Uncategorized

Nintendo Forces Swedish Dental Surgery To Change Name

Not a headline you’d expect to read first thing on a Monday, granted, but it’s true: Nintendo’s lawyers have made a small dental surgery in Malmö, Sweden, change its name. Why? The surgery is called “Wii Smile”. And while one of the two partners running the joint, Christer Wihlborg, says the name came about because…

Nothing Says Charity Auction Like Mai Shiranui

Will the Mai Shiranui statues ever stop? No, no they won’t. This figurine adds to the deluge, but all for a good cause. At the Volks Osaka hobby showroom has a Mai Shiranui from SNK’s The King of Fighters. She’ll be up on the Volks charity auction block. The proceeds will go to the Make…

J Allard? No, It’s Doctor J Allard

J Allard has, tragically, been in hiding for some time now. And still is! But his name, at least, has come out of hiding. We’re glad. And so, so glad that when it did resurface, it was to share the limelight with some illustrious company! Yes, the former Xbox pin-up boy, who played a big…

Xbox 360 Propaganda For Japan

Take free! This “Xbox 360 super catalogue” is being distributed at Japanese retailer Messe Sanoh. Don’t be fooled by the cute Xbox 360 console character, it’s good old fashioned propaganda. The cover reads, “Xbox 360 over PS3 if you are picking multi-platform games.” At the bottom of this pamphlet, there’s the Xbox 360 console line…

Spore: Galactic Adventures Trailer

While we’re appreciative of the new weapons, how different can “protecting the oracle” and “defending the priest” really be? Video Games – Cheat Codes – Video Game Trailers

Hugh Jackman: Wolverine Game “More In-Depth”

Some are already calling the Wolverine video game better than the Wolverine movie. Hey, actor Hugh Jackman is impressed with the game, too. During production, Jackman was so dazzled that he had some of the video game dialogue shoehorned into the film script. “In fact I was able to bring some of the lines of…

Former Chinese WoW Operators Releasing Shameless WoW Rip-Off

Never mind that The9 have lost the contract to run World of Warcraft in China to a rival firm. They’re going to compensate by releasing a new game! Which…looks a lot like World of Warcraft. And sounds a lot like World of Warcraft, as the game’s name is World of Fight. Oh, and the game’s…

Myst Is On The iPhone Right Now (And Big For An iPhone Game)

The iPhone port of Myst has gone live. The game is priced at US$5.99, and the download size is extra large. As we posted back in August, Cyan — the developer behind the puzzle-based series — announced it had a small team working on a port of it’s 1993 point-and-click classic Myst. The team may…

What Sequels Does Japan Want?

Lots of games get sequels. Some of them Japanese games want, and others Japanese games want really bad. Game magazine Famitsu polled its readers about which franchise sequel they crave the most. Here’s the raw data: (Oh, and do please tell us which sequel you would like!) 1. Sakura Taisen (aka Sakura Wars) 267 votes…

Quote/Unquote

To: Luke From: Owen Re: The Big 8 Twenty years ago this month, my father’s newspaper back in my hometown decided to try something to gin up reader interest and participation. “Quote/Unquote” it was called; it ran on Mondays down the left side of the front page. Anyone could call in to an answering machine,…

Week in Games: Steel Drums

Fallout 3’s latest round of DLC deploys this week for 360 and PC; it’s joined by Patapon 2 on the PSP, and Crysis: Maximum Edition for the PC. Otherwise, May comes in like a lamb, which is fine. Don’t you have enough games already? This week’s count: Five for Wii and DS, four for PC,…

Protest Against Video Game Army Recruiting Ends in Arrests

Yesterday in Philadelphia, a crowd of 100 marched on a mall demanding the shutdown of the “U.S. Army Experience” – a video-game based recruiting station. Seven were arrested for cosplaying Shyguys wearing masks. GamePolitics tweeted the showdown, which began back in March with ideas of gathering in the mall as ordinary shoppers and then descending…

Survey Says …

Faithful Kotaku reader Beaver apparently takes marketing surveys over at something called Play Insights, which assures visitors in fine (and grayed) print “Please be assured this is a legitimate research study.” Of course it is. Their surveys must be frequented by A-list developers all the time, because here they felt the need to offer a…

Forza 3 Event Spits Out Another Perfect Dark Tease

Last week’s Xbox 360 event in Sao Paolo, which teased Forza 3, also spun off another rumor tidbit: That pic, sent over to Destructoid, which is the second in-the-wild sighting of Perfect Dark on XBLA. The image, says D’toid, comes from someone who attended the Brazilian showing and quickly snapped the image. A video of…

Housers Named to Time’s ‘100 Most Influential’ List

Time’s latest issue is its “Time 100” in which they name the most influential people in the world, for this year anyway. Rockstar rockstars Dan and Sam Houser are in the “artists and entertainers” category. I couldn’t tell if Sam and Dan together count as one influential person, or if they took two whole spots…

Pokémon Remakes Take Gold, Silver?

Adding it all together, a teaser by Japan’s Pokémon Sunday TV program points to an announcement next weekend that Pokémon Gold and Silver will be remade. The tease, offered this weekend, said simply that Pokémon Sunday would have a “world-exclusive first announcement,” on May 10 during the program’s Pokémon Game Arena segment. Oh, but there’s…

360 Controller Meets this Sniper

This helicopter-borne robot sniper can fire 7 to 10 aimed shots per minute, and does so using a modified Xbox 360 controller plugged into a laptop. Each trigger squeeze costs $4 (320 Microsoft Points). Wired wrote up the ARSS (stop snickering, those in Commonwealth nations) – which stands for Autonomous Rotorcraft Sniper System, and imagines…

Another Pic of Wolverine’s Secret Areas

Friday, Fahey dug up a screenshot of X-Men Origins: Wolverine’s homage to Warcraft. A reader sent us a screengrab of another crossover marvel, one of two mentioned in the game’s achievement list. Obligatory spoiler alert. The first hidden area is understandable – Activision/Blizzard publish both Warcraft and Wolverine. Although it’s not specifically invoked, and Valve…

The Red, the Dead …

The concept for the Red Dead Redemption box art got me to thinking – I know I’ve seen that somewhere before. No, I’m not accusing Rockstar San Diego of ripping off The Good, the Bad & the Ugly. But the style here does seem somewhat inspired by Clint Eastwood’s freeze-frame pose at the end of…

Video Game Hall of Fame Gains Momentum, Support

Barely a month old, the movement to place a video game hall of fame in Ottumwa, Iowa has formed a city-backed committee and is hiring legal services to incorporate itself as a nonprofit venture. “We’re going to step carefully and make sure we don’t screw this up,” said Terry McNitt, the executive director of the…