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
Weird Al Yankovic recorded a Pac-Man parody in the 80s… and now we can finally hear it
Weird Al Yankovic’s career has spanned more than 40 years, but in all that time, the geeky icon only rarely delves into doing game-themed parodies. Perhaps that’s because of a bad experience he had early in his career with “Pac-Man,” a parody of “Taxman” by The Beatles.
Speaking to Nerdist, Weird Al believes an overzealous lawyer initially rejected the song without ever listening to it: “I’d like to think that none of the Beatles ever actually heard the song back then. It was just some office [clerk] whose whole job is to litigate and prosecute people for copyright infringement.”
However, Weird Al would later become friends with George Harrison’s son Dhani, and he helped work out a deal to include “Pac-Man” on Squeeze Box: The Complete Recordings of “Weird Al” Yankovic, an upcoming retrospective box set. Squeeze Box will be available this Fall on vinyl and CD, and it’ll include every album from Weird Al’s career housed in a replica accordion (of course). A 15th disc, Medium Rarities, will feature several unreleased songs (like “Pac-Man”), as well as alternate takes on more popular parodies.
But if you can’t wait that long, you can listen to “Pac-Man” at Nerdist right now.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard shambles to the top of January 2017’s best-selling games report
It looks like there’s still some life left in the Resident Evil franchise. The latest game in the series, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, topped the NPD Group’s report on the best-selling games in January 2017. The only other new release to crack the top ten was Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8: Final Chapter Prologue, which camein at #6.
“With only five days in the market, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard was the best-selling game in January. The last time Capcom had the best-selling game of the month (in dollar sales) was in March 2009 with Resident Evil 5,” NPD Analyst Sam Naji told GamesIndustry.biz.
Overall spending on game titles was up 14% last month over January 2016, thanks mostly to continued demand for 2016’s biggest releases including Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (#2), Battlfield 1 (#4), and NBA 2K17 (#5). And Grand Theft Auto V (#3) continues to burn up the charts more than four years after it was first released.
The complete list of best-selling games from January 2017 can be found after the break. (more…)
Nintendo Download: Tank Troopers, Ogre Battle 64, more
It’s war in this week’s Nintendo eShop update!
First up is Tank Troopers, a tank battling game for the 3DS published and developed by Nintendo. Players will choose their tank, customize it, and then go into battle against their friends in six-player local multiplayer battles. But if you’d rather go it alone, Tank Troopers also includes a single-player mode with 30 unique stages.
Also available to download this week is Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber, a tactical RPG originally released for the Nintendo 64 in 1999. Wii U owners will be able to take control of Magnus Gallant, a nobleman who has to decide whether to desert his kingdom and fight with the rebellion, or “turn a blind eye to the evils of his rotten society.”
More information on both games (and a few other new releases) can be found after the break. (more…)
Crash Banidicoot N. Sane Trilogy will be released for PS4 on June 30
Activision and Vicarious Visions have announced that the Crash Banidicoot N. Sane Trilogy will be released for the PS4 on June 30.
The publisher, working with Sony, plans to include the first three games from the franchise (Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, and Crash Bandicoot: Warped) in the compilation, and each game will get a complete makeover with remade graphics and audio:
This is a AAA remaster. We’re giving this the love and attention to detail that we pay to all of our AAA games. We’re building it using the original level geometry so that it plays as close to the original as possible. We’ve also referred to this as a remaster plus, as we are adding new features that we think the fans are going to love!
Members of the Vicarious Visions team also stopped by the PlayStation Blog today to discuss some of the development choices they made with the Crash Banidicoot N. Sane Trilogy.
Posted in News, PS4
Tagged Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, Crash Bandicoot: Warped
Cities: Skylines will be released for Xbox One and Windows 10 this Spring
Last month, Paradox Interactive teased that Cities: Skylines would soon be available for the Xbox One and Windows 10, and that it would be playable at this year’s Game Developers Conference. This morning, the publisher confirmed that the city builder will make its console debut this Spring.
Tantalus Media is in charge of the port, and they’ve optimized Cities: Skylines for use with a controller. In addition to providing a new way to play Cities: Skylines, both the Xbox One Edition and the Windows 10 Edition will come packed with the After Dark expansion.
