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#castlevania Any gaming gourmet can whip together a piece of cake or a burger. Only the most dedicated have what it takes to make Castlevania-style Wall Turkey. First step, grab a sledgehammer. More »

EMI Music Group has filed a suit against Def Jam Rapstar creators 4mm Games and Terminal Reality, claiming the game contains unlicensed tracks from Kanye West, Lil Wayne, DMX and more, and uses unlicensed compositions from DJ Khaled, MIMS and Daft Punk.

According to statements given to The Hollywood Reporter, EMI demanded royalties from the game makers but never received a response. EMI is looking for compensation on 54 songs from Def Jam Rapstar's total tracklist, and with EMI looking for upwards of $150,000 for each "infringement" that total tab is looking mighty steep. In the worst case, that brings us to total of $8.1 million.

The karaoke aspect of Def Jam Rapstar, and its online video-sharing capabilities, also make this dispute trickier, since EMI owns the rights to display, publicly perform and distribute these songs. Please excuse us while we try to get Richard a good lawyer in case EMI targets us next.

#psvita Last I checked, Little King's Story was not a sexy game. It was a cute game. Now that Konami is handling the game, it seems different. More »

Frogger: Hyper Arcade Edition is officially a thing, coming to XBLA, PSN and WiiWare this spring. Hyper Arcade Edition updates Frogger's classic core mechanics and adds new game modes, including Tile Capture, Battle Royale, Freak Out and four-player matches against friends or the CPU.

This new Frogger also totes a variety of different skins, with the version's default neon, original 8-bit sprites, and classic Castlevania and Contra skins. As noted previously, Hyper Arcade Edition is in development from Zombie Studios, the team behind Blacklight: Retribution. We're still holding out for the realistic 3D mode with frog-et launchers.

Among the many things that Metal Gear series creator Hideo Kojima is known for - microblogging about everything he eats, for instance - we're particularly interested in his proclivity for breaking the fourth wall. The first Metal Gear Solid's controller port trick is but one example of his bizarre, outside-the-box thinking when it comes to making games. As it turns out, he was trying to do so as early as 1988, when he first worked on the original Snatcher for Konami.

During a roundtable interview session today, just ahead of his appearance at the Smithsonian's "The Art of Videogames" event, Kojima detailed his first forays beyond the game as presented on screen. "Back when I was making Snatcher, which is a PC game - at the time we used floppy disks," he said. "One thing that I wanted to do that I wasn't able to do was that I wanted to have a secret message on the disk -- actually have something written or printed on the disk." Kojima wanted the missive to be heat activated - which is to say "activated by the heat created by the disk drive itself." S ... seriously?

"So maybe when you put it in your disk drive and you're playing for about fifteen minutes, the heat from the disk drive interacts with that chemical and creates a certain smell. It smells like blood or something like that," he said through a translator. "And when you pull it out you see like a dying message on the disk. That was actually an idea I had for the original Snatcher but unfortunately I got yelled at for it and they didn't let me do it." Isn't it always "they?" Those guys are the worst!

#japan You think only male nerds are scary? Wrong! Japanese voice actor Shinnosuke Tachibana is so freaked out by some of his female fans that he actually asked them to stop tailing him. More »

#watchthis Well, that's a lie. This video, released last week by popular YouTube user Lore, only sums up part of the action-shooter-stealth series' twisty, oft-incomprehensible story. Still, it's worth watching if only to see Lore's adorable cartoon portrayal of Solid Snake's adventures. More »

#konami Graphics engines have gotten quite powerful, to the point that they can render wide-open spaces, far-off worlds, and incredible alien races. But can they re-create… a meeting room? More »

#metalgeararcade While Metal Gear Online's servers will be shutting down soon, there is one last place to get your Metal Gear Online fix: Japanese Arcades. More »

Last we heard, Konami's HD re-releases of the two Zone of the Enders games were coming out in "early-to-mid-2012". Nope. They're now coming in the Fall. More »

Konami has shifted the launch date of the Silent Hill HD Collection once again, with the bundle now due to hit stores on March 20. As Game Informer notes, the survival horror classics were intended to creep in by March 6, after having already been delayed from January.

Despite this delay, March is still set to be a mad month of Silent Hill. Silent Hill: Downpour should be out on March 13, and Vita's Book of Memories on March 27. Now, the HD collection will be sandwiched inbetween, with a digital launch expected sometime after.

#lisafoiles There are misdemeanors I have committed in this life, I'll admit it. For example, I recently got a ticket for jaywalking and it cost me $200. For jaywalking. I'm still very angry about this situation and am actively devising a plan to exact revenge on the LAPD, and guess what! Now you're all accomplices. More »

Hot off the news: Metal Gear Solid creators Konami are advertising for “Project engineers for the latest Metal Gear Solid targeted for high-end consoles and PC.” What could this possibly mean? We brought on our own engineers to decode it, and it seems that could mean the fifth proper game of Snake is headed for the computer machines. Of course we already sort of knew that was happening from way back in 2009, but it’s nice to have it confirmed in internet writing. Unsurprisingly, the game is unlikely to be out until late 2013, or early 2014. So that is some far-away news.

