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
Runbow will race onto the Xbox One on July 16 (and it’ll be free thanks to Games With Gold)
13AM Games will release Runbow for the Xbox One on July 16. Best of all, Xbox Live Gold subscribers will be able to download the side-scrolling platformer for free (until August 15) through the Games With Gold program:
Runbow is a fast-paced party action game with a never before seen color mechanic. Up to nine players can race against each other locally or online as platforms and obstacles appear and disappear when the colored background changes. Go head-to-head in one of Runbow’s modes, including Arena, King of the Hill, ColourMaster, and The Bowhemoth.
Xbox Live Gold subscribers will also be able to grab Grow Up for free during the entire month of July, as well as Kane & Lynch 2 (July 1-15) and Lego Pirates of the Caribbean (July 16-30) for the Xbox 360.
Cities: Skylines will be coming to PS4 on August 15
Paradox Interactive, Colossal Order, and Tantalus have announced that Cities: Skylines will be released for the PS4 on August 15. The city management simulation will be available to purchase as a digital download on the PlayStation Store and as a disc release at retail outlets.
Cities: Skylines will make its PlayStation debut with a new “controller-friendly” control scheme, and it’ll come bundled with the After Dark expansion. Paradox’s Niklas Lundstrom shared a bit more about the conversion on the PlayStation Blog:
There’s more to Cities: Skylines, of course, than just zoning districts and placing your roads into a neat grid (or using them to spell out your name). Want to build the all-green-energy and self-sustaining town of the future? Have a diabolical plan to build a dam across the river and funnel wastewater into your tourism district? We’ve even seen an entire town of services and infrastructure built around just one house! Cities: Skylines is a game all about setting up plans and policies to create a metropolis that’s uniquely your own, and we can’t wait to see what PlayStation players are capable of.
The first trailer for the “PlayStation 4 Edition” of Cities: Skylines has been embedded above.
Posted in News, PS4
Tagged Cities: Skylines
SteamWorld Dig 2 also coming to PC and PS4 alongside Switch launch in Late Summer/Early Fall 2017
Image & Form has announced that SteamWorld Dig 2 will be available “soon-ish,” and they also revealed that it’s coming to the PC and PS4 as well. Community Manager Julius Guldbog had a bit more to say about the announcement on the developer’s official website:
We’re happy to reveal that SteamWorld Dig 2 is coming to Steam and PS4 in addition to Nintendo Switch. We plan to have SWD2 out on all [platforms] within a few days of the Nintendo Switch debut. A few years ago a multi-platform launch would’ve been completely impossible for us. Thanks to hard work and a bigger team we can finally make it happen. It’s like we’re a “real” game studio now!
Rest assured that these new versions of the game won’t delay the Nintendo Switch version, it’s just that multi-platform development is so much easier for us nowadays. Switch is still the main platform, and now more gamers can join in on the fun!
The addition of two new platforms means that SteamWorld Dig 2 won’t make its originally-planned Summer 2017 launch date. Instead, the game will be available on all three platforms in “Late Summer/Early Fall 2017” So Image & Form can apply some extra polish to it.
Finally, Guldbog said that Image & Form “have not forgotten where we came from,” and that “Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita are still important to us.” So it’s very likely that a portable version of SteamWorld Dig 2 will materialize at some point.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Switch
Tagged SteamWorld Dig 2
Distrust is a survival game inspired by The Thing and it’ll be out August 23
In Distrust, players will have to survive the night after a hostile alien presence overtakes an Arctic research base. That premise should sound familiar to fans of John Carpenter’s The Thing, and publisher Alawar Entertainement cites the horror classic as a direct influence on the game.
A helicopter crash has left two lone survivors stranded near an abandoned Arctic scientific base. In Distrust you play as both of the survivors, switching back and forth between them to scavenge the base for food and supplies while also battling a terrifying force that attacks the characters as they sleep, sucking the life out of their bodies and distorting space and reality. Once one character’s perception of reality has been altered you must constantly switch between the two to determine what is real and what is not, all the while unraveling the mystery of what has happened to the base’s missing residents.
