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The people obsessed with uncovering gaming’s deepest, darkest secrets For some, playing a video game to completion isn’t enough. They want to reveal the secrets behind its creation.
This article was originally published March 2016. For some, playing a video game to completion isn’t enough. They want to reveal the secrets behind its creation. Turning their fevered gaze towards cut content and cancelled games, these individuals assemble in online communities, their goal being to uncover fresh information about our favourite games and the abandoned titles we never got to play. Unseen64 is one such community. Started by a group of Italian friends in 2001, the website has grown into an international venture, staffed by volunteers from all around the globe. These volunteers are responsible for scouring the web for news about unfinished and rejected games, to archive for…
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Does the C64 Mini’s games library do the Commodore 64 justice? The real reason it trumped the Speccy and Amstrad was breadth and quality of software.
Hacker receives developer-sanctioned death penalty in Guild Wars 2 Sweet justice.
10 reasons Alien: Isolation is the greatest survival horror game ever made I really loved about this game. But I’m writing this with all the lights in my house on.
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ESA doxes over 2,000 journalists and content creators attending E3 The accidentally released excel sheet contains names, e-mails, phone numbers, and addresses.
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has doxxed over 2,000 E3 media attendees by accidentally posting a list containing their sensitive personal data. The excel sheet, first revealed by independent game journalist Sophia Narwitz, contains the names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and private residences of media attendees ranging from journalists to content creators. It has been available online and linked to on a publicly viewable page on ESA’s website since the most recent E3 in June, and only 404’d after Narwitz contacted the ESA to inform them of the privacy breach. We can confirm that at the time of posting, the list remains publicly available on archive websites. According to a…
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“You will suffer beyond imagination!” WoW Classic player fights girlfriend while streaming Annoy this WoW nerd and you will suffer beyond imagination, you will see the punishment.
10 great adventure games everyone must try From the games we grew up with to the best modern examples of this wonderful genre.
They really did that?! Little known games from big developers Before Naughty Dog made Uncharted, it made the wacky comedy game Keef the Thief.
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Diablo creator David Brevik spills the beans on Blizzard A noticeably drunk Brevik joins increasing number of former employees speaking out about the issues at Blizzard.
There’s no one else in the world who would know more about the company than the executives who used to work there, and they are now speaking out about the issues at Blizzard. The studio has come under fire for its treatment of its fans following the announcement of Diablo Immortal — a mobile game that no one in the Diablo community asked for. As I described in my previous video, the studio has come into the habit of burning its bridges with the community by focusing on making money and less on delivering quality products. Blizzard appears to have lost its way, and the reason why has been elaborated…
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Gaming’s most persistent myths and urban legends, debunked From blowing in cartridges to Lara Croft nude cheats and the secret Windows95 devil program. I’m sure you believe in at least one of these falsehoods.
The making of Firewatch The story behind one of 2016's most unusual, human and thought-provoking games.
‘Experiment 12’: the disturbing result of 12 indie devs taking turns to make a game Our look inside the strange chaingame made by 12 different indie developers.
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Inside the troubled development of Star Citizen After five years, more than $124 million in fan funding and nothing close to a finished game, Star Citizen has become a lightning-rod for controversy. What’s really been going on?
For the past seven months, I’ve been talking to the people who have been making Star Citizen. This includes its directors, a number of anonymous sources who’ve worked on it, and the man who drives the whole project: Chris Roberts. From the outside, Star Citizen appears to have been wildly successful; to date, it has raised more than $124 million from passionate fans. The money has allowed its developer, Cloud Imperium Games, to open studios around the world and employ more than 325 talented developers. Behind the closed doors of CIG’s studios, however, it’s been far from an easy ride, according to staff. They have all faced a unique challenge:…
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You’ll never be able to afford these top gaming battlestations MOM! BATHROOM!
Mortal Kombat has kept a secret for 24 years That's... a long time to keep a secret. Huh.
Playing with the human side of history Games traditionally present history as monolithic spectacle, but this new breed focuses on the individual experience of simply existing alongside great events.
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How an activist subverted the Mega Man franchise Leaked chat logs vindicate Mighty No. 9 fans.
Gamers are right to temper their expectations for new games. Given how disappointing some of the most overhyped titles, like the recent No Man’s Sky, have been, the cynicism is warranted. But no one expects a game they’re looking forward to playing to become subverted with notions of “social justice.” Action games like Mega Man have never imparted any sort of political message apart from overly simplistic notions of good versus evil—standard video game stuff. Fans enjoyed these games not just for their gameplay, but for their simplicity in storytelling and straightforward design. When Mighty No. 9 was announced in mid-2013 as a spiritual sequel to the Mega Man series…
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Former jewel thief reviews GTA 5’s jewelry heists A former jewel thief has taken Grand Theft Auto 5’s heists to task, and explains how he would have done it instead.
J. B. Harold: the 20-million-selling game series you’ve never heard of With their labyrinthine plots and adult themes, the J.B. Harold games drummed up huge sales in Japan. But despite their success, they never made it to Europe.
