Insomniac’s Canceled Pinball Project had Powerful Potential

Celebrating the company’s transition to Facebook’s mandatory Timeline format, Insomniac Games shares the secrets of 1080Pinball , the high-definition downloadable game that never was. Ratchet & Clank and Uncharted Resistance (sorry, temporarily insane) are nice and all, but give me a strong pinball video game with tight physics and a meaty selection of tables and…

Dragon Roost Island, You Stole My Heart

Long-time readers of Kotaku may already know that my absolute, unquestioned, favourite video game of all time is The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. There are many reasons for this. The timeless art style, the “open world” design, the inherent charm and humour present throughout. There’s one more reason though that’s not quite as…

The Silly Bulls*** of Censored Soundtracks in Sports Video Games

Sports video games must license everything. League symbols, player likenesses, individual events, even certain stadiums. Then they must provide a soundtrack every year and, yep, those songs must be licensed, too. It is a neverending headache unique to the sports genre. Further complicating the job, nearly all league-licensed sports video games are rated E, or…

A Hidden Gem on the Greatest Jazz Album of All Time

It’s widely held that Miles Davis’ 1959 album Kind of Blue is the greatest jazz album of all time. I believe that in some jazz style-manual or another, it is actually required that people who write or talk about it refer to it as a “seminal.” While it’s of course impossible to declare that any…

This Game Will Make Your Epic Sax Guy Dreams Come True

We all want to be Epic Sax Guy. No matter our race, creed or political persuasion, every single person on the face of the planet has wanted to put on some blue pants, don some red leather gloves, pick up an alto saxophone and pelvic-thrust their way to glory. Now, thanks to the magic of…

On the Trail of Metronome, The Sound-Bending Marvel That Never Was

On Tarsier Studios’ website you’ll find a game, The City of Metronome, presented among its existing projects. It’s there, not far below a banner for the forthcoming Little Big Planet Vita (the Swedish developer’s current project). Only, this inclusion is not a celebration of past achievement or of a concrete undertaking. Without a release date,…

Tactics Ogre: Weird Name, Amazing Soundtrack

See what I did in that title? I hope you did. Okay, so you guys were right. When I asked for reader’s submissions for the best game music of 2011, a ton of people said “Dude! Tactics Ogre!” Those people were correct. I didn’t have a chance to play the PSP remake last year, but…

The Kotaku Mixtape Vol 4: Nobuo Uematsu

When you talk to people about game music, Nobuo Uematsu is gonna come up. It’s just going to happen, and with good reason: the guy is the John Williams of the Final Fantasy series. The sheer volume and quality of work the man has produced is pretty staggering, and I can think of a number…

Kotaku Melodic Starts Here

Greetings, and welcome to Kotaku Melodic, your one-stop-shop for music, video games, and musical video games. For the next two hours, you’re all mine. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the sounds.

Street Fighter Producer Stepping Down Over Health Concerns

Following a recent health scare, popular Street Fighter series producer Yoshinori Ono and his favourite Blanka action figure have announced they’re taking a step back from their jobs. “I’ll be out of the limelight as fighting game series for a while”, Ono posted on Twitter. “I’ll think about the new future of fighting game after…

March Madness Hits Hockey as NHL 13‘s Cover Goes Up to a Vote, Too

News and notes from around the world of sports video gaming: • With every cover for every game coming out of EA Sports Tiburon being put up to a vote, now their siblings in EA Sports Canada are getting in on the act. NHL 13 will also choose its cover star through a fan-voted contest.…

Wait, Why Isn’t The PGA Championship in the PGA Tour’s Video Game?

This is something that always confounded me. In the career mode of Tiger Woods PGA Tour, the fourth major championship is not The PGA Championship, but the “EA Sports Championship.” Now, The British Open does not appear either (it is simply “The U.K. Open”) but that I can understand and chalk up to licensing. But…

Why Are We Still Hating on Activision?

Why is it still so fashionable to hate on Activision when there’s so many other publishers worthy of our scorn? That’s the question commenter Spacerac poses in today’s Speak Up on Kotaku. Do we really still hate Activision that much? All they’ve really done is milk Call of Duty, which is what people have demonstrated…

I Wish My Schools Had Walls Like These

Look at what covers the walls of this Redditor’s school in Sweden. None of my schools were cool enough to incorporate that kind of artwork, or appreciation for games. Even NYU (my alma mater), with their Game Center and relatively new game design master’s program, can’t boast walls like these. I thought r/gaming would appreciate…

Metronome Screens and Concept Art

Come On, Video Games, Let’s See Some Black People I’m Not Embarrassed By

I’ve never played as a black video game character who’s made me feel like he was cool. Worse yet, I’ve never played a black video game character who made me feel like I was cool. Instead, I’ve groaned and rolled my eyes at a parade of experiences that continue to tell me video games just…

You’ll Want This Triforce Lamp Until You See The Price Tag

This thing is beautiful turned on or off. You can display it proudly on your desk, or hang it up to stand in the air using the secret door on the top. According to the Etsy creator’s page: Built with a Poplar frame, birch face, and acrylic yellow plastic triforce. The sides of the lamp…

Playing Video Games for a Living is Just as Terrible as It Sounds

Game testing and QA positions can be really rough jobs, as previous lawsuits and even a webcomic attest. Though the testing process is vital to good game development, not all developers or publishers necessarily consider their testers to be vital employees, it seems. IGN spoke with several, recently, seeking to discover where, on the spectrum…

Looks Like There Might’ve Been a Rampage Reboot For Kinect in Development

Remember Rampage? The old-school arcade hit let players control giant monsters that unleashed havoc all over fictional cities, most memorably by climbing buildings and punching them into rubble. When Warner Brothers acquired Midway after the publisher declared bankruptcy a few years ago, it also got the company’s intellectual property portfolio, which included Rampage. It’s been…

The Kotaku Game Club Joins the Mass Effect 3 Galaxy at War Effort!

Welcome to the final Kotaku Game Club meeting on Mass Effect 3. We’ve spent the last three weeks talking about this game as the culmination of a gameplay promise established years ago, judging the its merits versus the two that came before for it. Today we’ll be doing something a little different, venturing into an…