E3 is a time for a lot of huffery and puffery about video games, much of which turns out to be true—just not all of it.

The bluster is biggest when a new console is being launched. Promises are made or at least implied. Then the system comes out. So. The Wii U. It just came out. Let's rewind to the Nintendo press conference of E3 2011. During that conference, Nintendo showed the Wii U for the first time, explained the system's bizarre controller and even got 10 prominent people who make games to praise the GamePad.

Who were these people and what did they deliver?

You can watch the video above, as it aired during Nintendo's conference.

Or you can read the list below. Each person gets a 'Yes' next to them if they announced or released a Wii U game. They get a "No" if they did not.

• Peter Moore, EA. Yes (EA released Madden, FIFA, and Mass Effect for Wii U)
• Karthik Bala, Vicarious Visions. Yes (VV developed the Wii U version of Skylanders Giants)
• Danny Bilson, THQ. Yes (A post-Bilson THQ put out Darksiders 2 for launch.)
• Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft. Yes (Weird asterisk on this one: He promised Assassin's Creed and Ghost Recon Online. The latter is MIA. But Ubi did deliver ZombiU, Rabbids Land and Just Dance 4 to complement ACIII.)
• Martin Tremblay, WBIE. Yes (Warner Brothers released Batman Arkham City and the next guy's game on launch day.)
• Jeremiah Slaczka, 5th Cell. Yes (This occasional Kotaku columnist's studio released Scribblenauts Unlimited for Wii U.)
• Katsuhiro Harada, Namco Bandai. Yes (Namco released Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Tank Tank Tank for Wii U)
• Ken Levine, Irrational. No (Odd? A month later he told IGN that his BioShock Infinite studio had "no plans to do any games for that platform." BioShock Infinite comes out in February for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC, but Nintendo themselves can't yet explain why it's not announced (coming?) to Wii U. I reached out to a PR rep for any comment and no update was to be had. Oh well.)
• Warren Spector, Junction Point. Yes (His team's Epic Mickey 2 came out for Wii U on launch day.)
• Frank Gibeau, EA. Yes (See Peter Moore.)

Nine out of ten. So close to perfection!

Edmund McMillen's The Binding of Isaac gave players a horrific, addictive roguelike experience when it came out last year. After a planned 3DS release was scuttled, the only place to play the super-tough dungeon crawler has been on PC platforms. But Isaac is being reborn for consoles, with a new edition that packs even more stuff into an already burly game.

Detailed in a blog post by McMillen, Binding of Isaac: Rebirth will be produced by Nicalis, the studio that ported indie hit VVVVVV to the 3DS. Lots of changes will be coming to Rebirth, including new content cut from the Flash version and local two-player co-op. McMillen also says that the art style and other elements will be changing:

-Nicalis is working on the port for Ps3/Vita and PC (steam) and is also currently talking to MS and Nintendo about releasing on their platforms. we are also looking into an iOS version if its not garbage.

-The game will go into full time development the 1st of the year and is set to be finished by the end of the year (but we know how this stuff goes)

-The game will be getting a full 16bit make over, im doing this because i think the art is tired and im sick of looking at it. i think a fresh coat of paint is needed and i think its kinda appropriate/funny to do a damake for the remake.

As mentioned above, there's no timeframe for the release of Binding of Isaac: Rebirth but with all the work that appears to be going into it, this might be the best version of an already good game.

Celebrating 40 years of Atari's take on video game tennis, Pong World transforms those primitive paddles into furry animated monsters, because why the hell not?

Pong World is the end result of the Pong Indie Developer Challenge, a contest that gave small devs a chance to deliver their take on the game that launched a thousand arcades. zGames' fabulously furry Pong World took home top honors, and now it's available for free on iTunes for all the Pong-y people.

Pong World mixes up the classic formula with upgrade-able paddles, multiple game modes and spin physics, the sort of things I'm sure would have been in the original had the technology been capable (or not).

