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Weekend Listening: I went on Kat Bailey’s US Gamer podcast to talk about The Witcher 3 and Destiny, AKA the only two games I ever seem to play these days. We had a good time; you can listen to the whole thing here.

The First Five Minutes Of Thirty Years Of Gradius

Three decades ago, back when Konami released video games, Japanese arcade goers were graced with one outstanding space shooter. I was so much better at Gradius back then. Collecting pods, choosing which power-ups to activate in which order, and that horrible feeling of loss when you die and lose it all. That’s what Gradius for…

In Atlanta This Weekend? Then You Should Be At Momocon.

Anime and gaming convention Momocon is on day three of it’s newly extended four-day run, which leaves plenty of time to check out some cosplay, buy some vintage video games and maybe watch a Kotaku writer judge an indie game contest. When I first attended Momocon back in 2010, it was an incredibly small convention…

I Love It When Tekken 7‘s Mom And Dad Fight

Kazuya’s mom has got it going on, and by “it” I mean summoning tigers to beat up her husband. This is pretty much marriage in a nutshell. Unlocking in Japanese arcades next week, Kazumi is the latest addition to the ever-expanding Mishima family. She’s Heihachi’s wife, so good on Heihachi for pulling that off despite…

This Week In The Business: Three Out Of Four Ain’t Bad

QUOTE | “You look at the relatively thin field at the top and we’ve sort of died and gone to heaven in terms of the opportunity.” – Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, explaining that they see themselves as #3 out of only four companies making AAA games Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week… QUOTE…

Halo: ODST is now dropping in for owners of the Master Chief Collection Players who purchased and played the Xbox One collection before December 19 of last year are starting to get their codes for the remastered ODST campaign. Folks falling outside of that window will be able to purchase the campaign separately for $4.99“soon.”

Sony says that a patch will hit next week for the very janky PS4 version of Ultra Street Fighter IV.

Someone Turned Rainbow Road Into A Super Mario 64 Level

And it looks wonderful. Check out this Super Mario 64 hack: it’s called Super Mario & The Missing Memories, and it’s being created by someone who goes by MarioHacker14. The footage makes the game look like it could have easily been an actual level in Super Mario 64, observe: The level is one out of…

A Hilarious Game Where You Can Date…Dogs

As game narratives expand into new territories, some are bound to make us feel uncomfortable. Hot Date is a dead simple, totally hilarious speed dating game in which you have rapid-fire conversations with a series of dogs—yes, dogs—about topics ranging from how one feels about modern Simpsons, which starting Pokemon you prefer, and if anyone…

Marvel’s Latest Big Superhero Crossover Is Way Better Than DC’s

You know the drill: Worlds will live! Worlds will die! Lots of spin-offs! Marvel and DC Comics are pretty much doing the same universe-changing story in almost the same way at almost the same time. One of them is good. One of them isn’t. Kotaku editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo and I have both been reading chunks…

A Game About The Complicated World of Dick Pics

It’s rare for a video game to hang dong. Cobra Club, the newest game by developer Robert Yang, doesn’t just feature dicks: the game is fundamentally about dicks, how they look, and the many ways people try to make them look good. (NSFW warning!) “As a gay dude, dick pics are mundane and funny to…

The Frag Dolls, a group of women who promoted Ubisoft games and gender diversity in gaming, have officially disbanded. You can read their goodbye letter here

Kotaku Asks: An Anonymous Video Game Tester

Curious about what it’s like to play video games for a living? Want to know how grueling—or how satisfying—it can be to work as a QA tester for major video game companies? This afternoon we’ve got a professional video game tester here to answer your questions about all things QA. Our tester requested anonymity in…

Worth Reading: What A 10-Year-Old Girl Thinks Of Splatoon

A holiday won’t stop me from sharing the best games writing from the past week with you! Hey, You Should Read These “Here’s what a 10-year-old thinks of Splatoon, her first online competitive shooter” by Chad Sapieha As we suffer through endless hot takes on whether Splatoon is or isn’t a shooter (who cares?!), I’m…

Watch Captain America Fight the Hulk In a Cancelled Marvel Fighting Game

Does the Hulk remind anyone else of Homer Simpson? Remember when they made superhero games for consoles? Used to happen all the time, swear to God. Way back in that storied era, an EA Chicago studio was working on a fighting game featuring a slew of characters from the House of Ideas. It got cancelled.…

Fan’s Backstory For Heroes Of The Storm Is Better Than The Real Thing

Lore. It’s always the tricky part. Heroes of the Storm, by branding constraints if not by design, doesn’t offer much in the way of narrative inspiration for players. There’s talk of a “Nexus” in the very first tutorial, which is the name of the place where characters from all different Blizzard universe’s gather together to…

The next Need for Speed will require an online connection, according to a tweet from the racing series’ official Twitter account. This development isn’t too surprising after seeing persistent connectivity play such a big part in NFS Rivals. Let’s hope the implementation improves for the upcoming game. Contact the author at [email protected]

It looks like the rumored new Xbox One controller is legit, based on a (now pulled) retailer listing from Austrian retailer Libro spotted by Eurogamer. We should know more at E3, and hopefully there will be other style options. This one is…questionable. You can reach the author of this post at [email protected] or on Twitter…

How Running Out Of Money Helped Us Make Our Dream Game

Back in August of 2012, our Kickstarter for Steam Bandits: Outpost, a free-to-play steampunk townbuilding game, was funded for $55k. Since then, the studio has run out of money, lost a lot of team members, found new ones, and turned the game into an RPG. That was almost three years ago, and we had lofty…

The developers of horror classic Amnesia: The Dark Descent will release their new game, SOMA, on September 22. Set underwater, it’s coming to both PlayStation 4 and PC. There’s a new gameplay trailer, too. You can reach the author of this post at [email protected] or on Twitter at @patrickklepek