Zack Kotzer
Motherboard
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Past articles by Zack:
Is Everyone Going to Pretend 'Yoshi's Island' Is Not a Super Mario Game?
If your ‘Best Super Mario’ list doesn't include Yoshi's Island it is invalid. → Read More
'Sonic 2' Becomes 'Yoshi’s Island' in Best, Least Sexy Mod in Ages
Recently uncovered hacking contest submission is sure to kill an afternoon. → Read More
New Exhibit Celebrates the Lost Art of the Screensaver
You could turn your desktop monitor into an aquarium, but could you turn it into art? → Read More
Super Mario Isn't a Human Being
'Super Mario Odyssey' upsets much of what we know about the 'Italian' 'plumber.' → Read More
The Cult 70s Movie About Reverse-Engineering a Ghost
Nigel Kneale’s classic ghost story, ‘The Stone Tape,’ is perfect for a techy Halloween. → Read More
Horror comedy in videogames isn’t given enough credit
He recently passed away, but in his 90 years on earth Herschell Gordon Lewis claims that he had been approached on two occasions to direct a snuff film. The idea didn’t amuse him. During an interview with Alexandra West from Diabolique Magazine, he said such a thing wasn’t “worthy of a thought.” “I regard that as too far back in organized society,” said Lewis in his genuinely golden voice, which… → Read More
Thoth isn't here to make friends
Thoth works on certain illusions. A static screenshot would make you think this twin-stick shooter is more in line with Jeppe Carlsen’s previous game—the rhythm-based, minimalist platformer 140 (2013)—or that your dot in Thoth is kettled in against mean squares that look like descendants to Geometry War’s (2003) shapes. Thoth may only have a few matted colors at a time, but it is very loud; a… → Read More
The Last Guardian’s development cycle now overlaps the Obama administration
Three yards from the finish line, The Last Guardian has been delayed again. Put down your torch—it’s still within grasp. Just a bump from the end of October to the beginning of December, an amount of time that seems so puny at this point it barely feels worth getting upset about. It just means that The Last Guardian won’t be available before Halloween, before Thanksgiving, or before the US… → Read More
Obduction is not to be missed
Obduction, despite how the cosmic the word sounds, does not refer to flying saucers. More terrestrial than extraterrestrial, obduction means when one oceanic tectonic plate heaves up and laps over a continental plate. One world eclipsing another. Imagine the confusion you’d feel if you one day woke up underwater. Myst (1993) began with Atrus (one of the series’ central curators, played by… → Read More
Apple and Nintendo sitting in a tree ...
While the iPhone 7 was the star birthday boy of Apple’s keynote yesterday, there was a shocking amount of news from a once-rival company, Nintendo. To the amazement of everyone tuning in, there was apparently a Snorlax on stage, as seen during the demonstration of Pokemon Go on the Apple Watch. Those presenters were miraculously spared a trampled death. Also worth mentioning is that videogame… → Read More
Not even Anarcute can put a friendly face on rioting
State of Emergency (2002) seemed real dumb even to a 14-year-old kid reading its EGM cover story. A chaser to Rockstar’s monumental Grand Theft Auto III (2001), State of Emergency wanted to carry on the torch, but only for Grand Theft Auto’s chaos and edginess. It was a Crazy Taxi (1999) for rioting where you’d play as thugged-out agents of mayhem, torching bystanders, smashing property, and… → Read More
Dots & Co brings even more friends to the dot-popping series
During the spring of 2014, a cloud-bearded pappy and his blushing daughter went on a quest to connect dots in dangerous places. A puzzle game with pleasant, sojourn aesthetics, TwoDots took players to volcanic peaks and icy depths, battling lava and thawing matching dabs of color. Some good stuff to keep idle thumbs busy, but at its lowest points felt like it had succumb to the atypical mobile… → Read More
The Lion's Song takes you back in time to tackle creative block
There are a lot of adventure games that can leave you feeling stumped. Scanning the environments, trying to wedge objects together like a baby mashing toys, clicking up and down the page like the moving parts of a fax machine before giving up, perhaps indefinitely. Maybe this frustration is where the point-and-click format clicks with another damning mental slog, namely in Mipumi Games’s The… → Read More
Forget fighting Pokémon, it's all about doing battle with Ennui Teens now
Header image: A “suuuuuuper early” image of Bravery Network /// One of the reasons Bravery Network is being made is because Damian Sommer, creator of Chesh (2015) and The Yawhg (2013), couldn’t find anyone to play Pokémon with. “I played a lot of competitive Pokémon,” said Sommer, “I still do, actually. It’s just a lot of fun for me. I’m the best Pokémon player I know, but I’m not that good in… → Read More
Wilson's Heart brings a healthy dose of The Twilight Zone to VR
Aside from a fairly prominent pinball machine, a more or less unknown Amiga game, and some homages from 2010’s Alan Wake (which, to be fair, homaged everything), the sudden crash course between The Twilight Zone and videogames sure has been a curveball. First this year was Oxenfree’s haunted-prop overnight horror—which was good. Then, BioShock’s Ken Levine decided to revive the classic… → Read More
An upcoming cyberpunk horror is about hacking into people's fears
While Polish studio Bloober Team doesn’t have the most intimidating name in the world, their horror game released earlier this year, Layers of Fear, showed that they had a particular appetite for dread. Loaded as it was with Edgar Allan Poe clichés, Layers of Fear still hinted a certain mastery of perspective. The game’s strongest moments were when paintings and pedestrian items began to feel… → Read More
Steep will let you cheat death by never risking it in the first place
Listen. Me and heights? We don’t have what I’d describe as an amiable relationship. If you try to shuffle your house party on to the roof, I’m going to be the square making a case for couches and kitchen access. And the surge of GoPro stunt videos? I think the only reason I can white knuckle through them is because their very publication guarantees the daredevil survived. If you live your life… → Read More
Confessions of an online prankster: A good laugh with Ben Esposito
This article is part of Issue 8.5, a digital zine available to Kill Screen’s print subscribers. Read more about it here and get a copy yourself by subscribing to our soon-to-be-relaunched print magazine. /// April Fools is a dead sport. One popular, though extremely contested belief is that the holiday was created when Pope Gregory XIII switched to the Gregorian calendar, shifting New Year’s Day… → Read More
OmniBus can’t stop, won’t stop
Beating one of the levels in OmniBus means driving over a ramp, bonking the head off a statue, and careening into a set of bowling pins before turning right-side up to drive straight into the endless blue ocean. I take no responsibility for that last part. After you beat any of the game’s levels you can continue to watch the titular OmniBus drive in its configuration—whether that’s straight… → Read More
That time Super Mario decided to get a real job
Super Mario, as long as we’ve known him, has been a plumber. Strangely we have rarely seen him engage in any plumbing. Super Mario is simply surrounded by pipes, but we do not see him inquiring about water leaks, fecal blockage, or invoices. Super Mario is more of a career adventurer, a socialite, a close friend to the royals, and the matter of his income would be more confusing if it weren’t… → Read More