You know the Sonic Cycle meme, right? Gamers hear about a new Sonic game, they get excited. Then, the game comes out, and it’s a huge disappointment. With that kind of letdown baggage, you’d think Sonic would not make a good lucky charm. Then again, you’re not Puerto Rican runner Javier Culson, and you didn’t…
Players outside of Japan have been enjoying online role-playing game Phantasy Star Online 2. Those days are over. Until its Western release, the game is now Japan only. Sega updated its terms of usage today, dropping this bombshell for PS02 players outside Japan: “Connecting to the game server through the installed software is restricted to…
So Namco Bandai is making the new Smash Bros. games. Know what that means, don’t you? There’s a really good chance Namco characters will pop up in Smash Bros Tales director and producer Yoshito Higuchi tells The Official Nintendo Magazine that he would totally be happy if Tales characters appeared in Smash Bros. Of course…
Computers are an important part of our lives. They have transformed the way we lived. Right now, we are living in the future. But what did that future look like in a 1960s Japanese children’s magazine? Like this. In 1969, Shonen Sunday published a series of articles called “Computopia”. They depicted how computers would be…
Sony trademarked two new games: Rain and Until Dawn. Go ahead, imagine the trailers IN YOUR MIND.
It’s August. For Japanese otaku, the month means that the biannual Comic Market, AKA “Comiket”, is right around the corner. The event is an opportunity for amateur and pro manga artists to sell their limited edition, self-produced creations. In the last few years, cosplay has become a bigger part of Comiket. It isn’t just the…
Dragon Quest X now has twice the servers after Square Enix added servers 21-40 earlier today. Level up!
Spotted at Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu, the most important Shinto shrine in Kamakura, here is a paper lantern that features an Evangelion Unit-08, the latest Eva unit slated to appear in upcoming anime Evangelion 3.0 Evangelion 3.0 director Hideaki Anno drew this Eva Unit-08 as part of the shrine’s “Bonbori Festival” (“bonbori” is a Japanese lamp with…
Ask any anime fan, and they’ll tell you: cartoons in Japan are different from their localized counterparts. Last night on Japanese TV, the issue was explored for the Japanese viewing public, who was surprised to learn that English language versions of anime are edited. The show was Sekai Marumie! (世界まる見え！ or “The World Exposed!”), which…
It’s been a long time since I’ve played Portal, but this Olympic Stadium rig sort of looks like GLaDOS from Portal Kotaku tipster Ian summed it up: “Anyone noticed the speakers hanging from the athletics stadium at the Olympics kinda look like GLaDOS?” No, but now that you mention it… As several Kotaku readers have…
Just as the Olympics in London kicked into high gear, the annual World Cosplay Championships came to a close on August 5. The event, which drew participants from twenty countries, duke it out in colorful outfits for the title of cosplay champ. Held every year in Nagoya, 2012 saw new countries, such as the UK,…
Twenty-one year-old Satomi Suzuki won two medals at the London Olympics: a silver for the 200m breaststroke and a bronze for the 100m breaststroke (she also scored a team bronze medal for the relay). Winning three medals is the stuff of dreams. But Suzuki, has another dream entirely. She wants to voice video game and…
Here’s the latest entry in the BlazBlue fighting game series. It’s called BlazBlue: Chronophantasma and features new characters Amane Nishiki, Bullet, and Azrael as well as new moves for your favorite BlazBlue characters. Chronophantasma begins arcade location tests in Tokyo this month, and it will be released at game centers across Japan this winter.
Nyotaimori— often translated as “female body arrangement”—is the practice of eating sushi off a woman’s naked body. It is not mainstream in Japan by any stretch. Yet, as sister site Jezebel points out, the tradition survives in the West. During the 1990s, thanks to Hollywood movies like Rising Sun and a flurry of media coverage,…
Unlike previous Dragon Quest games, Dragon Quest X is an online MMO. So far, the game’s online experience has been surprisingly painless. But here’s one thing that some players *might* find painful. According to Square Enix, if you do not log in for online play for over three months, it’s possible that the game’s server…
Nearly a week ago, Japan’s Kaori Matsumoto took Olympic gold after defeating UK judoka Sarah Clarke Romanian judoka Corina Caprioriu. Matsumoto’s spirited judo and her ensuing Olympic win have spawned a meme online in Japan that compares the gold medal winner to Neon Genesis Evangelion Unit 01—the unit piloted by Eva hero Shinji Ikari. This…
Samurai. Skyrim. Or even ancient Mayan prophecies. Star Wars helmets are fertile ground for artistic reinterpretation. But now, it’s all for a cause that’s bigger than simply awesome art. The As You Wish Helmet Project is a charity art endeavor that features over 40 reworked Boba Fett and Clone Trooper helmets to be auctioned off,…
Video games have the ability to take us, well, anywhere. We can visit other planets, we can visit destinations far away, and we can even travel back in time. I’d like to go here. Here is the Irganai Dam in Dagestan, Russia—the largest derivational hydroelectric power station in the country. Construction on the plant began…
Always nice to see game makers step outside their comfort zone, and bit by bit, Square Enix has been doing just that. The Tokyo-based game maker, best known for Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, is working on a new car game called Gyrozetter. A new transforming robot car game. It’s Unreal Engine powered, there’s an…
Australian free daily The Mx included “Nice Korea” and “Naughty Korea” in its medal count—presumably as some sort of gag? Online in South Korea, the reaction has been varied. “This makes it seem like North Korea has done something bad to get medals,” wrote one, while another explained, “This is how Australia sees the two…
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