Further proof that giant swords designed by Japanese artists are entirely impractical in the real world, Michael "Giant swords are kinda my thing" Craughwell has built a 1:1 replica of Dante's Rebellion sword from the Devil May Cry series.
Built entirely from steel, and weighing a whopping 33.5 pounds, it doesn't look quite as manageable as it does in the games. It does still look awfully nice, though.
Especially when you see Craughwell run through the snow and smash a table with it. A table that's on fire.
The worst we normally get from irate psycopaths are angry/entertaining emails. For Zynga boss Mark Pincus, though, things are a lot more serious, to the point where he needs an absurd amount of security to ensure the safety of his family.
Since last year, Pincus claims that he's been stalked by a stripper, and while there are attempts to settle that particular case in court, other undisclosed threats have caused Zynga to spend around $1.37 million on security for both Pincus and his family.
While corporations spend big on the safety of their executives all the time, MarketWatch analysts believe this is well above the norm, putting Pincus in the same league as the bosses of companies like Lockheed Martin.
I know people hate Zynga games, and other people act crazy around the super-rich, but come on, people.
Reddit user lurker_becomes_lurkd has turned the draw distance on World of Warcraft all the way up to eleven, and in a series of screenshots lets us look down on the world of Azeroth as though we were Gods.
It's...clearly not designed to be seen from this kind of distance (it needed some tweaks to get the camera up there), but at the same time it still looks amazing, especially for a game that's approaching its tenth birthday. Shows what a strong colour palette can do your longevity.
This is very exciting. Nearly three years ago, I did a story on Han Solo Adventures, a fan-made project looking to bring the world the 1990s Lucasarts x Star Wars adventure game it never actually got.
Given this was three years ago, I'd given the project up for dead, but no. In the last few weeks it has sprung back into life, and better still, there is now gameplay footage.
Developer Stacy Davidson is doing the whole thing himself, and while it's clearly still got a bit to go, you can already see he's got the bones of a Lucasarts game - circa Fate of Atlantis, by the looks of it - down pat.
You can keep up with the project at its official site, linked below.
Get a cup of tea, a biscuit or two and settle in for ten minutes worth of Nintendo Power Glove propaganda, courtesy of the official VHS cassette guide to the peripheral.
It is something you really should watch. From the product placement to pseudo-religious tone throughout, it's as perfect a summary of one of Nintendo's most glorious failures as you're likely to see.
Due to the overwhelming popularity of its Smash Bros. series, a lot of people give Nintendo credit for pioneering the idea of a fighting game bringing together a company's mascots in the name of face-punching.
Sega fans, though, will know that Smash Bros. was just the latest in a long line of such titles. One that includes the amazing Fighters Megamix.
While Smash Bros. was released in 1999, Fighters Megamix was first released on the Sega Saturn in Japan in 1996. And while they're not quite the same game - SB being a more "open" style of game for multiple players while FM was a more traditional fighter - I'd say given they still fall within the same overall genre and are built largely around the same conceit, it's close enough.
Developed by the company's famous AM2 team (Out Run, Virtua Fighter), it featured a stellar cast of Sega heroes, some obvious inclusions in a fighting game, others...less so.
As it was developed by the Virtua Fighter team, it looks and plays quite similar to the pioneering 3D fighting series. It even, at first glance, appears to be a Virtua Fighter game, as half the game's initial roster is made up of characters from Virtua Fighter 2. The other half hailed from Sega's sadly-forgotten other fighting game series, Fighting Vipers.
Where things get awesome is in the game's massive roster of secret, unlockable characters. To stop it from being simply labelled Virtua Fighter X Fighting Vipers, the game included a dozen "special" characters, unlocked after beating the game's singleplayer modes (and in some cases entering special moves/cheat codes).
While some of these are improved versions of existing characters, others are a little crazy. You've got a couple of characters from a Sonic fighting game (which is such a great story in itself we'll get to another day). There's Janet, from Virtua Cop 2. There's a fighting Mexican bean, complete with sombrero, built especially just to be a secret character in this game.
Best of all, though, are two characters very close to the AM2 team's heart. One is called "Hornet", and is...one of the cars from Daytona USA. Not a transforming humanoid version. Just the car, standing up on its rear wheels, punching and kicking with its tyres. The other is a palm tree, which is the logo of the developer. Punching and kicking with its...palm leaves.
Which all sounds crazy, and it was, but what's important to remember is that this was also a great fighting game. It hit around the time the Virtua Fighter series was probably at its peak, and the fact it included such a bumper roster of fighters only made it all the more awesome.
Sadly, the game isn't available on the Virtual Console (perhaps because of licensing issues?), but it did receive a global release in 1997, so if you want to check it out you can grab copies on eBay for under $50.
Hello, Kotaku! I just thought I'd give you a nice and lovely and heartwarming image for your Tuesday night open thread. No reason other than that. Nope.
I hope you're having a good week so far. Here, gathered from around the internet, are some things to check out and talk about.
Here's Aimee Mann with "Little Bombs" - This is a good song! From a good album. Don't worry, I won't post Aimee Mann songs all week. But could you blame me if I did?
And that's what I've got for ya. Have good chatting, see you tomorrow.
Game Informer's Halo 4 issue is now out, and inside are details not just on the game's singleplayer campaign, but what new developers 343 studios are doing with the series' multiplayer as well.
Which is blah blah bullet points whatever. More interesting, to me at least, is that a big part of the fourth main game will be dealing with the impending death of your trusty sidekick Cortana.
Apparently complex AIs like Cortana have a limited shelf life, and hers is fast approaching. Seems after seven years spent crunching limitless amounts of data they begin to go crazy, then mad, then they die. So you'll be spending time with Cortana dealing with her life sentence, and I'm just guessing here, probably try and help her find a way to beat it.
Hopefully not in a Mass Effect 3/EDI kind of way, because this would then become a love story real fast, and that would be just weird.
Also noteworthy is a tease that you'll finally run into some of the series' mythical Forerunners, and that Halo's multiplayer set has been completely overhauled, now being based around something called Infinity. Peel back the PR jargon and it appears Infinity is an attempt to tie the game's multiplayer to its singleplayer, so as to give it more context and meaning within the larger scope of the game.
Infinity is the name of a massive UNSC ship, deployed to the same area that Master Chief winds up in and which you'll cross paths with a few times during the singleplayer campaign. Boot up multiplayer, though, and you'll play as a Spartan onboard the ship.
Alongside regular multiplayer battles there's also a co-op campaign you can play, and which in a neat touch is episodic, with new cutscenes and five new missions being added each week.
I like the sound of this. I rarely play multiplayer because it all feels so abstract and impersonal. Tie it more closely into a narrative and I may just stick around. Especially since 343 say they'll be free.
On the technical side of things, respawn times are gone, there's a whole ton of in-game awards to be earned and weapon drops are now random.
Further proof that giant swords designed by Japanese artists are entirely impractical in the real world, Michael "Giant swords are kinda my thing" Craughwell has built a 1:1 replica of Dante's Rebellion sword from the Devil May Cry series.
The worst we normally get from irate psycopaths are angry/entertaining emails. For Zynga boss Mark Pincus, though, things are a lot more serious, to the point where he needs an absurd amount of security to ensure the safety of his family.
