Um, This Sure Is A Lot Of Ass Cheek For A Nintendo-Licensed Product

Nintendo is about as family-friendly as video game companies can get. This goes double for the company’s merchandise, which normally begins at t-shirts and ends with plush representations of cute little Mushroom Kingdom characters. So it’s strange to see this figure of Tharja from Fire Emblem Awakening on the 3DS turn up, not only because…

Watch A Virtual City Be Built Before Your Very Eyes

You’ve probably heard the term “procedurally-generated” thrown around gaming in the last few years. It’s fancy tech, which at its most basic level means something that’s built randomly each time you ask it to be built, but it’s certainly more complicated than that, as content still needs to follow certain rules. The best way to…

Minecraft + Goats Screaming Like Humans

It’s been inching its way through the rest of the internet all week long, so it was only a matter of time before “goats screaming like humans” made its way into video games. You can see the original clip (itself based on an old Usher joke vid) here—1:23 might be the funniest thing I’ve ever…

A Look At The StarCraft Game That Never Was

American artist Jason Felix has been working in the video game business for over 13 years now, and has had his artwork contribute to the development of series like Dead Space, Prince of Persia and even the ill-fated StarCraft Ghost He’s also done some movie work, most recently with Blur Studios on Girl With The…

See If You Are The World’s Greatest Fart Engineer

Hide the Fart is a simple Korean browser game that’s all about, well, hiding your farts. You play as a guy at a bus stop, where he’s stood right next to another guy. Decorum forbids just farting, so you need to time your releases to coincide with passing traffic. The real challenge comes from the…

Help Make This Fantastic Zelda LEGO Set A Reality

This isn’t the first attempt we’ve seen to convince LEGO to make a Legend of Zelda set, but it’s easily the most fully-realised, because the builder has gone to the trouble of actually building a prototype unit out of real bricks. That builder also happens to be the same man who drew this incredible LEGO…

Game of Thrones Takes Over The New York Times With Awesome Print Ad

Proving that there’s still life—and imagination—left in good old-fashioned print advertising, HBO took out a two-page ad in the New York Times and used it to fly a dragon right across the middle to promote the return of Games of Thrones to the TV. If you’re about to say something snide about editorial surrendering to…

Somebody, Please Make A Star Wars Game Look This Cool, Thanks

A group of stunt performers has made a video that will instantly have anyone who’s ever played a Star Wars video game clutching at their hearts and whimpering “pleeeease” through clenched teeth. It’s a first-person lightsaber duel, shown from both the perspective of Darth Vader and a Jedi. We’ve had games try and do this…

No off-topic post tonight: Head on over to the Talk Amongst Yourselves forum and talk games, life, or anything ya like.

Witchcraft, Sex and Murder Make This The Craziest Game I’ve Played This Year (So Far)

When I started SABBAT, I had no idea what to think. It asks you what’s in your drawers, and then makes it obvious you’re about to kill a bunch of animals in sacrifice—in the hopes that darker powers take you away from your miserable life. This interactive fiction certainly has an unsettling start, but curiosity…

EA Is Hosting A Conference Next Week To Talk About Gay Rights And Gaming

While Electronic Arts certainly doesn’t have the best reputation among hardcore gamers, they do have a good track record for supporting gay rights. And next week, the giant video game publisher is holding a conference to talk about all sorts of LGBT issues. Kotaku just got an invite today. Here’s the whole thing: You Are…

This “origin” trailer tells the story behind the Tim Burtonesque survival game Don’t Starve. More info here

With Some Tweaks, 1989 Could Have Seen The Release Of A 2013 Game

Though the recent Retro City Rampage is a parody of older games, it is not, in fact, an 8-Bit game. Well, not until Vblank Entertainment decided they wanted to make it into a real 8-bit game. Here they are, walking us through how they crunched the game down to 8-bit. It’s all technical stuff, but…

A Small Detail About The PlayStation 4 Could Have Big Implications

Among the bits of information dropped during last week’s PlayStation 4 announcement was this from PS4 lead architect Mark Cerny, as he discussed the system’s enhanced social features: “[With the] PlayStation 4 we are transitioning to a friends network based on real world friends. We’ll keep around the alias and icon used in today’s multiplayer…

Midweek Moneysaver: Borderland Madness

This Wednesday edition of Kotaku’s The Moneysaver catches all the offers, promotions and bargains that can’t wait until the weekend. The Midweek Moneysaver is brought to you by Dealzon. Downloadables GameFly • Borderlands Collection: Borderlands GOTY + Borderlands 2 is $23.99 (separately $60) • Fallen Enchantress is $10.89 (list $40) • Port Royale 3 is…

Mash Your Piano Keys To Survive In This Cacophonous Free Game

If you’ve ever had a nightmare about bombing in a musical performance onstage (and who hasn’t?), then Drop A Beat, Giuseppe! is for you. The free flash game puts you in control of Giuseppe, a misunderstood piano genius. His audience is angry, and in order to survive, you have to move your piano underneath the…

Our Introduction to Edge of Twilight is a Bad Temple Run Knock-Off

I was excited about the revival of Fuzzyeyes’ Edge of Twilight steampunk action-adventure property. Then I played Edge of Twilight: Horizon. It’s pretty bad. Available as a free download for the iPhone, Horizon is nothing more than a bad copy of Temple Run, right down to the giant monkey creature chasing the naked homeless guy…

No, Baby Pokémon. You Don’t Get To Be Your Evolutions Just Yet.

You only get to be adorable for now, you rascals. Take a look at these absolutely adorable Pokémon illustrations by Instragram user itsbirdy . For the last couple of months, he’s been uploading pictures of Pokémon in what appear to be, what, onesies? Hoodies? Of their later evolutions. Whatever you’d call them, I think we…

I’m Lara Croft. You’re Lara Croft. Everyone’s Lara Croft, Actors Say.

The new trailer for next month’s new Tomb Raider takes an interesting turn: we’ve got men and women of various ages and ethnicities all saying that they’re Lara Croft. We at Kotaku knock game companies when they push a game in a less than classy way. Might as well praise them when they do something…

If There’s One Thing Windows RT is Good For, It’s Gaming

Windows RT, the version of Windows 8 built specifically to work on mobile processors, confuses a lot of people. It’s best to imagine it as a Windows 8 blowup doll—though it resembles the real thing it isn’t nearly as functional, but if you use your imagination you can still have a lot of fun. Microsoft…