Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- Silent Hill, Dragon Quest, Skyrim, and More Announced as Finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Has Another Big Night and Wins “Game of the Year” at the 2025-2026 DICE Awards
- 2025 GOTY Scoreboard: In Progress
- The Game Awards: All the Winners from 2003 to Today
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Racks Up Nine Wins, Including “Game of the Year”, at the 2025 Game Awards
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- We Pitched a Museum a 1993 Game Hint Line (And They Actually Said Yes) – Yarn Spinner (2026)
- The History Of The Word “Metroidvania” And How It Spread – A Critical Hit (2025)
- Creator of Hit Game Shovel Knight Is at a ‘Make or Break’ Moment – Bloomberg (2025)
- Shadow of the Colossus: An oral history – Design Room (2025)
- In 2005, games started rewiring our brains – The AV Club (2025)
Author: Andrew Rainnie
Wreck-It Ralph joins Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed as guest driver
Sega has announced that the titular star of Disney’s upcoming movie Wreck-It Ralph will join NASCAR driver Danica Patrick as a guest racer in the upcoming Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed.
Masanao Maeda, Chairman and Chief Content Officer for Sega of America, was bursting with enthusiasm when the newest addition to the racing roster was made public: “Wreck-It Ralph will make a great addition to our stellar cast in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. Disney has created a unique film experience that will appeal to gamers of all ages, and our video game collaboration will give fans the opportunity to interact with their character on the small screen as well.”
Wreck-It Ralph‘s director Rich Moore was also over the moon about the character’s inclusion in Sega’s racer: “To have Wreck-It Ralph included in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is a dream come true. The film pays homage to the video games I loved as a kid, including Sonic the Hedgehog in a special cameo, so being able to see Wreck-It Ralph in a real video game alongside Sonic and other iconic Sega characters is unbelievably exciting for me and should be a treat for fans!”
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed will launch in November for Xbox 360, PC, PS3, Vita, 3DS and Wii U. Wreck-It Ralph debuts in cinemas that same month, along with a Wii and 3DS game of the same name.
Rhianna Pratchett announced as lead writer on Tomb Raider reboot
The gay tortoise-owning, tea-loving, goddess of game writing that is Rhianna Pratchett was revealed by Crystal Dynamics to be the lead writer of their Tomb Raider reboot. The game scribe has had a hand in crafting the stories for several well-regarded games in the past including Heavenly Sword and cult classic Mirror’s Edge.
“I grew up playing Tomb Raider, uncovering the world’s secrets and unearthing its treasures; I have lived and died as Lara Croft, but nothing comes close to the challenge of re-writing her,” Pratchett said. “Seldom do we get the opportunity to reimagine and reinvent a legend, so getting my narrative hands on Miss Croft was a once-in-a-life-time opportunity. It was going back to the genesis of video game action heroines and exploring how to make such an iconic character meaningful and relatable for gamers today.”
The announcement was made during this past weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con, where Pratchett appeared at the Tomb Raider panel alongside the new voice of Lara Croft, Camille Luddington, creative director Noah Hughes, global brand director Karl Stewart and narrative designer John Stafford.
Creativity certainly runs in the Pratchett family as Rhianna’s father is Discworld writer Sir Terry Pratchett.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Comic-Con 2012, Tomb Raider
First trailer for Mass Effect anime makes its debut at Comic-Con
For those feeling withdrawal symptoms from piloting the Normandy throughout the galaxy, fear not! The first trailer for Mass Effect: Paragon Lost, the anime prequel produced by BioWare and Production I.G., debuted at the San Deigo Comic-Con over the weekend.
Production I.G., perhaps best known for the animation portion of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Volume One (depicting the turbulent childhood of Lucy Liu’s O-Ren Ishii), brings their highly energised and sweeping visuals to a script written by Henry Gilroy, who previously wrote a number of episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
Paragon Lost focuses on the early career of Alliance soldier James Vega (Freddie Prinze Jr.) as he protects a remote civilian outpost from an attack by the mysterious alien race known as The Collectors.
The Blu-ray/DVD combo will be available to buy on November 13, 2012.
Posted in Etcetera, News
Tagged Comic-Con 2012
EA interested in Kingdoms of Amalur sequel
When 38 Studios folded, everyone assumed that any chance of a sequel to the beautiful, yet flawed, action RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was lost in the wreckage. However, EA is still actively looking for a partner to revisit the boggarts, trolls and niskaru of the world of Amalur.