It's rather splendid, especially when played head-to-head against a friend. It doesn't feel much like Pong, but then what else has? Hooray for 40 years of trying to recapture the magic!

Lekki, a French company specialising in the restoration and resale of old electronic devices, has recently turned their eyes towards the PAL version of the Super Nintendo console.

Fixing old units, cleaning them up and giving them a new coat of paint, they're not cheap—around €150—but considering the work that's gone into it, and the fact you'll be one of the only people on the planet with an orange SNES, for many it'll be worth it. Especially since it also comes with a Super Mario World cartridge.

You can check out their store below (where they also sell Game Boys).

Super Nintendo [Lekki, via NWE]

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Via VG247, here's a first look at Dirty Bomb, an upcoming PC first-person shooter from Splash Damage, the developers of last year's Brink, with what looks to be a nuclear twist.

Dirty Bomb Splash Damage Trailers [VG247]

Smartphone game Galaxy Dungeon is Square Enix's attempt to mix card-based action with role-playing game elements. The mecha heroines caught the attention of some gamers, and there was some fanfare when it was recently released.

Things seemed to be going well for Galaxy Dungeon. Then, there was a bug—a bug that now looks like it might actually be a hack.

In social games like Galaxy Dungeon, cards are precious. Players invest time and money to get those cards. So when those precious cards began disappearing from player's accounts, people notice. This caused Square Enix to scramble to perform maintenance early this morning.

The deadline for this morning's 6am maintenance was missed. That deadline was in turn extended to 6pm, and then missed. This evening, the deadline was extended to tomorrow. The developer did note that it's possible to restore the missing cards. At this point that isn't really the concern.

On Japan's largest bulletin board 2ch, images that are supposedly of a Chinese chat board allegedly show people begging a user to sell them rare cards. There is also talk about the hack and the maintenance—and someone even says that the maintenance is "pointless" because they will "keep hacking" unless the entire app gets an update.

"We'll give you a surprise tomorrow," wrote another commenter in the same thread. The implication, if this thread is real, is that the hackers are supposedly in it.

Now Galaxy Dungeon players are worried that this card disappearance "bug" was a hack. Along with the alleged Chinese hacking, there's speculation that someone was banned and is getting revenge. "There aren't bugs that erase cards," wrote one 2ch user. Maybe there are, and maybe there aren't. What is certain is that many players are not only feeling exposed, but also confused and angry.

Tomorrow, Galaxy Dungeon's maintenance is slated to finish. If there are more details that come to light, Square Enix will probably make them known.

スクエニの新作ソーシャルゲーム『ギャラクシーダンジョン』が中国人にハックされて阿鼻叫喚らしい [へちま]

ギャラクシーダンジョン [2ch]

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For those of you who saw the first 6 minutes and 38 seconds of the new Evangelion movie, you were treated to scenes of a space battle involving giant biological humanoid… things (the creators at Gainax have emphatically stated that Evas are NOT robots or mechs and should not be called as such). The whole spectacle was pretty dramatic, with lots of technical mumbo jumbo in the background to build the atmosphere.

Well, apparently it wasn't all for show. According to the Tokyo Metropolitan University Space Systems Laboratory, the whole thing was pretty much legit...

In an article posted on their homepage, the members of the Space Systems Laboratory picked apart the 6 minute space heist in the Evangelion movie, from the basic jargon to the actual physics involved. While the giant biologically engineered almost-humans with deus ex machina-type barriers is obviously a technological fantasy, most of the rest of the space scene was not. The SSL article even describes how the movement of the jettisoned boosters was accurate.

The article goes into technical depths that honestly make my head spin. The descriptions of the speeds involved for the space rendezvous between the Eva Unit 2' and the imprisoned Eva Unit 1 made my eyes roll back into my head. Nevertheless, I was able to decipher enough to understand that 1: These people knew what they were talking about, and 2: The things that happened in the beginning of the movie made sense.

As accurate as the space physics involved in the 6 and a half minute intro were, the writers of the SSL article did find 3 inaccuracies.

