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A Famicom Controller For Your Business Cards
Hey business people! Do you have business cards? Do you? Priced at ¥2,900 (US$31), there’s this from Japan’s Banpresto. The aluminum card case has two compartments: one is for your business cards, and the other is business cards you receive during your meeting. The case is scheduled to drop this October and comes in two…
By Brian Ashcraft Published July 23, 2009 -
Getting Barefoot With Nintendo
At a fake beach today, Nintendo’s vp of corporate affairs didn’t want to tell me how many copies Nintendo hopes to sell of Wii Sports Resort. Nor shipped. Give me something for a post, Denise! She suggested this. I had fished for news, but I wasn’t going to get it from Nintendo of America’s Denise…
By Stephen Totilo Published July 23, 2009 -
Retailer: Profits For PSN Cards Are Zero
That’s according to a Japanese retailer. In an interview with Japanese mag Game Lab, the manager of Tokyo retail shop Games Maya dishes about how downloadable content is faring in brick-and-mortar stores. For pre-paid PlayStation Network Cards, the manager says, “We don’t see a single profit.” The reason? The PSN uses an actual monetary unit,…
By Brian Ashcraft Published July 23, 2009 -
Epic Games Exec Doesn’t Think Nintendo Owns This Generation
The Wii is hugely popular with lots of people. Some people, though, are more wary of the Wii. One of those is Epic Games boss Mark Rein. “People talk about, ‘The Wii has run away with this generation.’ I don’t think that’s true,” Rein told game site Eurogamer. “Nintendo’s made a lot of money and…
By Brian Ashcraft Published July 23, 2009 -
Dead Space Extraction Preview: What The Wii Can Do
When he wasn’t expressing excitement that one of the people attending his demo writes for legendary horror magazine Fangoria, the executive producer of Dead Space Extraction was letting us experience EA’s bravest Wii game. These devs like the gore. EA has taken a bold step. The company is bringing a prequel to the graphically and…
By Stephen Totilo Published July 22, 2009 -
Muramasa: The Demon Blade’s 108 Swords
Video Game – E3 2009 – X-Play Muramasa: The Demon Blade looks amazing, and it sounds like it’s amazing to play. But with titles like No More Heroes and Arc Rise Fantasia under its belt, can Marvelous Entertainment get it to sell? This G4 video gives you a good look at why you should be…
By Brian Crecente Published July 22, 2009 -
Need For Speed NITRO Hits Nov. 17
The Need For Speed reboot for the Wii and DS will be hitting stores on Nov. 17, Electronic Arts announced this morning. “Need for Speed NITRO offers fun and intense competition for every type of gamer, “said Joe Booth, Senior Producer, EA Montreal. “The varied track designs, deep controls, and intuitive drift and nitro mechanics…
By Brian Crecente Published July 22, 2009 -
Someone At Fox News Loves Zelda
This may look like a boring, run-of-the-mill current affairs story from Fox’s Detroit outpost. But sit tight and wait it out until you hit the 55-second mark. Zelda fans will hear something that’ll bring a smile to their faces. Click to view Employment Agency Has Job Seekers Sad [Fox, via Go Nintendo]
By Luke Plunkett Published July 22, 2009 -
The Best-Selling Wii Games Of 2009 Didn’t Come Out In 2009
An analysis by website Gamasutra of first-half sales figures for the three big gaming consoles shows that the Wii’s hits are older hits. Gamasutra has crunched the NPD video game sales numbers and the results show that the top five best-selling games on the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 in the U.S. from January…
By Stephen Totilo Published July 20, 2009 -
Wizard of Oz Preview: Partying Up With The Tin Man
Thank goodness the new Wizard of Oz game for the DS doesn’t closely follow the movie’s plot, because this reporter, who played the game recently, could never get through that movie. What Is It? The Wizard of Oz is a newly announced (today!) game for the DS coming this fall from publisher XSeed. It’s a…
