Bowling with Tekken characters is coming to the PlayStation 3 this fall with the release of Tekken Hybrid, the Blu-ray disc bundle that includes one computer animated movie, Tekken: Blood Vengeance, and one PlayStation 2 remake, Tekken Tag Tournament HD.

That PS3 exclusive will both help us wash the foul taste of the live action Tekken movie from our mouths and get us more excited for Tekken Tag Tournament 2, still just an arcade release at this point. To ramp up enthusiasm for even more Tekken over the next year and to hype up Tekken Bowl, Namco Bandai has released dozens of fresh screens from Tekken Hybrid.

There are shots of Tekken Bowl, stills from Blood Vengeance, a selection of detailed character renders and even a few shots of Tekken Tag in the gallery above. Who's excited?!

SERIOUS GAMING | The Games for Change Festival kicked off this week in New York City. (Photo by Brian Crecente)

Resident Evil's Dip Into Action Is More Experiment Than Evolution

I haven't had a good scare since 2005, at least not at the hands of Resident Evil. While it may not be another six years until the lurching infected, man or dog, scare the pants off me, Capcom does seem hesitant to make any short-term promises about the series once famous for making people... More »

Can Two Dudes Really Survive Against a Horde of Zombies?

The latest in Rooster Teeth's Immersion series of web videos is here, this time seeing if two dudes in a video game could really survive against a horde of 400 zombies. More »

Wii Motion Plus Captures Jimmy Fallon's Wild Flailing on Late Night

Jimmy Fallon's body was ready, but Reggie Fils-Aime overwhelmed him anyway with what Nintendo had to offer at E3. Nintendo's E3 showcase spanned four consoles while Late Night with Jimmy Fallon featured only three. More »

Liveblogging Al Gore's Games for Change Keynote

Former vice president Al Gore addresses the Games for Change summit today, kicking off three days of discussion about making games for social impact. Gore is co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management and co-founder and chairman of Current TV. More »

Proving Ground Co-Host Dies in Crash [Update]

Ryan Dunn, Jackass daredevil and co-host of G4's Proving Ground, died in a Pennsylvania car crash this morning. He was 34. Dunn's latest show, which co-stars IGN's Jessica Chobot and had the two testing memorable moments in video games, comics, TV and movies, premiered less than a week ago. Dunn... More »

Welcome to the Game Club: Shadows of the Damned a.k.a. the Five-Week Boner Joke

Howdy everyone! Welcome to the next installment of the Kotaku Game Club! Starting this week, through the month of July, we're going to play Shadows of the Damned, the third-person shooter from Resident Evil mastermind Shinji Mikami, and the crazy man behind No More Heroes, Suda 51. More »

Nintendo Believes the 3DS' Two Big Problems Have Been Fixed

The buzz on the Nintendo 3DS hasn't been good, I recently mentioned to Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime. I hear people complaining about a lack of must-play games and a lack of reasons to boot up the machine. More »

Accused Train Robber and Whiskey Thief Sets Sights on Game Consoles

An accused whiskey drinkin', train robbin', Xbox stealin' ne'er-do-well was picked up earlier this month after police say he stole more than $100,000 worth of Xbox 360s. Mario Ward and his accomplice William Flowers were arrested a couple of weeks back for stealing hundreds of Xbox 360's on... More »

If you know the name Jim Redner, there's a good chance you know him for the single Duke Nukem Forever tweet that caused a brief public relations shitstorm last week. If you don't, Jim Redner will tell you all about the "brain fart" that caused Duke Nukem Forever's publisher to drop him like a bad habit.

Redner, dropped by publisher 2K Games last week after calling out reviewers of Duke Nukem Forever for their "venom"—he later apologized—explains his side of the story at Wired's Epicenter.

The source of Redner's frustration that ultimately lead to that heated-then-deleted tweet, he writes, was one review in particular.

"It was a scathing diatribe masked as a review," Redner says. "Hate is a strong word, but I believe after reading his review it is fair to say that the reviewer hated the game."

