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What’s this little green dinosaur’s name? If you said “Yoshi” we’ve got news for you…

Nicknames can be confusing things, especially when they’re the only name by which you’ve ever known someone. I can clearly remember the moment when my friend’s Japanese wife looked at me with a mixture of surprise and betrayal, for example, when she found out that Phil (or “Firu” as it’s awkwardly pronounced in Japanese) is in fact short for Philip.

But after learning that the same green dinosaur that I’ve traversed hundreds of levels, raced go-karts and carried baby Mario back to his parents with since I was about 10 years old isn’t actually called Yoshi, I can kind of understand why she was so shocked.

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Nintendo’s Mercedes-Benz for Mario Kart 8 is actually kind of depressing

Nintendo’s business is in dire straights, and has been for three consecutive years. Perhaps that’s why the company let Mercedes-Benz sponsor three new cars into its cartoonish racing game for the Wii U, in the form of a free downloadable content (DLC) package set to release at the end of the month.

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The awesome costumed fans of Nagoya’s World Cosplay Summit 【Photos】

With schools in both Japan and abroad on summer vacation, we’re right in the prime seasons for pop culture events like San Diego Comic-Con and Chiba Prefecture’s Wonder Festival. We recently attended both, snapping pictures of all the cool cosplay costumes, but the hobby’s most prestigious gathering was yet to come.

Last weekend the 2014 World Cosplay Summit was held in the city of Nagoya. Our own cosplay efforts aren’t quite competition-level, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t enjoy all the awesome costumes that were, so we grabbed our camera and hopped on the Shinkansen.

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Not as easy as it looks! The making of viral video “Mario Jumps into Battle”

Just under a week ago, a fan-made video featuring Nintendo’s Super Mario appeared online. Titled “Smash Bros. Mario Jumps Into Battle”, it showed the portly plumber doing a bit of shopping in a real-life Tokyo store before realising that he was late for his appointment in Nintendo’s upcoming brawler, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS, and dashing across the capital city.

Due to its incredible animation and clever blending of real and computer-generated images, the video was quickly picked up by a number of gaming news sites (and shared on our own Facebook page) and scored thousands of hits in the blink of an eye. But even short videos like this don’t just pop out of question-mark blocks; they take weeks of hard work…

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And the most popular video game developer in Japan is…

Whether you’re an avid gamer with over 100 titles in your library or you prefer to buy only new installments of your favorite series, chances are you have a favorite video game developer or two in mind. In an attempt to draw out the most popular names, one recent internet poll asked 500 Japanese men and women to share their opinions about their favorite game developers.

Can you guess the top three in the correct order? 

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Amazing Game Boy smartphone wallpaper brings out the Nintendo fanboy in us all

Despite the fact that kids today don’t seem to fully appreciate the simple perfection that is the original Game Boy, there is something about that brick-sized grey piece of plastic that can instantly remind almost any 20- or 30-something video game enthusiast of our early gaming days basking in the dull green glow of the monochrome LCD screen. And even though most of us now have a phone in our pocket with specs that blow the Game Boy away, Nintendo’s portable will always hold a special place in our hearts.

So when a Japanese net user caught a glimpse of a co-worker’s expertly crafted smartphone wallpaper, the Internet exploded in one voice—GIMME.

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Luigi’s ‘death stare’ makes it into Japanese Mario Kart 8 commercial

Luigi’s competitive dark side was discovered back in May with the release of Mario Kart 8. Dubbed “Luigi’s Death Stare,” the character achieved meme status after appearing in a multitude of fan videos on YouTube. Nintendo, perhaps intentionally, included Luigi’s now signature look in a recent Japanese Mario Kart commercial.

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One of the reasons I’ve done most of my video gaming with a console instead of a PC is the simplicity, on the consumer end, of the hardware. After plopping down the money for the system, you’re pretty much good to go, without the need to continually tinker with and incrementally upgrade it in order to play the latest games.

Still, that doesn’t mean everyone is satisfied to leave well enough alone in the console and handheld world, as evidenced by the piles of hardware add-ons that have been released over the years. Not every addition is a good one, though, as illustrated by the Japanese gamers who flocked to website Niconico News to share their video game peripheral horror stories.

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Keep your iPhone safe and retro-gamer chic with Famicom protective film

Yesterday, Nintendo’s Famicom, known internationally as the NES, celebrated its 31st birthday. While it may not have been the first video game console, the way Nintendo’s 8-bit system combined, for its time, high-end processing power, pleasing aesthetics, and user-friendliness elevated it to a level above both its predecessors and would-be rivals.

The Famicom was the sort of sweeping, segment-defining success that didn’t come along again until the iPhone took over the smartphone market. Now, you can combine those two iconic pieces of Nintendo and Apple hardware with a Famicom protective film for your iPhone.

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Is boob-shaped controller a clever gag ad, pie in the sky dream, or the future of gaming? 【Video】

While plenty of video games use busty female characters to try to spice up their gameplay and drum up sales, few are as unabashed and exuberant in their mammary motivations as Senran Kagura. The bosomy brainchild of producer Kenichiro Takaki, Senran Kagura is an action title centered on a group of young female ninja that lets players fight hordes of enemies while staring at oversized, under-supported breasts.

Recently, though, a new round of inspiration smacked Takaki in the face, as he realized that cramming his series full of prodigious chests is only half of the equation of letting people play games with big breasts.

So he set out to design a game controller shaped like a pair of boobs.

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Happy birthday, Famicom! The console that bought video games back from the dead turns 31 today

The Nintendo Family Computer, which quickly came to be known by the abbreviation-loving Japanese simply as the Famicom, was launched in its native land in 1983, a time when the world was still in black-and-white and people travelled to work by horse-drawn cart. It was a grim, unforgiving time, but games like Donkey Kong and Popeye made life that bit brighter, and before long people even had electricity and TV sets to connect their new consoles to instead of just staring at the back of the games’ boxes.

