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Sonic Free Riders Visual Guide

Maybe I’m not smiling enough when I play. Or perhaps I need to play the game in a giant white box. I had some issues with the game at Gamescom, but it was much worse in my home. This game needs less commercials and more patches.

Japan Overdoses On Young Maids, Wheels Out Old Maids

Step off the train at Tokyo’s geek and gaming mecca Akihabara, and you’ll see them: maids. Besides serving cake and coffee at maid cafes, maids pop up in video games, manga and anime. They’re typically young. Not these maids, though. This month, a temporary maid cafe with, literally, old maids is operating in Tokyo. Dubbed…

Just Because Foxconn Workers Make Xbox 360s Doesn’t Mean They Play Them

“An Xbox gaming area was not as well attended,” writes Giz’s Joel Johnson. Check here for more photos and details from his upcoming Foxconn feature for Wired.

A Little Splatterhouse To Cleanse The Palate

Had your fill of becoming the controller? It could be worse. You could be Rick Taylor, transformed into a rampaging juggernaut by a mystical mask and forced to fight in vicious survival arenas, as seen in these new Splatterhouse screens. When he isn’t busy hunting for Jennifer or trying on his nifty alternate masks, Splatterhouse’s…

Splatterhouse gallery

The Ultimate Guide To Xbox 360 Kinect

This is your guide to everything you need to know about Xbox 360 Kinect: how it works, what it costs, and what games you can play on it. What Is Kinect? Microsoft calls Kinect a hands-free motion control device for the Xbox 360. It allows players to control games using a combination of body movement…

See Kinect’s Thousands Of Points Of Invisible Light

Kinect works by projecting infared light throughout the room it’s situated in. Under normal circumstances, it’s invisible, but switch to night vision mode and you can actually see the dots floating around your living room. Kiwi reader Cullen sends us this footage that, while a little tough to make out at first (he’s having to…

Microsoft Is Beta Testing An Episodic Xbox Live Poker Game Show

It looks as if the studio that brought us Xbox Live’s 1 Vs. 100 has a new episodic game show in the works, as beta test emails go out for Microsoft Game Studios’ Full House Poker. A reader-forwarded email from Microsoft Game Studios indicates that Full House Poker aims to bring live poker to the…

Dead Rising Splatter-Flick Shuffling On To DVD

Zombie horror game Dead Rising was inspired by George Romero’s zombie horror films, like Dawn of the Dead. But that wasn’t enough! Former Dead Rising producer Keiji Inafune made his first — and last — film for Capcom, Shibyou Osen DEAD RISING The movie was released on Xbox Live earlier this year. It is hitting…

Sniper: Ghost Warrior Gets Prettied Up For The PlayStation 3

City Interactive brings the head exploding fun of Sniper: Ghost Warrior to the PlayStation 3 next year, with updated graphics and plenty of exclusive content for Sony sniping fans. Sniper: Ghost Warrior saw mostly mediocre reviews, but people bought it anyway because it’s a game dedicated to one of the gaming world’s most enjoyable pastimes:…

Apple Patent Takes Augmented Reality Games To The Next Level

Apple explores the awesome potential of augmented reality in a patent application that describes a multiplayer shooter that allows players to track each other for real using networked iPhones. Augmented reality is more than simply overlaying video game graphics on the real world using a camera. Sure, Invizimals is a hoot, but when it comes…

Say Sayonara To Call Of Duty Swastikas

The Japanese version of Call of Duty: Black Ops is different. The game was retouched to tone down torture and graphic violence. That’s not all. According to the game’s Japanese publisher Square Enix, the swastikas appearing on flags in the game’s “zombie mode” were changed to the Iron Cross in the dubbed console and subtitled…

Microsoft Says Kinect Won’t Invade Your Privacy

Microsoft’s new Kinect device will put an advanced sensor array in the living room of millions of people, an Internet-connected set of machine ears and eyes capable of capturing voice, recognizing faces and tracking body movement. Don’t worry, the company says, we won’t peep. “By default we don’t listen or look at anything,” MIcrosoft’s director…

Talk Amongst Yourselves

It’s another day to talk about video games. Do your best right here. Thanks to reader Ben for today’s image. Submit yours to #TAYpics

3D Gaming Phone Ready To Battle Nintendo 3DS

The Sharp Galapagos is an upcoming 3D smartphone. And it’s getting a handful of games that mean it might just give the Nintendo 3DS a run for its money. Powered by Android, it boasts a 3.8 inch glasses-free 3D screen, 512MB of on-board memory and so far, the phone is slated for seven games: horror…

Growing Up, Learning Kanji

To: Crecente From: Bashcraft RE: Kinect Flood Incoming Busy nite! Loads of Kinect coverage. Nice work Team Kotaku. My 7-year-old son Mini-Bash is in first grade, which means he’s learning kanji. All first graders are required to learn certain characters each year. Kanji are the Chinese characters used in Japanese. They are used in combination…

The Many Reviews of Kinect and Its Games

The Xbox 360’s Kinect launched today with more than a dozen games. We played through half a dozen of them. Here’s a run down of the reviews for quick reference. Click on the game’s name to go to the full review which is much more detailed and packed with videos of us playing the games.…

Do Gaming And Game Characters Help Political Campaigns?

During the political campaigns for the recent election, some candidates made promises. Some candidates talked trash. And some candidates used video games to make their point. Did gaming give those politicos a 1Up in office? Website GamePolitics has a round-up of some of the politicians that used gaming in their campaigns. Take Missouri Congressman Russ…

Cops Nab Man For Sharing New Pokémon

On September 1 at approximately 8:00pm, 27-year-old Makoto Sekiguchi from Yokohama uploaded images of unrevealed characters in the new Pokémon game Pocket Monsters: Black & White via his mobile phone. He is now in police custody. According to 47 News (via ANN), Sekiguchi uploaded six images of unseen Pokémon, such as Chaoboo. The characters appear…

360 Gets Old-School Role-Playing For A Buck

“West” is a new indie game for the Xbox 360 that looks right up the alley of anyone who has ever played (and enjoyed) games like Pokemon or Mother It of course lacks the polish of those top-down, role-playing Japanese classics, but then, you can’t get them for $1 on an Xbox console, either. West?…