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I Beat Final Fantasy VI‘s Opera House And All I Got Was This Lousy Airship

Every time I would tell people I hadn’t played Final Fantasy VI—a claim which is no longer true, thank god—they’d respond with particular forcefulness because of how much I love music. Not only does FFVI have a famous soundtrack, it features a major musical setpiece: The Opera House. Last week, Kotaku news editor and towel…

Smaller New 3DS Finally Coming To North America

Word from the ongoing GameStop Expo today is that Nintendo will finally release the smaller version of its New 3DS hardware in North America, responding to consumer demand and apparently making good on a hint the company gave us at E3 in June. Nintendo rapidly followed that with a press release making it all official,…

Street Fighter V’s Bearded Ryu Is The Hottest Ryu

Well hello there, rugged Ryu. Did you lose your razor blade? I don’t mind. What you’re seeing above is not Joe Manganiello, contrary to what it may seem. Actually, it’s the special Gamestop “Battle Costume” pre-order skin for Street Fighter V. Here’s another look: Normally, we’re pretty wary of posting about pre-order incentives, but this…

The First Five Barrel-Blasting Minutes Of Bullet Boy

If you’ve every played through a blast barrel level in a Donkey Kong Country game and thought “Man, I wish there were more of these,” Bullet Boy is more of those. Available now for iOS and Android (yay!) from Pomelo Games, Bullet Boy takes a mechanic that console platformers generally use sparingly and dials it…

I’ve Played 30 Hours Of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain And It’s Friggin’ Great

For the past few days, I’ve done very little but play Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, a new video game made by the well-known spa company Konami. I’ve been sneaking and shooting through deserts and forests. I’ve infiltrated bases, crippled soldiers, and taken four showers. It has been wonderful. UPDATE (8/31): I’m now…

My Nightmares Are Gonna Miss You, Wes Craven

In the middle of the show floor at PAX, a text message glared back with a brief message: Wes Craven had died. I stopped a moment, took a breath, and sighed. Few humans have made me laugh and scream the way filmmaker Craven did over the years, and I’ll miss him terribly. Craven had apparently…

Heroes Of The Storm Matchmaking Isn’t Really Working Right Now [UPDATE]

Heroes of the Storm has been running very well for the most part since I started playing it earlier this year. It’s suddenly gotten a lot worse over the past few days, though. I first started to notice an issue with my personal HOTS game when I was unable to queue up for a few…

The stubble simulator Uncharted 4 will be out March 18 for PS4. If you want to read about the preorder bonuses and blah blah blah I’m so bored I can’t even write the rest of that—anyway I’m psyched for this game it looks really cool go to the PS Blog if you want to find…

The results of the Autobots Vs. Decepticons Splatoon event are in, and obviously someone’s been paid off. Splatfest? This is bad comedy.

You Probably Cannot Beat My Threes Score

Many in the world are unfairly skilled at piano, or fishing, or programming, or other hobbies that can be used to create great things and enrich people’s lives. I am good at the video game Threes This morning on a red-eye home from Seattle, I finally got a 6144 tile, beating my previous Threes high…

Coming to the Microsoft Store and GameStop in November, the Xbox One Elite Bundle packages a matte black one terabyte Xbox One console together with the $150 Elite Wireless Controller for $499. Pass, but I will take one of the GameStop exclusive Lunar White controllers.

Keytarist Does Amazing Things To Sonic‘s Green Hill Zone Music 

The flashing colored lights. The energy. The majesty of the keytar. Rush Coil’s Sonic the Hedgehog Green Hill keytar performance is my new inspirational jam. I’m not being facetious. I am not poking fun. I’ve watched this video a dozen times since former co-conspirator Owen Good posted the video on Polygon yesterday, and it keeps…

If Wes Anderson Directed Metal Gear Solid V

Well this gives a whole new meaning to the collectible cassette tapes in Metal Gear Solid V. In a Wes Anderson version we’d probably have B-sides of counterculture-rooted rock music instead of additional story elements. YouTuber Jacob Rich and his friends imagined how Metal Gear Solid V would look as a Wes Anderson film. It’s…

My Five Favorite Kotaku Stories From Last Week

August is nearly over, and what do we have to show for it? Among other things, another week of good Kotaku stories. I recommend reading (or in some cases viewing) these: Well, The Witcher 3 Sure Proved A Point – Shrewd news analysis by Luke: “In many ways, a game like The Witcher 3 doesn’t…

World of Warcraft Addon Changes Questing Radically

One of the most popular new addons for World of Warcraft right now is something refreshing: It’s called “Storyline” and it fully revamps the quest UI by changing it to an interactive experience. While the questing framework in WoW has improved a lot over the years, it always remained a wall of text sort of…

The Next Deus Ex Launches in February

Square Enix has given a launch date of February 23 for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided in a recent press release. The accompanying PS Blog post also describes the pre-order bonuses for the game. It’s one of those “get more people to pre-order, get more stuff” kind of deals, capped by a four-day early release reward.…

In June, designer Karolin Gu started drawing one Pokémon a day, posting the results on Instagram in what she calls “The Tiny Monsters” series. She’s currently at Tentacool, ie. #72, and plans to eventually draw every Pokémon in existence. Only a few hundred more to go! You can follow her progress here Thanks to Tianlin…

THR is reporting that legendary Horror director Wes Craven (Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream) has died of brain cancer at the age of 76.

The Pokémon Company File Stupid Lawsuit Against PAX Party

The Pokémon Company, the business devoted entirely to managing all things Pokémon, has filed one hell of a lawsuit against the organisers of a PAX party that had been scheduled to go down last week. As Motherboard reports, the Unofficial Poke’mon (sic) PAX Kickoff Party is in trouble for two things: the first is using…

Rocket League “Goal” Is 100% Hype

Almost everything here is perfect. The build-up. The anticipation. The move, the shot, the agony, the ecstasy. Almost SPOILERS BELOW … … … …if the ending doesn’t make sense, the goal didn’t count. If the clock runs out and the ball is still in the air, the game continues until the ball hits the ground;…