Nintendo

Mario Kart 8 Hack Launches Luigi Into Space

This is a video of a ghost version of Luigi riding around Mario Kart 8’s Rainbow Road. But don’t worry: this doesn’t mean he’s come back to haunt us all with a new, supernatural death stare Rather, the footage above shows a ghost driver pulled from a play-through of Mario Kart 8’s revamped version of…

How I Learned Link’s ‘Real’ Name

“Link isn’t even his real name,” a friend told me recently. We were talking about Zelda, and the way people reacted to the new trailer for the next big game in the series My friend is more of a Zelda veteran than I. But still, his comment seemed heretical. This is Link we’re talking about!…

Kotaku secrets revealed: the entire staff does not uniformly appreciate the excellence of Pilotwings 64, a game that lets you jump across the United States. Very sad. Good thing there’s a Pilotwings mode for when you’re feeling kind of blue…

A Touching, Unexpected Tribute To Link’s Horse From Zelda

YouTuber Twin Perfect, probably inspired by the unlockable horse in the classic arcade racer Daytona USA, rewrote the lyrics of the memorable soundtrack of the game to include Link’s steed, Epona. And he also made an awesome video for it. Here’s the full edit. It’s full of surprises and late 90s feels: Epona Usa [Twin…

Mario Kart 8’s Yoshi, On A Yoshi Bike, In Yoshi’s Valley

What’s better than one Yoshi? Two Yoshis? What about…get ready…three Yoshis? Boom. Done. Well, sort of. Never one to shy away from bizarre self-referential humor, Nintendo made a character, a vehicle, and a racetrack modeled off its adorable green dinosaur for Mario Kart 8. While I haven’t encountered anything like it yet online, this means…

Adventure Time Goes Really Well With Game of Thrones

Artist Joe Hogan and Mike Vasquez’s crossover series are the best example that Adventure Time and its style is just perfect for mash-ups. Their latest piece has really serious and funny-looking Game of Thrones characters. Their prints will be available at this year’s Comic Con or, alternatively, you can grab them on Etsy Here’s the…

Luke Ranks The Mario Kart Games, Worst To Best

A Mario Kart game came out recently, and some people at Kotaku said it’s the best ever. Others disagreed. This quickly leads to jokes about Mario Kart DS, the merits of balloons and arguments over just how close to perfection Double Dash got. To appease the great Pecking Order, then, and to settle the debate…

Name And Publicly Shame Your Most Useless Pokémon

As awesome as owning Pokémon would be, it would undoubtedly come with some drawbacks—just like owning real pets would. But if the newest Pokémon trend is anything to go by, it would be kind of hard to stay mad at our Pokémon. Right now, tons of artists are taking the “pet shaming” meme and are…

Do Nintendo Miis dream of virtual sheep? Probably. But they also dream of much more peculiar things than that in Tomodachi Life. Like an altar to an old NES accessory, for one. StreetPass Princeton got a glimpse into one of the whackier dream sequences I’ve seen come out of Nintendo’s new sim game, and the…

The Internet Reacts To Smash Bros.‘ Fire Emblem Party

This morning, Nintendo dropped three Smash Bros. bombshells named Lucina, Robin, and Captain Falcon. The Internet was quick to react. For starters, you must check out this new art by Kozaki Yusuke (via TinyCartridge): Of course Twitter was quick to respond to the big reveals with jokes: There’s some concern that Lucina is just a…

Someone Already Beat Zelda: Link Between Worlds In An Hour And A Half

It’s been eight months since The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds came out for 3DS, and already, speedrunners have pretty much hacked it apart. Here’s a new World Record run, set by speedrunner Anwonu. He beats the game in an hour and 31 minutes—and that’s with a few mistakes that could’ve shaved off…

Check Out Pikachu’s New Cosplay Outfits

Though we detailed some of this last week, here’s some footage of Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire’s new mega, secret bases, and yes, Pikachu dress-up. Too cute. Here’s what The Pokemon Company has to say about the Pikachu cosplay: First introduced in Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, Pokémon-Amie returns in Pokémon Omega Ruby and…

Watch The Wii U Get Torn Apart In The Name Of Trivia

Now that the Wii U is officially a viable console it’s time to tear it apart in stop-motion to see what sort of fun trivia makes it tick. Vsauce3 continues its proud tradition of stripping gaming devices down to their base components while cleverly revealing important tidbits about them you may not have known, like…

Watch Someone Use Mario Kart 8’s Super Horn Like A Total Jerk

People cutting their teeth online in Mario Kart 8 know this moment all too well. Say you’re racing towards the end of the track. You’re in second place. Maybe third. Things are still close, close enough that you’re not going to give up just yet. Then, this happens: Some jerk comes in with a super…

Three More Characters Announced For Super Smash Bros.

Nintendo promised one new Smash Bros. character reveal this morning and instead gave us three: the returning Captain Falcon and two characters from Fire Emblem Awakening—Robin and Lucina. Chrom also made an appearance in this morning’s trailer, but sadly, he appears to be an assist trophy or Final Smash for Robin, not a playable character.…

One Of The Highlights Of EVO 2014 Was An Incredible Win With Pikachu

Hyping the crowd with a Pikachu plushie, Smash Bros. player Axe pulled an incredible win against Silent Wolf with his Pikachu, beating the hell out of his opponent in record time. It wasn’t the grand finals, but without a doubt one of the best moments of all the games played at EVO 2014. Here are…

This is what it looks like when Fi from Zelda: Skyward Sword joins the battle in Hyrule Warriors She, as you can see, is very much into sword-themed magical attacks, which makes a lot of sense, really—if you’ve played Skyward Sword, you’ll know why.

Metroid As A Hanna-Barbera Cartoon

Metroid in the style of a Saturday morning cartoon by Wil Overton. You can buy a print here You are now looking at Screenburn, a Kotaku blog dedicated to the best gaming images, videos and GIFs online.

Evo’s Smash Bros. Final Came Down To An Elite Fox Vs. Jigglypuff Battle

The Super Smash Bros. Melee grand finals at this weekends huge Evo fighting game tournament culminated with a match between reputedly the world’s best Fox McCloud player against the world’s best Jigglypuff player. The guy playing Fox won the tournament last year. Could he repeat? You can watch the final round of the final match…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Mario At McDonald’s

There are weeks when picking a subject for the Kotaku ‘Shop Contest is an epic task. Then there are weeks when Nintendo sends out pictures of Mario and Luigi cavorting at McDonald’s the day before the new contest starts. Thank you, Nintendo. Nintendo hosted an event for kids to celebrate the launch of the Mario…