All-Time Great Barry Sanders Runs Away with Madden NFL 25‘s Cover

Barry Sanders may have once appeared on the cover of Madden, but until today he was, technically, never its cover star, subjected to the fame, celebrity and, yes, the curse that supposedly goes with it. Now he is, thanks to the fans. Sanders, the Detroit Lions’ hall-of-fame running back, prevailed over the Minnesota Vikings’ reigning…

The AMD Radeon 7990 Graphics Card, Benchmarked

The current generation AMD GPU series collectivelly known as “Southern Islands” were released over a year ago, with the beginning of its rollout in January 2012. Sixteen months later, the Radeon HD 7000 series is still very much relevant, as AMD continues to release new models under the same GPU family. The Radeon HD 7790…

Study Finds Tetris Greatly Helps With Difficult-To-Treat Vision Problem

When I was growing up, one of the common worries about young people playing video games was that it’d strain our eyesight. Well what do you know, it’s sounding more and more like video games are more likely to help fix eyesight! CBC News reports a new study at McGill University has discovered that Tetris…

What If The NES Games Of The 1980s Were Released In 2013?

We often look back fondly on the games of yesterday, especially when it comes to the purity of their design. In the days before DLC, before always-online, before microtransactions, they were things that you bought, once, they were complete, and you could enjoy the entire experience. For a moment, though, let’s pretend that was never…

BioShock Infinite’s Mysterious Physicist Gets Some Great Cosplay

BioShock Infinite has proven pretty popular with cosplayers, but most of them focus on Elizabeth. Eeeeeveryone cosplays as Elizabeth. And that’s fair, Elizabeth is a wonderful girl and a very cool character. But what about Roaslind Lutece? DeviantArt’s LaynesLionRedCat has moved off the beaten path with some high-quality cosplay of our favorite Commander Shepard-voiced quantum…

Looks like your town in Animal Crossing: New Leaf offers sweet places to shop—which, sure, is neat, but not as important as finding out that K.K. Slider’s club is called Club LOL and not Club 101. Curious name for a club, that.

Developers Accused of Cloning Luftrausers Say Luftrausers Is a Clone

Two days ago, dev studio RubiqLab found themselves the subject of much scorn, thanks to the unseemly resemblance between their game SkyFar and Vlambeer’s long-ago-announced Luftrausers. They responded to their critics by saying that they’ve been working on SkyFar for a year and cited U.S. copyright law. Now, RubiqLab is accusing Vlambeer of copying. In…

SimCity 2.0 Update Brings A Rash Of New Bugs

This week, hopeful eyes turned to SimCity as the troubled city-building game received its first major patch. Maxis has promised that SimCity 2.0 would fix a number of problems in the game, but it sounds like the 2.0 patch has also brought with it a raft of new, equally annoying bugs. Over at the SimCity…

Continuing the streamlining of its web-based social game business, Zynga has announced that it will be closing Empires & Allies, Dream Zoo and Zynga City, the Chinese version of CityVille on Tencent. That’s in addition to The Ville, confirmed for closure earlier this week.

No Sales Projections From Nintendo Hint at the DS Going Into Sunset

The long-lived and long-loved Nintendo DS, the thing that’s sold more than 150 million devices (in four formats) and damn near a billion games, received no projected sales in financial statements the company filed today. Is this the end of the world’s most successful gaming handheld? If it is, Nintendo probably won’t announce or formalize…

Minecraft Builders Re-Create MC Hammer’s Hometown for Museum Exhibit

Oakland. The town. Birthplace of Luke Skywalker and MC Hammer. The city of champions and the Golden State Warriors. An enterprising group of Minecraft enthusiasts sought to recreate it over the past 10 days in the game, and their work goes into a museum this weekend. The kicker is that most of the team building…

Nintendo Lawyers Leave Yoshi’s Rip-Off Android Game Feeling Blue

In February I speculated that perhaps a sex and name change would be enough to throw Nintendo’s legal team off the scent of Era’s Adventures, an Android game starring a female dinosaur that bore a striking resemblance to — okay, it was Yoshi. I was being silly. Nothing throws off Nintendo’s legal team, and so…

Gamasutra’s got a very technical look at the PS4’s specs, courtesy designer Mark Cerny. “The launch lineup for PlayStation 4 — though I unfortunately can’t give the title count — is going to be stronger than any prior PlayStation hardware,” Cerny says.

This Is What You’ll Want To Wear To Your Next Ugly Sweater Party

Technically, these clothes by pixel artist Drew Wise aren’t ugly sweaters. They’re sweatshirts—there’s a difference. But, if you were to show up at an ugly sweater party wearing any of these, I don’t think anyone would fight you on your attire: these have the same spirit as ugly sweaters, no? Or you might just be…

This new trailer for the upcoming Crusader Kings II: The Old Gods gives a taste of how you’ll build a pagan empire, beginning in 867 AD. The base game was one of Kotaku’s 2012 Game of the Year nominations; the expansion will be out at the end of May.

The Moneysaver: Great Gaming Headphones For The Price Of A Game

We’ve got your new gaming headset right here, your wallet won’t even break a sweat. The Corsair Vengeance 1500 USB Dolby 7.1 Gaming Headset was the “biggest surprise” in Kotaku’s gaming headset roundup, but the discount on it was today’s biggest surprise. Grab it from Amazon today for $60 with free shipping- the lowest this…

Give Me 30 Minutes. I’ll Show You Why You Should Play Monaco.

Monaco is out now. It’s a co-op heist game. It’s great …so far! I’m halfway through it. You should get it now on PC (or later on Xbox Live Arcade.) Not sure? Then watch this video. I’ll play the game for you. Ok? If you have questions, fire away. I’ll answer as many as I…

This Guy Can Pilot A Helicopter And Snipe Enemies At The Same Time

Sure, you could opt to use an aircraft’s weapons when in an aircraft. Or, you can use the altitude to your advantage as a sniper, as sSantzuu does here in Battlefield 3. One of these options is more impressive, if not more dangerous than the other! I wonder which is more difficult—sniping while falling from…

The Next Xbox Will Be Revealed On May 21

The next Xbox will be unveiled in late May, Microsoft has just confirmed. This is the first time the company has officially acknowledged their next-generation gaming console, which has been rumored for years now. We just got our invite to the event, which will take place in Redmond, Washington on May 21 at 10am Pacific.…

This Guy Draws People’s Weirdest Tweets

One of my favorite Tumblrs—next to Sports Balls Replaced With Cats, of course—is this one where Mike Rosenthal draws people’s silliest, funniest, downright weirdest tweets. The tweets themselves are pretty great, but Rosenthal really emphasizes how uniquely strange and funny they are through his drawings and (sometimes) animated pictures. There are even a few video…