"I overreacted when I read the review and I vented on Twitter," he continues. "It was an act of passion on my part that lacked objectivity. In my opinion, someone had gone over the top to attack the game and those who spent their lives trying to make it. Ultimately, I committed a cardinal sin in marketing."

(Gearbox Software founder Randy Pitchford recently offered more measured defenses of Duke Nukem Forever, which he likened to other guilty pleasures.)

Redner goes on to explain the process by which he fields what he says are hundreds (or more) requests for preview and review copies of games, a process that is largely governed by Metacritic weight and an outlet's coverage of the game before consumer interest peaks, right around launch day.

The man behind The Redner Group goes on to explain more about the thought process behind which media outlet often gets which games for reviews, noting that he never used the word "blacklisting" in his original lashing out on Twitter.

"Publishers are under no obligation to send out copies of their game for review," Redner writes. "They reserve the right to pick and choose who they want to send their game too, just like writers have the right to publish a review in any manner they choose. It's call[ed] selection. It's a choice. [...] I personally have sent first person shooter games to one editor knowing that he likes FPS games, but then not sent him a copy of a game based on our national pastime because I know he finds baseball boring. That's not blacklisting. It's a selection process."

There's a lot more where that came from, so if you're interested in some behind-the-scenes details on reviews and the people who control them, head to Wired.

Guest Column: My Side of the Duke Nukem Twitter ‘Brain Fart' [Wired]

I'm a bit of a physics hobbyist. That doesn't mean that I understand or can even converse in the language of motion, but I love reading about it.

So you can imagine my delight when ElectricPig wrote up something about a physics professor using Angry Birds to teach students about physics. Turns out he's not the only one, there's a slew of physics fans who have started using the game in classrooms.

I think Angry Birds' rising popularity in classrooms is driven by its overall popularity in pop culture, its direct use of physics and the fact that the game is now playable in a web browser. The fact that it's playable in a browser means it is much easier to capture your own footage of angry birds laying down a bit of revenge of obnoxious pigs.

Plenty of people have been writing about physics and these cartoon game birds, but my favorite has to be this little video-enhanced physics pop quiz.

I've dropped the questions in with each video. I don't know ANY of these answers but if you want to enlighten us in comments go right ahead. Sound smart enough and I promise I'll buy it.

Angry Birds in the Physics Classroom [Action-Reaction, via ElectricPig]

1. Make a reasonable estimate for the size of an angry bird, and determine the value of g in Angry Bird World. Why would the game designer want to have g be different than 9.8 m/s²?

2. Does the blue angry bird conserve momentum during its split into three?

3. Does the white bird conserve momentum when it drops its bomb? Why would the game designer want the white bird to drop its bomb the way that it does?

4. Describe in detail how the yellow bird changes velocity. You will need to analyze more than one flight path to answer this question.

5. Shoot an angry bird so that it bounces off one of the blocks. Determine the coefficient of restitution and the mass of the angry bird.

Angry Birds in the Physics Classroom [Action-Reaction, via ElectricPig]

In honor of "The Legend of Zelda" existing in this world for 25 years, Josh Dunbar created an amazing fan art poster to hang on your wall! (High-Res)

Now available to purchase at his art blog (18"x19" $25 | 11"x26" $45).

Zelda 25th Anniversary Tribute by Josh Dunbar (deviantART)

Need your daily fill of geek eye candy? If so, head over to Justin Page's Rampaged Reality and get your fix. Republished with permission.

Zipper Interactive has released a new DLC pack for SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy Seals. The "Pro Assault Pack" includes three new maps and two new guns—and is absolutely free, for registered SOCOM Pro members. [SOCOM Blog]

I'm supposed to be telling you about a new video game called Defiance, but... I have to tell you something else: I saw one guy controlling the game on an Xbox 360. Another was playing in on a PlayStation 3

But they were playing the same game, on their two distinct consoles, with each other.

I thought the cool thing about Trion's upcoming shooter-MMO Defiance was that the players of the console and PC game will somehow affect what happens on a related SyFy channel TV show.

