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Ultraman Is a Fancy Dresser
Ultra Cool | TOKYO, JAPAN: Ultraman (men?) pose in 2006 at the opening of an Ultraman movie. (Photo: Shizuo Kambayashi | AP) IKEA, and the Logic of Video Game Design A visit to IKEA usually means house moving, renovating, and too much fun spent with LEGO for grown-ups. But is there an element of videogame…
By Brian Ashcraft Published February 3, 2012 -
Man Lights Fireworks. Man Blows Up Manhole.
A man in a blue jacket crouched, lighting a firecracker on a manhole. The children stuck their fingers in their ears. What happened next was caught on a security camera. It can only be described as unbelievable. Gas in the drainage system unexpectedly caught fire, causing an explosion that sent the 44-pound manhole several stories…
By Brian Ashcraft Published February 3, 2012 -
Perverts Running Amok with NSFW SoulCalibur V Character Creation!
If you allow people the freedom to create things, you can count on this: sex. Just look at all the dick faces people made with Nintendo Miis. Nintendo Miis! They’re the most innocuous things imaginable, and bam, cocks So, when you have a game like SoulCalibur V, which has been baiting hyper sexuality, you’re going…
By Brian Ashcraft Published February 3, 2012 -
Let This Gothic Lolita Shoot Up Your Shelves
DeathSmiles is a horizontal shmup from bullet hell developer Cave. It’s not my favorite Cave title by any stretch, but it does have a sizeable following due to its Christmas-in-Hell asethetic. Plus, the game stars Gothic Lolitas, like batgirl Casper. People seem to like those. This figure was first released back in 2009, but the…
By Brian Ashcraft Published February 3, 2012 -
Leave It to this Italian To Bring a South Korean MMORPG to Life
Way before cosplay was mainstream, Italy’s Giorgia was doing her thing, dressing up as game and anime characters. She’s been cosplaying since 1997, which, in internet time, must be a century. Giorgia’s photos are extremely well done—ditto for the outfits. No wonder she won Best Individual Cosplayer at the 2005 World Cosplay Summit in Nagoya,…
By Brian Ashcraft Published February 3, 2012 -
Marvel at Sony’s Amazing Gravity Rush Whiteboard Drawings
Sony invited a group of Japanese press to its offices to check out upcoming PS Vita game Gravity Rush. These types of tours can start to blur into each other, with game developers giving the press the hard sell. But this tour had something I’d never seen before: whiteboard drawings! The game creators created these…
By Brian Ashcraft Published February 3, 2012 -
The Horror of Plastic Figures
You might think this statue of Nene Anegasaki from Konami’s love sim Love Plus looks pretty nice. You might think it’s well sculpted and well put together. But wait until you see it in pieces. The horror! Obviously, this is the kit deconstructed form, but man, that’s some scary sauce. Orders are being taken now,…
By Brian Ashcraft Published February 3, 2012 -
Hello Dentist. Tokyo Gets the Pinkest and Cutest Clinic on Earth.
Hello Kitty is an icon. You don’t only find the cat in video games, on toilet paper, and even an infamous vibrator. And now, Hello Kitty has a dentist office. Last month, the Heart Dental Clinic opened in Tokyo’s Koto-ku. It’s wall-to-wall Kitty-chan, Sanrio approved, and pink. Really, really pink. Inside, it’s a Hello Kitty…
By Brian Ashcraft Published February 3, 2012 -
In the Grim Future There Might not be a Warhammer 40K MMO
A few weeks back, the future of THQ’s Warhammer 40K: Dark Millennium MMO was very much up in the air. Comments early yesterday had seemed to ease fears over the project, but comments later yesterday brought the fears right back. It seems beleaguered publisher THQ doesn’t have the stomach or coin to fully back the…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 3, 2012 -
Report: Video Gaming Interrupted by Sadistic Sisters. Cruelty Ensues.
It started out as any other fall afternoon. High school student “Joseph” was in his room playing video games when he got a call from Amanda Johnson, 17, to come over to her house. Joseph’s last name is being withheld to protect his privacy, because as Wisconsin’s St. Croix County Sheriff’s Office stated, what happened…
By Brian Ashcraft Published February 3, 2012 -
Spiderbait: Monty
Time for a little antipodean rock n’ roll on Soundtrack tonight, I think. This is Monty, from Spiderbait’s finest work, 1995’s The Unfinished Spanish Galleon of Finley Lake Another standout from the same album is Sam Gribbles. For something a little older, and which may be the most Australian song you will ever hear, see…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 3, 2012 -
Some of Ubisoft’s PC Games Won’t Work Next Week. Not Even Singleplayer.
Next week, Ubisoft will be moving around some of its servers. What this means for those of you saddled with Ubisoft PC (and Mac!) games that have restrictive DRM is that, in some cases, your games won’t work while the move takes place. At all PC games affected include Tom Clancy’s HAWX 2, Might &…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 3, 2012 -
Man Plays Every Zelda Game in a Month, Writes Paper on Timeline
So Nintendo has, more or less, settled on some semblance of an official timeline for the Legend of Zelda series. You may have thoughts/concerns about this. You also probably don’t have as many as reader Zach does, though. A little while ago Zach, who writes at website View From Heaven, sat down to play every…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 3, 2012 -
The Well-Spoken Horror of Video Game Novel Audiobooks
If you need help sleeping tonight, why not curl up and listen to a man with a very proper accent read you a novel based on a video game about men with giant necks shooting monsters in the face. If Gears of Wars’ Jacinto’s Remnant doesn’t do it for you, you could try Halo: Cryptum,…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 2, 2012 -
Is There a New Populous Game in Development? And is Insomniac Working on a Game Called Outernauts?
Some patent and resume digging by French site HardGamers has uncovered the very real possibility that Electronic Arts is bringing back from the dead one of its most treasured old properties: Populous Managing to access what looks to be an internal wiki for EA’s marketing team (specifically projects involving its EA Partners program), they’ve uncovered…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 2, 2012 -
Put Your Lighter in the Air for this Rock Remix of the Skyrim Theme
As a fierce, cold land of rippling muscles and town guards who speak like Col. John Matrix, Skyrim has always struck me as a kind of ancestral home for hard rock, much in the same way Iceland is where the Supreme Council of Metal is seated. That makes this rock remix of The Elder Scrolls…
By Owen Good Published February 2, 2012 -
IKEA, and the Logic of Video Game Design
A visit to IKEA usually means house moving, renovating, and too much fun spent with LEGO for grown-ups. But is there an element of videogame design hidden away within the Swedish minimalism? I never went to IKEA for videogames. I went there for Swedish pillow covers. But somehow I ended up with videogames. Not literally…
Daniel Golding Published February 2, 2012 -
Gene Simmons Wants to Make a KISS Angry Birds Game
Because there’s no product tie-in too outlandish for KISS, frontman Gene Simmons told IndustryGamers that he and his rock band (or, “rock band”) are looking into some sort of partnership with Rovio’s insanely popular Angry Birds video game franchise, in addition to talking to Sony about other possible KISS video games. I have no idea…
By Kirk Hamilton Published February 2, 2012 -
Fans to Pick Next Madden Cover from a Field of 64 Players
At Madden Bowl XVIII, EA Sports’ Anthony Stevenson just announced that the cover athlete for Madden NFL will be voted on by fans for a second year. This year’s field will be doubled to 64 candidates, and the first round of voting will be a “play-in” round pitting NFL teammates against each other to determine…
By Owen Good Published February 2, 2012