Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- Angry Birds, Dragon Quest, FIFA Soccer, and Silent Hill are the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026
- 2025 GOTY Scoreboard: In Progress
- 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”
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- How a Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game – The New York Times (2026)
- Spore: An oral history – Design Room (2026)
- 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)
Author: John Scalzo
Latest BioWare teaser asks you to feel the “Impact”
BioWare has released another teaser trailer in their “You’ve Been Chosen” series of adverts ahead of the game’s Gamescom 2014 reveal next week. This one is titled “Impact” and it depicts a terrified girl whispering that something isn’t her fault over and over again. A quick cut later and we realize that she has somehow created a magical-looking sinkhole under her house. The trailer closes with this teaser’s tagline, which asks, “Can You Control Your Power?”
After careful consideration, I think we’re dealing with mutants here. Or possibly modern day folks dealing with mystical powers that they never knew existed. Something like that.
We’ll find out for sure next week during BioWare’s Gamescom presentation, which is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, August 13 at 10:00 AM (Eastern Time). If you can’t make it to Cologne, Germany, BioWare will livestream the announcement on Twitch.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged Gamescom 2014, Shadow Realms
Sony is teasing a bloody snowflake for Gamescom 2014
Sony has released a ten-second trailer of a blood-covered snowflake falling toward the ground to promote an upcoming Gamescom 2014 announcment. Right now, this trailer is the entirety of Sony’s Gamescom 2014 tease, so who knows what they’re attempting to promote. But we can take a few guesses.
The consolemaker has several games in development that focus heavily on blood including Bloodborne, The Order: 1886, and the supposedly still-in-development Until Dawn. Is it teasing one of these titles? Or something else entirely? We’ll all find out together when Sony delivers their Gamescom 2014 keynote on Monday, August 11 at 1:00 PM (Eastern Time).
Posted in News, PS3, PS4, Vita
Tagged Gamescom 2014
XBL Store Today: Sacred 3
Deep Silver’s hack and slash sequel, Sacred 3, is the sole addition to the Xbox Live Games Store this week. It’s available for the Xbox 360 and it’s been priced at $49.99:
Sacred 3 ($49.99)
Sacred 3 is an arcade Hack ‘n’ Slash game for up to four players, set in the war for Ancaria. Choose from legendary heroes and fight together against the rise of evil. You will face hordes of grimmocs, brute beasts, legions of mercenaries and undead wizards. Develop your character’s skills and abilities and band together to use powerful co-op abilities and tactics. Victory is Ours. Glory is Mine.
Shovel Knight sells 180,000 copies in first month as Yacht Club breaks down budget/sales
When Yacht Club Games created their Kickstarter campaign for Shovel Knight last Spring, they didn’t just set out to create a retro-styled platformer. They also wanted to make the development process more transparent by regularly releasing budget figures and sales numbers.
To that end, the team revealed that their initial budget for Shovel Knight was $1.44 million. So what’s a developer to do when their Kickstarter campaign only brings in $328,000? In Yacht Club’s case, they deferred the salary of their outside composer, split off the Stretch Goals into post-release content, and forgoed paychecks for the last five months of development.
“It was a difficult period, where some of us were awkwardly standing in front of cashiers having our credit cards declined, drawing from any possible savings, and borrowing money from our friends and family,” a Yacht Club team member said.
But it appears to have paid off as the team sold more than 180,000 copies of Shovel Knight during the game’s first month of availability. Amazingly, it’s selling at exactly the same pace on each platform as the 3DS, PC, and Wii U versions all account for about a third of the sales.
With a success on their hands, Yacht Club is ready to embark on creating those promised Stretch Goals. If you’d like to read more about Shovel Knight’s wild ride from Kickstarter darling to beloved game, head over to Yacht Club’s website.
Posted in 3DS, News, PC, Wii U
Tagged Shovel Knight
Mario Kart 8 August update includes Mercedes DLC, on-screen map, more
That bizarre Mercedes-Benz DLC will soon be available for Mario Kart 8. Nintendo of Japan has announced that an August 27 update for Mario Kart 8 will include three Mercedes-Benz karts and a comprehensive set of gameplay tweaks… including the return of the course map!
