Uncategorized

Can You Play a Game Without the National Anthem? I Do It All The Time.

Hat in right hand, right hand over heart, I raised my beer cup with my left and took a sip. Dad chided me for that, so I put it down. The singer was behind the beat on The Star-Spangled Banner. My thumb tapped against my cap’s bill. A distinctly video-game thought came to me: Can’t…

What if movies were reviewed in the same way as video games? Something Awful has an idea of what that would read like: “The film runs at a steady 24 frames per second with very few frame drops.” And a 9.6 means we’re guaranteed a World War Z sequel right?

The Moneysaver: New Leaf, Infinite, Amazon Summer Sale, Godfather

Waiting for Monday for the Moneysaver, ain’t nobody got time for that! Sometimes we have one-offs over the weekend, but today there was easily enough content to put together a full post. My Twitter feed is basically nothing but Animal Crossing: New Leaf at the moment, which means you should probably grab that one for…

A Crappy 1980s Cartoon Makes My Favorite Panel From Last Week’s Comics

FF #8: The tricky thing (sorry, that was totally unintentional) about picking a standout moment from reading a bunch of comics every week is that I try to defy my own expectations. And while, I loved sequences from Daredevil, Hawkeye and some of the other comics that came out last Wednesday—more on those in a…

The 3DO and the Neo Geo are still the most expensive consoles ever—including when adjusted for inflation, but you’d be surprised how ridiculous the Intellivision’s price looks now in this chart prepared by Ars Technica. The feature also examines price drops over all consoles’ lifespans.

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Hairy Situations

Video game-themed tonsorial stylings constituted a mini-trend in the news this week—from a kid with a bangin’ Mario shaved tattoo-like into his head to, well, that guy and … the thing he did. Get out your scissors and your clippers, it’s time for another ‘Shop Contest. Source Image: Mario hair win. Source Image: Pac-Man beard…

Nintendo Loses Case to Take Control of ‘WiiU.com’ [Update]

Normally when video game companies go into Internet name court to take over domains using their trademarks, they walk out a winner. So you’d think that Nintendo would be easily successful in the effort to get control of WiiU.com from a cybersquatter. You’d be wrong. Astonishingly, Nintendo’s complaint before the World Intellectual Property Organization has…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Burn This Villager: The Winners

The menace of Animal Crossing‘s Villager is upon us, lurking around every corner with his mirthless grin and vitrified eyes. We asked for your worst nightmares and you gave them to us, eighteen in all, including overall No. 1 Anshin above! Honorable mentions this week go to DonCopal, Insomnis, mrdark and double finalist MrEck0. Oh,…

Ride to Hell is a Bad Game, but I Still Bought It for a Good Reason

Last year saw the glimmer of a movement to get a video game based on Sons of Anarchy, FX’s biker gang series and a vicarious lifestyle fantasy for many viewers, one of them me. The possibility seemed to go no further than series creator Kurt Sutter’s own hopes. Still, he vowed anything the show licensed…

All-Time Greats Will Be Featured in NBA Live 14, Designer Says

Hall-of-fame stars from the NBA’s past will be a part of NBA Live 14, though exactly how isn’t known, as one of the game’s designers took to Twitter to roll out some early details of a title that will have a lot to prove when it arrives. The details came out of a Thursday afternoon…

Arguing Console Specs is Pointless, Says Xbox Exec, Who Does It Anyway

Debating which console’s guts are more powerful is “a pointless argument,” says one Xbox executive, “because people are debating things which they don’t know about.” By and large, he’s right. He then went on to tout his console’s innards. They [Sony] actually go out and they talk about how proud they are about their off-the-shelf…

Following stops in Las Vegas and then Paris, Minecon 2013, the annual gathering for Minecraft fans, will be held in Orlando, Fla. Dates, ticket and hotel information will be announced in July.

Aaron Hernandez might not make it back in time for the next Madden, but if you want to play a topical video game (not about a crack-smoking mayor), try Snowden’s Leaks: The Game. It was made by Dutch developers in 72 hours. No, it won’t report your high scores to the NSA.

A Beer With a Clean, Crisp Taste That Says ‘Anomaly: Warzone Earth’

Why would a tower defense “offense” game be the perfect inspiration for a beer? Because “warzone,” spelled exactly that way, in Polish means “brewed.” And the guys behind the Polish-developed Anomaly: Warzone series like to hoist a pint, too. This is Tower Offense Stout—”the very first brand of beer in the world created by game…

Xbox Live Stops Charging Studios to Patch Games; Fez Creator Upset

When a rare—but utterly game-breaking bug—crippled the indie sensation Fez, its maker said it would issue no patch to fix it. That’s because Microsoft would have charged “tens of thousands of dollars” to put out the patch out over Xbox Live. Yesterday, the company revealed it did away with those charges back in April. Eurogamer…

The Gamer Who Raised Me

There are many factors that have made me into the person I am today, as is the case with any person on this planet. My personality has been partially formed by that chemical factor called ‘depression’ that I have discussed here many times but, as any good psychologist would tell me, there are also plenty…

If Dr. Seuss Wrote The Last of Us and Resident Evil…

Then the covers would look a little like…this! Here are the latest and greatest Dr. Seuss themed covers and rhymes from DrFaustusAU, who graced us with other similar covers in the past. This time we’ve got The Last of Us, Resident Evil, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and BioShock Infinite—all from the last couple of months.…

The Best Of Kotaku, The Week Of June 24th

It kinda feels like it’s been a slow week, but looking back it really wasn’t. Deadpool released, so did Company of Heroes 2, we’re still catching up with all our E3 previews of games we saw in LA, and everyone is slowly coming together to discuss The Last of Us as they complete it. Check…

Total War: Rome II Is Gonna Wage War On Your Hard Drive

It’s likely that the amount of content will justify it (at least, that immense screenshot they shared helps give that impression), but man alive is Total War: Rome II going to take up a lot of hard drive space. 35 gigabytes, to be precise, according to the recommended specs released today by Creative Assembly. Time…

Even More Game of Thrones Characters As Bad 90s Stereotypes

Mike Wrobelis at it again: here’s a collection of even more Game of Throne characters asbad 80s/90s stereotypes. This time around, we’ve got Khal Drogo, Cersei Lannister, Tyrion Lannister, Bronn, Theon Greyjoy and Margaery Tyrell. When the cast of the show is so huge, there’s no shortage of people to pick from, eh? Cersei in…