Today, on this space-age date of July 15, 2014, the Famicom turns 31 years old, so we felt it would be a good time to think about just how much we owe this little bundle of plastic and circuitry.

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Keep running right with new line of Super Mario Bros-themed sneakers from Converse

Although Mario is occasionally seen riding atop his faithful dinosaur companion Yoshi, and Mercedes-Benz recently hooked him up with a pretty sweet ride, Nintendo’s biggest hero has spent most of his adventures on foot. Even after three decades of running and jumping, though, Mario always seems up for the latest physical challenge life throws at him.

He must have some pretty comfortable shoes, and now thanks to Converse, you can try on a pair of Mario kicks for yourself.

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Why did we blow into NES cartridges? 【Video】

It’s 1987. You’re looking awesome in your oversized Michael Jackson “Bad” t-shirt as you slot a chunky, grey game cartridge into your NES console. But instead of the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt title screen, all you see is a jumbled-up mess of an image that looks like an 8-bit Picasso. What do you do? The same thing everyone did – you take the game cartridge out, blow into it, and put it back in. Lo, and behold: this time the game loads perfectly and you can squish goombas or shoot ducks to your heart’s content.

But in the pre-internet age, how did we all “know” to blow into cartridges? And like rubbing the magnetic strip on a credit card or shaking a Polaroid photo, why did we keep doing it even when product manufacturers and scientists insisted that it didn’t work and could actually cause damage? Joe Hanson, biologist and author of the popular science blog It’s Okay To Be Smart, offers up some answers in a neat YouTube video asking just that.

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Feel lame and old by watching kids react to a Nintendo Game Boy for the first time

In the latest episode of their popular “React” series, YouTubers The Fine Bros decided to give their group of tech-savvy kids none other than an original Nintendo Game Boy to see what they’d make of it. As you might expect, what with the portable console now being roughly 25 years old, many of the kids had absolutely no idea what it was, nor even how to turn the thing on.

So join us after the jump to see little kids fumbling to insert game cartridges, failing to find the power switch and saying things like “You have to actually press buttons” and “I kinda feel sad for the people in the past.”

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【TBT】Tokyo’s Pico Pico Cafe: Where video games meet coffee

Despite having visited the town of Kichijoji in Tokyo on a near daily basis for over a year, it wasn’t until I sat down with video game developer James Kay and started chatting about our mutual love of pixels and coffee that I learned about Pico Pico Cafe, a cosy corner perched at the top of a eight-storey building just minutes from Kichijoji station.

After dropping the staff a line, RocketNews24 headed over for a coffee and a chat. We hadn’t gone two steps inside, however, before we found ourselves completely enamoured with the unique cafe’s warm, homely interior and – perhaps most of all for this life-long gamer – the subtle dashes of video game culture in every other nook and cranny.

Tons of cool photos after the jump.

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Behold: The world’s fastest Super Mario Bros. speed run

Truth be told, I’ve never been a huge fan of video game speed runs. All too often, recordings show players exploiting a game’s code to the point that it hardly seems like they’re playing the game any more, taking all the fun (and some would argue genuine skill) out of it.

But this new record performed by a gamer known only as ‘Blubber’ is nothing short of spectacular and deserves the attention of anyone who ever picked up an NES controller during their childhood.

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As the rainy season in Japan begins to wind down and we head into the sweet spot of midsummer, more and more people are hitting the beach and working on their tans. For followers of a certain fashion aesthetic, there’s nothing more appealing than a beautifully bronzed body, which holds true whether we’re talking about men, women, or even video game consoles, it seems.

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Low standards for Pokémon virtual art in new DS game inspires fans【Photos】

While many people love the Pokémon video game series for its addicting gameplay, there is no denying the popularity of the hundreds of cute characters featured in the famous Nintendo franchise. Earlier this month in Japan, the new Nintendo DS game Pokémon Art Academy was released and is already inspiring Japanese amateur artists to create their own Pokémon masterpieces. But some on Twitter recently have discovered how the video game may be just a little bit too easy on these virtual artists and began sharing some of their very “special” artwork.

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Wii U’s Hyrule Warriors is actually starting to look pretty spectacular 【Pics & Video】

It’s been a tough few years for Nintendo. Although the 3DS continues to sell very well, its home console Wii U has barely even registered on consumers’ radar since debuting in 2012, and even long-time fans are becoming increasingly restless between big releases. Thankfully, the latter half of 2014 looks set to be a little sunnier for Nintendo, with the recently released Mario Kart 8 reportedly quadrupling Wii U sales, and now Tecmo Koei’s Zelda/Dynasty Warriors mashup Hyrule Warriors looks set to be one of the biggest titles of the summer.

As well as updating its official Hyrule Warriors website with new screens earlier today, developer Tecmo Koei has released a video showing none other than Princess Zelda smashing her way through hordes of enemies and showing off her skills.

Gorgeous pics and the full video after the jump.

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Time to fight! Japan-only Hyrule Warriors special editions come with awesome Triforce clock

I’ve never really been one for special editions of video games. At first they seem like a great idea, with terms like “rare” and “collector’s edition” making us feel like we’d be missing out if we didn’t pick one up, but when you later realise that there are thousands of other people out there with the same cheaply made “limited” trinkets – most of which are likely to end up in landfills a few years down the line anyway – that Master Chief helmet or deluxe orc statue suddenly doesn’t seem quite so essential.

The Triforce clock that comes with special editions of upcoming Wii U hack and slash title Hyrule Warriors, however, is by far the coolest gaming goodie we’ve seen in years, and for once I’m actually considering paying extra money for the additional chunk of plastic.

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