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Nintendo hereby announces a new Wii Remote Plus controller styled in the royal fashion of Princess Peach. The pink controller features many touches that pay homage to the Mushroom Kingdom’s most powerful heroine, who recently starred in the Super Mario 3D World game for the Wii U console. The new controller includes a crown design over the speaker, blue buttons that echo Peach’s royal jewelry and a golden-yellow plus pad that evokes her regal crown.

The new Peach Pink Wii Remote Plus will start appearing in stores in late April at a suggested retail price of $39.99. It joins other controllers themed to Nintendo characters, including the red Mario and green Luigi controllers. Wii Remote Plus includes Wii MotionPlus technology, and works with all Wii and Wii U games that call for Wii Remote controllers. Fans of Mario Kart 8 might want to pick up the new remote to control Peach when the game launches May 30.

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Navarro World Order is currently in effect, which means we somehow talk about wrestling for most of the show. Something about PAX East, too.

The term "simulation" is appropriate for MLB 14: The Show, but not just because of its beautiful presentation, a defining trait of the series that's become a benchmark for other sports video games. Rather, MLB 14: The Show earns its simulation stripes by continuing the series' tradition of challenging players with mechanics and statistics that mirror the real sport. While MLB's gameplay has changed little this year, no matter what option players select for pitching, fielding and hitting (we'll get to that later), they will fail or succeed as regularly as athletes do in the big leagues.

Yet much like the faithfully-recreated and wildly differing batting stances of hitters in the game, MLB 14: The Show truly makes its mark in the baseball sim series by being one thing: dynamic.

Dead Effect is Now Available on Steam Early Access!
Fight for your life in the INDIE SCI-FI FPS game fit for both casual and hard-core gamers with a passion for hunting down hordes of zombies. Prepare yourselves for the incoming nightmare!

The long-in-development puzzle game continues to move along, and it still looks extra crazy.

Uli Kilian once set a world record by solving 100 Rubik's Cubes while running a marathon at the same time. So he's smart. And fit. But the smartest thing he's done might have been building a robot to tap his iPad screen in the middle of the night so that he wakes up to a ton of money in a mediocre free-to-play game. Just look at it. Beautiful, right?Read more...

That. That is a big number. I had to turn my phone sideways and everything to work that out. I don't even know how to say it. The staggering figure is the combined souls lost across both 360 and PS3, and the result of some 252, 163, 804 deaths overall.Read more...

Manufacturing issues push back the boxed release by a week.

Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars is out today for PS Vita, and you know what that means? It’s time to start classmating! Conception II is a dungeon crawler/social-sim hybrid where you’re put into the role of “God’s Gift” — a teenager bestowed with unprecedented amounts of power from the Star God. As a disciple, you’re tasked with saving the world of Aterra by pairing up with one of the game’s seven heroines and clearing out infestations of monsters.

Of course, to do that, you’ll need your army of Star Children — magical beings that fight for you in battle. You make these Star Children through a magical ritual with the heroines, and you can bring up to nine Star Children with you into battle. There’s 30 classes of Star Children to choose from, and the stats of the heroine, the heroine’s mood (You gotta be nice to them!), and other rare items affect what classes are available to you, so spend your time wisely.

Oh — and be sure to turn on your ad-hoc networks; you can actually classmate with another player’s heroines or even the other players themselves in a process called “classmanting” (Yeah, that’s a thing).

And even if you’re planning to get the game, you should start with the demo first. Your progress transfers over to the full version of the game, and you’ll receive a starting gift of some strong in-game items.

Conception II is around 40-60 hours to complete the main story and side quests (depending on how grind-heavy you get), so make sure you charge your Vita often!

Sometimes it takes a while to make a judgement. I spent a fair amount of time with Path Of Exile’s beta but hadn’t revisited the release version for more than seven or eight hours in total until I decided to write something about it a few weeks ago. Now that I’ve been back to the grim shores of Wraeclast for a long vacation and have stared deep into the heart of the passive skill tree’s labyrinth depths, I’m ready to tell you wot I think.