Other features players can expect to find in Cities: Skylines include:
- Build the City of Your Dreams: Plan road networks, bus lines and parks. Bring on a smog-filled industrial revolution or create a quiet beach town ideal for tourists powered by renewable energy. Bring education, healthcare and safety to your citizens. Build it your way!
- Multi-Tiered and Challenging Simulation: Playing as the mayor of your city, you’ll be faced with balancing essential requirements such as education, water electricity, police, firefighting, healthcare and much more, along with your city’s economy. Citizens within your city react fluidly, keeping you on your toes with ever-evolving demands.
- Extensive Local Traffic Simulation: Managing traffic and the needs of your citizens to work and play will require the use of several interactive transport systems… use careful road planning alongside buses, trains, subways, and much more.
- Districts and Policies: Be more than just another city hall official! Create a car-free downtown area, assign free public transport to your waterfront, or ban pets in suburbia.
Paradox also released a new trailer for Cities: Skylines, and its been embedded above.
Posted in News, PC, Xbox One
Tagged Cities: Skylines, GDC 2017
Inversus will be released for Xbox One later this year alongside 1.5 Update
Hypersect has announced plans to bring their monochromatic shooter, Inversus, to the Xbox One later this year.
In addition to launching the game on a new platform, the developer also announced that an updated version of Inversus with new Maps, Levels, and AI Bots will soon be available for the PC and PS4:
New Features Planned For Inversus 1.5
- Compete on 12 New Maps in Versus Mode.
- Master 3 New Levels in Arcade Mode.
- Collect New Split-Shot Ammo that can fork into multiple bullets.
- Sharpen your skills against the community’s most requested feature against AI Controlled Bots in Versus Mode.
“Supporting Inversus with regular updates has been a great experience and I really wanted to do something special for the 1.5 Edition.” said Hypersect’s Ryan Juckett. “I think the new Versus Mode Bots are where the value really shines. They are great for training against and add yet another local game mode for solo players to enjoy while in queue for matchmaking.”
A new trailer for Inversus’s upcoming update has been embedded above.
Xbox Store Today: Sniper Elite 4, For Honor, Ride 2, more
Not every developer has left World War II behind, and Rebellion returns to that massive conflict between the Allies and the Axis in Sniper Elite 4, which is now available to download for the Xbox One. Players will once again take control of Karl Fairburne, an American sniper who has been moved to the Italian front. There, he’ll “fight alongside the brave men and women of the Italian Resistance and defeat a terrifying new threat with the potential to halt the Allied fightback in Europe before it’s even begun.”
Also available to download for the Xbox One today is For Honor, Ubisoft’s medieval combat game that pits Knights, Viking, and Samurai against each other in a three-way battle royale. Players will be able to choose a Faction and then fight it out in the game’s single-player Story Mode and online multiplayer modes.
Finally today, racing fans will be able to download Ride 2 for the Xbox One. Developed by Milestone, Ride 2 is a motorcycle racing simulation more than 170 bikes and over 30 tracks.
You can learn more about all of these games (and the rest of today’s additions to the Xbox Games Store) after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged For Honor, Sniper Elite 4
Nintendo’s Eiji Aonuma said there is “a possibility” for a 2D Zelda on the Switch
We are getting closer and closer to the launch of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Franchise Producer Eiji Aonuma has decided to share his vision for Link’s future with Game Informer.
With the Nintendo Switch occupying a place in our lives as both a home console and a portable handheld, the magazine asked Aonuma if we’d ever see another 2D Zelda game like 2013’s A Link Between Worlds. The developer replied that the Legend of Zelda’s handheld development team will remain intact and that there’s “definitely a possibility” they could create a 2D Zelda game for the Switch:
“The dev pace is not really dependent on how many people are on a team, so combining them would not necessarily expedite the development pace,” says Aonuma. “The 3DS team and the Wii U team have different approaches to game development, so I don’t necessarily want to combine them and have them think together, but rather have each think about what they can bring to Nintendo Switch from their own perspective.”
Aonuma then offered additional clarification, saying “The handheld development team will not be phased out because of Nintendo Switch. Switch will allow the users to bring their home console on the go, but this doesn’t mean handheld game development like Nintendo 3DS will be discontinued.”
When we asked point-blank if there was a possibility that the 3DS Zelda teams were working on a new game for the Nintendo Switch, Aonuma said, “Yes, there is definitely a possibility.”
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and the Nintendo Switch console, will be released on March 3.