1: Inside the cockpit. The entry plugs of the Evas are filled with L.C.L, a breathable liquid that helps pilots synchronize with the Eva units. While throughout the movies, the viscosity of L.C.L. has been treated as less than water, almost to be as thin as air, treating it as such and depicting the movement of things inside it as though it was not there is a little strange. Of course, this little nitpick is not exactly something that is restricted to the first 6 minutes of the movie.

2: The plume from the reverse thrust which takes place after the Eva Unit 2' makes contact with the Unit 1's coffin is inaccurate. Considering that this reverse thrust takes place roughly 100 kilometers above the Earth's surface (which can be assumed from the size of the Earth in the scene), there should be enough atmosphere to change the shape of the plume to a more rounded and thicker burst.

3: The fuel efficiency. This was another part where just trying to read it made me dizzy, but basically what it boiled down to was that considering the design of the boosters and rockets, there was apparently a more efficient way to execute the operation. (But it probably wouldn't have been as exciting.)

Despite what inaccuracies the movie had, overall it seems to stand (aside from the existence of the Evas themselves). On further research, it's been discovered that the individual Gainax went to for advice on the space scene was one Satoshi Hosoda, an engineer at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency who was involved with the development of the ion engine system of the Hayabusa spacecraft. I guess it makes sense that most of the space stuff was accurate.

In other Eva news, a new trailer has been released by Gainax. It's pretty spoiler heavy so, view it at your own peril.

ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版：Q_冒頭6分38秒_宇宙考証の解説 [首都大学東京システムデザイン学部航空宇宙システム工学コース・宇宙システム研究室]

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For those of you who saw the first 6 minutes and 38 seconds of the new Evangelion movie, you were treated to scenes of a space battle involving giant biological humanoid… things (the creators at Gainax have emphatically stated that Evas are NOT robots or mechs and should not be called as such). The whole spectacle was pretty dramatic, with lots of technical mumbo jumbo in the background to build the atmosphere.

Well, apparently it wasn't all for show. According to the Tokyo Metropolitan University Space Systems Laboratory, the whole thing was pretty much legit...

In an article posted on their homepage, the members of the Space Systems Laboratory picked apart the 6 minute space heist in the Evangelion movie, from the basic jargon to the actual physics involved. While the giant biologically engineered almost-humans with deus ex machina-type barriers is obviously a technological fantasy, most of the rest of the space scene was not. The SSL article even describes how the movement of the jettisoned boosters was accurate.

The article goes into technical depths that honestly make my head spin. The descriptions of the speeds involved for the space rendezvous between the Eva Unit 2' and the imprisoned Eva Unit 1 made my eyes roll back into my head. Nevertheless, I was able to decipher enough to understand that 1: These people knew what they were talking about, and 2: The things that happened in the beginning of the movie made sense.

As accurate as the space physics involved in the 6 and a half minute intro were, the writers of the SSL article did find 3 inaccuracies.

1: Inside the cockpit. The entry plugs of the Evas are filled with L.C.L, a breathable liquid that helps pilots synchronize with the Eva units. While throughout the movies, the viscosity of L.C.L. has been treated as less than water, almost to be as thin as air, treating it as such and depicting the movement of things inside it as though it was not there is a little strange. Of course, this little nitpick is not exactly something that is restricted to the first 6 minutes of the movie.

2: The plume from the reverse thrust which takes place after the Eva Unit 2' makes contact with the Unit 1's coffin is inaccurate. Considering that this reverse thrust takes place roughly 100 kilometers above the Earth's surface (which can be assumed from the size of the Earth in the scene), there should be enough atmosphere to change the shape of the plume to a more rounded and thicker burst.

3: The fuel efficiency. This was another part where just trying to read it made me dizzy, but basically what it boiled down to was that considering the design of the boosters and rockets, there was apparently a more efficient way to execute the operation. (But it probably wouldn't have been as exciting.)

