Great Article, Bash! Really enjoyed hearing about Becker and the others. All those guys are so humble when it comes down to it. Will definitely keep my eye on what Japan Studio is up to next.

Ho! Love those brown muted colors. Nothing screams dynamic like brown brown brown brown.

My biggest complaint about business hotels in Japan? The beds are so rigid and stiff I have a hard time actually getting sleep, and I've actually woke up with back pain, and can't get back to sleep. Might as well be sleeping on the floor! From my experience with beds in love hotels, they really throw down on the…

Also surprised I've never Street Passed any Kotaku folks here in this thread; did street pass w/ Brian Crescente of all peeps though!

Hells yeah to the Japan Street Pass. Walk into any metro station and immediately you're at full. Was in Nagoya last fall and had to clear out my queue of Street Passes 3 times just during lunch session.

Hells yeah to the Japan Street Pass. Walk into any metro station and immediately you're at full. Was in Nagoya last fall and had to clear out my queue of Street Passes 3 times just during lunch session.

Except for Roc's Feather in Link's Awakening! They Mario'd the heck out of some of those dungeons.

So awesome. I am just now finishing this game for the first time (currently, mid December; P3P version). This is such good news to be able to go right into the movie after completing the game! Very cool news, thanks for sharing.

"Hi, how was your day?"

Traditional JRPGs in particulars

Exactly, competition is a good thing! Would love to see some original IPs again — Stern's recent games are all existing big name IPs. Fingers crossed Jersey Jack can fill that void!

Awesome!! Thanks for sharing, and the Wizard of Oz game looks great! I saw they have a couple in NYC (Reciprocal in EV and Mug's Ale House in Williamsburg), will definitely give this a shot soon!

Sigh... if it only it were real pinball! Saw that Stern (the only US pinball maker left) just put out a new Star Trek game. So close, and yet so far away.

Awesome. Was just about to ask for this picture.

Thanks for sharing, Kirk! I had never read this before, but it certainly lived up to the expectations.

I always dug the final boss music from River City Ransom for NES. That was pretty ballin'! And proceeded by none other than the Double Dragon theme (also by Technos Japan Corp.)

Holy crap, never realized that the fight with Culex battle music theme is the Final Fantasy IV boss theme! How rad is that!?

This is not a critique of Pikmin, but rather Kotaku's review "graphic": why do you not put the "Should you play this game" section into HTML, so everything would render clean and remain SEO friendly? Certainly this could be added to Kinja, non? As a web dev here in Brooklyn, I'd be happy to help you guys build it :)

More like, we don't give you shit cuz we dont sell importzz yo

Think that was my favorite too because the head was just so creepy.