Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

If you were displeased when Drake took the stage during the EA presser yesterday, you weren't the only one.

Do you ever play video games with your mom? If so, Jimmy Fallon wants to put you on TV. In honor of Late Night's upcoming "video game week," the host wants you to shoot a video of yourself playing video games with your mom. He explains in the clip above. If your submission is good enough, they'll air it next week during video game week. Just think! Play your cards right, and millions of people could know that your mom is better than you at Smash Bros.

Pikmin 3 was originally announced at E3 2008. It's almost here.

Gratuitous crotch shots still included.

Like the Highlander, there can be only one. Call of Duty dog. Mario cat. Only one (Popular Video Game + Animal) can win. And you will decide the winner. It's time to settle this.

Monolith Software brings its mechs and swords to Wii U.

Someone get Michael Buffer on the phone.

PlatinumGames' crazy superhero action game is finally hitting the Wii U in a couple months.

The fourth installment of SMT is on 3DS, so you should probably check that out. For real though.

If you tried watching this morning's Nintendo Direct broadcast in real time, then you probably got a stuttering stream that had you cursing up a storm. Calm down. Here's the whole thing for you to take in at your leisure.

It takes a pretty poor pirate to think that closing one eye all the time is an actual substitute for an eyepatch.

The weak spot glows red!

Cat Mario? What is this devilry?

Mario's just too good to help out his brother this time around, it looks like. Pshaw, Mario! Pshaw!

The tyranny of the blue shell will one day be ended. This is not that day.

You know that there's going to be a fair bit of challenge in the upcoming 3DS platformer. But the tunes in this new trailer make the lovable dinosaur's next adventure feel really, really mellow. That's probably for the best. Baby Mario needs soothing, y'know? Here's the game's description from a just-sent Nintendo press release: Yoshi’s New Island: The third game in the series offers classic Yoshi abilities while introducing new ones, such as giant Mega Eggs that Yoshi can use to mow down obstacles. The game features different worlds in a variety of art styles, including oil, watercolor and pastels. The game is scheduled to launch this holiday season.

Lead creator Masahiro Sakurai promised and Nintendo delivered. After a long, long wait, players will be able to have the company's best-loved characters beat up on each other in glorious high-definition. An Animal Crossing villager was shown kicking butt and teh game seemed to shift visual styles during the promo clip. The game's due out in 2014.

Reminder: There’s a Nintendo Direct coming up at 10 a.m. Eastern / 7 a.m. Pacific. If you’re at a Best Buy, you’ll be able to watch and then play demos of the games shown during the broadcast.

Previously ... on E3 ... "Chief, you don't understand, it's $399!"..."Internal affairs wants to see you. Something about sharing a lot of games." ... "Remember me, detective? I went by the name Final Fantasy Versus XIII." ... "There's a catch. The D.A. says we have to have PlayStation Plus for online multiplayer." ... "I asked for a new partner, and you send me something that looks like an eraser!" ... "You need to put down the bottle, sarge, and pick up the controller ..." The morning after, Sony's complete and total ownership of E3 does not want for metaphor. To some it looked like a 12th round knockout after a very, very long comeback. Others, it felt like a righteous monologue closing out a tense courtroom drama. Yes, the biggest news may have been confirming that features or prerogatives we already expect and use in console gaming will be present in the PlayStation 4 experience. But after what has been written, said, and unsaid over the past three weeks, hearing a full-throated defense of the customer, on stage was cathartic. Sony got genuine, sustained applause breaks last night, and I thought we were all too cynical for that. So, while it may be tempting, I don't recommend hitting yourself over the head with a brick so that you get amnesia and forget what happened so you can hear the news all over again and feel great. But you can do the next best thing and read this recap of last night's big moments. For Starters, It's a Hundred Bucks Less Than the Xbox One The PlayStation 4 is $399, and already available for preorder at major retailers (GameStop has eight bundles, but not the machine by itself.) Yes, Xbox One is $100 more, but it comes with Kinect and all of those TV features. Hardcore gamers made it clear how they felt about that stuff two weeks ago. This What It Looks Like Sony didn't show us the case back at the PlayStation 4's unveiling in February. Now we know what it looks like. I think it looks like a rhomboid PS2. The system will have a 500GB, upgradeable hard drive, but it will not come with a camera. Jack Tretton Went HAM on Microsoft "We're equally focused on delivering what gamers want most, without imposing restrictions or devaluing their PS4 purchases," said Tretton, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment America, before unloading five missiles to the Xbox One's jaw. "PlayStation 4 won't impose any new restrictions on the use of PS4 games." Twenty-second applause break. "When a gamer buys a PS4 disc, they have the rights to use that copy of the game, they can trade in the game at retail, sell it to another person, lend it to a friend, or keep it forever." Twenty-second applause break, with "Sony" chant. "PlayStation 4 disc-based games don't need to be connected online to play." Twelve-second applause break. "If you enjoy playing singplayer games offline, PS4 won't require you to check in online periodically." Eight-second applause break. "And it won't stop working if you haven't authenticated within 24 hours." Ten-second applause break. All of these were aimed at the weak spots of Xbox One, which in the three weeks since its introduction, divulged plans to require online authentication once a day to play games, a restrictive used-game buyback network, and further controls against sharing a game with a friend. Gamers came to E3 in a pissed-off mood, and Sony played to the crowd masterfully. On the Other Hand, PSN will Charge for Multiplayer The goodwill Sony acquired onstage made this news tolerable, even if it was slipped into the fine print. But after offering online multiplayer for free over PlayStation Network, Sony now will require a PlayStation Plus subscription to use that feature. PlayStation Plus will still cost $60 a year, a subscription is good for every PlayStation device, and you still get a bunch of free games. Final Fantasy Versus XIII is Back From the Dead Given up for dead seven years after its first trailer was released, Final Fantasy Versus XIII made a dramatic reappearance at E3—as Final Fantasy XV. Rumors persisted that Versus XIII had been killed off, or had its work sent to the folks making XV. Square Enix insisted development continued on Versus XIII. Turns out they were both right. Games, Games and More Games The Order: 1886, an alternate-history sci-fi title set in Victorian England, led off the showcase of new games on the PlayStation 4. It was followed by the outrageous Dark Sorcerer from Quantic Dream, another PS4 exclusive. A Mad Max game from Avalanche, the makers of Just Cause, is not a console exclusive, but it was still quite a crowd pleaser. Assassin's Creed: Black Flag and Destiny both got long demonstrations. Finally: This Is How You Share Games on the PS4 To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.

