Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- Clair Obscur Completes the Sweep by Winning “Best Game” at 2025-2026 BAFTA Games Awards
- Boss Fight Books Gets 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
- Silent Hill, Dragon Quest, Skyrim, and More Announced as Finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026
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
PS Store This Week: Superhot, Fortnite, Orcs Must Die Unchained, more
The mob is marching on the PlayStation Store as three games that are all about crowd control will make their digital debut this week.
Team Superhot will bring their unique first person shooter, Superhot (and its VR-focused spinoff, Superhot VR), to the PS4 this Friday. Both games pit the player against an army of “Red Guys,” but don’t worry, “Time Moves Only When You Move” in Superhot.
Joining Superhot on the PlayStation Store this Friday is Fortnite, a new “action building” game from Epic Games. In Fortnite’s post-apocalyptic reality, players have to build up the defenses in their base, but also go on the offensive against the game’s mutant attackers.
Also available to download for the PS4 this week is Orcs Must Die! Unchained. An army of Orcs are making a beeline for your base, but players will be able to “slice them, burn them, skewer them, and launch them” in this tower defense game.
You can learn more about all of these games (and a few other new releases) after the break. (more…)
Major League Baseball might oppose Blizzard’s Overwatch League logo
Blizzard has big plans for their Overwatch League. Like traditional sports leagues, Blizzard wants to connect franchise owners in the Overwatch League to a city, and to help build fan support for professional Overwatch franchise at the local level. They even opted to create a logo that should look very familiar to sports fans… a silhouetted figure against a two-toned background.
Unfortunately, Major League Baseball believes the logo looks a little too familiar.
Major League Baseball has requested an “Extension of Time to File An Opposition” against the logo with the US Patent and Trademark Office. This request gives lawyers for Major League Baseball a chance to investigate the Overwatch League’s logo, and decide if its too similar to their own. If the USPTO agrees with Major League Baseball, Blizzard would have to change the design of the Overwatch League’s logo.
While it’s not hard to understand the MLB’s position (the two logos do look almost identical), I find it hard to side with the sports league over Blizzard. Putting both logos side-by-side-by-side with the National Basketball Association logo, which was adopted in 1971 and also features a silhouetted figure against a two-toned background, casts further doubt on the MLB’s tentative claim.
Major League Baseball has until July 26 to officially file the paperwork for an “Opposition” to the Overwatch League’s logo.
BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle is a fighter that mashes together characters from BlazBlue, Persona 4, Under Night In-Birth, and RWBY
If you missed all the action during this weekend’s EVO tournament, you might also have missed Arc System Works’s announcement of BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle, a new 2D fighter that’ll include characters from BlazBlue: Central Fiction (Ragna the Bloodedge), Persona 4 Ultimate Arena (Yu), Under Night In-Birth (Hyde), and RWBY (Ruby Rose).
Konomi Higuchi, an Illustrator at Arc System Works, will serve as the game’s Lead Character Designer, and more characters will be announced at a later date.
BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle is currently in development for at least one console, and is expected to be released in 2018. The game’s first trailer has been embedded above.
Posted in News
Tagged BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle
Max Brooks’s Minecraft: The Island novel is now available at bookstores everywhere
Mojang teamed up with Max Brooks (the author of World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide) to create the first official tie-in novel based on Minecraft. Titled Minecraft: The Island, the book is targeted at a younger audience and it’s available on store shelves today.
When writing Minecraft: The Island, Brooks found inspiration in classics like Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe to tell his own tale of survival and mystery:
Washed up on a beach, the lone castaway looks around the shore. Where am I? Who am I? And why is everything made of blocks? But there isn’t much time to soak up the sun. It’s getting dark, and there’s a strange new world to explore!
The top priority is finding food. The next is not becoming food. Because there are others out there on the island… like the horde of zombies that appear after night falls. Crafting a way out of this mess is a challenge like no other. Who could build a home while running from exploding creepers, armed skeletons, and an unstoppable tide of hot lava? Especially with no help except for a few makeshift tools and sage advice from an unlikely friend: a cow.
In this world, the rules don’t always make sense, but courage and creativity go a long way. There are forests to explore, hidden underground tunnels to loot, and undead mobs to defeat. Only then will the secrets of the island be revealed.
