Ethan Gach

Track: Harvest For The World | Artist: The Isley Brothers | Album: Harvest for the World

Fortnite Battle Royale got a holiday update today that adds grenades which force enemies to dance after exploding. Yes you read that right. “When boogie dancing, you are prevented from building, firing weapons, or using items,” the rest of the description explains. A “High Explosives” event begins on December 28.

Fan Shows What Donkey Kong Country 2 In HD Could Look Like 

What would Donkey Kong Country 2 look like in HD? About as beautiful as you’d expect it turns out. YouTuber BlobVanDam posted a video of the game’s Bramble Blast level with cleaned up visuals recently (thanks Resetera). While it doesn’t necessarily capture all the jaggy depth of the original, it looks fresh and polished. It…

Gwent Players Aren’t Happy With The Game’s Big New Update

This week the Midwinter Update for Gwent, CD Projeckt Red’s card game based off The Witcher 3, finally went live. Gwent, which is still in beta, gets patched pretty regularly, but not like this. Popular cards have seen their abilities simplified and weakened, and text descriptions that added flavor to the game have now been…

The World’s Top Tetris Player’s Secret To Success Is Learning To Embrace Chaos

Of the eight Classic Tetris World Championships that have ever been held, Jonas Neubauer has won seven. The 36-year-old Neubauer, a microbrewery manager from Redondo Beach outside LA, bought the Nintendo Entertainment System version of Tetris after seeing it on the front cover of Nintendo Power magazine in November 1990 when he was eight, and…

Nintendo Power Comes Back In Podcast Form

Nintendo Power magazine ceased publishing at the end of 2012. It was a nostalgic time full of sad goodbyes and fond memories. Its last cover was even a call-back to the first issue, where Mario pounds his fist triumphantly into the air while standing on a mushroom. But today, on the five-year anniversary of its…

One Man Is Trying To Speedrun Three Final Fantasy Games–At The Same Time

Speedrunning a long role-playing game requires both concentration and stamina. There are endless menus to navigate and character builds to optimize, and doing everything fast means knowing the game’s secrets like the back of your hand. Speedrunning an RPG can be grueling for even the most accomplished player. So naturally, one guy wants to speedrun…

Enter The Gungeon Is More Forgiving On The Nintendo Switch

Enter The Gungeon released on the Nintendo Switch last week, and they go great together. Despite a few bugs and some little niggling issues with the controls (which are 100% remappable) the overall experience is great. It’s also the most approachable version of the game thanks to some balancing tweaks that haven’t yet hit the…

Kingdom: New Lands got a free DLC expansion called Skull Island today. It adds a new territory to the pixel-animated, side-scrolling medieval strategy game as well as a new win condition apparently. According to the developers it’s also “challenging AF. Yeah, that’s right, capital A F. Fuuuuuuuuuuuu.” 

The World’s Biggest Video Game Mod Site Will Start Paying Modders

Nexus Mods plans to roll out a new donation system and storefront early in 2018 according to a recent post in the site’s news section The fan site was founded in 2001 and now has over 10 million registered users. While it supports mods for hundreds of games some of the biggest include ones like…

Gwent’s midwinter update is out today on PC, Xbox One, and PS4. The Witcher 3-based card game is getting balancing tweaks as well as some new features like adaily quest system and new deck builder interface. The game’s third holiday event, Midwinter Hunt, is also live. You can find the complete patch notes here.  

LucasArts’ 1987 point-and-click adventure Maniac Mansion is now on Steam for the first time. The inspiration for things like this year’s Thimbleweed Park, Maniac Mansion is a witty puzzle game about aliens and 80s teens that’s worth checking out even if you’re not a big fan of the point-and-click genre.

The Week In Games: Life Is A Highway 

As we descend on the end of 2017 it’s time to take a moment and look back at all of the year’s great games. Fortunately, this week’s release schedule won’t distract you from doing that. Another episode of Life Is Strange arrives this week, along with the latest slew of Switch ports. Nintendo’s handheld is…

How To Fix Your Game’s Camera Without Really Trying 

Tokyo 42 came out earlier this year and while its cyberpunk ninja sprawl was both beautiful and exciting to navigate, the game’s camera didn’t always play nice. SMAC Games, the studio behind the game, recently published an update to address the issue and Paul Kilduff-Taylor, a developer on games like Frozen Synapse and Frozen Cortex,…

Track: Halfway Home | Artist: Broken Social Scene | Album: Hug of Thunder Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Mario 64 Experts Discover An Even Shorter Way To Beat Level Without Jumping 

Last year, YouTuber pannenkoek2012, someone who knows more about Super Mario 64 than most people ever will, finally found a way to collect a star on the level Watch for Rolling Rocks without fully jumping. The video blew up both because of how extraordinary and esoteric the accomplishment was and how in-depth pannenkoek’s research was.…

There’s a great article over at Eurogamer about the development of Dendy, Russia’s knockoff version of the NES. It also goes into how the console helped develop a market for gaming in the former Soviet Union and paved the way for Nintendo to begin selling its original hardware.

A Closer Look At Final Fantasy VII‘s Battle Cinematics 

Final Fantasy VII did a lot of things, but one was revolutionizing the idea of how a turn-based battle could look and feel. On the latest episode of Boundary Break, YouTuber Shesez shows what these scenes look like from the outside. The Boundary Break series has become renowned for taking control of in-game cameras and…

Sunday Comics: Over Here!

Welcome to Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics that usually occurs on Sunday except when it doesn’t. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published December 16. Read more of Nerf NOW!!  Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published December 11. Read more…

One Of Star Wars: The Last Jedi‘s Biggest Problems Comes Straight From Video Games

As of writing this there’s currently an almost 40% disparity between the critics and audience’s response to the latest Star Wars on Rotten Tomatoes. For all of the high moments, satisfying pay-offs, and generally cool Star Wars stuff, a movie that runs two hours and 33 minutes is bound to fall flat in some areas.…