What It’s Like To Be Poor and Rich, According to This Cartoon

While I may not agree one hundred percent, I do think there is certainly an element of truth to this illustration. Artist Rika Asakawa drew the image, which Kotaku has localized. OnTwitter, she wrote, “This is something I thought about when I became an adult.” The image appeared online earlier this fall and was retweeted…

Satellite Reign is The Syndicate Wars You Remember

Memory can be a strange thing. Especially with old games. We’ve all returned to a beloved classic to discover something unplayable and been unable to reconcile warm memories with the broken experience of something that hasn’t aged well. (For me it’s Resi 2, which is regularly reloaded and ditched within hours.) This post originally appeared…

Japanese High School Holds “Sex Change Day”

Yesterday wasn’t your typical day at Fuji Hokuryo High School in Yamanashi Prefecture. Male and female students could trade uniforms for what the school dubbed “Sex Change Day” (セクスチェンジ・デー or sekusu chenji dee). The event made the national news. According to one of Japan’s largest papers, Asahi Shimbun (via game site My Game News Flash),…

Track: Sea | Artist: Skalpel | Album: Transit Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

Plants vs Zombies vs LEGO

Oh, if only this was an actual LEGO set. Well, actually, it can be if enough people vote for it, thanks to LEGO’s Ideas program. Which I’m guessing people will do, because even as a pitch it looks as good as you’d expect from the finished product. The work of killarkai, the set includes the…

Cops Raided Game Studio Because They Thought It Was A Gambling Den

Staff at the Indonesian branch of mobile gaming giant Gameloft got a bit of a surprise on Monday, when police raided the office believing it to be an “an online gambling den”. Maybe they’d got a bad tip, maybe they were jumping to conclusionsabout mobile gaming in general, but local news site Tribun Jogja (via…

Hold X To Play This Call Of Duty Funeral Tribute

Would you believe me if I said Press E To is actually kind of powerful, even if it’s suuuper minimal and based on a goofy moment from Call of Duty? Press E To is a free PC game that emerged in part from another project creator Leo Burke was working on, and in part from,…

An Underrated Classic Gets A Surprise Remake

In 1991, Codemasters released one of the greatest racing/party games of all time: Micro Machines. Despite a few sequels, it’s all but forgotten these days, Mario Kart casting a very long shadow over that style of game. But hey, good news: Codemasters just released what’s basically a remake! To very little fanfare, a game called…

​Assassin’s Creed Unity Just Doesn’t Run Very Well On PS4 Or Xbox One

We’ve been seeing complaints all day about Assassin’s Creed Unity‘s performance on consoles. Here’s what we know from our own experience, and from what others are reporting around the internet. I’ve played a fair bit of the game on Xbox One, and have found the frame-rate to be a real bummer. To my eye, it…

Pikmin Has The Best Origin Story

Game developers don’t usually say much about the genesis moments that inspire their work, probably because they’d sound a little weird. And repetitive, considering how similar many high-profile games are to one another. Pikmin’s is special, though. The Telegraph recently published an interview with Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto that explains how the legendary game designer first…

Assassin’s Creed Unity Takes Video Game Kissing To A Whole New Level

Assassin’s Creed Unity may be taking some lumps from critics, but—not kidding—we need to all appreciate how good the game’s kissing is. Don’t snicker. Video games have a tough enough time animating individual characters and tougher times animating the interactions between two. Even at that, they can do violent interactions between bodies fairly well, but…

Sonic Throws The Worst Parties

Ever wonder what a celebration held by Sonic and friends looks like? Turns out, the answer can be summed up with the word “hilarious.” The scene you see above was uploaded by Cyberman65, and it comes from Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal on the 3DS. The party is what happens when the player collects all the…

Regarding post-release review embargoes... Yesterday, I gave readers a heads up about the timing of several of our upcoming game reviews. In that note I mentioned that Ubisoft has stipulated that reviews of Assassin’s Creed Unity, based on copies sent in advance by the publisher, couldn’t run until noon of release day. Some readers asked…