Distrust will also include 15 characters, each with their own unique skills and abilities, as well as quests to complete and a randomly-generated map. If you’d like to test out some of these features yourself, a pre-release demo is now available on Steam.
Distrust will be released for the PC on August 23.
Super NES Classic coming September 29 with 21 games including never-before-released Star Fox 2
Here we go again.
Nintendo has announced they will release the Super NES Classic Edition microconsole on September 29. Priced at $79.99, the Super NES Classic Edition will include two controllers and 21 games, including the never-before-released Star Fox 2.
Star Fox 2 was originally scheduled to launch for the Super NES in 1995, but Nintendo cancelled it due to the then-upcoming launch of the Nintendo 64. The game was nearly complete at the time of its cancellation.
“While many people from around the world consider the Super NES to be one of the greatest video game systems ever made, many of our younger fans never had a chance to play it,” said Doug Bowser, Nintendo of America’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “With the Super NES Classic Edition, new fans will be introduced to some of the best Nintendo games of all time, while longtime fans can relive some of their favorite retro classics with family and friends.”
While many Nintendo fans have likely already resigned themselves to never obtaining one, the Super NES Classic Edition lives up to its name with an absolute murderer’s row of titles. In addition to Star Fox 2, the microconsole will include Contra III: The Alien Wars, EarthBound, Super Metroid, Super Mario Kart, Final Fantasy III, and many more:
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Games Included in Super NES Classic
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Games Included in Super NES Classic
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Let’s hope it’s easier to find than last year’s ultra-rare NES Classic Edition.
New Retail Releases: Call of Duty Modern Warfare Remastered, Crash Bandicoot Trilogy, Valkyria Revolution, More
This week’s New Retail Releases report is packed full of remakes, sequels, and spinoffs, which is perfect for the start to a likely lazy Summer…
Let’s start things off with Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, a compilation of the first three games in the series, now remade for the PS4. Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, and Crash Bandicoot: Warped helped put the original PlayStation on the map, and now’s a great time to play them again.
And Activision is striking back again this week with the upcoming standalone re-release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered on the PS4. You might already own it if you purchased the Legacy Edition of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare last year, but if not, here’s your chance.
Also available this week is a pair of spinoffs to two very Japanese franchises. First up is Sega, who will launch Valkyria Revolution on the PS4 and Xbox One, and add real-time combat to the franchise for the first time. Meanwhile, NIS America will deliver a side-story in the sprawling Danganronpa saga with Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls on the PS4.
NIS America will also bring RPG Maker Fes to the 3DS this week. Players won’t be required to have any programming skills, but they’ll be able to create (and share) their own RPG all the same.
Finally this week, two long-forgotten franchises will return to store shelves. Codemasters will zip around the house with the diminutive automobiles from Micro Machines World Series for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One. And the famed Elite series will fly again thanks to Elite Dangerous: Legendary Edition on the PS4 and Xbox One.
You can read up on all of this week’s new releases after the break. (more…)
Sub-Zero will be added to Injustice 2 on July 11
Ed Boon has revealed (via Twitter) that owners of Fighter Pack 1 will be able to download Sub-Zero in Injustice 2 on July 11. Everyone else will get the chance to purchase the Lin Kuei’s Grandmaster on July 18.
NetherRealm has announced that nine additional characters will eventually be added to Injustice 2. The next, Starfire, will make her debut sometime in August.
And in case you missed it, you can check out Sub-Zero’s “Introducing!” trailer right here.
Posted in News, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Injustice 2
Clueless Gamer returns… Conan O’Brien and Will Arnett play Arms
Conan O’Brien’s Clueless Gamer returns for another round of ridiculousness as the comedian straps on a pair of Joy-Cons to fight it out with Will Arnett in Nintendo’s Arms.
Conan and Arnett traded insults and springy-armed blows while playing the game, but they also seemed to be in a competition over the affections of Conan’s assistant, Aaron Bleyaert. Also, Will Arnett mumbles a lot, sweats even more, and mentions he’s from Canada every chance he gets.
I’m not sure I knew Will Arnett was Canadian, but I do know that Arms was released for the Nintendo Switch last week.