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Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Burn This Villager
The Villager’s haunting, dead-eyed look has gotten a lot of treatment since his introduction as a new Smash Bros. fighter, but he hasn’t yet gotten the Kotaku ‘Shop Contest treatment. Let’s take care of that this week. While The Villager already has a submission pending on Know Your Meme, and there’s a ton of crap…
By Owen Good -
Ding! FAA May Roll Back Stupid Restrictions on Electronic Device Use
Good news for the flying, gaming public: The Federal Aviation Administration’s bullshit, insulting-to-the-intelligence rules for the use of “approved portable electronic devices” are due to be relaxed, allowing for gate-to-gate use of your iPad, 3DS, Android phone or whatever. This could come as early as September. That’s according to reports by the Wall Street Journal…
By Owen Good -
Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Roll Out the Barrel: The Winners
Plenty of great entries for this week’s ‘Shop Contest, drawing on a dynamic trio photo-op comprising Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata, Reggie Fils-Aime, and Shigeru Miyamoto. How do you win with that exploitable? I’ll give you advice: Go to E3, screw up like I know you will, and wind up in a barrel, like dystopika! If you’re…
By Owen Good -
Mind-Controlled Pong is One Step Toward a World Cup Kickoff
Controlling games with brainwaves is a vogue research subject—Patricia Hernandez herself tested out a demo that involved tossing trucks telekinetically—but a team of researchers have applied it to a competitive game—Pong—with the goal of allowing a paralyzed person to make the ceremonial kickoff of the 2014 World Cup. Duke University showed off its work to…
By Owen Good -
‘Tactical Marketing Decision’ Means It’s Just Dragon Age: Inquisition
What was Dragon Age III: Inquisition has now got rid of the eye-eye-eye. Losing el numero three-o may seem like a minor thing, but to Electronic Arts, it was a “tactical marketing decision.” Frank Gibeau, the boss of EA Games, acknowledged to IGN that there’s a debate over whether numbers in sequels work, don’t work,…
By Owen Good -
Again, NBA Live Quietly Distances Itself From Past Failures
Reading between the lines of an open letter by NBA Live‘s new executive producer, one understands that whatever comes next in that franchise is really no continuation of last year’s effort, which, like its 2010 predecessor, was aborted a few weeks before its assumed date of release. Remember, at the time, EA Sports said it…
By Owen Good -
Alaskan Tribe Starts Video Game Studio
They could have put their money into more traditional businesses, like a funeral home or a dry cleaner or real estate development. Instead, the Cook Inlet Tribal Council of Alaska chose to fund a video games company. They say it’s the first one in the United States owned by indigenous people. Upper One Games announced…
By Owen Good -
The Best Of Kotaku, The Week Of June 17th
E3 is over! Kotaku Selects—where I round up the best stories we posted from the week—is back. Fahey was a trooper last week running home team while a bunch of us were running around LA like madmen. The chaos was a little overhwhelming, so Kotaku Selects missed a beat (as did Ask Kotaku—sorry guys!) but…
By Tina Amini -
This Is How You Sell A Starship
I had my eye on a new Jeep Cherokee, but this ad for Origin Jumpworks’ new 300i series has me sold, both on the ship and Chris Roberts’ Star Citizen Okay fine, I was already sold on the game, and this is just proof that my money is on the right trajectory. Only one man…
By Mike Fahey -
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Three Weeks In Gaming Apps, In Case You Thought We Forgot
In the last exciting episode of The Week in Gaming Apps, the feature apologized for wanting to kill you. Afterwards it was so ashamed it hid for three weeks. Guess who gets to write-up 20 fresh mobile games? Not The Week in Gaming apps, certainly. It’s just an idea. A thought. A sometimes murderous thought.…
By Mike Fahey -
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Watch A Fox Reporter Demolish A Hackneyed Anti-Game Argument
Today, an old man went on television and complained about video games. Then someone proved him horribly wrong. Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and current head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, went on the John Stossel Show on Fox Buisness to tell why he thinks violent games are abhorrent and deserve to be…
By Chris Person -
E3 Aftermath, And Other Popular GIFs This Week
Jokes referencing the villager character of the new Smash Bros. started to get stale a few days after E3. Then, suddenly, hilarious videos like this popped up, squeezing out the remaining potential of the character. Outside of E3, newly announced and newly released games inspired people to capture the best moments as animated GIFs. Let’s…
By Gergo Vas -
They Mastered Rhythm Games. How Does iNiS Handle Tower Offense?
Japanese developer iNiS — the name’s an acronym for “infinite Noise of the inner Soul” — has spent the past decade and a half perfecting the art of the rhythm game. From classics like Gitaroo Man and Elite Beat Agents to not-so-classics like last year’s DLC-packed Demon’s Score, iNiShave mastered the melding of sound and…
By Mike Fahey -