You can read the first chapter right now at the novel’s official website.
Square Enix announces Closed Beta for Dissidia Final Fantasy NT
Square Enix has announced that registration is now open for a Closed Beta for Dissidia Final Fantasy NT. The Closed Beta will begin later this Summer, and developer Koei Tecmo’s test for the team-based brawler will include 3v3 battles, and some of the franchise’s most recognizable characters:
This summer, the Closed Beta will let fighting game fans get hands-on with the team-based brawler as they play the roles of legendary heroes and villains from the Final Fantasy franchise, take part in epic 3 vs. 3 battles across iconic arenas and invoke the help of classic summons including Ifrit, Shiva, and Odin.
Fans can register for a chance to join Dissidia Final Fantasy NT’s Closed Beta at Square-Enix’s official website. And a special message from developers Takeo Kujiraoka and Ichiro Hazama can be found after the break.
Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is set to launch for the PS4 in Early 2018. (more…)
Posted in News, PS4
Tagged Dissidia Final Fantasy NT
Final Fight’s Abigail will be Street Fighter V’s next downloadable character
Capcom has revealed that Abigail, the final boss from 1989’s Final Fight, will be the next downloadable character for Street Fighter V. The hulking leader of the Mad Gear Gang isn’t the first character from the Final Fight franchise to make the jump to the Street Fighter universe… Cody, Guy, Sodom, Rolento, and Maki all previously appeared in the Street Fighter Alpha series.
As always, the Capcom-Unity blog has a detailed breakdown of Abigail’s moveset:
Character Overview
Making his way from Final Fight to Street Fighter V, Abigail was one of the top ranking members of the Mad Gear Gang. His territory is the Bay Area of Metro City, a location he terrorizes with his gargantuan size, and at eight feet tall, he makes the Red Cyclone look like a spinning top. The tires around Abigail’s monstrous biceps make is clear what he’s been up to when he isn’t cracking skulls. This mountain of a man is a complete (mad) gear head that loves to make car noises almost as much as he loves driving them.V-Skill: Hungabee
Abigail thrusts his sizeable belly forwards (either high or low) countering the opponent’s attack and setting himself up for a combo opportunity.V-Trigger: Max Power
After popping his two-bar V-Trigger, Abigail can charge up his four different heavy punches for one hit of armour and extended juggles. A full charge will break the opponent’s guard.Critical Art: Abigail Special
Abigail slams his opponent with a downward open-palm strike that puts them into a daze. He then hoists them into the air, pummels them like a makeshift speedbag before launching a savage hook that shatters the screen.
Abigail will be available to download next week, July 25, as part of Street Fighter V’s Season 2 Character Pass. The first trailer for Abigail has been embedded above.
Posted in News, PC, PS4
Tagged Street Fighter V
Tekken 7 will add Fatal Fury’s Geese Howard as a downloadable character this Winter
The fighters from Bandai Namco’s Tekken 7 will soon be able to do battle with another crossover character, as the publisher announced that Geese Howard will be added to the game this Winter.
Geese Howard made his debut in 1991’s Fatal Fury as the final boss, and would go on to appear in more than a dozen games in the combined Fatal Fury/Art of Fighting/King of Fighters series including Fatal Fury Special, Art of Fighting 2, and the recently released King of Fighters XIV.
Tekken 7 is currently available for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One, and you can get a glimpse Geese Howard in his Tekken guise in the trailer embedded above.
New Retail Releases: Splatoon 2, Fortnite, Aerea
The Squid Kids will make their Nintendo Switch debut this week, as Nintendo will release Splatoon 2 for their console/handheld hybrid this Friday. The sequel will feature the return of Turf War, as well as a brand new single-player Campaign, and the wave-based Salmon Run cooperative mode.
Also set to launch this week is Fortnite, a survival simulation from Epic Games for the PS4 and Xbox One. Players will be able to craft crazy weaponry for attack missions and build their own “extravagant” forts to keep the monsters at bay.
Finally this week, Triangle Studios and Soedesco will release Aerea: Collector’s Edition for the PS4. The music-themed action RPG includes four different character and a hand-drawn graphical style.
That’s it for this the Retail Releases Report, but we’ll be back with an update on the latest additions to the PlayStation Store, Xbox Games Store, and Nintendo eShop later this week.