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Professor Layton’s Puzzles Paid For This Stadium

Well, it’s name. Fans of professional American sports will be used to seeing stadiums named after companies. Insurance companies, banking companies, telecommunications companies. It’s a shame, then, that unlike in Japan, none of them are named after video game developers. Hakata no mori Stadium, in Fukuoka, has that honour, as since 2008 it’s been known…

Why The Prettiest PlayStation 2 Game Wasn’t A Smash

In April 2006, Okami was released on the PlayStation 2 in Japan. The game was a critics’ favorite and a commercial flop. Selling a mere 66,000 copies the year it was first released in its native Japan, the Capcom game follows a Japanese sun goddess and uses game controls based on a brush calligraphy. The…

LittleBigPlanet: Good On PS3, Better In Real Life

Give this Show About Games Show clip ten seconds to let you know what’s going on. Give it thirty to warm your heart. Then give it around sixty to blow your mind. It’s Sony and Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet if instead of being a video game, it was a delightful little hand-made adventure where you had…

Gaming’s Funniest Designer Inspired By Film’s Artiest Director

Tim Schafer is a funny guy. He makes funny games like Grim Fandango and Psychonauts. And the idea for his newest game comes from an unlikely place. During the production hell that was the metal-inspired Brutal Legend, Schafer took a cue from Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai on how to break up post-production monotony. In…

It Took Five Video Games To Make This Image

This image is called “Captain Lights Part 2: Electric Boogaloo”. Looks nice, but it’s not entirely the artist’s own work, seeing as it’s actually a composite of five video games, a movie and a toy gun. Call it an exercise in synthesising modern popular culture, call it a man with a desire to throw random…

Only One Child Was Harmed Making This Angry Birds Video

Mobile sensation Angry Birds is one of the biggest games on the planet right now. It’s fun enough on a phone, but man, it’s way more fun when you’re pegging birds at small children instead of fat pigs. Did I say fun? I did? Well, add adorable to the list of things it is. Because…

The Father Of The Fitness Video Game Passes Away

Jack LaLanne, who appeared in a fitness video game long before Nintendo and EA made millions off the genre, has sadly passed away over the weekend at the age of 96. A noted health club pioneer and TV salesman, LaLanne lent his name (and likeness!) to 1979’s Intellivision title Jack LaLanne’s Physical Conditioning, which you…

Ballet Is For Girls (Who Love Nintendo)

Super Mario Bros. made the leap to the big screen, and that didn’t work. What about the leap to ballet? One school in Brazil tested out Mario’s twinkle toes. School plays are great. Handmade backdrops and colorful costumes. The kids at Brazil’s Maria Imaculada de Porto Alegre recently gave their ballet recital, titled “Super Mario…

These Children Need To Calm The Eff Down

You think new Pokémon Happy Meal figures get Japanese kids in television ads excited? You are wrong. They do not. A new McDonalds ad features three children, a sheepish mother and SpongeBob toys. SpongeBob is popular in Japan, where he’s translated into Japanese. But the kids in the commercial are way too excited. In fact,…

No More Heroes 2 Artwork

Silent Hill: Downpour Screens

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Artwork

Mass Effect 2 Artwork

PSP2 Will Have 3G Connectivity And A Very Fancy Screen

Sony is widely expected to formally unveil the PlayStation Portable 2 later this week, but ahead of this a major Japanese newspaper has spilled the beans on some of the new handheld’s specs and capabilities. According to a report on Nikkei, the portable will in Japan be able to link up with the NTT DoCoMo…

Ten-Year Anniversary

To: Luke From: Owen Re: Game of the Year Readers’ Choice Looks Like a Real Horserace Some highlights of the weekend. A Comeback Player Takes To The Field In MLB 2K11 Tennis, Everyone Is The Name Of Top Spin’s Latest Game Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Your Mom Hates ‘Shops Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Facebook Games From Hell…

The Week In Games: Dead Week

Dead Space, the 2008 survival horror hit, repressurizes your living room environment with a widely anticipated sequel entering orbit this Tuesday. Other major drops include Monday Night Combat over Steam and Breach, the team-based downloadable FPS. Monday (Jan. 24) Jam City Rollergirls (Wii) Monday Night Combat (PC) Rocks N’ Rockets (DS) Tuesday (Jan. 25) Dead…

Kotaku’s Top Five List of Top 10 Lists

Each week throws off several new video game lists ranging from the humorous to the trivial. What’s better? A list of those. Here’s a roundup of the rundowns out there. •10 Musician Video Game Vanity Projects [Joystick Division] Neither Green Day, the Beatles, Aerosmith nor Metallica show up here, mostly because those games weren’t ridiculous.…

A Comeback Player Takes To The Field In MLB 2K11

Major League Baseball 2K10 got many big-picture details right, but still left me with a laundry list of demands for MLB 2K11, which I happily ticked off before getting a preview of the game this week. More demanding pitching accuracy, for starters. Last year’s control set was a delight – I preferred pitching with it…

With Kinect, You Are The Epic Controller

The mods and uses developed for Kinect off open-source drivers keep outdoing one another. If I could, I would start every day this way. Except I’d substitute the roar of a sports crowd for the THX introduction. Motion Emotions [Gerry Chu, via Giant Mecha]

Tennis, Everyone Is The Name Of Top Spin’s Latest Game

Well regarded as a series, Top Spin’s last entry in 2008 took some risks that were, in hindsight, inadvisable for an American-published game simulating a sport that has lacked a dominant American men’s professional for several years. 2K Sports’ Top Spin 4 puts a focus back on playability, aligned to a sport that’s seen growth…