#loveplus Today, love simulator New Love Plus went on sale. Today is also Valentine's Day. A photographer at Japanese game site 4Gamer snapped this photo, which seems to show a young couple passing by the Love Plus Akihabara launch, which is populated with dudes. More »

If you're one to believe analysts (ha!), note that Nomura Securities is forecasting that MGS5 will be out by March 2014. Apparently, Nomura doesn't realize how long it takes Hideo Kojima to get games out the door. Nihon Securities Journal] More »

#wedontneednowater An image circulating Twitter earlier today seemed to imply a Konami office building in Japan was burning. It most certainly was not, a spokesman told Kotaku. All is well. More »

#konami Multiple Japanese Twitter users have posted pictures of what appears to be a fire in a Konami office. More »

#loveplus You might think this statue of Nene Anegasaki from Konami's love sim Love Plus looks pretty nice. You might think it's well sculpted and well put together. But wait until you see it in pieces. More »

#bowlin Konami has confirmed that the beloved beat-em-up The Simpsons Arcade is coming to consoles, and sooner than you expected. Not only does it get here, like, Friday (on Xbox Live), it'll be available free to PlayStation Plus subscribers when PSN gets it on Tuesday Feb. 7. More »

PlayStation Plus users are getting Konami's 1991 classic, The Simpsons Arcade Game, for free, while XBLA users get it a few days early on February 3, according to Game Informer. The side-scrolling beat-em-up will set you back a cool 800 Microsoft Points ($9.99) and will also include new modes, the (rumored) Japanese version of the game, as well as four-player online co-op and bonus promotional material from the game's original release.

The last time we played this game, it was in the back of a Circle K next to the ICEE machine and a Street Fighter 2 cabinet. We'll be trying our best to recreate that experience by covering every surface of the office with a thin, sticky film. Mmmm, nostalgia.

#neverdead Great games often spring from a single brilliant idea, like a protagonist that can pull himself back together after being blown apart. Unfortunately this is also the case for many really crappy games. Where does NeverDead's mangled pile of people parts fall? More »

#silenthill Silent Hill's resident bogeyman Pyramid Head ask the class to solve for X using the Pythagorean theorem. More »

#puddle Coming later this month to Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network, Puddle is a fluid dynamics platformer that follows various fluids as they travel through a garden hose, a rocket engine, the human body, and more. More »

#metalgear Konami is releasing a special Metal Gear Nintendo 3DS. Good luck on trying to get one, though. You'll have to jump through all sorts of hoops. More »

Even though Konami dissolved game maker Hudson and even though Takashi Meijin left and Momotaro Dentetsu's creator quit, Konami said today it's keeping the Hudson brand around. What for? Hudson's dead, baby, Hudson's dead. ハドソン、合併後もブランドは残る [Inside] More »

On Mar. 1, Konami's takeover of Hudson will go into effect. The merger will mean that Hudson ceases to exist and is dissolved into Konami. Best known for Bomberman, Hudson became a fully-owned Konami subsidiary in last year. [Infoseek] More »

The legendary Konami code came about because Gradius was too hard for one of the guys making it. Katsuhisa Hashimoto was on the team of four responsible for the NES port of Gradius, and he recalled adding the code in a 2003 interview just translated by GlitterBerri. "I had one guy under me, and he played through the coin-op version," Hashimoto said. "That one's really tough. I hadn't played that much and obviously couldn't beat it myself, so I put in the Konami Code."

The code uses its familiar, now-iconic pattern for ... convenience. "Because I was the one who was going to be using it," Hashimoto said, "I made sure it was easy to remember. The game took around half a year to develop, and, at the time, putting the code together was like an entertaining puzzle. 'How on earth am I going to be able to fit these passwords into the program?' I'd ask myself." The solution to that puzzle may have led to your successful completion of Gradius, Contra, or countless other Konami games.

[Image: DefunctGames]

If you grew up in the 1980s and played video games, you know the Konami Code. It's very easy to remember. Kazuhisa Hashimoto, inventor of the Konami Code, said there's a reason for that. More »

The XBLA adaptation of Konami's The Simpsons Arcade Game has yet to be officially announced, but we're learning more details about it regardless. The Achievements have been spotted by Xbox360Achievements -- they include one called "Mr. Sparkle," which requires you to banish dirt to the land of wind and ghosts. Oh, wait, we read that wrong. It requires you to "make it to the stage 3 bosses in Survival Mode with the Japanese ROM."

This suggests that the Japanese version of the arcade game is included. There are a few minor differences from the US release, according to HG101: lower difficulty, more health items, more points, and the ability to jump while holding a weapon. The inclusion of that international version also suggests that developer Backbone is putting a bit of extra care into this update.

#neverdead The unkillable Bryce Boltzmann comes to life on January 31 in Konami's Neverdead. Should you care? Megadeth hopes so. Owen Good didn't seem to think so. Perhaps a new batch of screens will help? More »