What Happens When Your Kids Develop Their Own Gaming Taste

For a beautiful few years, you have near-complete control over what your child plays. You decide what’s allowed and when, what to play together, which gems from the past to share with an excited five-year-old. Then a little more time passes, and suddenly the situation is completely different. There comes a point where kids are…

Tokyo’s Halloween Crackdown Includes Plans For Banning Public Drinking [Update]

Last year, Halloween in Tokyo’s Shibuya descended into chaos. According to News 24, Shibuya is moving towards regulating the area’s Halloween celebrations by banning public drinking in the roads around the station as well as in public parks. [Update June 20 – 6:00 am: Shibuya has banned drinking on the streets during Halloween and New…

It’s Hard For Japan To Change Its Escalator Manners

One of my first memories of moving to Japan in 2001 was the surprise at seeing how everyone lined up on one side of the escalator, leaving an open path for people in a rush. How courteous, I thought. But now, there are campaigns to change the country’s long-standing escalator manners. The tradition is so…

Worn Path. Drivenik, Croatia. By Eduard Tucaković | Instagram JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line!

K-Pop Pick Of The Day: Zimzalabim

Red Velvet, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite artists of all time, just released their newest title track, Zimzalabim. And it’s… hmm. Part of the reason why I’m so struggling to encapsulate my feelings for Zimzalabim is, I think, because the song is quite literally all over the place. It kind of reminds…

League Of Legends‘ Version Of Auto Chess Has Taken Over Twitch

We have a habit, in the gaming industry, of declaring things “The Year Of ___.” 2013 was The Year Of Luigi. 2014 was The Year Of Luigi’s Death Stare. 2019 is The Year Of Gooigi. However, if Gooigi had not transformed into an unassailable, medium-defining phenomenon, we might also be tempted to call this The…

You Can Now Play Mass Effect 2 In First-Person

The Mass Effect games are third-person by design, but that hasn’t stopped LordEmil1 from creating a mod that lets PC gamers play the best of them—Mass Effect 2—from a first-person perspective. You can’t play the whole game like this, as combat isn’t working properly due to clipping issues, but everything else, from wandering to conversations,…

Fake Magic: The Gathering Card Names Are Fantastic

Jason Rohrer (Passage, Sleep Is Death) thought it’d be fun to train an AI to create fake Magic: The Gathering card names. It was a good hunch. To do it, he created a database of 18,978 card names, which the AI would then use to jumble all the words up and come up with new…

Fan-Made Half-Life 3 Is Coming Along Nicely

Last year, a group of Half-Life fans announced that they were going to be taking former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw’s Episode 3 synopsis and turning it into an actual game. A year later and things are looking good! The team behind Project Borealis have released this update video that shows all the work they’ve been…

EA: Our Loot Boxes Are Actually ‘Surprise Mechanics’ That Are ‘Quite Ethical’

Given that 2017’s Star Wars Battlefront II is broadly considered the tipping point in an anti-loot-box conversation that has recently led to a loot box bill in the United States senate, you might be forgiven for thinking that Electronics Arts games have loot boxes. Not so, says its VP of legal and government affairs; they…

Isabelle Player Proves She Can Take Solid Snake In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Upset

In fighting games, appearances can often be deceiving, but one Super Smash Bros. Ultimate matchup is exactly what it looks like. Solid Snake, the rugged protagonist of “tactical espionage action” franchise Metal Gear, has a clear advantage in many fights, especially when facing the cute Animal Crossing secretary Isabelle. But this lopsided matchup didn’t stop…

Apex Legends Has Dragons Now

There are dragons in Apex Legends. I don’t know why they’re in the game, but they’re pretty cool. As pointed out by PCGamer, dataminers previously found mention of flying enemies in the game’s code. Dragons were also seen at the end of Apex Legends’ Season 2 teaser during EA Play at E3. We’re still a…

We Quiz Borderlands 3‘s Art Director On Video Game Screenshots

Here’s another dispatch from Tim Rogers at E3 2019. This time, Tim sat down (or kneeled down in this case) with Borderlands 3 art director Scott Kester and tested out just how many games he could identify by their screenshots alone. For more of Tim Rogers at E3, check out this handy YouTube playlist

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Players Are Creating Custom Quests To Level Up By Doing Nothing

Earlier this month, Ubisoft released a free new Story Creator mode for players of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. It’s a simple tool that lets you stitch together your own original quests in Odyssey using a limited set of options and assets. Yet even in its rudimentary state, you can still add experience and monetary rewards to…

In case you missed me playing some Lovely Planet 2 and putting my barely elementary-level Japanese to the test, here’s the YouTube archive. Follow us on Twitch for daily streams too!

Pokémon‘s Creators Tell Us What Kind Of Pokemon Gym They’d Run

I’ve always fantasized about what kind of gym leader I’d be in the world of Pokémon. The series’ producer Junichi Masuda’s and Pokémon Sword and Shield director Shigeru Ohmori’s hypothetical gyms both sound like places I’d want to visit. In Pokémon games, every gym leader specializes in a certain Pokémon type. Misty from Red and…

Rhythm Games Don’t Get Much Simpler And Sweeter Than Muse Dash

Rhythm games can be pretty complicated, twisting players’ fingers into knots as they try to keep track of four to six lanes, each delivering a brutal barrage of notes. PeroPeroGames’ Muse Dash has all the quirk and charm of a DJMax or Superbeat: Xonic, but it controls with just two buttons. Already a hit on…