Nintendo

Kirby: Triple Deluxe for the 3DS will be out on May 2 in North America. Here’s a new trailer.

Smash Bros.‘ Newest Contestant: Punch-Out‘s Little Mac

Welcome to the fray, Little Mac. Punch-Out‘s main character will join the cast of the next Smash Bros., to be out on Wii U and 3DS later this year. Nintendo announced the news during their Nintendo Direct this afternoon. No word on King Hippo or Mike Tyson. Trailer:

There’s a Nintendo Direct at 5pm Eastern. 3DS/Wii U stuff for this spring. You can watch liveright here, or check Kotaku for all the news as it happens.

Bold Move, Nintendo

Here is the next big game for Nintendo’s Wii U displayed on my TV. Do you see something strange in this picture? Hint: look at that screen on the controller. It’s dark! No graphics! (It might actually be displaying blackness, oddly enough!) That’s right. Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, a game for the Nintendo home…

Today Is The Last Day Of The Year Of Luigi. Make It Count.

364 days ago, Nintendo made the most important proclamation of the 21st century, declaring a year of peace and prosperity. A year of hope. A year of Luigi. That was February 14, 2013. Assuming we’re operating outside of the Gregorian Calendar—because the Mushroom Kingdom follows its own rules—today, my friends, is the final day of…

Smash Bros. Creator on Why Japanese Games Take so Long to Make

Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U are scheduled for release this year and can’t come out soon enough. Why does Japanese game development take so long? In his semi-weekly column for Weekly Famitsu, Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai addressed a fan’s concerns directly. A fan wrote to Sakurai: “It appears that the time…

Maybe A Pokémon MMO Wouldn’t Be As Awesome As We Think

Okay, let’s say Game Freak decides to take the plunge and finally give us the Pokémon MMO that so many people clamor for. It would be amazing! …or so we hope. While obviously lots of things about a Pokémon MMO would be great, it’s kind of funny to think about the crappy things that could…

Time for a new Nintendo Direct—on Thursday at 5pm Eastern, we’ll get to hear about this spring’s slate of Wii U and 3DS games. About time!

Wii U Donkey Kong Includes a Fantastic 3DS Easter Egg

What appears to be a charming little visual Easter egg in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is actually so much more. Yes, DK whips out a 3DS and plays it when you leave him idle (he’s done this in the past.) But he’s actually playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Mario Kart 7 and even, well,…

Classic Video Games as Romance Novels

The fine folks over at Shutterstock and illustrator Echo Chernik teamed up for Valentine’s Day, and imagined what romantic pulp fiction would look like with video game characters. Here’s The Legend of Zelda, Street Fighter, Super Mario, Pac Man and A**hole dog from Duck Hunt, appearing in a romantic novel for the first time. Head…

And the “Best Smash Bros Facial Expression” award goes to: Donkey Kong! Masahiro Sakurai showed us the redesigned Home-run Bat in the upcoming Super Smash Bros. Wii U, and a Donkey Kong with googly eyes, scared to death. Hopefully the bat will have similar eye-popping effects on every Smash Bros character. Aaaand he’s out: Dayshot…

I Was Wrong About Handheld Gaming

I was wrong about handheld video games. Very wrong indeed. There’s a hilarious scene in Malcolm in the Middle. One morning Bryan Cranston’s character Hal discovers his youngest son has been carrying a handbag to school each day. Instead of getting all weird, macho and defensive, he empathises. He understands why his young son might…

New trailer: Disney Magical World—the life simulator that was a hit in Japan last year—now has an English-language promo clip.

Mystery Pokémon Found Hidden In X & Y’s Code Is Star of Upcoming Movie

Officially, there are 718 known Pokémon…unless you count the three mysterious Pokemon found in X & Y’s code, that is. While we reported the existence of unannounced Pokémon back in November of last year, it wasn’t until last night that we started hearing details about what the deal with these Pokémon is. Obviously, if you’d…

Nintendo Characters Are a Perfect Fit for Children’s Books

Concept artist Joey Spiotto has an ongoing series where he mixes video game protagonists with the Little Golden Books children’s literature series, and this time, he went for Nintendo characters. A shame that he only did the covers. Samus playing with an adorable Metroid throughout a fully illustrated book would be fun to read. (Not…

Huh. So Even I’m Liking Bravely Default.

“Oh, that game must be good, because even [some person] likes it”. Bravely Default is that game, and I am that person. I am Jason’s worst enemy. I am a casual JRPG player. It’s not that I despise the genre. I am instead just incredibly picky about it. I don’t care much for the core…

The Week in Games: Lightning Strikes

The week’s big new packaged release is Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, with a couple of bundles and re-releases arriving with it on Tuesday. The MMO World of Tanks fully launches on Xbox 360 on Wednesday, and The Last of Us gets its prequel, Left Behind, on Valentine’s Day. Here’s the week in games: Tuesday,…

Tips For Playing Bravely Default

Bravely Default is out in North America today, and if you’ve just picked it up, we’ve got a whole bunch of tips to make your experience better. (Read our review of the new 3DS RPG right here.) Do all of the sidequests—at least in Chapters 1-4. Every time you see a blue exclamation point on…

Bravely Default: The Kotaku Review

There’s an old saying: if it looks like a Final Fantasy, feels like a Final Fantasy, and sounds like a Final Fantasy, it’s probably Bravely Default Yes, Square Enix’s latest sojourn in the well-trod world of medieval fantasy and magical crystals will feel familiar to anyone who has played old Final Fantasy games and other…

“Housed within the Control Capsule! Protected by Rinkas! Eyeball armed with a Laser Brain Attack!! The massive Assist Trophy Mother Brain joins the collection!!” Masahiro Sakurai, in his latest Screenshot of the Day Miiverse post, presents the upcoming Smash Bros. games’ newest assist trophy: Metroid’s Mother Brain