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)
Most Recent: News
CoD Modern Warfare 3: More evidence for November 8th date
An anonymous retail source has delivered a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 promotional poster to IGN Australia that lends more credence to the game’s rumored release date.
The poster features the now confirmed Modern Warfare 3 cover image along with the date “08.11.11”. Before you get all excited about a surprise August 11th launch, bear in mind that the poster uses the Australian date format of Day-Month-Year, so it actually reads November 8, 11.
Which is the exact same date that Kotaku learned from its sources. So I’d say this rumor is as good as confirmed.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Chrono Trigger added to Virtual Console
Square Enix has added their time-travelling epic, Chrono Trigger, to the Wii’s Virtual Console today. The Super NES classic can be downloaded later today for 800 Wii Points ($8). Also available this week in the WiiWare section is Gabrielle’s Ghostly Groove: Monster Mix, a dancing game… with monsters!
A trio of new DSiWare games have been added to Nintendo’s portable download store: Big Bass Arcade, a fishing game; Word Searcher 3, a word search game; and Hellokids Volume 1: Coloring and Painting, a “coloring book for your DSi.”
More information on all of these titles can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News
Tagged Chrono Trigger, DS, Wii
Disney trademarks “SEAL Team Six” for games
Because of their involvement in the death of Osama bin Laden, SEAL Team Six has been in the news a lot lately. Considered by many to be the most elite special forces team in the entire U.S. military, it’s not surprising that they would capture the public’s interest.
Disney has decided to capitalize on this new found notoriety by filing an application for the trademark to “SEAL Team Six.” The application covers “hand-held units for playing electronic games other than those adapted for use with an external display screen or monitor” as well as “Christmas stockings,” “Christmas tree ornaments and decorations,” “snow globes,” and “clothing.” Interestingly enough, the actual SEAL Team Six was renamed in 1987. The unit is now known as the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (or DEVGRU for short). No company holds the trademark to DEVGRU.
This actually isn’t the first time a company has held a trademark on “SEAL Team Six.” Budget publisher NovaLogic held the mark until 2006, and used it in their Delta Force series of games.
It seems unlikely that this new trademark application will lead to a Disney-produced “Raid on Osama bin Laden’s Hideout” game (the language used in the trademark application sounds more like those standalone handheld units that Tiger Electronics used to make), but stranger things have certainly happened.
Posted in News
Weekly Warp-Up: Play Ball… Umm… PSN!
No, that’s not a typo. Welcome to the Weekly Warp-Up, your weekly wrap-up of the biggest and the best articles posted at Warp Zoned this week…
Get Warp Zoned!
I’ll make this week’s Weekly Warp-Up quick as the PSN is back online!
Yes, Sony’s online service has been restored and online play, chat and third-party services like Netflix are all up and running. The PlayStation Store remains down for the time being. It’s been a hard road to bring the PSN back online and a Sony Japan spokesman actually said the company was targeting May 31st for a complete restoration of the service. Thankfully, things were able to come back online piecemeal. The company even kept it’s promise of “a few more days” that it made on the 10th.
As if that wasn’t good enough news, we’ve also got a new episode of the Warp Zoned Podcast for you this week. Mike Gutierrez, Nicole Kline, and Ryan Littlefield are joined by a very special guest – contributing writer Brianne Galli! The foursome start off by discussing what they’re playing, and I’m sure no one is surprised at this point to find out that the answer is “Pokemon!” They also talk about Nintendo’s successful handheld, the DS, and how the different iterations have stood up to the test of time – from the clunky original all the way up to the shiny new 3DS. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll want to buy Radiant Historia when you listen to this week’s Warp Zoned Podcast!
But due to the PSN outage, we may have gone a little mad as this week we analyzed Christina Perri’s “Jar of Hearts” and found that the pop singer was totally singing about Mortal Kombat!
Hit the jump for the rest of the Weekly Warp-Up. (more…)
Posted in News
Sony begins restoration of PlayStation Network
The PlayStation Network is back! Sony began the process of restoring PSN functionality at 5 PM Pacific Time starting with the following services:
- Online play
- Third party services like Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and MLB.TV
- PlayStation Home
- Friends List and Chat
- Trophies
As part of the restoration, PS3 owners will have to download the new 3.61 firmware. This update will require all PSN users to create a new password as well. Services are being turned back on on a state-by-state basis. Sony has started with the northeastern states and California and the PlayStation.Blog is tracking the system restoration progress. Sony also released a special message from CEO Kaz Hirai, which can be viewed above.
So the PSN outage is finally over! Time to celebrate by buying that game I’ve always wanted… oh, right… the PlayStation Store will be restored “as soon as possible.” Still, it’s great to have online play back.
Posted in News
Tagged ApocalyPS3 2011, PS3, PSP
Army of Darkness: Trapped in time, Surrounded by evil, Now a tower defense game
Alright you primitive screwheads, listen up! You see this? This is a news article informing you that Backflip Studios has recently added Army of Darkness: Defense to the iTunes App Store in both iPod Touch ($0.99) and iPad ($2.99) versions.
Army of Darkness: Defense is a tower defense game that recreates the climactic scene from the film where swarms of Deadites raid the castle in search of the Necronomicon. Bruce Campbell returns as Ash to give the “world’s biggest idiot” a dose of “Groovy!” as he’s joined by swordsmen, armored knights, archers and more.
The movie really seems to be tailor-made for the tower defense treatment as Arthur, Henry the Red, Sheila, the Wiseman and Evil Ash will all join the fight. Thankfully, Ash’s trademark weaponry can also be unlocked including his Boomstick, the chainsaw, magic spells and the Deathcoaster.
With all that firepower, maybe Ash’s boys can protect the book. Yeah, and maybe I’m a Chinese jet pilot.
Konami releases Silent Hill: Downpour E3 teaser
The Facebook page for the Silent Hill franchise has amassed 500,000 “Likes,” and to celebrate, Konami has released an E3 teaser trailer for the next game in the series, Silent Hill: Downpour.
So put on your galoshes and your rain slicker and head over to the Silent Hill Facebook page to check out the video, which also features a short message from developer Vatra Games.
Silent Hill: Downpour will be available for the PS3 and Xbox 360 this Fall, but it looks like we’ll get our first real look at it at the E3 Expo, which runs from June 7-9.
Posted in News, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Silent Hill: Downpour
New Releases: L.A. Noire, The Witcher 2, Fable III PC, More
Put on your detective hat as we go searching for clues to this this week’s new releases.
The biggest new game of the week is Rockstar Games’ L.A. Noire. An ambitious story of murder and traffic violations in 1940s Los Angeles, L.A. Noire has been a long time in the making and has the makings of changing the way we look at games with its facial cues game mechanic.
To counteract the juggernaut that is L.A. Noire, two major PC games are also being released this week: CD Projekt’s RPG The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and the PC version of Peter Molyneux’s Fable III.
Check out the full list of the rest of this week’s new releases after the break. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, DS, News, PC, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360
Tagged Fable III, L.A. Noire, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings