Kotaku older than one year ago

The console game was rubbish, the browser-based social strategy game lacks action — what's a Game of Thrones fan for a satisfying video game adaptation of their passion? Spanish comic artist Abel Alves offers this free solution. Read more...

After months of speculation, the map of Grand Theft Auto V finally made its way to the web, and besides the fact that Leonardo from TMNT is obviously hidden on there, the details and the layout opened up the opportunity for a little bit of speculation. SPOILERS FOLLOW!Read more...

Today in Tokyo, Sony introduced PS Vita TV. It is six centimeter by ten centimeter device, making it the smallest piece of PlayStation hardware.Read more...

Here's an odd e-mail that those of us who "like" Nintendo's official Wii U Facebook page received today. Are you thinking what I first thought when I got that? They couldn't be thinking about...they wouldn't change the name... no way, right? (Spoiler: No way is probably right!)Read more...

First, Hideo Kojima wanted the mute female sniper of Metal Gear Solid V to appear "erotic." That was either a poor choice of words, or poor translation, but he evidently wanted the art director to sex her up to encourage cosplay. Or figurine sales. Well, now Kojima is Tweeting, and says we have it all wrong.Read more...

#barackobama Barack Obama has triumphed over both ignorance and the Republican primary field, in an unofficial and moderately alarming poll of players of the cartoony multiplayer online video game MapleStory. More »

One thing I can't help but admire about fighting games is how well the genre uses moves and kinetics for characterization: sure, not every game has a fantastic story attached to it, but that doesn't mean a fighting game can't have well-defined, unique characters, you know?Read more...

Take an assortment of cheesy embarrassment videos from all over the internet. Add in the blistering attacks of Street Fighter’s Chun Li. Stir well. Laugh heartily. Read more...

Platinum Games' Hideki Kamiya has a new video game out. It's not getting perfect scores or perfect reviews. Yeah, like he cares. Here's one of video game's most expressive game designers brushing off criticism as only he can. Read more...

Square Enix consistently protects its trademarks and copyrights. And still people consistently use them without permission. So it's perhaps not a surprise that an artist selling a Final Fantasy action figure series was shut down when Square's lawyers told his 3D printer to cease and, yes, desist.Read more...

0x10c (often pronounced "ten to the c") was for a time the next big thing from Mojang and Markus "Notch" Persson, creator of Minecraft. It was to be a sprawling sandbox space adventure, but Persson put the project on hold back in April, citing creative difficulties, and then this week said he'd shelved it altogether.Read more...

A pet sim/adventure game featuring talking dogs? PlayStation Vita Pets bounds through the forest next year to rescue the unfortunate handheld gaming device trapped in the well.Read more...

Holy smaller video game, Batman! Warner Bros. has confirmed that the newly-revealed multiplayer modes for Batman: Arkham Origins won't be included in the Wii U version of the game.Read more...

Polytron, the studio behind the indie hit Fez, announced over its official Twitter that development on Fez II has been canceled. It appears to be related to a very heated Twitter argument between Polytron founder Phil Fish and an Internet personality who sharply criticized him today.Read more...

Nintendo is (finally) releasing a black version of the 3DS XL on August 11, just in time for the release of Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. Read more...

The things I said were out of line and the mouth that said them would soon be out of alignment, too. That's the polite version of a one-way conversation about 20 years ago in a far off arena, when the difference between criticism and a harangue was expressed to me in very physical terms.Read more...

Pikmin 3 is already out in Japan. It's headed to the U.S. on August 4. The game is the same, but the Pikmin 3 commercials couldn't be more different. Read more...

Justin Carter, the 19-year-old who was imprisoned earlier this year for a Facebook comment interpreted as a terrorist threat, will file a motion for dismissal on August 12, his lawyer says.Read more...

You knew he was gonna have an opinion about Microsoft's flip-flop on Xbox One DRM. And lo, Francis, one of the most excitable video-game personalities on the Internet, has obliged.

#minecraft It's hard not to get all wistful and teary-eyed when you watch these videos of Final Fantasy VI's various landmarks, faithfully recreated in Minecraft by builder Felix Trapper and set to glorious Nobuo Uematsu-composed music. More »

Today's new gameplay trailer for Grand Theft Auto V is filled with all sorts of nifty things you can do in the single-player game. You can keep those. All I care about is that last ten seconds of tantalizing multiplayer mayhem. I never finished the story mode of Grand Theft Auto IV. Hell, I only completed a handful of missions before the allure of an open world to play in distracted me from millions of dollars' worth of voice-acting and script-writing. It's the same thing that happened in the older Grand Theft Auto titles, only IV gave me a new way to do absolutely crazy stuff for hours — with a gaggle of complete strangers. I spent countless hours in the game's free play multiplayer mode. Sometimes I would be in the thick of the action, playing impromptu games of "How Long Can We Hold Out Against The Cops?" in the middle of Liberty City. Other times I would climb that big-ass crane in the middle of town and just watch everyone else screw around. I planned entire evenings around watching other people play. We don't know much about the multiplayer of Grand Theft Auto V yet. We know you'll create a custom character. We know there will be jets involved. Grand Theft Auto Online, as they're calling it, should carryover the Crew system from Max Payne 3, so it's likely some sort of gang wars feature will be available. What little we know sounds lovely. But what excites me most is the view in the trailer. The player is standing in a high-rise, watching other folks tear through the city in cars. A jet performs a fly-by. I want to be that guy, sitting in my penthouse apartment, sipping a beer and watching the world go up in flames.

The news is sad and brutal. Ryan Davis, 34, longtime Senior Editor at Giant Bomb passed away last week just a few days after getting married. Davis' passing was announced today by his heartbroken colleagues at Giant Bomb.Goddamnit.It's always too soon. It's always so painful. We always wish we had more time with them.Like many of you, I got to know him through his media presence. I was late to the Gamespot shows he did with Jeff Gerstmann, but I was a loyal listener to the Giant Bombcast for years. At first I couldn't tell the difference between Ryan and Jeff's voices, which seems weird now. I figured it out quickly enough. Ryan's was the one that was quicker to laugh. Well, it was more of a giggle, wasn't it? On the show he seemed ever-cheerful. He was our affable host. He seemed eternally gracious.A few years ago, he started letting me appear on the Bombcast. These would be the main times I would see him from year to year, and so my mental image of him is sitting behind some audio equipment, headphones on, eyes darting at whatever they need to dart at while making the best gaming podcast on the Internet.I think I was an okay guest on Ryan's podcast. I tried to be informative. I didn't try to be funny. The other guys and guests were funny. They'd be the ones to make him laugh. Still, I didn't feel good about my showing. I saw Ryan the next day. Ran into him at E3 where he was unusually smartly-dressed (that's photo proof in the image up top). I am not an insecure person, but I told him about my doubts and second-guesses. Don't worry about it, he said. He told me I did fine. But maybe I should have been in a different segment with the newsier people? No, he told me. He wanted me in the segment I was in. He wanted that mix of personalities. It was just what he had hoped for. He had a kindness and a confidence about the whole thing that stuck with me. He was a good guy.I've mostly interacted with Ryan through Twitter and Facebook. I was delighted to see he'd tied the knot. I'm now crushed that he is gone.My and all of the Kotaku team's hearts go out to Ryan Davis' family and friends. I've got a couple of Bombcasts on my iPhone and now I think I may never listen to them. I like the idea that there will always be some new laughter of his to hear. So long, Ryan. I look forward to hearing you again. To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo

Six champions were crowned in Indianapolis this weekend at the largest ever Pokémon U.S. Nationals ever staged. The winners, and the next three finalists, will all travel to Vancouver, in August, for the 2013 Pokémon World Championships. The winners, by division. (By the way, it's weird to me that someone born between 1998 and 2001 is playing in a "Senior Division" of anything.) Video Games Junior Division (born 2002 or later): Beau Berg, playing with Tyranitar, Garchomp, Zapdos, Cresselia, Hitmontop, and Scizor. Senior Division (born 1998 to 2001): Paul Chua, playing with Politoed, Kingdra, Cresselia, Scrafty, Metagross and Thundurus. Masters Division (Born 1997 or earlier): Gavin Michaels, playing with Ludicolo, Amoonguss, Landorus, Metagross, Volcarona, and Tyranitar. Trading Card Game Junior Division: Carson St. Denis, running a team Plasma deck. Senior Division: Calvin Connor, running a team Plasma deck. Masters Division: Edmund Kuras running a "Deck and Cover" Gothitelle/Accelgor deck. For more information, see the official site for the Pokémon U.S. National Championships.

Douglas Engelbart, one of the great pioneers of computer science, has passed away at his home in Atherton, Calif. He was 88 years old. While he's credited with helping bring about several fundamental computing innovations, from graphical user interfaces to hyperlinks, his most lasting achievement was the work that led to the invention of the computer mouse. In the video below, you can see the first mouse in action, shown off as part of a 1968 demonstration. This demonstration, part of the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, was one of the most important in computing history, as it marked the public debut of hyperlinks, text editing and windows. Engelbart is survived by his wife and four children. Douglas C. Engelbart, Inventor of the Computer Mouse, Dies at 88 [NY Times]

Chibi-Robo! was one of the most underrated games on Nintendo's GameCube, so it's nice to see the robot of the same name find a new lease of life in a 3DS title, freshly-announced by Nintendo Japan. It's an augmented reality photography game, where you're given shapes that you have to find in the real world. Succeed and take a photo and the little guy pops out and whisks it away. It's an e-shop title, and is available in Japan today.

Made by artist and designer Tobias Wüstefeld for the We Love 8 Bit show in Austria this month, these two pieces are...animal skulls. Turned into floating Super Mario Bros. levels. Right. It should be macabre as hell, but really, you barely notice the fact they're the skulls of dead animals. Maybe. Just think of them as incredibly detailed clouds! [via it 8-bit]

It's not like I've seen all that much Pac-Man facial hair. Or really, any Pac-Man facial hair. But this is still the worst. This dude, posted to Uberhumor and spotted by Tosh.0, manages to combine some truly nightmarish facial hair with a generally dopey/high facial expression, sending a clear message: "I don't give a flying *crag*." A transcript from when I dropped this image into Kotaku group-chat: Evan: The real question is, does he have enough chest hair for ghosts? Owen: Wait'll you see where he plays Missile Command.

Retro Studios, makers of the legendary Metroid Prime series, is currently busy creating the next generation of Donkey Kong Country, much to the chagrin of a lot of Metroid fans. That doesn't mean, however, that they abandoned Metroid. On the contrary. "Well, we love Metroid. We love Metroid Prime and we always will," Retro Studios President Michael Kelbaugh told IGN. "It was a big part of our studio, the culture of the studio... We might do another one someday. But we really enjoyed working with [Donkey Kong] as well." Kelbaugh explained that the team wanted to develop another Donkey Kong Country to see what they could do with the franchise on the Wii U's more powerful hardware, and to implement some leftover ideas from Country Returns. So, why not develop a new Metroid Prime alongside the new Donkey Kong Country? "We’re pretty much on one major project at a time. We do a game every two years or three years... Do we have the bandwidth to do two major projects at once? I don’t think so. A big project and a little project at the same time, we can do that." IGN then spoke to Nintendo's Kensuke Tanabe, producer of all four Metroid Prime titles, who chimed in with his own ideas on where the Prime series could go next. "Basically I’m thinking of, not just Samus, but how we can expand the whole Samus universe. You remember Metroid Prime Hunters. I’m thinking about things like how we could make that go out further, with all these different bounty hunters as well." Well, better late than never. E3 2013: Nintendo, Retro Discuss Future of Metroid [IGN] Questions? Comments? Contact the author of this post at andras-AT-kotaku-DOT-com.

As part of the Switch Fringe festival in Ipswich, England, artist The Decibel Kid drew this map of the city to help attendees find their way around and track down shows and events. While most aspects are actual parts of Ipswich rendered in 16-bit style, keep your eyes out for the odd Nintendo cameo, like the King of Red Lions. Map [Switch Fringe, via Slashdot]

It's not all champagne and high fives coming out of Sony's E3 press conference today. A "screw you, Microsoft" video the PlayStation team put together has some fine print underneath, which reads: PS4 multiplayer online access requires PSN account & PS Plus subscription. Now, this is far from terrible news. PlayStation Plus gives you access to a ton of free games (so long as you're a paid-up member), and competitors Microsoft have always charged for online play, something they'll continue to do with the Xbox One. Still, the fact that online multiplayer was free on the PS3 will likely rankle a few. We're reaching out to Sony for confirmation on this, and will update if we hear back.