This past week saw the Western release of Animal Crossing: New Leaf for the 3DS. Despite having never played an Animal Crossing game myself—largely due to its part in the most heartbreaking gaming tale I have ever heard—I decided it would be fun to sit down and watch the 2006 Animal Crossing anime film. This was, frankly, a bad idea as it turned an otherwise enjoyable evening into one of the most boring 87-minute chunks of my entire life. Good – True to the Games If one good thing can be said about the Animal Crossing film, it's that it does a good job in bringing the game setting to the silver screen. The town is filled with familiar characters ranging from Tortimer—the mayor of the town—to Tom Nook the shop owner. Many of the game's locations appear as well like the coffee shop in the museum and the town hall. Even events from the games, like K.K. Slider's Saturday night concerts and the various festivals, are shown in the film. There is even a new vocal version of one of Slider's songs in the film—though while everything else in the film is in Japanese, his singing voice has been converted into highly digitized-sounding Animalese. Bad – Not As Much a Story as a Collection of Random Scenes Unfortunately, there is a downside to being an accurate representation of Animal Crossing: it's not exactly a game known for its plot. More than anything else, the Animal Crossing games are about making your own story within the game's setting. You interact with the other characters and basically live how you want. This does not make for a compelling or particularly interesting movie. When the main character of the film, a young girl named Ai, comes to the town, she has no motivation or back story. The first third of the film is simply her wandering around and meeting the town's inhabitants. After that, there is still no overriding plot but there is at least a cast of known characters we follow from scene to scene in a weirdly boring slice of life tale. Bad – Hanging Plot Threads [*Skip to “Final Thoughts” to avoid spoilers.] And as these scenes are largely unconnected, many obvious plot set-ups are left unresolved. Take for example Blathers the Owl. He mentions his dream is to finish his dinosaur fossil collection by finding a seismosaurus skeleton. Indeed, our heroine does find one but never even mentions it to him—in fact this plot point is never mentioned again. This means he is less a character and more of a tool to tell Ai about the existence of such a fossil so that when she comes upon it, she'll know what it is. Even worse is the case of Margie the Elephant. We spend nearly every scene she's in seeing how dedicated she is to becoming a fashion designer. Eventually, she leaves the town to pursue her dream in the most emotionally devastating moment of the film. But once Ai comes to terms with her sadness resulting from it, Margie's dream is never addressed again. Sure, Margie returns near the end of the film, but her professional success or failure is never once mentioned. Bad – Teaches a Horrible Life Lesson to Children [*Skip to “Final Thoughts” to avoid spoilers.]Most of the problems with the film would no doubt be overlooked by the film's obvious target audience: young children. However, the fact that it is a film for children actually makes the film worse as the Animal Crossing movie teaches a horrible lesson to children. The film’s big dramatic moment is when Margie the Elephant leaves town without telling Ai. The next day, Rosie the Cat berates Ai for not saying goodbye to Margie on her final night in town—this is how Ai finds out she may never see her best friend again. To make it worse, Ai discovers that every single other person in town knew that Margie was leaving. So after spending the day in crippling emotional pain, Ai gets a letter from Margie stating she didn't want to start her new life being sad so she decided to skip saying goodbye to her best friend all together. Which translates to: “I decided to be selfish and make you feel horrible so I wouldn't have to be sad. And since you are a good friend, you'll forgive me because that's what friends do.” And, of course, Ai immediately does. This is not a good lesson to teach kids. Shouldn't we be teaching them to do the right thing even if it's sad? That it's important to face the hard moments of our lives instead of running away from them? Or that even friendship has its limits on what is forgivable? I'll say one thing for this part of the film, though, it got me out of my bored emotional state—and into one of affronted disbelief. Final Thoughts When it comes down to it, I spent the vast majority of my time watching Animal Crossing being bored out of my mind—and when I wasn't bored, I was offended. It is a pretty terrible film that suffers from not really having a point—be that a plot-based one or a thematic one. While I suspect fans of the game series may enjoy seeing their favorite characters animated, I wouldn't recommend this film to anyone, especially children. There are plenty of better films for them out there that do more than teach poor lessons about friendship. Animal Crossing was released in Japanese theaters on December 16, 2006. The film has never received an official release outside of Japan. Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am. To contact the author of this post, write to BiggestinJapan@gmail.com or find him on Twitter @BiggestinJapan.

During its E3 conference, Sony talked business and showed games. Leaving some of the more mundane - but no less important - stuff to come out after. Stuff like this video, which shows the system's user interface. We can see how the PS4 swaps between programs (like a phone), how the share button works, how you can download certain parts of a game first, how the PS4's keyboard works, how its party sharing works, how you can stay connected even on a mobile device...you get the idea. The nuts and bolts. Playstation 4 - User Interface Overview Promo [YouTube, thanks Matthew!]

The PS4's lack of online requirements or used games DRM has been cause for celebration for many, but for me, as someone who lives in neither the US or Japan, one thing was even more important. Whether the PS4 was, like its predecessor, region-free. According to SCE boss Shuhei Yoshida, it is. Yes.

