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Beautiful Summit Of A Grueling Journey. Mt Fuji, Japan. By Xereint. JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

The Commandos Games Are Coming Back

Commandos, the classic PC stealth series, has been missing in action for years. No more: strategy publisher Kalypso (Tropico) has bought the rights to the games, with plans to bring them back. This includes the obvious thing—re-releasing the existing games—but also more ambitious plans as well, with Kalypso’s Simon Hellwig saying they’re looking at “the…

New Sega Book (For Adults) Has Pop-Ups

Specialist publisher Read-Only Memory, the team behind A+ books like the Sega Genesis Collected Works, are trying something different. Instead of releasing another coffee table book about video games, they’re releasing a coffee table book about video games that also has cardboard pop-ups of old Sega arcade cabinets. The book is called SEGA Arcade: Pop-Up…

Why I’m Not Streaming On Twitch Today

Today is Prime Day, the Amazon-invented international shopping holiday that involves offering extensive deals on the digital storefront’s products. Amazon workers across facilities in Europe are celebrating this artificial holiday with a multi-day strike, and I’ve decided to join them in my own way. I stream video games on Kotaku’s Twitch channel multiple times a…

Amazon Temporarily Sells Pirated Copies Of Popular PC Games

Over the weekend, people shopping on Amazon thought they’d hit the jackpot: popular recent PC games like Frostpunk and Surviving Mars for the price of a cup of coffee. Problem: these copies were pirated. Word of the dubious deals first got out in a Reddit thread on Saturday. “I think this is a screw up…

An update on our colleague Mike Fahey: Mike is now home and acclimating to a future of having to use a wheelchair. He’s exploring options for a van he could ride in or even drive with hand controls. They’re expensive, so we’re inviting people to contribute to his family’s GoFundMe to help get him back…

Darling In The Franxx Doesn’t Make Good On Its Promises

Darling in the Franxx is a show about children fighting monsters in giant robots, but through its 24 episodes, it undergoes a metamorphosis from teen melodrama with mecha to a galactic-scale conflict. This transition isn’t very smooth, however, and by the finale, Darling feels like a beautifully animated series that never quite sticks the landing.…

Contest Winners Use Labo To Turn Switch Into A Zelda Piano

The standard Nintendo Labo kits include designs like robot arms, mini pianos, and fishing rods, but some players have been able to use the raw materials to create other stuff, like this steering wheel for a motorized wheelchair. Over the weekend, Nintendo encouraged people to get even more creative with a contest for the most…

Nathan Fillion Made An Uncharted Fan-Film, And It’s Excellent

The official Uncharted movie may be stuck in development hell forever, but actor Nathan Fillion and his crew have made their own 15-minute cinematic tribute to the iconic action-adventure franchise. It is wonderful. This short fan-film—which I sure hope Sony doesn’t try to take down—is just about everything you’d want from an Uncharted movie: witty…

Magic: The Gathering Is An Unfortunate Victim of U.S.-Canada Trade War

The CBC reports that Magic: The Gathering cards are part of the $12.6 billion in goods from the United States that are now subject to a 10% tariff by Canada. Won’t they think of the Canadian planeswalkers? The United States has been embroiled in a trade dispute with Canada since May 31st, at which point…

World Cup Player Celebrates Goal With Rude Fortnite Emote 

In the World Cup final between France and Croatia, player Antoine Griezmann celebrated in the rudest way possible: with an emote dance from Fortnite “Take the L” is an emote in Fortnite that truly, brutally taunts other players. As you can see in the video below, the character puts their hand up to their face…

Heat Maps Of Battlefield V Are Beautiful

Earlier this week the Battlefield V development team released a blog post chock full of information about what they learned from the game’s recent closed alpha. It also contained a couple beautiful heat maps. Heat maps are ways of visualizing certain kinds of data that are distributed across space. In the screenshot from Battlefield V…

Silent Hill 2 Players Discover Hidden Mini Map

Some intrepid Silent Hill 2 players have recently discovered a hidden mini map in the game alongside a much-needed “save anywhere” feature. Twitter user punk7890 posted about the discovery on July 13, linking to a page on The Cutting Room Floor where the conditions to be met and the button presses necessary are laid out…

Fixing A Typo Makes Aliens: Colonial Marines Better (But It’s Still Bad)

Aliens: Colonial Marines isn’t a great game. It was plagued by a troubled development, and Kotaku’s official review flatly called the game “awful.” However, a modder has discovered a critical spelling error in the game files that might be responsible. In a post on ModDB linked in a thread on Resetera, Colonial Marines modder jamesdickinson963…

The Game Boy Sewing Machine Is Still Very Cool

There have been a lot of peripherals in the history of video games. Light guns, fishing rods, and that giant Steel Battalion control board have graced store shelves and personal collections alike. But you might not know about the sewing machine for the Game Boy Color. In a video posted this week, video game YouTuber…

Final Fantasy XV Modder Brings 1997 To The Game

Steam Workshop support for Final Fantasy XV has created some great costume creation opportunities, but this “1997 Retro Noctis Outfit” takes the cake. Modder Kyriya has created some great costumes for the PC version of Final Fantasy XV so far, including Lifeguard Gladiolus and Chef Ignus, but this 1997 skin outdoes those in its sheer…

Snake, do you remember the sinking of that tanker two years ago? We’re sneaking our way through (hopefully) all of Metal Gear Solid 2 live now on Twitch!

The ArenaNet Catastrophe Has The Whole Game Industry Rethinking Harassment Policies

One week ago, two Guild Wars 2 narrative designers, Jessica Price and Peter Fries, were fired after Price called out a player of the game on Twitter, prompting widespread backlash. Since then, mobs have tried to employ similar tactics against more women, and game development studios have had to take a hard look at their…

Animal Crossing On GameCube Can Actually Play Any NES Game

A deleted feature from Animal Crossing for the GameCube would have let you play a library of 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System games off of your memory card, a passionate and talented fan of the game found out this week. The original Animal Crossing had so many memorable moments. . There was the dog that performed…

Racing Games Are Coming Back In A Big Way

Within the last month, some amazing racing games have released. It’s been something of a micro-renaissance. These games—Wreckfest, Danger Zone 2, and Onrush—succeed because they avoid more serious minded gear-grinding in favor of going fast and crashing loud. While there’s joy to be had in examining a 1958 Aston Martin DBR1 up close in Forza…