… [visit site to read more]

On April 17, Terraria will receive a "massive and free" update on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Vita. Update 1.2 makes numerous tweaks to the console version and adds plenty of fresh content, including four new bosses, additional NPCs, new pets, and "over 1,000 new items."

The console version change log, which the game's official forum notes is "a direct copy from the PC change log with console exclusive changes added to them," notes a few other additions, including new ores, wood types, brick types and the ability to now imbue melee weapons.

Update 1.2 makes a few improvements to Terraria's graphical fidelity as well, making the sun brighter and making midnight in the open world darker. "Hell houses have been remodeled," the change log adds, which is itself a feat considering just how lazy the contractors in hell are.

The complete list of changes detailed on the official Terraria forum, can be found after the break. [Image: Re-Logic / 505 Games]

Consumer tech products are often imbued with a pristine, ornamental quality in our current design-crazed age. In spite of that, most gadgets aren't exactly things that you could imagine hanging up on your wall to impress new guests.Read more...

Now that John is on sabbatical, where will RPS turn when they need someone who understands emotions? Child of Light is about a young girl exploring a twinkling world of wonder and danger, and probably its story will require descriptors like “tender” and “heartfelt”. The rest of us aren’t equipped to deal with such things. Case in point: the plinky-plonky video tour of the game’s world, Lemuria, which can be found below. I’m too scared to watch it myself, but I showed it to Adam and he hasn’t stopped screaming since. He seems so confused and angry.

… [visit site to read more]

Today's selection of articles from Kotaku's reader-run community: Is Europe the Epicenter of Next-Gen Graphical Fidelity? • Valkyria Chronicles II is Worth Your Time • Games to Increase Your Typing Speed! • Finding True Love on the Farm • Why Don't We Have Smartphone Reviews for Gamers?Read more...

NEStalgia is Now Available on Steam and is 25% off!*
NEStalgia is an original MORPG inspired by the glory days of traditional console RPGs. Essentially "Dragon Warrior 3 meets World of Warcraft", NEStalgia is an amalgam of the best generations of RPG gaming. You can play solo, in private games with friends, or online with hundreds of other players!
*Offer ends April 22 at 10AM Pacific Time

Plus we have exclusive screens of every new class, as well as gameplay of an entire match.

Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare just keeps getting better and better. Today EA drops the free Western-themed "Zomboss Down" game pack, adding two maps, eight new characters and tons of new customization items. Read more...

At PAX East last weekend, Team Kotaku went and played Evolve, the upcoming co-op shooter that pits a group of four hunters against one vicious monster. Yesterday, we talked about it. Here's that conversation. Read more...

Descent 3 is Now Available on Steam and is 50% off!*
The vertigo continues as the highly anticipated sequel to Descent I and II takes the mind-bending, pulse-pounding experience to another level! This time around, you will experience not only the same frenzied, subterranean shooting action, but also the thrill of flying out of the mines into the planetary atmosphere; where you can soar above the surface of the planet, engage in combat with enemy air and ground forces and use 10 new, lethal weapons to obliterate the most sophisticated robots to date!
*Offer ends April 22 at 10AM Pacific Time

Get those thinking caps on and ready the crew for an intense battle of the minds — in a “not too serious” way. It’s time for That Trivia Game!

That Trivia Game on PS4 is all about trivia. We spent a large portion of our time researching and creating questions that cover a wide range of categories and topics. A thousand questions were hand-picked out of the thousands of candidates to ensure we had a fair and balanced collection of relevant and current trivia. The difficulty levels were carefully balanced so that everyone can get involved — there’s nothing worse than being the only person playing that doesn’t know any of the answers. That Trivia Game has four rounds with fun and varying ways of playing. Each round adds its own twist to the trivia format, making every round fun and engaging, while still being easy to play.