The show hasn't even technically begun yet - the doors to the LA Convention Centre don't open until later today - but June 10 is a day gamers are going to remember for a very, very long time. And for all the right reasons. This time last year, I was as down on the show as you could possibly be. Yes, I know it's most useful as a trade show (for retailers, etc), and yes, I know I'm getting older, but still. E3 was once a magical time for video game fans, and over the last decade, those times have gotten less and less magical. Things got so bad last year that I wondered whether it wouldn't have better to do away with the show altogether. My bad. Today brought the magic back. There were big announcements. Surprise announcements. Crowd-pleasing announcements. Corporate-sparring. It had everything. Mirror's Edge 2? Seriously? A new Battlefront game? For real? Ubisoft showing off another brand new game completely out of nowhere? The return of Final Fantasy Versus XIII? The PS4 targeting Microsoft's weak spot for massive damage? What planet are we living on? For years E3's had been a boring, confusing mess, punctuated with presentations full of non-gaming fluff and a lack of big, new game reveals. This? This had been some kind of game fan's dream come to life. In many years past, any one of those announcements above would have carried the show. Yesterday, they simply formed part of a flood of good news, one that washed over those keen enough to be watching at home and who could be forgiven for thinking they'd travelled back in time to 2004, to an era when E3 was all about games, not TV deals and fitness programs. The show could have ended today and people would have called it one of the all-time greats. Yet there's more to come! Nintendo might be skipping a traditional press conference, but they still have new stuff to show, and who knows, it might be big enough to keep the good times rolling well into tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

That was a hell of a thing to watch.

We've seen the box, seen more games, and gotten the price. Hard to argue with any of what we saw, really.

After a day of mostly expected, occasionally exciting, as often disappointing announcements from Microsoft and various third-party publishers, I was all settled in, expecting Sony to maybe have a few fun new things to show. I didn't expect anything too garish. I didn't expect to be bowled over. I didn't expect much surprise. I sure as hell didn't expect what I got.

Instead of just another half-enthusiastic press event, Sony came to E3 looking for a fight. Early on the tone was set for something pretty great, but by the time we hit the halfway point, it almost looked like Sony was actively mocking Microsoft's tepid announcements and various system-related controversies. And that was before Sony actually started mocking Microsoft quite directly for all those things and then some.

Sony showed confidence at tonight's press event. It showed swagger, awareness of its own audience, and, most importantly, games. Man, did it ever show a whole bunch of games. Even if you didn't love every single one of them, I'd be amazed if you couldn't find at least one or two in there to get a little bit excited about.

Sure, things started out a bit slow. Jack Tretton was quick to promote the Vita and and the PS3, showing off a couple of new things (Walking Dead on Vita), as well as some games we already knew about, like Tearaway for the Vita, and The Last of Us and Beyond: Two Souls for PS3. That last one was a particularly odd demo, showing the lead character played by Ellen Page in some heavy CIA training that looked more evocative of something like Zero Dark Thirty. Presumably, that game is still about ghosts and stuff.

Transistor was one of several noteworthy indie games to come out heavily in favor of the PlayStation platform.

But once the PS4 stuff kicked in, it didn't let up. After a bit of brief house-cleaning regarding video apps (you may be shocked to learn that there will be video apps), the games just started flowing. Solid trailers for known quantities like inFamous: Second Son, DriveClub, and Killzone: Shadow Fall, were joined by Ready at Dawn's steampunky looking shooter The Order: 1886, a new game that unfortunately only had a CG trailer (albeit kind of a cool looking one). Third-party games like Destiny, Watch_Dogs, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, and Elder Scrolls Online got lengthy, mostly impressive demos (unfortunately, the AC IV build crapped out part of the way through), while Square Enix managed to bowl over the entire audience with trailers for Final Fantasy XV (formerly known as Final Fantasy Versus XIII) and, believe it or not, Kingdom Hearts III. Hell, we even found out WBIE and Avalanche Studios are making a goddamn Mad Max game. Who saw that one coming?

There was an incredibly strong indie presence as well, kicked off by Supergiant Games coming out to introduce Transistor, which will debut on the PS4, as well as PC. Other indie titles now exclusively headed to Sony platforms (on consoles, anyway) include Octodad: Dadliest Catch, Don't Starve, Outlast, and Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee New N' Tasty. These announcements were made in tandem with Sony unveiling its indie self-publishing initiative, which will allow indie studios to bring their games to the PlayStation Store free of any publisher deal nonsense.

