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Sports Video Gaming Must Face Its Own Era Of Excess
Wednesday was supposed to be a day of no news in Major League Baseball. There are no league games in January, of course; pitchers and catchers report to spring training in 29 days. And exit polling had long foreseen the shutout ballot, for the first time since 1996, that the Baseball Writers Association of America…
By Owen Good -
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If Street Fighter IV was a First-Person Game, Here’s What It Would Look Like
Pipoca, the Brazilian animator who brought us First-Person Bomberman, now delivers this concept of Street Fighter IV‘s bonus stage, fought first-person style. It’s a great take, but if the combos are based on your point of view, I’m now completely messed up on how to throw a hadouken. What’s forward? Up? YouTube video uploaded by…
By Owen Good -
The World of Warcraft Theme Park in China Features a “Happiness Index” for Its Rides
This weekend Redditor FrancescaO_O paid a visit to Joyland, the World of Warcraft-themed park in China, and reported back with this amusing picture. Each ride comes with a five-star happiness rating! That’s most likely a broken English translation, where “happiness” is meant to reflect the ride’s thrill level—as in, a five-star ride has more drops,…
By Owen Good -
Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Googly Eyes
That no-good Chris Person stole our thunder on Tuesday with this, in which he discovered that googly eyeballs add a certain je ne sais quois to every video game. Well, he is just one person. We are an army of ‘Shoppers, and this week we’re going to take his idea and completely overrun him with…
By Owen Good -
Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Balloon Snake: The Winners
I told you maggots to hold the damn file size under 2 MB, but no, one of you just had to create something so hilariously excellent above that limit that I am now forced to take extraordinary measures just to bring it to you. So now all of you must stay late in order to…
By Owen Good -
Warcraft-Playing Bodybuilding Fan Barely Misses Donkey Kong World Record
Vincent Lemay came in just 2,700 points shy of Hank Chien’s world record score for Donkey Kong, adding his name to the team of rivals for what has become arcade video gaming’s Holy Grail of high scores. On Friday, Lemay, 21, of Quebec, recorded a verified performance of 1,135,900, according to Patrick Scott Patterson, an…
By Owen Good -
EA Sports’ Dream Appliance Has Arrived: The Internet-Enabled Fridge
Seven months ago at E3, I sat down with EA Sports’ boss, Andrew Wilson, for an annual chat that always features a lot of big-picture spitballing because of where and when it takes place. I forget what question brought this up, but I’m now looking at my notebook from that day and I see the…
By Owen Good -
MLB The Show Welcomes a Notorious Pirate
Andrew McCutchen, Pittsburgh’s center fielder, is your cover star for MLB 13 The Show, following an extremely brief period in which fans voted on the honor. McCutchen prevailed by nearly 20,000 votes over New York’s C.C. Sabathia, and by more than 30,000 votes over Miguel Cabrera of Detroit, the first batter to win the Triple…
By Owen Good -
StarCraft II Says It’s Sorry With a Free Name Change for Everyone
Battle.net had hinted at plans for a name-changing service—for a fee—in StarCraft II some time ago but it never materialized. With the paid name-change option deprioritized and unlikely to happen anytime soon, Battle.net is saying sorry by giving everyone a free name-change. “The fact that we didn’t keep you updated when we deprioritized the feature…
By Owen Good -
The Speakys Have Spoken; This is Your Game of the Year
Though Speak Up on Kotaku became one with the Force back around September, the reader-voted GOTYs it spawned lived on in the second annual Speakys, which longtime reader GiantBoyDetective organized this year again. The votes have been tallied, and it’s a clean sweep for 2K Games in both chambers of Kotaku‘s congress: Borderlands 2 is…
By Owen Good