Mid-Summer Cosplay Was Wonderful This Weekend in Japan

At its heart, Wonder Festival is an event in Japan for toy models and sculptures. But wherever there are nerds, there are people dressing up! Here’s a look at some of the standout cosplay from this weekend’s Wonder Festival. Many of these outfits (such as the Kamen Rider Wizard and the Raiden outfits, above) look…

A Most Unusual Pokemon Peripheral for the 3DS

This is Pokemon Tretta Lab for Nintendo 3DS. The app is a free download, but the hardware costs 3,800 yen (around $38). In Japan, there are coin-operated Pokemon games that use chipped plastic pucks. Players put the pucks on a mat on the machine, and the mat “reads” the pucks. So, for example, if you…

And Now, Here’s Gintama’s Sakata Gintoki Beating The Crap Out Of Goku

Also featuring: many other popular anime and manga characters beating the crap out of each other, courtesy of J-Stars Victory VS, the upcoming PS3/Vita crossover fighting game that’s just received a nice gameplay trailer. Sadly, there’s no word on a Western release.

“The truth is we were doing prototype tests of Pikmin for the DS and 3DS, but it turned into unit management with only the touch pen, and no matter what it just didn’t seem like Pikmin.” Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto to 4Gamer, on their early plans to develop Pikmin 3 for handhelds instead of the Wii…

Geeks, Games, and Extremely Bored Booth Companions at China Joy 2013

For the last 11 years, the yearly China Digital Entertainment Expo has been “entertaining” China and the world’s gamers. Commonly known as China Joy, the show is usually known more for its booth companions—in fact, this year’s China Joy was more about the gamers and geeks taking photos of young women. Over 200,000 people attended…

Japanese University Makes Special “Forever Alone” Dining Tables

One of Japan’s most prestigious institutions, Kyoto University, has installed new lunchroom seats for students who don’t want others to watch them while they eat. Alone. The seats are called “bocchi seki”　(ぼっち席), with “bocchi” meaning “alone” in Japanese. According to Asahi News, Kyoto University first installed the “lonely seats” last spring at its engineering school…

Our Australian comrades report that after being re-submitted for classification, Saints Row IV has again been refused classification by the Australian Review Board. No decision has been made about the game’s “safe” low-violence version yet.

Man Opens Nazi Cafe, Baffled that It Pisses People Off

Who would have thought that a cafe packed with Nazi memorabilia would make people incredibly angry? Henry Mulyana, that’s who. Back in 2011, the Indonesian businessman opened SoldatenKaffee (“Soldier’s Cafe”), a restaurant filled with Nazi emblazoned decor. After the English-language media recently discovered his cafe, Mulyana received death threats and temporarily closed the establishment. According…

For Some Reason, Lightning Returns Has Boob Jiggling

One of the best things about Final Fantasy heroines is that, generally speaking, they’ve tended to be strong females and haven’t really relied on fan service. Until now, that is. At a recent Q&A session with Lighting Returns: Final Fantasy XIII‘s developers, the following question was asked: “Is it true that Lightning went from a…

Some Lucky Humans Got To Sit In A Macross Cockpit

The Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum – located in Takarazuka, home to this goodness – has been running an exhibit lately that would have made my inner seven year-old’s brain explode. As part of its Macross: The Museum exhibit, there to celebrate the series’ 30th anniversary, there’s an amazing recreation of a VF-1 cockpit from the…

Most Ouya Owners Aren’t Buying A Damn Thing

When you play an Ouya, you can try a demo of every single game available, without ever having to buy a thing. Which is exactly what most owners of the tiny Android console are doing. In an interview with The Verge, CEO Julie Uhrman has said that while “Monetization on Ouya is so far better…

A Board Game About Prison Gangs (And Yes, There Are Shivs)

The Oleg Story is a board game about being in prison. You’re not trying to get out of the place. Just get by. Maybe you’ll be someone’s special friend. Maybe you’ll be a bully. Maybe you’ll bully the bullies. Maybe you’ll team up and just…I don’t know, pump iron and get tattoos. Each player controls…

Wow, There Was A Daytona USA That Was Also A Little Bit…RPG

It wasn’t made by Sega, sadly, but whatever: around 2003-04, there was an arcade version of Daytona USA going around that added RPG elements to the famous racer. Put together by modders, it was called Daytona USA : GTX 2004, and featured a range of little changes and improvements to the original like upgraded visuals. The…

Now Video Game Magazines Are Getting Hacked

People hacking video game companies, that I get. But really, messing with a video game news outlet? That’s a bit much. Last Friday, moderators on the PC Gamer forums noticed some “suspicious activity”. Turns out a script had somehow been hidden in a forum post that had been designed to steal a user’s profile information…

Cosplay That’s Kickin’ Like Bruce Lee

It’s another bumper cosplay roundup this week, as some late Comic-Con uploads are joined by shots that are just awesome, regardless of the time of year. Not to take anything away from some of the more complex builds featured this week – that Charr is mighty impressive – but my favourite might be Leon Chiro’s…

The Best Zelda Movie That Doesn’t Have A Cosplaying Link In It

See? What’s even funnier is that the guy’s actually in a pretty good doom band. Lost Woods on accordion…on a unicycle…in the woods [YouTube, via Geekologie]

The Biggest Space Fight In History Involved Over 4000 Pilots

There’s an epic battle going on in EVE Online right now, involving around 4000 people and enough space hardware to make screenshots look like bee swarms. It’s taking place in the 6VDT system, and the two sides are CFC/Goon and the TEST Alliance. UPDATE –Looks like TEST Alliance are bugging out. You can watch it…

From the Mouths of Babes …

If David Vonderhaar, design director for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, thought shining a light on the rancid Twitter spew coming from the game’s so-called fans would curb those reactions, well, think again. It’s still going strong, and someone’s curating it all. Consider this a to-block list for your own Twitter feed.

We’ve seen first-person representations of Super Mario Bros. World 1-1 before. If you’ve ever pondered what Green Hill Zone’s Act 1 from Sonic the Hedgehog would look like in first-person view, here’s a virtuoso remake of the stage, courtesy of Machinima.

A Locker-Room Talk Might Have Spared Us From Yesterday’s Fez Fiasco

The things I said were out of line and the mouth that said them would soon be out of alignment, too. That’s the polite version of a one-way conversation about 20 years ago in a far off arena, when the difference between criticism and a harangue was expressed to me in very physical terms. In…