smartphone app, will be released in Japan on March 17 (the exact time is TBA). The last day to pre-register is March 16. For those in Japan, there’s still time!

Baseball Team Turning Players Into Walking Game Boys

These days most professional sports teams, regardless of where they are in the world, tend to dabble in limited/variant jerseys. But few go as nuts for the ideas as minor-league American teams. I’ve posted about the weird union between video games and sports jerseys before, but most of those cases were relatively straight-up commercial agreements.…

A Brief Update on Zelda Wii U

The last we heard the Zelda Wii U was delayed, which is something Nintendo always does. Wondering how things are going? In the most recent issue of Famitsu, series producer Eiji Aonuma was asked just that. “Busy,” he replied. Continuing, he said, “When we did Skyward Sword for the Wii, at the end stages of…

A Ten-Minute Tour Of Pokkén Tournament Wii U

The Wii U version of Namco Bandai’s Pokémon fighting game has landed at Kotaku, along with strict time constraints on how much video we can share. So here’s quick look at training, fighting, customization and Amiibo unlocks of Pokkén Tournament. Before review day arrives we are able to share 30 minutes of direct feed (non-streamed)…

First Details on Nintendo’s Universal Studios Collaboration

As Kotaku reported last year, Nintendo is coming to Universal Studios Japan. Today, the first details—namely, how large the Nintendo area will be, how much will be spent, and when it should be completed—have been made public. According to Sankei News, forty billion yen (US$351 million) is being invested in this project with the deal…

The Ugly New Front In The Neverending Video Game Culture War

Gaming’s culture war hasn’t ended. It’s still roiling, with new fights, new targets, new depths of ugliness, but also many of the same tactics. If you’ve witnessed this kind of “Chanterculture”/GamerGate drama before, you know the playbook: discredit, harass, shame, isolate, maybe find a skeleton in a person’s closet that calls their reputation into question.…