Nintendo

Switch Online Now Lets You Cheat At The Legend Of Zelda

Today, Nintendo continued to build out the NES library in its Switch Online app with the previously-announced addition of NES Open Tournament Golf, Solomon’s Key, and Super Dodge Ball. But it also had a surprise: “Living the life of luxury!,” a hacked save file for The Legend of Zelda that starts players out with a…

Playing Super Mario Bros. With A Live Band Doing The Soundtrack Behind You Must Be Nice

While you or I would play Mario with the game’s original soundtrack chirping out of TV speakers, George Salazar got the chance to play recently with a “full sized jazz big band, orchestra, and choir” providing the tunes. The death music is wonderful

A 1:1 Scale Zelda Bike For Nintendo Labo

We’ve seen some ingenious Labo designs lately, but this one from an Australian contest winner takes the cardboard cake. Not content with building something small and cute that sits on a desk, Jordan Booth from Australia won Nintendo’s local Labo competition with this life-size replica of Zelda’s Master Cycle Zero, complete with moving handlebars, rocking…

Someone Did The Math On Which Dice Are The Best In Super Mario Party

Curious to find out which of the new character-specific dice in Super Mario Party was the best, a math teacher in Ohio decided to research their underlying statistics. While he found that some characters are better for rolling higher numbers on average, the game is overall too random for character choice to always matter. In…

We Debate Whether Super Mario Party Is Actually Evil (And Whether That’s Bad)

Hello, Mario Partiers and haters alike. Last week, Nintendo released Super Mario Party, a four-player digital board game about playing cute mini-games and destroying your friends. I reviewed the game. I liked it a lot. It was a great take on a classic formula, in my opinion, but it’s certainly not just about me here.…

Bowsette Is Now A Final Boss Battle

We’re still doing Bowsette stuff? OK, here’s the end of New Super Mario Bros Wii, modified by StupidMarioBros1Fan to replace Bowser with a giant, fire-breathing Bowsette. Overall it’s the same boss battle, but a number of changes have been made. The new model, a “heavily edited version of Peach’s model from Mario Party 9″, has…

Mario Odyssey‘s Goomba-Stacking Limit Has Been Found

How many Goombas can be stacked atop one another in Super Mario Odyssey? Playing normally the answer is 30, but video game developer and dissector Skelux has managed a stack of 200. A very unstable stack of 200. They may be magical mushroom creatures, but Goombas are still subject to the laws of physics. His…

Super Mario Party: The Kotaku Review

“Who are you rooting for?” I asked my housemate, a non-player heckler watching a full-up game of Super Mario Party. Without missing a beat, he responded gleefully: “Chaos!” Mario Party is a video board game series that’s all about swing. You get a star. You move a few spaces. You lose a star. You steal…

Music Is The Secret Weapon Of Mario Speedrunners

Is there anything so satisfying to watch as a well-played Mario speedrun? What makes an expert run of Super Mario Bros. so eminently watchable, and how do the players master their moves so perfectly? It turns out that the answer to both questions could be “music.” “Most of the movement is timed with the rhythm…

Report: New Nintendo Switch Model Coming In 2019

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Nintendo will be introducing a new version of its popular Switch console next year. The report says that the move comes as Nintendo hopes to boost sales momentum of the Switch, which has dropped off since its meteoric launch. It’s claimed that this new model would “likely share…

Multi-Console Emulator Now Runs On Hacked Switches

RetroArch is a homebrew program that combines a ton of different gaming emulators into a single, relatively sleek package. Development on it began in 2010, with version 1.0 releasing in 2014. Several updates later, today the people behind itreleased the latest version, which can run on hacked Nintendo Switches. RetroArch isn’t the simplest homebrew program…

Some Of The Fall’s Biggest Switch Games Are Shortchanging Handheld Mode 

Super Mario Party comes out on Friday. It’s the series’ debut on Switch and the first main entry since 2015’s ill-fated Mario Party 10 on Wii U. It has 80 new mini games, one of which even utilizes multiple Switches to create a shared, continuous screen. What it doesn’t have is handheld mode support, the…

The Closest Thing To A New Zelda Dungeon Is… Nintendo Labo?

The Nintendo Labo Vehicle kit is far from a new Zelda game, but while building it recently, I had flashbacks to some of my favorite parts of some of the best Zelda adventures. I can’t stop telling people this. I hope not everyone thinks I’ve lost my mind. Like the first two Labo kits released…

Nintendo’s New Mobile RPG Is A Slick Version Of The Same Old Thing

Nintendo and Cygames’ Dragalia Lost is a very pretty mobile game. The characters are lovely, the music is gorgeous, and its overall presentation is quite charming. One could almost forget it’s just another generic character collecting mobile action RPG under all of that polish. Almost. Nintendo’s done some pretty innovative things since moving into the…

Play As Bowsette In Super Mario 64

Someone paid modding mastermind Kaze Emanuar to build a playable Bowsette in Super Mario 64, and he duly obliged. It’s not just a visual gag, she’s also got a permanent fire-throwing ability. His indifferent “Someone paid me to do this shit” is almost as good as the mod itself. While the creation of the mod…

Yo-Kai Watch 3 will hit 3DS in North America on February 8, 2019. The Pokemon-like will come as two separate versions per usual: Sushi and Tempura. The game is broken up into two halves, the first focusing on life in an Americanized town called St. Peanutsburg and the second on a detective agency.

Nintendo Wins Lawsuit Against Tokyo’s Totally Unofficial Mario Kart 

Today, Tokyo District Court ruled against MariCar, the unofficially real-life Mario Kart, ordering the company to cease lending out Nintendo-themed cosplay and cough up ten million yen in damages. That’s nearly $89,000. Nintendo filed suit against MariCar, now known as MariMobility, early last year for intellectual property violation. The MariCar tours are incredibly popular with…

Bowsette Fan Event Being Held In Japan

Things have moved real fast for Bowsette. There is a Charge.org “Bowsette is Real” page hoping to make the character cannon. That’s not all. Next month in Japan, there will be a Bowsette gathering with fan art and cosplay. The name of the event is Oukan Keikaku: Kuppa Hime Onrii Ibento or “Crown Plan: Bowsette…

After Bowsette, Fans Go Wild For Boosette

Bowsette isn’t the only fan creation tearing up the internet. Boosette is really making a name for herself. As Kotaku previously reported, the Super Crown in New Super Mario Bros. Wii U Deluxe led to fanart in which Bowser morphed into a new character, Bowsette. Fans didn’t stop there, dreaming up what other characters would…

Here, A Bowsette Amiibo, I Hope You’re All Happy

Nintendo has of course released official Peach Amiibo. But it’s up to people like GandaKristo turn them into something fans truly want The custom Amiibo creator extraordinaire has created the masterpiece you see here. And the back: Perfection. We’vefeatured her work here before, but in the time since our last showcase and this she’s also…