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  Big Time Gangsta Takes Back The Portable Streets

  Fresh out of prison and back on the streets, it’s time to gather your gang and reclaim your ugly, run-down, drug plagued neighborhood block-by-block. Glu Mobile is so gangsta. Big Time Gangsta for the iPad and iPhone takes the formula established in Facebook games like Sony Online Entertainment’s The Agency: Covert Ops, strips out the…

  By Mike Fahey Published April 4, 2011
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  PixelJunk Shooter? No, PixelJunk Signed Shooter Shirt

  Kyoto’s Q-Games, the studio behind PixelJunk and a whole host of wonderful titles, is auctioning off a signed ThinkGeek t-shirt for “Play for Japan”. The whole PixelJunk staff autographed the shirt! Auction ends on April 10 and all proceeds will go to the American Red Cross. More info in the details below. Play For Japan:…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published April 4, 2011
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  Want To Help Build A Digital Library Of Old Video Game Magazines?

  Kevin “Game Mag Weasel” Gifford has a plan. He’s sitting on a motherload of old (like, pre-2000) video game magazines and wants to know if anyone’s got the means to scan them all. Make a digital “library” of sorts. If you can help, head here for details

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 4, 2011
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  Lara Croft Gets Wet, Snake Takes A Smoke Break And Vader Mourns A Tragic Loss

  Between Anime Conji 2011 being held a week ago, Wondercon 2011 and the Supernova conventions going down in Australia, there’s been a ton of great cosplay on display in recent days. So let’s take a look at some of the best of it! In this week’s round-up, there’s an aquatic Lara Croft, an energetic football…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 4, 2011
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  Street Fighter’s Cammy Gets An Unofficial Makeover

  Cammy, a Lara Croft rival for “Most Beloved British Video Game Character Of All Time”, is looking a little old-fashioned in the 2000’s. I think it’s the boots. Time, then, for a change. Russian artist Bogdan Gabelko drew this redesign of the iconic character for a recent competition. There’s two pictures on show: one a…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 4, 2011
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  Naked Fan-Made Figure Goes For Insane Price

  Virtual idol Miku Hatsune has her own Sega video games, concerts, insane game controllers, and figurines. Whether it’s plastic statues for arcade redemption games or detailed collectors’ statues, there is no shortage of Miku merch. One fan decided there was a gaping hole in the Miku figures, namely of the totally naked variety, and decided…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published April 4, 2011
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  Get A Behind-The-Scenes Look At The New Twisted Metal

  Twisted Metal series creator David Jaffe has posted some photos on his blog, giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the filming of the new Twisted Metal’s live-action cutscenes. If you’re not a Twisted Metal fan, these likely won’t make sense at all! If you are, though, you’ll see glimpses of costumes and characters you haven’t…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 4, 2011
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  Gaming’s Greats (And Kotaku) Pay Tribute To Japan

  Broadcasting over the weekend, Gamers Heart Japan is a one hour program, designed to celebrate the country that’s given us so many great games as well as help with the relief efforts. Created by The Electric Playground, the program features a whole host of gaming luminaries, like Tim Schafer, Will Wright and Sid Meier, talking…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published April 4, 2011
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  There’s A New Mech Fighting Arcade Game

  Developed by Konami, Steel Chronicle is a multiplayer mech combat game that’s currently – and rather quietly – having some location testing done in Japan. The game is a shooter of sorts, with a viewpoint sat close behind the player’s mech, while you’re tasked with mowing down waves of invading alien bugs. The action is…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 4, 2011
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  Samus, You Are One Tough Broad

  The star of the Metroid series gets tough in a very different way (via 4CR) Biker Samus by agentscarlet

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 4, 2011
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  Some Of Gaming’s Giants Give Toys To Quake Kids

  While some of the Tohoku Earthquake’s youngest refugees told the Mainichi Newspaper that they really want to play video games, power shortages make that impossible. Kids are kids, and they want to play. This is why twenty-six companies are donating four ten-ton trucks worth of toys, clothing and stationary to the relief efforts. Among those…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published April 4, 2011
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  Oh, Turns Out You CAN Run Gmail Using Kinect

  Last week, Google thought it’d be funny to have an April Fool’s gag based on Kinect powering, of all things, Gmail. Well, turns out you can actually do that. A research team at USC already has Kinect running Google’s email service, and as you’ll see in this slightly stupid video (it’s keeping things in the…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 4, 2011
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  This 3DS Sports Game Sure Seems Gimmicky

  The Nintendo 3DS is not multi-touch. That hasn’t stopped Namco Bandai from making a game that requires two touch pens. So players not only have to hold two touch pens like total goobers, they cannot use them at the exact same time. Well, they can, but the multitouch won’t register. Only one of the brain…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published April 4, 2011
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  Not Everyone Knows Who The Hell Hideo Kojima Is

  You probably know who Hideo Kojima is. He makes Metal Gear Solid. But is he famous? Probably, but that doesn’t mean mainstream Japanese celebs know who the heck he is. Kojima appeared on a recent episode of variety show Real Scoop, talking about how popular he is abroad. Famous celebrities like Yusuke Kamiji as well…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published April 4, 2011
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  Video Games Say The Darnedest Things

  While the video games of today are (usually) professional enough to hire proper writers to handle localisation and translation duties, it wasn’t always that way. Take the 1980s and early 1990s, for example. Lots of games turned up in the West from Japan. And some of them got a little…lost in translation. You may have…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 4, 2011
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  When You Think Of Japan, Think Of This

  More than schoolgirls, salarymen or neon lights, when video games want to evoke Japan, they pick one thing above the rest: cherry blossoms, or “sakura”, as they are called in Japanese. During spring, Japan is awash in pink and white. Cherry blossoms are in bloom for a short period (around two weeks or so), and…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published April 4, 2011
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  Anonymous Targets Sony, Warns Of Penises Stuck In Hornets Nests

  Militant hacker group Anonymous has launched a campaign against Sony, citing the Japanese company’s “unforgivable offense against free speech and internet freedom” after it took legal action against a pair of hackers. As you’d expect from the group, its statements are neither polite nor subtle. It says Sony has “abused the judicial system in an…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 4, 2011
• CultureTotal Recall

  Meet The Four Americans Who Built Sega

  Nintendo and Sega. Hardware rivals for decades, and even today they remain the archetype Japanese video game companies. Only, Sega isn’t entirely Japanese. It was founded by some American guys. While Nintendo, with its history in trading cards and love hotels, is as Japanese as they come, Sega’s history can actually be traced back to…

  By Luke Plunkett Published April 4, 2011
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  Hit for Six

  World Champions | All of India is rejoicing, including these expatriates in New York, at the nation’s World Cup triumph. Yesterday’s victory over Sri Lanka gives Sachin Tendulkar, considered one of the greatest batsmen in the sport’s history, a legacy-cementing world championship in his final try. It’s the second title for the cricket-mad nation. (Photo:…

  By Owen Good Published April 3, 2011
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  Teaching First-Graders with Minecraft

  When his five-year-old daughter built a treehouse by herself in Minecraft, Joel Levin, a computer teacher at Manhattan’s Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School, got the idea to try incorporating the PC game into his lesson plan at school. He worried about numerous possibilities that the game would simply be incompatible with students that young, but…

  By Owen Good Published April 3, 2011