Despite what inaccuracies the movie had, overall it seems to stand (aside from the existence of the Evas themselves). On further research, it's been discovered that the individual Gainax went to for advice on the space scene was one Satoshi Hosoda, an engineer at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency who was involved with the development of the ion engine system of the Hayabusa spacecraft. I guess it makes sense that most of the space stuff was accurate.

In other Eva news, a new trailer has been released by Gainax. It's pretty spoiler heavy so, view it at your own peril.

ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版：Q_冒頭6分38秒_宇宙考証の解説 [首都大学東京システムデザイン学部航空宇宙システム工学コース・宇宙システム研究室]

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Yakuza 5 is scheduled for release in Japan next week and the developers at Sega are in full PR mode. Executive producer Toshihiro Nagoshi and producer Masayoshi Yokoyama spoke to Weekly Famitsu in a pre-release interview to talk about the latest in the Yakuza franchise.

As the 5th numbered Yakuza game, the development has had plenty of experience in making these games, but as the story gets grander, the development team has been under a lot of pressure to up the experience and outdo the previous games. Indeed, Yakuza 5 looks to be the most voluminous game in the series so far. "Honestly, 6 months ago I was wondering, ‘Will we even be able to properly release a game with this much content?'" said Yokoyama. "There was a time when I thought, ‘it might not all fit?' but thanks to the efforts of the staff, it all came together."

In order to make the game experience as smooth and enjoyable as possible, the development team took extra care. One of the biggest hurdles they faced was finding ways to decrease the load time to maintain the players' immersion. "Our goal [in development] this time was to shorten the loading times. As a result, I feel the entire game pace has gone up." explained Yokoyama. "Compared to other Yakuza games, you get a more dense play experience in the same amount of time." Nagoshi added, "Starting with load times, we paid the closest attention to the "courtesy" to the user in the game's development."

The game overall is indeed dense. Yokoyama himself took 72 hours to clear the game on a test run. Nevertheless, the developers focused on making the time spent playing the game as enjoyable as possible. "More than anything else, I want people to experience the story to its conclusion." Nagoshi stated. "I believe our true goal is to have 100% of players finish the game."

The developers placed a great deal of confidence in their latest game and hopefully it will live up to everything we've seen and heard. But until next week, we'll just have to take these gentlemen's word for it. "Fans of the Yakuza series should be able to play the game and feel, 'The Yakuza has truly come this far.' And I think that first time players will be able to pick up the game and think 'I never realized there were games like this.'" said Nagoshi. "Please, have faith in us and give it a try."

Yakuza 5 is scheduled for release in Japan on December 6th. No western release date has yet been announced.

Incidentally, the Japanese subtitle for Yakuza 5 is, "Yume, Kanaeshi Mono" (夢、叶えし者). Translated, it means essentially, "One who makes dreams come true." Maybe the English title of the game will be, Yakuza 5: The Dreammaker…

ファミ通.com [ファミ通.com]

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Kids these days! With their computers and fancy software, they get up to all kinds of fun, doing things like freaking out the internet, for example. Oh to be young!

Earlier this year, it was a bit of a thing in China for teens to post altered photos of themselves with pointy chins and enormous eyes—a culmination of the ideal anime face and anime eyes.

Now, that trend seems to have reached critical mass in neighboring South Korea. (Because it wasn't at critical mass before?) According to reports, these photos were uploaded by a self-professed 13 year-old in South Korea, who apparently wrote, "I wish everyone would get plastic surgery like mine!"

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These photos do look like arcade sticker pictures that have had the hell Photoshopped out of them, just as those photos emerging out of China earlier this year did, too. Online in Japan, where the images have spread through numerous blogs, many are saying the pics look like they've worked Photoshop to death—as well as saying the snaps resemble Picassos. Modern art!

Even though they appear to be altered and even though gamers see all sorts of manufactured horrors in the titles they play, that doesn't stop these photos from being this: scary as hell. Sweet dreams.

韓国人の整形の方向性が斜め上どころじゃねぇｗｗｗｗ [2ch via ソニック速報]

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