That's why I went to meet with the Defiance people.

But I've got to keep pointing this out: this was one game, one shard of a game world, and yet I saw it played on two TVs hooked up to an Xbox 360 and a PlayStation 3 that were linked together for multiplayer.

I had expected science fiction from from Defiance, but I didn't expect this. It wasn't a magic trick. It was multiplayer console gaming without borders. And it won't be coming to a home near you.

Defiance is a third-person shooter set on a future earth that has been invaded by aliens. The game will play as a massively-multiplayer online third-person shooter, letting gamers team up for co-op missions or battle each other. In the brief gameplay sequence I saw in a theater demonstration earlier this month at the E3 gaming showcase in Los Angeles, the Xbox 360 player and the PlayStation 3 gamer teamed up to secure valuable crystals from a fallen alien terraforming satellite called an Arkfall. In the process, of course, they wound up in a massive firefight against aliens who wanted to protect the Arkfall from human pillaging. I saw what seemed to be solid third-person shooting amplified with the effects of coordinated team play.

That's cool, right? The world could use another attempt at the shooter-MMO, and PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC gamers would all be the richer for it?

By the time Trion global brand director Alex Rodberg started talking about how the game was tied into an upcoming Syfy TV show involving this same fiction, I must confess that I was already too distracted by this sight of cats and dogs playing together. Xbox 360 with PS3? How? And would that mean.... Xbox 360 vs. PS3?

No way.

Officially, Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s can't be wired together. Not with finished games. Rodberg told me that the demonstration I saw involved development hardware. Any device running a Defiance client (read: program) could be connected to the same server, he said. That's what I was seeing: developers showing off a unified-Germany of a video game, a game where divided console populations could mingle. This was something I'd never seen developers show off in the half-decade I've seen PS3 and Xbox 360 games demoed for me and my fellow reporters. And you, reader, will most likely never see this for yourself, not just because the Trion people wouldn't let me take a photo (these are basic single-console Defiance screenshots in this story, I'm sorry to say).

As cool as this sneak peek was, Trion can't let the finished Xbox 360 game connect to the PS3. "Microsoft won't let Sony players play against them," Rodberg said, before suggesting we change the topic to something less sensitive. Presumably the barrier is a corporate and/or technical incompatibility between the Xbox 360's Xbox Live and Sony's PS3/PSP PlayStation Network. Those services are separate enough that people who play, say, Call of Duty on one, can't play that game against owners of the other, rival console.

I checked with Microsoft to be sure Rodberg wasn't maybe just mis-hearing them. Maybe Microsoft wanted to break the barrier too? Here's a Microsoft spokesperson saying "no," while promoting how awesome the Xbox 360's online service is: "Xbox Live delivers the best entertainment experience unmatched by anyone else, with 35 million actively engaged members. We have a high level of expectation for our game developers to ensure that all Live experiences remain top notch. Because we can't guarantee this level of quality, or control the player experience on other consoles or gaming networks, we currently do not open our network to games that allow this cross-over capability."

It wouldn't matter much, I guess, if Sony was into this thing while Microsoft wasn't. It would matters as much as if DC Comics wanted Superman to punch Spider-Man again while Marvel Comics was holding out. I checked with Sony's public relations team, but they didn't come up with an official statement yet about how their company feels about the possibility of cross-console gaming.

Sony Online Entertainment's DC Universe Online does segregate its PC and PlayStation 3 players. The game's creators explain the division in their game's FAQ: "We want DC Universe Online to be an experience that's fun, rewarding and balanced for both console and PC gamers, so we've decided to keep the platforms separate."

Cross-platform multiplayer does exist. The Xbox 360 game Shadowrun let console gamers battle PC gamers. The upcoming racing game WipEout 2048 will let PS3 gamers compete against players of the PlayStation Vita. World of Warcraft gamers can group together regardless if they're on a PC or Mac.