25 years later, how Super Metroid came to define a genre It drastically reimagined how people would think about action games, and still shows up on “best game of all time” lists to this day.
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The No Man’s Sky leak is a darkly amusing outragefest A leaker’s early review dashed hopes for those who expected No Man’s Sky to be the gaming messiah.
No Man’s Sky fans, to put it lightly, have been quite spirited surrounding the release of the innovative space explorer. When the game’s creator, Sean Murray, previously announced delays, he was bombarded with death threats along with a Kotaku reporter who wrote about it. No Man’s Sky fans have projected ungodly levels of hype onto a game they knew little about, as the game appears to offer a completely unique procedurally generated gameplay experience, something extremely rare for major releases. And now with a little over a week before the game will finally be available to the hordes of rabid fans, leaked copies are creating all sorts of drama. More death threats, denial, a whole…
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The bittersweet (and sour) search for Chinese representation in games Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan may be symbols of pride for Chinese people, but you don't quite feel that when passing idiots shout their name at you.
Paypigs revolt after glitch reveals “cute goddess”‘ real face — and age "Her Royal Highness" Qiao Biluo's false online representation tricked Chinese men out of oodles of cash, and now they're trying to charge it back.
Legendary Commodore 64 Daffy Duck game finally found, playable for first time It’s a 228KB download, which was huge for the time.
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Mortal Kombat has kept a secret for 24 years That's... a long time to keep a secret. Huh.
Mortal Kombat, the game from 1992, had hidden a secret menu from us all until late in 2015. Now that’s some pretty subtle secret-keeping skills for a series so utterly lacking in subtlety. It’s a developer menu present on Mortal Kombat, as well as its sequels Mortal Kombat 2, 3 and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, accessed on the arcade versions by inputting a sequence of button presses. The long-hidden dev menus allows such fun things as checking the arcade machine is running all nice and funky-like, a ‘hello’ shout-out screen and the ability to watch each and every character’s ending at the push of a button. I likely would have…
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69 things you need to do in GTA before you die So you think you’re done with Liberty City? Think again.
The craziest things people ever did to persuade parents to buy video games Kids can be very creative when they want something.
Arming the citizens of GTA V leads to absolute chaos Modders have patched in the 'Crazy Peds' cheat from San Andreas.
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A conspiracy of silence: How NDAs are harming the games industry Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) have long been a fact of doing business in video games - but their enforcement can have wide-ranging, negative effects.
Big business likes to talk on its own terms, in video games as elsewhere. Announcements about upcoming games are delivered according to strict marketing schedules, while the biggest publishers only allow their developers to discuss their work with both the press and the public within very specific timeframes. To prevent information leaks outside of approved timeslots, most big developers require their employees to sign non-disclosure agreements, usually referred to as NDAs. These legal contracts prohibit developers from external discussion of a project without prior permission. Giving an unsolicited interview, letting slip information on social media, or even discussing a project with friends over drinks, can potentially result in punitive action against the…
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These are the most controversial games of all time, according to science We’re sitting here with a beautiful big dataset from Metacritic. It's time.
Eleven years on, Resident Evil 4 is still a masterpiece What makes a game that’s as campy as Rocky Horror shine.
The games players love more than critics We use statistical analysis to shine some light on the divide between video game players and critics.
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Ubisoft security fail: up to 58 million email addresses and passwords stolen No credit card details, however.
Ubisoft are the latest victims in a string of hacking attempts over the last six months or so. This one was successful in stealing the usernames and passwords of possibly all 58 million customers. The good news is that credit card details and other similar sensitive information is not stored on the server that was hacked, so private information remains safe. From Ubisoft support: Security update regarding your Ubisoft account – please create a new password We recently found that one of our Web sites was exploited to gain unauthorised access to some of our online systems. We instantly took steps to close off this access, to begin a thorough…
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Metroid Prime like you’ve never seen it before An extract from the new issue of Heterotopias.
The Mission: the most bizarre soccer game ever made "Once you have acquired the ball it is used as your main weapon against the Ninjas."
The state of health Nobody wants to die. But were games more fun when we still could?
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Catacombs: the inside story of Square Enix’ canceled shooter It’s always a great shame when a game is cancelled, but much more so when a genuine original is lost.
It’s always a great shame when a game is cancelled, but much more so when a genuine original is lost. Catacombs, the Square Enix shooter that was revealed by Siliconera in April of this year, fell firmly into that category: its fast-paced, team-based shooting owed a debt to Valve’s Left 4 Dead, but its narrative was distinctive, dealing with themes of perception, existence, and social and cultural disharmony in an uncommonly bold manner. What began as a simple story of four treasure hunters exploring a mansion became something much more interesting. The Siliconera leak was satisfying for the man behind the transformation, narrative director Brandon Sheffield, who had worked on…
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The magic of video game cartography Video game maps shift and redraw the borders between real and imaginary.
The doomed heroes of Dark Souls Beneath the chivalric castles and lofty cathedrals of Lordran beats the bitter, pagan heart of Beowulf.
Why Zelda dungeons are so great Let's dig into how the dungeons work so well with Mark Brown's great crash-course.