Although the franchise remains in the control of the state of Rhode Island, the core development team from Big Huge Games are in middle of constructing Epic’s new studio in Baltimore. They have expressed interest in creating a sequel, although unless the legal wrangling is worked out, any future title would be linked in spirit only. But EA President Frank Gibeau hopes to work it out:
“I think it’s unfortunate how everything worked out [for 38 Studios],” said Gibeau. “At the end of the day we saw a lot of creativity and vision in the team that Curt [Schilling] put together. We thought the game was terrific. It reviewed well. We built a good business there and hope there’s a sequel to it someday. We’d love to be a partner for that.”
[Source: Game Informer (via Video Gamer)]
Posted in News
Tagged Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Mass Effect 3’s Extended Cut: A Thank You Letter To BioWare
Dear BioWare,
You received a lot of negative publicity from fans over Mass Effect 3, the last entry in your space-faring trilogy, not least of all from me. Although I have only come to the world of Commander Shepard recently, I embraced it fully. For me, it was the first time I played a game of such scope and detail that matched the feeling I got from my favourite science fiction films and TV shows: Star Wars, Star Trek, and Firefly/Serenity.
However, the initial endings left me feeling like a duped customer, through their lack of difference, and their rushed abruptness. As a screenwriter, I found it in bad taste that you had taken all the threads and emotions of two games (I am a PlayStation 3 owner) and tied them into a brusque finale. While I wished for alternative endings, I certainly did not lead the pack calling for them, although I did voice my opinion when the movement gained traction. I am glad there were fans who felt like me, enough for you to hear them, and give us what we wished for. (more…)
Dead Space 3 developers tell you how not to die in this 20-minute gameplay video
Those of you eagerly anticipating the next title in the pant-staining Dead Space series should watch the above video as Executive Producer Steve Papoutsis narrates twenty minutes of glorious gameplay footage from Dead Space 3.
The footage takes place around Act Two of the game; assuming the chiseled Steve is using movie lingo, about a third of the way in. It appears to show Isaac and his partner Carver having survived a crash landing on the Hoth-esque ice planet Tau Volantis. The new hostile environment brings with it a host of new, scarier necromorphs for Isaac to dispose of with typical messy fashion.
Dead Space 3 will be available for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 in February 2013.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Dead Space 3
Gearbox still grinding away at Brothers in Arms: Furious 4
For those who were hoping for a Gearbox double bill of Borderlands 2 and Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 this year, you will be slightly disappointed, as the latter has now been pushed to 2013. However, it is not all bad news, as that means the game hasn’t been cancelled, as previously rumoured. According to Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, Furious 4 is still in development, and has “evolved” from what people are expecting:
“I think people are going to be surprised by what they’ll see, and it’s still evolving. One of the reasons why we’re not talking about it now is that it’s evolving and we need to make further changes before we can start talking about it.”
The premature speculation surrounding the game’s alleged demise seems to have been caused by a trademark application for the game was rejected. It has now been clarified that the initial rejection was granted to a joint application by both Gearbox and publisher Ubisoft. Gearbox has since filed for an individual trademark, which will hopefully pass through unhindered.
The World War II shooter is said to differ from its predecessors by injecting a hint of Borderlands craziness, with four zany soldiers tearing across Germany on a mission to take out Hitler. Whether or not the influence of Inglorious Basterds will still be there after the game’s “evolution” is something we will have to wait and see.
[Source: CVG]
High Moon’s Marvel game will star Hit-Monkey
We’ll never know if it was a planned “leak” or a simple mistake, but the website HitMonkeyGame.com (now offline) has revealed the much rumoured Marvel character that High Moon Studios will be tackling for their next game, and it is bananas. Literally.
The site confirmed that the developer of Transformers: Fall of Cybertron will be bringing the little known character Hit-Monkey to the world of gaming. It is an odd, perhaps bold move, given that Hit-Monkey first appeared as recently as 2010 in a Marvel digital one-shot by comic book writer Daniel Way. The killer Japanese Macaque later appeared in a three-issue Deadpool story also written by Way and featuring everyone’s favourite wallcrawler, Spider-Man.
With a larger announcement scheduled for this weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con, we’re sure to find out more soon. But the monkey is well and truly out the bag… unless High Moon is playing a nasty trick on the video games community and is secretly making the Deadpool game we are all dying for.
Posted in News
Tagged Comic-Con 2012, Deadpool