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The Great Gawker Mario Kart 8 Tournament
If you’ve ever wanted to watch 24 Gawker Media employees scream at a game of Mario Kart, today is your lucky day. Earlier this month, we gathered a whole bunch of our colleagues, including writers from Gizmodo, Deadspin, and our other sister sites, for what can only be described as the greatest Mario Kart tournament…
By Jason Schreier Published May 20, 2014 -
Say Goodbye To Online Services On Your Wii And DS Games
Hope you’ve already gotten all your Dragon Quest IX treasure maps and downloaded all those daily Professor Layton puzzles. If not, now’s your last chance. At some point in the next 24 hours, Nintendo is turning off online functionality for Wii and DS games including Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart, and Pokémon. You’ll no longer…
By Jason Schreier Published May 19, 2014 -
What Nintendo Is Doing Right
The conventional wisdom is that Nintendo has screwed up. They’ve lost the plot. Dropped the ball. Somehow sunk their own battleship. But they’re actually doing a bunch of things right, too. Let’s not focus on the very real storm clouds, for once, and focus on four bright spots that might change how you think about…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 19, 2014 -
Honest Star Fox 64 Trailer Goes Straight For The Furry Jokes
Sometimes an anthropomorphic animal is just an anthropomorphic animal, Honest Game Trailers. Now if Fox McCloud too off his head at the end of Star Fox 64 to reveal a human wearing a suit, then that would be a furry. Even then the gross generalizations are a bit much. Not all furries are sexual deviants.…
By Mike Fahey Published May 17, 2014 -
Kotaku EastThe Joy and Sadness of Playing Pokémon
Earlier this year in Japan, the Pokémon Dragon King Competition got underway. Kids duke it out with cards and consoles. There were smiles, tears, and Pocket Monsters. In the below video, you can see a short digest movie, which the Pokémon Company uploaded to YouTube this week. ポケモン竜王戦2014 ダイジェストムービー [PokemonCoJp via Siliconera] To contact the author…
By Brian Ashcraft Published May 16, 2014 -
PSA: Mario Kart 8 is the 10th 11th Mario Kart Just in case you were counting. In related news, Mario Kart 64 was not actually the 64th Mario Kart. Also: the new Mario Kart is pretty good UPDATE: A third arcade Mario Kart game has been released, making this month’s 8 actually the 11th game.…
By Stephen Totilo Published May 15, 2014 -
What Pokémon In a Darker Future Would Look Like
Pokémon would look a lot darker in an alternate future, where not just Pokémon evolved but also bio- and nanotechnology. DeviantART artist Abel Vera imagined Mewtwo and Blastoise in a universe like that. Here’s a Mega Mewtwo X, a Mega Mewtwo Y, an armored, cyborg Mewtwo and a realistic Mega Blastoise: Dayshot is an image-based…
By Gergo Vas Published May 15, 2014 -
Kotaku EastJapan Is Getting a New Pokemon Downloadable Game. It’s Free!
Soon, a new downloadable Pokemon game will be released in Japan—free of charge. Called Thief and 1,000 Pokemon, the 3DS game has players amass an army of Pocket Monsters via StreetPass. Those Pokemon are then used in battle. The more you have, the better your chances are for winning. The game will be available in…
By Brian Ashcraft Published May 15, 2014 -
Culture
Motion-Controlled Gaming Is Flailing
I played the Wii for the first time at a trade show in Leipzig, Germany. The consoles were set up in tents, shielded from outside view. Standing in the queue, you’d watch people lift the folds of material in front of the entrance, walk in, then walk out with huge smiles on their faces after…
Keza MacDonald Published May 14, 2014 -
Nintendo chief Satoru Iwata has some thoughts about Nintendo’s next hardware—and what it needs to before it moves on. This is from Iwata’s most recent Q&A with shareholders and is in light of Nintendo’s struggle to make its Wii U console a hit. Photo by Koji Sasahara, AP Images.
By Stephen Totilo Published May 13, 2014 -
Game Boy Camera Makes For A Whole New Kind Of Street Photography
Photographer David Friedman recently unearthed a set of beautiful black-and-white photos of New York City that he had taken in 2000. The only difference between these shots and the stunning higher-resolution ones available on his professional website? He captured all of the former shots with his Game Boy Camera. As he explains on his blog…
By Yannick LeJacq Published May 13, 2014 -
Kotaku East
Visiting a Real Life Pokémon Center
It’s an understatement to say that Pokémon is popular in Japan. “How popular” you might ask? So popular that it has its own Pokémon Centers that look as if torn straight out of the games. You can even buy pokémon there (well, stuffed ones anyway). Currently there are eight of these Pokémon Centers in Japan.…
By Richard Eisenbeis Published May 13, 2014
