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Behind the Scenes With the iPhone’s Take on Diablo

I loved the original Dungeon Hunter. The iPhone Diablo-esque action game was one of the first iPhone games that felt like both something built for the iPhone and a solid, deep game. Here’s a look at Dungeon Hunter 2, complete with strangely mis-matched translator voice-overs.

Microsoft: There Will Be A Halo Movie

At the Future of Television East conference last week, Microsoft’s Frank O’Connor sat on a panel that focused on the grail of transmedia. Halo’s franchise development director is a shortish, stocky guy who looks like a feisty boxer. And he’s proud bordering on arrogant about the lauded series of games that sold so many Xboxes.…

Gifts for Gamers of All Ages—and Degrees of Cleanliness

Video game consoles are getting a bit long in the tooth. But these gifts will make them feel like brand new toys. 1. Splitfish FragFX mouse controllers for PS3, $50 to $80. Studies show that mouse + keyboard gamers fare better against console gamers, so why not bring a mouse to a virtual gunfight? Splitfish…

California Is The Best Place To Buy World of Warcraft: Cataclysm First

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is the kind of game shops open at midnight to sell. No shop is planning more midnight Cataclysm madness than Fry’s Electronics in Fountain Valley, California. That store will host all of the following on the night of December 6, starting at 9PM PT as midnight and the WoW expansion tick…

Navigating The Video Games of Black Friday

Motion gaming, mobile gaming, traditional gaming. More than any year before, shopping for that gamer in your life has become a minefield of games, deals and gadgets. With Black Friday looming, Kotaku is here to help with a hand-dandy primer on what’s new, what’s hot and what’s coming to the world of gaming. Motion Gaming…

Robot Unicorn Attacks Christmas

It’s amazing what a single, surprisingly-fitting piece of music can do for a game. Take Robot Unicorn Attack, for instance. The original was wonderful. The remakes? All that really changes is the art and that single song. Robot Unicorn Attack’s latest target is Christmas. The 99 cent iPhone game is due to hit iTunes Tuesday…

Debatable Evidence That Conan O’Brien Is Copying Super Mario Again

The theme song for Conan O’Brien’s new show on TBS sounds sorta kinda like a theme song from Super Mario Bros. 3. And we know someone who works with Conan loves Mario. Right? Listen. Even the guy making the video concedes this might be a stretch, but listen and then try to not hear it.…

Is It Time For a Major Black And White Video Game?

Our video games are in color. Even our noir video games set in 1940s Los Angeles. They don’t have to be, right? This is a trailer for Rockstar Games’ L.A. Noire, with one change. We made it black and white. Sure, this is a crude transfer. I took Rockstar Games and Team Bondi’s official L.A.…

iTunes Chart Toppers: Out with the Old, In With the New

Plenty of hot new titles swamped the charts this week including id’s Rage for the iPhone and iPad, LEGO Harry Potter and Need For Speed Hot Pursuit. Here’s the full list of games for both platforms: iPhone Position Title Price Weeks Last Week 1 Angry Birds (Clickgamer.com) $0.99 28 2 2 Smurfs’ Village (Capcom) Free…

Talk Amongst Yourselves

We recommend that you talk about video games right here, in the comments section. And, hey, go submit an image to #TAYpics and it might be featured in a future installment. Thanks to p4w4rr10r for today’s image.

Nothing Says Weekend Like Robo Sushi

To: Crecente From: Bashcraft Ahoy! Saturday was spent covering the Kinect launch in Japan. There weren’t that many lines, but I do expect Microsoft to see a bump in Xbox 360 sales in Japan. How big? It’s hard to say. Japanese game retail blogs (here, here, here and here) are reporting sluggish interest. Even though…

Balance the Budget The Game, Now With More Defense Cuts and Health Care Reform

With the United States’ budget projected to hit a $418 billion shortfall by 2015 and a $1.3 trillion shortfall by 2030, the New York Times knows something has to be done. So they made a game. The Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget allows you to get rid of that nasty deficit by clicking on…

Where There’s Smoke, There’s PlayStation Phone Fire

Late last month, photos of a rumored PSP phone surfaced. The prototype looked like a Sony Ericsson cell phone mated with a PSP. Rumors, right? Know what they say, where there’s smoke there’s fire — with “they” being Sony. “There’s a lot of smoke, and I tell you there must be a fire somewhere,” Sony…

Robot Unicorn Attack Christmas

Two Different Games, The Same Dang Character

On July 29, PS3 title Hyperdimension Neptunia was released in Japan. Late last week, Record of Agarest War 2 hit Japan. Hey, wait a sec… There’s something familiar, and it’s not just the game covers. Both titles were developed by Idea Factory and Compile Heart. While Hyperdimension Neptunia is a role-playing send up of the…

Microsoft Will Not Be Taking Kinect “Hackers” To Court

When people first started talking about messing around with the insides of the Kinect, Microsoft played bad cop, making legal threats. Thankfully, things have calmed down since then. A few weeks back, Microsoft said – in response to a “bounty” being offered to the first person to “hack” Kinect – that it would “work closely…

Show Some Brotherly Love For This Assassin’s Creed Art

Now that the game is on store shelves and impressing people’s pants off, Nicolas Collings — an artist at Ubisoft — has been able to share some of his work from Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Men, women, faces, weapons, armour…there’s a nice variety of content on display, all of it showing just how many polygons go…

3DS Games Won’t Send Developers Broke, But…

Never mind that we don’t know how much a Nintendo 3DS game costs to buy, developers need to develop the games first. And that costs money. According to Harvest Moon publisher Marvelous Entertainment, Nintendo 3DS games cost — depending on the title — between ¥70,000,000 (US$838,976) at minimum and ¥100,005,000 ($1,198,598) at max. These, of…

Kinect Can Turn You Into Star Wars Kid

Star Wars Kid, one of the internet’s earliest celebrities, had to do his lightsaber combat the hard way. Now, with Kinect and a computer, anyone can look like the world’s biggest Star Wars nerd. Using a hacked Kinect, Yankeyan has rigged up this basic tool that can track a user wielding a wooden stick and,…

Make Your Own Cheapo Version Of The Nintendo 3DS

The Nintendo 3DS is a glasses-free 3D gaming portable due next February for ¥25,000 (US$299). That’s a long ways away! Let’s make a low budget version right now First you’ll need a Nintendo DS, DS Lite, DSi or DSi XL. Take your pick! Next? Next you’ll a lenticular lens sheet. Then? Then, you’ll need tape.…