Players of Final Fantasy XI say that they've been able to connect the PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 versions of that game together. The game's creators at Square-Enix even boast about their game's platform-agnostic sharing of worlds on their site, though, not having played FFXI I must confess that I'm having a hard time nailing down just how cleanly and completely that MMO's Xbox 360-PS2 cross-console play is supported. UPDATE: Several FFXI players have confirmed that cross-platform and cross-region play is fully supported, no strings attached.

Defiance won't allow for PS3 gamers to play with 360 gamers, but maybe we can forget that if their actual cross-platform connection between video games and a TV show works. The game will connect to Syfy's TV show that involves the same world. The drama of the invasion in Defiance isn't exactly humans vs. alien invaders. There are aliens who are trying to live happily alongside humans and others who hate them. That more complex friction will produce what will hopefully be a complex drama. Within that televised drama, Trion's Rodberg said, top Defiance players can expect to hear lead characters mention their gaming character. The show might demonstrate in some way that you, a top Defiance player is at the top of the game's leaderboard, Rodberg said. You might be "featured." And, in turn, as the TV series unfolds, the game will in some ways change. Rodberg kept things vague and wouldn't commit to players seeing their characters actually being played by actors. For all we can guess, the integration might be no more involved than a Defiance leaderboard ticker going across the TV screen while the show plays. But Rodberg made it sound like the connections would be cooler than that.

I went to to see the game Defiance with the same expectation I have when I attend most demonstrations for an upcoming video game: to write about an expected future. I saw one, but it was accompanied with the side distraction of a prohibited future. TV-that-connects-to-a-video game vs. rival-consoles-that-connect-to-each-other. Which of those futures really has the best shot? They both sure are wild.

This is the story of Binary Domain, a cautionary tale of a rise of the robots wrapped around a cover-based, third-person shooter. It's a game I was pretty neutral on after playing at E3 2011, but potentially good sci-fi fodder.

The game, from Yakuza and Super Monkey Ball creator Toshihiro Nagoshi and Sega, has facets more interesting than its well worn genre and mechanics. Players have to engender trust in their squadmates while fighting robotic forces that dynamically degrade under machine gun fire. Its futuristic storytelling may also be of interest, going by the above footage.

At the very least, its trailer is perfectly scored with some dramatic Godspeed You Black Emperor!-like rock that really sells the apocalyptic nature of a big gunfight with rebellious robots.

Binary Domain's brand of a bleak robot-infested future hits the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 early next year.

An accused whiskey drinkin', train robbin', Xbox stealin' ne'er-do-well was picked up earlier this month after police say he stole more than $100,000 worth of Xbox 360s.

Mario Ward and his accomplice William Flowers were arrested a couple of weeks back for stealing hundreds of Xbox 360's on Christmas morning.

Flowers and Ward are each charged with theft of property, $60,000 or more, and burglarizing a building. The duo reportedly stole around $100,000 in Xbox 360s from a south Memphis logistics company on the morning of Dec. 25, police say.

They would've gotten away with it too if it weren't for you pesky gamers! Detectives tracked down the Xbox burglars through users who had registered the stolen consoles online.

Flowers and Ward have been arrested for theft or burglary in the past. Though this is apparently their first accused video game heist, Ward has been connected to various crimes including stealing more than $20,000 worth of Jack Daniels whiskey from a train in Memphis. Ward has also been arrested on drug charges and criminal attempted first-degree murder.

Ward posted $60,000 bond and was released from Shelby County jail, was arraigned on Tuesday. He is due back in court this Tuesday. Bond for Flowers was set at $50,000. He is scheduled to be arraigned in Shelby County court on Monday.

The Commerical Appeal [Commercialappeal.com]

They won't tell us whether this fall's 10-years-later remake, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary will use the Kinect for voice control, gesture control or what, but Microsoft did tell us, today today, that the game's Kinect suport won't compromise the quality of the original game. Here's their official statement: "It's no surprise we're exploring ways Kinect can enhance game experiences in authentic and meaningful ways. The Kinect features we're exploring with 'Halo: Anniversary' are additive and will not affect the core gameplay experience or alter our mission of delivering a faithful recreation of the original game. That said we have nothing else to share just yet."