Aside from putting the course map back on your television where it belongs, Mario Kart 8’s August update will include a “Last Used Configuration” for each character and kart combination as well as a Scoreboard screen for each user that lists their total number of coins collected and online win-loss records. The update will also include an increase in the stability of online races and the ability for opponents to copy and edit the Mario Kart TV highlight videos.
As for the Mercedes-Benz DLC, the free kart has now become a trio as the car manufacturer has provided players with the GLA, the W25 Silver Arrow, and the 300 SL Roadster. You can see them all in action in the trailer above.
Nintendo of America has yet to confirm when Mario Kart 8’s first update will be available on our side of the Pacific, but it’s likely we’ll receive it around the end of August as well.
[Source: Nintendo Life]
UPDATE: Nintendo of America has announced that the Mario Kart 8 update will be available on August 27.
Posted in News, Wii U
Tagged Mario Kart 8
2K pushes Evolve’s release into February 2015
The Fall 2014 game calendar lost another one last night when 2K Games announced that Turtle Rock’s “4v1” shooter, Evolve, will miss its October 21 release date. The game, which was a huge hit at both PAX East and the E3 Expo, will now be released on February 10, 2015.
Posting on Turtle Rock’s official forums, co-founder Chris Ashton revealed that the team is “painfully close” to matching their vision for Evolve and asked for the extra time to polish the game:
As we got closer to the October date, we were able to look at where the game was going to be, and compare that to where we all dreamed it would be. In a meeting with the top brass I described it as “painfully close.”
Fortunately 2K feels the same way and is willing to put extra time into the game so that we can make our dream a reality. That’s huge for us, and for the future of Evolve. We want to be proud of every aspect of the game on release day.
The public will next get a chance to play Evolve during next week’s Gamescom convention in Cologne, Germany.
Killzone: Shadow Fall Intercept, Ultra Street Fighter IV, Swapper, more added to PS Store
Sony has dropped eight new games onto the PlayStation Store, so get for another punching, platforming, and shooting good time. This week’s big new releases include…
- Killzone: Shadow Fall Intercept (PS4), a standalone shooter based on the “Intercept” co-op mode from Killzone: Shadow Fall.
- Ultra Street Fighter IV (PS3), is the fourth (and presumably final) update for Street Fighter IV. It adds five new fighters to the game as well as a variety of balance tweaks.
- The Swapper (PS3/PS4/Vita Cross-Buy), is this week’s “PlayStation Store Play” selection and it tasks players with navigating a sci-fi world by cloning themselves into new locations.
- Metrico (Vita), is another puzzle platformer, but this one is set in a world of charts and graphs.
- Sacred 3 (PS3), the latest entry in the hack and slash franchise, which has shifted over to a new developer in Keen Games.
More information on all of these games can be found after the break and a full rundown of this week’s new game add-ons is available at the PlayStation Blog. (more…)
Posted in News, PS3, PS4, Vita
Tagged Sacred 3, Street Fighter IV, The Swapper
The Expendabros, a free Broforce/Expendables 3 crossover is now available on Steam
The Expendables is a testosterone-laden film franchise that gathers together an all-star lineup of 80s action stars for all new adventures, such as this month’s The Expendables 3. Spearheaded by Sylvester Stallone, the film trilogy has roped in Jason Statham, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren, Jean Claude Van Damme, and many others in its pursuit of creating the ultimate 80s movie.
Free Lives’ Broforce is a Contra-like side-scrolling shooter that has won over gamers with its insane run-and-gun action. Dripping with flag-waving patriotism and featuring bro-tastic parodies of those same 80s action stars, it already feels like a game adaptation of the Expendables formula.
So a Broforce/The Expendables 3 crossover seems like the natural fit, doesn’t it?
Enter The Expendabros, a ten-level crossover game that “combines the shock of Broforce with the awe of The Expendables 3 into an all-new ten-mission tour-de-force.” Now available as a free download through Steam, publisher Devolver Digital has taken to calling it “the best thing ever made.”
It’s hard to argue with them.