Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- BAFTA Games Awards: All the Winners from 2003 to Today
- Clair Obscur Completes the Sweep by Winning “Best Game” at 2025-2026 BAFTA Games Awards
- Boss Fight Books to Get a New Look for Richard Moss’s “Age of Empires”
- GDC Awards: All the Winners from 1996 to Today
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Wins “Game of the Year” at 2025-2026 GDC 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: John Scalzo
Cave’s Akai Katana gets a European release date
Rising Star Games has announced a European release date for Cave’s latest “bullet hell” shooter, Akai Katana. The Xbox 360 game will be available to purchase by our friends across the Atlantic on May 11.
“Cave are world renowned for creating the biggest and best arcade shooters around, and we’re delighted to add Akai Katana to that list, come May 11,” commented Martin Defries, the Managing Director at Rising Star Games. “No other arcade shooter offers the same explosive entertainment and wanton destruction as Akai Katana, and we can’t wait to let this loose on the public.”
Rising Star Games also plans to publish Akai Katana in North America (their first title for the region), but no release date has been announced.
Posted in News, Xbox 360
Tagged Akai Katana
First Elder Scrolls Online trailer released
“Salvation cannot come from one hero alone… but from many.”
Here’s the announcement trailer for The Elder Scrolls Online, Bethesda’s 2013 MMO re-envisioning of their massively popular RPG series. The teaser is a bit short on new information, but the game is still at least a year away.
The Internet consensus seems to believe that Michael Gambon (Dumbledore from the Harry Potter movies) provides the trailer’s narration. However, to my ears it sounds like a Christopher Lee and Bill Nighy double team.
Maybe I need to get my hearing checked.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged The Elder Scrolls Online
Remember the time Amazon outed Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse?
[Insert wacky cutaway gag here]
A listing for Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse has popped up on Amazon for the Xbox 360 and PS3. The retailer tagged the game as a “Shooter” with a September 25 release date.
The title is clearly a reference to the eighth season premiere, “Road to the Multiverse” and it’s likely that Stewie and Brian travel through the Multiverse once more. I hope the “Disney universe” plays a big part in this game, that’d be freakin’ sweet!
Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse will be published by Activision, and it’s a long time coming, as it was first teased by the company back in February 2011 during their quarterly financial briefing.
Posted in News, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse
Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 Hands-On Preview: Resurrecting a Zombie in More Ways Than One
When the third episode of Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness was canceled in 2010, I have to admit, I was a bit shocked. The first two games in the series provided plenty of RPG thrills and all the Penny Arcade-style humor I could ever ask for.
I was equally shocked when the RPG series was reborn under the slightly less laborious title, Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3. Now in the hands of Zeboyd Games, an indie development house known for their love of 16-bit RPGs, the game was playable for the first time at last month’s PAX East expo. And play it I did. (more…)
Posted in Mobile, PC, Previews, Top Story, Xbox 360
Tagged PAX East 2012, Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3
THQ fools us all, announces Saints Row 3: Enter the Dominatrix standalone expansion
On April 1st, THQ announced Saints Row: The Third – Enter the Dominatrix, a standalone expansion to Saints Row: The Third that trapped the Third Street Saints inside an extraterrestrial virtual reality machine. I guess the joke’s on all of us, because it’s real.
THQ reannounced Enter the Dominatrix today and revealed that it’ll be released for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 this Fall. The game will carry a suggested retail price of $29.99 and include something every Saints Row fan has been asking for: “freaking super powers.”
“Faster than a speeding cyber jetbike, more powerful than a roided-out Luchadore, able to leap flying aircraft carriers in a single bound… That’s the power you’ll find inside the Dominatrix. Use it for good. Use it for evil. Use it for whatever you want. As always in Saints Row, it’s up to you,” said Danny Bilson, Executive Vice President of Core Game Production at THQ.
Still don’t believe? Trust me, you want to believe:
Saints Row: The Third – Enter the Dominatrix picks up immediately following the events of Saints Row: The Third. For centuries, alien warlord Zinyak has eyed Earth and its precious natural resources and females with a watchful eye. As he prepares an armada for invasion, he has only one worry: the Third Street Saints.
Now, in order to prepare his forces for domination, Zinyak captures the leader of the Saints and imprisons him in an elaborate virtual reality simulation. This simulation program looks and feels like Steelport, but it is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. Here, you are a slave. Welcome… to the Dominatrix.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Saints Row IV
GameTrailers gets to the bottom of CoD Black Ops II trailer
GameTrailers has given the Pop-Block treatment to the Call of Duty: Black Ops II reveal trailer. Using their advanced sleuthing skills they deduce what types of weapons and vehicles we can expect to see in the game, what real-life locales we’ll be visiting, and just who is involved in this future war.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II will be available for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 on November 13. But I’ll bet you knew that already.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Call of Duty: Black Ops II
James Gunn and Suda 51 explain Lollipop Chainsaw
Ever since it was announced, Grasshopper Manufacture and WB Games have used a series of over-the-top videos to promote Lollipop Chainsaw. But they’ve chosen a slightly different approach for their latest video as writer James Gunn and Creative Director Suda 51 got together on the Lollipop Chainsaw bus to discuss the method to the game’s madness.
The seemingly normal pair touches on the genesis of the game, the motivations of Juliet and Nick, the difficulties of writing a game script versus a screenplay, and the ridiculousness of Juliet’s catchphrase (“What the dick?”).
Lollipop Chainsaw will be released for the PS3 and Xbox 360 on June 12 and I can’t wait.
Posted in News, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Lollipop Chainsaw
Nintendo Download: Super Hang-On, Amoebattle, Bird Mania 3D
Whoa, two weeks in a row with a new Virtual Console release!
For this week’s Nintendo Download, the publisher has added the Genesis classic Super Hang-On to the Wii’s Virtual Console. In addition to being the greatest motorcycle game ever… wait, being the greatest motorcycle game ever is more than enough reason to play it.
Also available this week is the DSi Shop title Amoebattle, an underwater puzzle game; and on the 3DS eShop, Bird Mania 3D, “a skill-based action game in which you steer a little birdie on his way to Africa.”