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Pirates Leak Pokémon Prism After Nintendo Shuts It Down

Pokémon Prism is a fan-made ROM hack for Pokémon Crystal. Over the course of eight years, creator Koolboyman and his team crafted a new Pokémon experience, which they hoped to release this Christmas. Nintendo hit them with a cease and desistfour days before release. Thanks to a group of pirates, the project still made it…

The Parents Who Name Their Kids After Final Fantasy Characters

The people who fell for Final Fantasy in its glory years when it was huge on the NES, Super NES and then the PlayStation are now adults. They’re having kids, and they’re the kinds of people who just might name their daughter Aeris or their son Kain. Giving your kid the name of a Final…

Fahey’s Top Ten Games Of 2016

When I’m not eating snacks or playing with toys, I like to relax with some video games. Through a careful selection process that mainly involved me staring at at a large list, shaking my head and swearing, I’ve managed to narrow the games I played in 2016 to ten favorites. I started off with a…

3DS Software Famed For Piracy Hit With Nintendo Takedown, Creator Says

Freeshop is homebrew software touted as a tool used to download 3DS games that you already own. Most people, however, know Freeshop as a thing you can use to download entire 3DS games, free of charge (hence the name). Today, Freeshop’s main distribution source was hit with a DMCA notice. If you visit the old…

Big Smash Bros. Melee Tournament Will Allow Controversial Controller

Super Smash Bros. Melee players still compete at tournaments with the 15-year-old GameCube controller. But it’s got issues—namely, painful ergonomics and easily-degraded joysticks. So when Dustin Huffer introduced a modern controller into the Melee mix, he was shocked to hear that the huge, January, 2017 Smash tournament Genesis 4 was considering a ban. After a…

Final Fantasy XIV Players Create Their Own In-Game Theater Troupe

Wanderer Sabaku met me at the foot of his mansion’s grand double stairway on the Diabolos server of Final Fantasy XIV. He was nearly twice my size and towered in a purple floor-length coat. A crown sat on his blue-gray head. He welcomed me from behind a partition and led me down some winding stairs…

Star Wars Video Game Players Honor Carrie Fisher

All across the video game galaxy, players are gathering to memorialize Carrie Fisher, who died yesterday following a massive heart attack. The most prominent celebrations have taken place in the BioWare MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, where players are holding impromptu get-togethers in an area called House Organa, on the planet Alderaan. Fisher, of…

Kirk Hamilton’s Top 10 Games Of 2016

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A farmer, a hitman, and a little boy all walk into a bar. Everything’s moving in slow motion, so the bartender’s like, “Dishonored? I hardly even know ‘er!” No but seriously, folks, 2016 was a pretty great year for games. I had a hard time narrowing down my…

Life Is Hard, And Frog Fractions 2 Is Great

To write about Frog Fractions 2, I spent three hours planting seeds and chopping wood in an entirely separate fairy resource management game. Finding Frog Fractions 2 was how I learned its first rule: It’s less about the game than the “fuck it” attitude you pick up on the ride. Frog Fractions 2 is the…

Day of the Tentacle Remastered, Titan Souls Headline PlayStation Plus Lineup for January

There’s an interesting range of games in PlayStation Plus’ lineup next month. Most exciting to me is The Swindle, a steal ‘em up platformer I enjoyed a lot on PC. There’s also This War of Mine: The Little Ones, which adds what I’m sure is heart-wrenching content to an already heart-wrenching game. As ever, these…

What Made 2016’s Doom Great

Innovation is like a game of telephone. Someone creates a message, but as it spreads, it loses its meaning. Lessons that seemed clear back in the first-person shooter’s formative years became taken for granted and eventually forgotten. Shooters today are all about weapon limits, level design set pieces, and regenerating health. Doom’s return in 2016…

Kotaku‘s Most Anticipated Games Of 2016

Here at Kotaku, we spend most of our time focusing on games that are already out. That’s kind of our thing. But still, every once in a while we like to look to the future and get excited about what’s next. Here are the games we can’t wait to play in 2016. Persona 5 After…

How Frog Fractions 2 Stayed A Secret For Two Years

Jim Crawford, the man who just released the most well-hidden video game of the last two years by smuggling it inside another one, misses a time when video games had more secrets. “One thing that’s been lost about games since the ‘80s is that they’re no longer particularly mysterious, because of marketing, because they’re cheap…

Hitman’s 17th Elusive Target, The Food Critic, will be in Bangkok for 7 days beginning December 30th. I’m guessing by the name there’ll be some poisoning involved…

Battlefield 1‘s Christmas Truce Didn’t Quite Come Together

Battlefield 1 players hoping to recreate World War One’s Christmas truce couldn’t rein back the bloodlust of those eager to kill the fresh wave of new players. In real life, the Christmas Truce of 1914 was a near-miraculous cease fire across many fronts in World War One. It came after Pope Benedict XV suggested a…

The Stanley Parable is receiving a new update to remove a mysterious black obelisk found in one of its hidden endings. The ending in question requires players to partake in a four-hour-long joke mini-game. According to creator Davey Wreden, the strange obelisk is actually the result of a bug.

Four Surprising Moments Tucked Into Watch Dogs 2

You may have expected hacking, driving and shooting in Watch Dogs 2, but did you expect a discussion of Aliens Vs. Predator? How about a chat about what’s cool about Latin? Yes, the language. Ubisoft’s developers have hidden some odd and interesting stuff in their latest massive open-world game. The Aliens Vs. Predator thing is…

Carrie Fisher Dies At 60

Actress Carrie Fisher, who charmed the world playing Princess Leia Organa in the Star Wars films, has died following a massive heart attack. She was 60. In a statement to People Magazine, Fisher’s daughter Billie Lourd confirmed the news: “It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie…

Revisiting Michael Pachter’s 2013 Predictions For 2016

On December 27, 2013, Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo told us to bookmark a post and check back three years later. So we did. And now, at the end of 2016, we can finally see how soothsayer Michael Pachter’s 2013 predictions turned out Pachter, an analyst for Wedbush Securities and host of the Pachter Factor on Siftd…

2016 Was A Great Year For ‘Shipping Our Favorite Characters

Ever loved a piece of fiction so much you never wanted it to end? That’s what fandom is for. While transformative works like fanfiction and fanart can serve more serious purposes like exploring subtextual themes or fixing up plot holes, sometimes it has a less lofty goal: getting two cute characters to kiss. Here’s what…