As mentioned earlier, That Trivia Game has more than a thousand questions in a wide range of categories. This means that you can play around 40 games of That Trivia Game without seeing repeating questions. And at the price of $9.99, that’s less than 1 cent per question!

That Trivia Game was built from the ground up as a pick-up-and-play game. We created the gameplay around the premise that That Trivia Game could be played by gamers with a wide range of experience, as well as non-gamers, too. The biggest hurdle was interfacing all kinds of players and non-players of varying ages with answering the questions. We designed the answering interface to work intuitively with your hand and DualShock4. This intuitive interface makes it effortless to select your intended answer, even for family or friends who have never held a controller.

That Trivia Game will be available today as a digital download for $9.99. Add your comments or questions here, we’d love to hear from you.

Professor Layton is getting a proper crossover game this year, but the talented animators at Polaris have let their imagination run wild and put the archeologist gentleman and some puzzles into Grand Theft Auto V.Read more...

Sometimes all you need is a headline.

A headline, and a death wish.

… [visit site to read more]

Up to 80 percent off is on offer at The Humble Store this week on a large collection of Nordic Games-owned franchises, including old THQ-published favorites Red Faction and Darksiders.

The Red Faction Collection is available for $9.99 (down from $60) and bundles each game in the series from developer Volition Inc., including DLC for Armageddon. Darksiders 2 is available for $7.49, while the original has been reduced to $4.99 during the limited time sale. Other franchises discounted in the deal include SpellForce, Gothic, Arcana, and Titan Quest.

Ten percent of sales at The Humble Store are given to charity. Humble supports multiple charities from its store, including the American Red Cross, Child's Play, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Charity: Water and World Land Trust. The Nordic Games 'Revolutionary Sale' ends early on Friday, April 18. [Image: The Humble Store]

A few weeks ago we added two classic Killzone multiplayer maps to Killzone Mercenary. Since then we’ve been working on adding more to Killzone Mercenary, and finally it’s here on PS Vita. We’re very pleased to announce the release of our latest update for Killzone Mercenary, delivering an offline multiplayer experience to our 8 maps.

With the purchase of the Botzone Soldier Training Pack, all of our multiplayer maps can be played offline in Mercenary or Guerrilla Warfare modes, against up to 7 AI soldiers. As the game host, you’ll have control over the number of teammates and enemies joining you in battle.

In team modes, you have the luxury of picking your compatriots and foes: play with 3 against 1 for a quick kill, or go brave and take on an entire team of bots alone. Your choice, soldier!

Killzone Mercenary Botzone brings new skills to the series’ traditionally strong AI bot experience: Vanguard usage, zip line navigation, interrogations, rescues, capsule hacking, and valour card collection are all behaviors unique to the game and our AI is going to challenge you with all of them. Not only that, but our cunning bots will also be using many of the game’s diverse loadouts to stop you in your tracks.

And it doesn’t stop there; you’ll have the chance to collect some of those harder-to-obtain multiplayer trophies in an offline arena — provided your skills are up to the challenge, of course!

Finally, we’ve also taken opportunity with this update to fix up some longer standing collision issues reported in the multiplayer maps. As such, the update will be mandatory for anyone wishing to play online multiplayer, with 23 MB required on the memory card to download it (549 MB if you’ve not downloaded our previous updates).

Today, the title update will be made available for download, and the Botzone Soldier Training Pack will also be available for purchase from PlayStation Store. The Botzone Soldier Training Pack will be required in order to unlock the in-game Botzone menu.

Happy fragging, and enjoy your training!

War of the Vikings: Berserker King, all new content for War of the Vikings is Now Available on Steam!

A blade flashed. Hardacanut pawed at it, slapped against the flat but felt the edge bite his palm. He pivoted into the wielder, drove his sword up under a shield and cast the dying man down the ladder.