That announcement joined several others that gave the impression Sony had been listening to criticism directed toward the Xbox One. People were already high on all the game demos when Tretton returned to confirm that the PS4 would feature none of the restrictive DRM features Microsoft planned to employ with its new console. Online checks would not be required to play single-player games offline, nor would there be any restrictions on used, disc-based games. All this culminated in the price announcement: $399.99 in North America, $100 less than Microsoft's $499 Xbox One price point. Sony's only negative news--the revelation that multiplayer gaming would be folded into the PlayStation Plus subscription service--was mostly offset by the volume of additional game content coming to Plus subscribers, as well as the news that other net-based media services wouldn't be locked behind the paywall.

I didn't care an iota about Destiny prior to today's conference, but the demo shown during the event finally got me on board.

Given all of this, it's hard to look at Sony's press conference as anything other than an exceptionally brutal blow to any momentum Microsoft had at this point. Where Microsoft appeared monolithic and generally unconcerned with currying any additional favor with consumers or developers, Sony looked fluid, adaptable, and self-aware. It showed a variety of games that spanned genres, tones, and scopes, offering a little something for everyone.

By all means, the PlayStation 4 could still find ways to disappoint consumers--not all of those games are going to turn out to be great, obviously. But in terms of what you would want from a console maker's E3 press presentation, Sony absolutely knocked it out of the park, and it did so by simply demonstrating a strong understanding of what its consumers would conceivably want, rather than just assuming that consumers will take whatever it feels like giving them.

Well, he's still mostly just mad at Microsoft. Furious, even. But you know Francis; he's pretty much mad all the time.

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?

Hey guys. You might have heard that Giant Bomb's L.A. studio was apparently burgled during Monday, when the crew was out and about at the day's press conferences, resulting in the loss of some equipment. I'm mostly posting this so that I don't get a million confused tweets tomorrow morning asking about where the archive of the stream is, and etc. There was no show last night, but I'm told that the guys in L.A. are looking to get something together for Tuesday night. The important thing here is that everyone's OK, of course. Theft's no fun, but it's a matter for the police right now. We will of course let you know what happens along those lines when we can.

I'm up in San Francisco posting trailers with Marino, so I don't really have much info on what's going on down there. Rest assured that we'll continue to post as many things that pop up out of E3 as we can during the day on Tuesday, and hopefully everything will be back to normal-ish by the time the Day One livestream rolls around at 8:00 PM PST today. We'll keep you updated via our Twitter account if anything else pops up, as well as update this post.

In the meantime, there's a boatload of trailers to look through! Go do that for a while!

If there's been a single constant throughout the life of the PlayStation brand, it's been Sony's insistence on using...different means of advertising its consoles. Sometimes it's a dismal failure, sometimes it's a critical success, but at least it's always interesting. A tradition this new clip continues. It's a bit corny, yeah, but I like the main guy. He's got charm.

An indie game from Ripstone for PS Vita.

Remember Brock from the Pocket Monsters anime? He left the series a few years back to go be a Pokémon Doctor, but can still lives on in our hearts as the dude who can operate nearly anything put in front of him. That includes rockets. And drawbridges. Recently on 2ch, Japan's largest online forum, an image popped up online that shows the various things Brock has driven over piloted during his stint on the Pokémon anime. The image is now appearing on numerous Japanese websites, but here is a translated version, courtesy of Kotaku: Surely, 15-year-old Brock has driven a car in the Pocket Monsters anime? ポケモンのタケシ操縦出木杉わろたｗｗｗ [2ch]

I'm not sure why this wasn't part of the company's presentation yesterday. Maybe they left it out because it simply matched Microsoft, instead of under-cutting it. But hey, the PS4 has a 500GB hard drive. The tidbit was revealed in a media release sent out by Sony after its press conference had wound down, which also let us know that the PS4 camera would be sold separately for $59 (surely a big reason why the PS4 was able to be $100 cheaper than the Xbox One, which includes a Kinect). You do, however, get a mono headset and HDMI cable with every PS4 sold, the latter being always welcome with a HD system.