By Stephen Totilo Published July 20, 2009 -
The Nintendo Download: My Life As A Darklord
Nintendo only adds four titles to the Wii and DS this week, with the Virtual Console passed up completely, but hey…one of the games has “Final Fantasy” in it, and the kids love Final Fantasy. Of course it also has “Crystal Chronicles” in it, which tends to make many a Final Fantasy fan cringe, but…
By Mike Fahey Published July 20, 2009 -
We Didn’t Have Achievements Back in the Day
But if we did, posits Gamespy’s Brian Altano – in this nostalgic and disarmingly sweet take on growing up with games – they might have looked a little like these. The part about bringing games to school is especially true. I think the only time I’ve ever read a game’s instruction manual was in study…
By Owen Good Published July 19, 2009 -
Conan O’Brien Gets Topical with Video Game Sales, Bombs
Were it me, I might have made a crack about a pencil-cup peripheral. As it is, Wii isn’t the best motion control for job interviews. Natal would offer a more immersive groveling experience. Conan O’Brien Discusses Video Game sales, Offers up a Wii Joke [GoNintendo]
By Owen Good Published July 19, 2009 -
Study Touts Calorie-Burn Benefits of Exergaming
A study published online by the journal Pediatrics finds that exergaming -in this case DDR and Wii Sports‘ bowling and boxing – provide as much or more activity than a brisk or intense walking pace. What’s more, the study’s authors were surprised to find the Wii Sports games, which rely almost solely on upper-body motion,…
By Owen Good Published July 19, 2009 -
33 Months Of Motion Control, The Wii’s Hidden Struggle
The Wii Revolution has succeeded. Everyone knows this. What was once doubted and mocked now dominates and broadly entertains. But a major Wii struggle, made relevant again by the pending release of Wii Sports Resort, has hidden in plain sight. This stumble in Nintendo’s stride has gained little attention as its competitors chase its dust.…
By Stephen Totilo Published July 19, 2009 -
Gold Cartridge Buyer Recreating Nintendo Championships Today
J.J. Hendricks, the Denver entrepreneur who bought the rare Nintendo World Championships Gold cartridge, is hosting an event today that seeks to recreate the original contest. He spoke to Kotaku about it and his acquisition. Hendricks, the owner of vintage game-and-console retailer JJGames.com, bought the NWC Gold cart last month for $17,500. The seller was…
By Owen Good Published July 18, 2009 -
If Nintendo Won’t Make A HD Starfox, These Guys Will
In the absence of a high definition Nintendo console – or even new Starfox games, for that matter – some fans have taken matters into their own hands, and are building a new Starfox game: Shadows of Lylat. Similar to the popular Battlestar Galactica mod, Beyond the Red Line, Shadows of Lylat is built on…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 18, 2009 -
Mario’s Family Line
It’s not a family tree – a) that would be too large and b) it assumes games mate and produce offspring. This is a family line, showing all Mario games, by generation, with their siblings. The thing is so super-huge you should probably just go directly to it or download it to magnify it for…
By Owen Good Published July 17, 2009 -
Yes, Someone At Google Is *Slightly* Triforce Obsessed
When Earth Day rolled around, an army of Kotaku tipsters pointed out the Triforce from The Legend of Zelda‘s cameo in Google’s holiday logo. Turns out that’s happened more than once. A lot more than once. Google apparently has an… enthusiastic Legend of Zelda fan on staff, as Google Blogoscoped points out, highlighting eight of…
By Michael McWhertor Published July 17, 2009 -
The Many Shapes of Stylus To Come
Tired of your boring old DS stylus? Is the Transformer’s stylus a bit too much? Maybe you should look into a custom stylus from Shapeways. The company has a service that lets people customize a number of pre-designed styluses, including ones shaped like a Wii remote, a Pokemon and Link’s shield, by selecting the material…
By Brian Crecente Published July 17, 2009