When Ivar the Boneless, heathen Viking king of Dublin, rampages through the petty kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, it's a chance for anybody with the courage to master their own fate.

Hardacanut the Berserker must prove himself worthy of Ivar's elite warband by carving a path to victory at the head of his own unruly band of warriors and freebooters. Young Ecbehrt of Bamburgh, a young English earl, yearns to escape the schemes of his king and flee into a wider world, but the Vikings are coming and war is in his blood.

Meanwhile, two ruthless women refuse to accept their place in what's supposed to be a "man's world". Princess Ymma, amateur witch, will do anything to become a queen. Lathgertha, king Ivar's axe-wielding sister, needs to take the head of a chieftain in battle in order to join the shieldmaiden Raven Sisters.

In the Dark Ages, anything is possible as long as you have a sword in your hand and warriors at your back…

Upon purchase, this book will be downloaded to the Steam folder on your computer in three formats: epub, mobi and PDF. To read the book on your mobile device, transfer the epub or mobi file to the device and open the file in your ebook reader app. Enjoy!

Today's Amazon Gold Box features flash storage ranging from 16GB to 2TB, and we're not talking external hard drives. Pick up a new flash drive or memory card, or get your hands on the DataTraveler HyperX Predator 1TB USB3 Flash Drive, which is sitting at a new low by $100. [Amazon]Read more...

Hello! We’re thrilled to finally announce that No Heroes Allowed: No Puzzles Either! launches exclusively on PS Vita today. The “Badman” franchise makes its comeback with new features and extra quirkiness.

No Heroes Allowed: No Puzzles Either! is free-to-play. Download today and try out your evilness in endless match-3 puzzle fun. There will also be a slew of add-on content for purchase, ranging from power boosts and expanded monster quarters to digging abilities.

No Puzzles Either! offers a good mix of gameplay from the previous games in the series, with additional features including a multiplayer mode where four players can battle against heroes in AdHoc mode. Gather your friends and play powerful combos to feel the thrill of defeating strong heroes.

Also, keep an eye out for special community events. Winners of these events will be rewarded with rare, stronger monsters that can be added to their monster collections. We’re happy to announce that all of these new features are free to access, as well.

Enjoy the series’ famous characters, witty dialogue, and unforgettable music while playing the bad guy today. Stay tuned for events details and schedules soon!

Sometimes you see a game and you immediately wonder why no-one had come up with it sooner. Cult of the Wind from Alex Allen's North of Earth is one of those games. Simply put in the words of the developer, it's "a game about people who pretend to be airplanes."

If you've never turned your arms into wings and pew-pew-pewed your friends in an epic dogfight, chances are you were doing childhood/adulthood wrong. That's the spirit that Cult of the Wind wants its players to channel, complete with "imaginary weapons, pretend explosions, and airplane noises made with their mouths."

North of Earth has some experience with completely bonkers multiplayer games, having already brought Godzilla-style deathmatches to Steam in Omegalodon. For Cult of the Wind, the studio promises a level editor, character customization and plenty of different weapons and abilities, albeit make-believe ones.

Cult of the Wind is currently on Steam Greenlight, and North of Earth expects to deliver it on PC and Mac in "mid-2014." Responding to queries, the studio said it's planning on an "early access beta," and when the game does take to the skies North of Earth estimates a regular price of $15, reduced to $10 on launch day. [Image: North of Earth]

I've managed to resist picking up the Mario and Luigi themed Wii remotes thus far, but the addition of a Princess Peach motion controller at the end of the month has the game paraphernalia collector in me twitching. Dammit, Nintendo. Read more...

Here it is: the moment of truth. Meridian: New World, the RTS that should still still be impossible, can now be played by the masses. The shiny new space-base base-race is largely the work of one man, which is the sort of information that makes my mind both boggle and Super Puzzle-Bobble All-Stars. It’s now available on Steam Early Access, so probably get on that because it looks kinda great.

… [visit site to read more]