PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Enters Open Beta This Week

You can check out the beta for Sony fighting game PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale starting tomorrow, assuming you are A) a PlayStation Plus user or B) a Vita owner. If you want to play on PS3, and you don’t have PlayStation Plus, you’ll have to wait until October 23 for access to the beta, which…

A Delightfully Melodic Take on the Monster Breeding Game

Thanks to the success of titles like Dragonvale you can’t swing a dead lizard without hitting a dozen games that feature mystical islands filled with magical creatures having sex with one another to create new magical creatures. Developer Big Blue Bubble has taken the sub-genre and made it into a musical. The familiar elements are…

The Incredibly Cute & Clever Cosplay of New York Comic-Con’s Last Two Days

If you weren’t careful, you could step over some of the cutest cosplayers attending this year’s New York Comic-Con. Take this little Spider-toddler in the shot above. She’s only 19 months old but kept her mask on like a real superhero. Off to a great start, I say. Take a gander at the other outfits…

Kotaku Timeline: Grand Theft Auto V

All video games have a history… a history of rumors and official statements, of leaks, of screenshots, of trailers and other things that excite us, confuse us or do both. So how do we get from the smallest hint of a new game to the real thing? What’s the journey? Today, we’re debuting something a…

Kotaku Gallery: Grand Theft Auto V

July 12, 2012 click here to return to our GTA V timeline! July 12, 2012 click here to return to our GTA V timeline! August 20, 2012 click here to return to our GTA V timeline! August 20, 2012 click here to return to our GTA V timeline! August 20, 2012 click here to return…

The Places You’ve Been Playing Video Games…

Where have you been in the last few years? I don’t mean in the real world. I mean in that other world. The one where Skyrim’s customs officer checks your bags for juniper berries, or where amidst the rubble of a post-apocalyptic society someone found a working sticker machine. British artist AJ Hateley (who we’ve…

Wii Drops Price To $130

In advance of the Wii U’s November 18 launch, Nintendo is cutting the price of the current Wii console to $129.99. The console, which will be black, will be sold in a bundle with Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort (on one disc, interestingly enough), a Wii Remote Plus and Nunchuk. The bundle will start…

Who’s White and Who’s Japanese in Anime? Once Again, the Internet Compares.

Earlier this year, there were discussions online in Japan on the “whiteness” of anime characters. That discussion, it seems, is not over. A recent Japanese thread titled “Even After Seeing This, You Can Declare Anime Characters Japanese?” (これを見てもアニメキャラは日本人って言い切れるかい？) picked up this issue once again, trying to suss out the physical characteristics of anime characters and…

Chinese Students Recreate Resident Evil, Freak Out Everyone

A group of art students at the Nanjing University of the Arts thought it was a good idea to create a Resident Evil fan film for a student get together. They proceeded to recreate scenes straight out of video games after hours on school property, bringing in dummy body parts, fake blood and weapons. They…

Nearly Twenty Chinese Bureaucrats Fired for Gaming at Work

Bureaucratic work is understandably boring but it has its perks: a steady income and a stable job. However, nineteen government employees in China’s far west province of Xinjiang have taken their jobs for granted, spending their office hours playing video games. The government employees were caught in late august after unannounced inspections by the local…

Cosplaying Lady or Not, Blue Noodles Look Disgusting

This weekend in Tokyo’s geek mecca, Akihabara, eatery LittleBSD wheeled out a noodle selling kiosk. LittleBSD isn’t your typical restaurant—it’s cosplay themed. These weren’t your typical noodles—they were blue. The noodles were “negi sio ita yakisoba” (ネギ塩痛焼きそば) in the image of virtual idol Hatsune Miku. “Negi” (green onions) is what the virtual idol is often…

Bravely Default‘s Inevitable Sequel Will *Probably* Be on the 3DS

On Twitter, a Japanese gamer said she or he purchased a 3DS just to play Square Enix’s latest role-playing game Bravely Default—then asked the game’s official Twitter, if there were a sequel, would it also be a 3DS title? Here’s the reply: “Depending on the circumstances, I don’t think it would change. Because I think…

My Uncomfortable Lunch At The Hello Kitty Dreams Restaurant

I like the color pink, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I wear pink shirts, I have a pair of pink boxers and a few pairs of socks that accidentally became pink but nothing could’ve prepared me for my lunch at the Hello Kitty Dreams Restaurant. It was an overload of pink. A few…

How Burger Dreams Turn into Burger Nightmares

You know how promotional photos for fast food restaurants always look delicious? And then you get the burger, and it looks like a dog’s breakfast? That’s often the case, and the special burger tower that’s hitting Lotteria doesn’t look to be an exception. Japanese site Rocket News has photos of both tower burgers (which you…

These Kentucky Fried Chicken Flavored Potato Chips Look Finger-Licking Good

Starting on October 25 and for a limited time only, KFC Japan is launching a new flavor of fried chicken called “uma shio shouga chicken” (旨塩生姜チキン) or “savory salt ginger chicken”. According to Tokyo Walker, KFC worked with Japanese snack maker Calbee to bring this flavor to potato chips—also for a limited time only. This…

Youkai Watch, announced last year by Level-5, is headed to the Nintendo 3DS.

First Look at the New Iron Chef Host (Does This Man Love Bell Peppers?)

I love bell peppers. You know who else loves bell peppers? Iron Chef’s original chairman Takeshi Kaga. When news broke last month that Iron Chef was returning to Japanese TV after a 13-year hiatus, it wasn’t known whether or not Kaga would be returning with the show. Turns out, unfortunately, he’s apparently not. Instead, actor-singer…

Japan Isn’t Getting a PS Vita Price Cut Yet. It’s Getting Two New PS Vita Bundles.

This November, two new PS Vita bundles are hitting Japan. There’s a Bonus Pack which comes with a 3G/Wi-Fi PS Vita, 20 hours of pre-paid 3G data, a cradle, protective film, and a 32GB memory card, plus AR cards, etc. Then, there’s a Standard Pack, which comes with a 3G/Wi-Fi PS Vita, 20 hours of…

Hawken Beta Starts Real Soon

There have been some secret alpha tests going on for a while now, but a much wider pool of people will finally get their hands on mech shooter Hawken when it kicks off a closed beta on October 26. Invites will start going out this week, while the beta will run until October 29. More…

It’s Not a Crime to Paint LEGO

I mean, it should be. The whole point of LEGO is that it allows people to create (or recreate) things within the bounds of a visual style that’s supposed to be basic. Yet here we have a Maschinen Krieger vehicle (explanation here), painted like it was some Warhammer 40K miniature, and…it’s not terrible. It’s actually…