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
- 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
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- 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)
- Shadow of the Colossus: An oral history – Design Room (2025)
Most Recent: News
Weekly Warp-Up: Mario Runs Towards the iPhone…
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…
Nintendo hit the ground running this week with the announcement that Super Mario Run will be available iOS devices this December. The endless runner will also make its way to Android devices in 2017. Not to be outdone, Sony officially announced the PS4 Slim, which will be released next week, and the PS4 Pro, which will be available in November.
Nintendo will no doubt take over the conversation once again when they reveal more about the NX, which is good news for our September 2016 Update to The Big List of Nintendo NX Games. To add to the list, Tank It!, an “anti-war” game from Bplus, was announced for the NX this week.
Elsewhere on Warp Zoned this week, the staff got together to discuss What We Played in August 2016 and The Games of September 2016. A review of Batman: The Telltale Series – Episode 1: Realm of Shadows is also available for your perusal.
More news from the rest of the week can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News
New Retail Releases: NBA 2K17 Early Tip Off, ReCore, BioShock Collection, More
Ladies and gentlemen, it has begun. The “Fall Gaming Season” begins now, and publisher are flooding store shelves with more than a dozen new titles this week.
With the NFL season kicking off today, let’s start with this week’s sports offerings. EA Sports released Madden NFL 17 three weeks, but the publisher is back this week with NHL 17 for the PS4 and Xbox One. If you’re more of a basketball fan, 2K Games will release the NBA 2K17: Early Tip Off Edition this week for the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. Soccer supporters will also get a new simulation this week with the release of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 on the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. And the checkered flag goes to NASCAR Heat: Evolution, which will be released for the PS4 and Xbox One this week.
Far away from Earth’s athletic fields is the planet of Far Eden, an interstellar colony that’s been overrun by villainous robots in Microsoft’s ReCore. Developed by Armature Studio, with additional idea work by Keiji Inafune, ReCore lets players fight back as Joule Adams, a resourceful woman who has her own team of robotic helpers. ReCore will be released for the Xbox One and it’ll also be available digitally for the PC as an Xbox Play Anywhere title.
You know who else has access to a lot of gadgets? Batman. And Telltale Games will put the World’s Greatest Detective through the ringer this week with their Batman: The Telltale Series – Season Pass Disc for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. The disc will include the first episode from Telltale’s Batman series and digital access to every subsequent episode released (the second is scheduled to launch on September 20).
Finally this week, a trio of re-releases will reintroduce gamers to a few beloved franchises. BioShock: The Collection will bring BioShock, BioShock 2, and BioShock Infinite together in a single package for the PS4 and Xbox One (and digitally on the PC) with improved graphics and exclusive commentary by Ken Levine and other developers from Irrational. Meanwhile, Capcom’s Dead Rising also makes the leap to the PS4 and Xbox One (and, again, digitally on the PC) with improved graphics. And Square Enix and Nintendo collaborated on a brand new localization for the 3DS release of Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past.
A complete list of this week’s new releases can be found after the break. (more…)
Xbox Store Today: Jotun, Pure Chess, Emily Wants To Play, more
Norse Gods, another Chess game, and spooky dolls are the highlights of today’s Xbox Games Store update…
In Jotun: Valhalla Edition, Xbox One owners will do battle with monsters in Norse Purgatory as Thora, “a Viking warrior who died an inglorious death and must prove herself to the Gods to enter Valhalla.”
However, if you’d prefer to wage war on a different sort of battlefield, Ripstone launched Pure Chess: Grandmaster Edition today for the Xbox One. Pure Chess: Grandmaster Edition will offer online play against up-to eight friends or local play against ten different AI opponents.
Finally today, Emily Wants To Play comes to the Xbox One and brings with it the eerie suspense of being alone in an isolated house with three terrifying dolls and a strange little girl named Emily.
More information on all of these games (and a few other new releases) can be found after the break. (more…)
Koji Igarashi delays Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night’s launch to the First Half of 2018
Koji “Iga” Igarashi delivered some bad news last night to fans of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. The famed developer revealed that progress on the game isn’t going as smoothly as he would have hoped. To make sure it’s “done right the first time,” Igarashi announced that Bloodstained will miss its planned March 2017 launch. Instead, the game be released in the first half of 2018 for the PC, PS4, Vita, Wii U, and Xbox One:
“The last thing I want to do is keep our backers waiting, but after receiving such incredible support, I feel responsible for delivering the best product I possibly can. Again, I offer my sincerest apologies.”
To help maintain his vision, Igarashi also confirmed that he’ll add a new development team so he can keep development of Bloodstained “fully on track.” Inti Creates is currently working on the game for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One (Armature is handling the Vita and Wii U port), but it’s unknown if this second team will work alongside them, or replace them.
Lego Harry Potter Collection coming October 18 exclusively to the PS4
WB Games, TT Games, and Sony Interactive Entertainment have announced that Lego Harry Potter Collection will be released exclusively for the PS4 on October 18.
The compilation will include both Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 (Sorcerer’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Goblet of Fire) and Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 (Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Deathly Hallows), as well all content from the second game’s Spell Pack DLC and Character Pack DLC.
According to the publisher, the games will be remastered for their PS4 debut with “enhanced graphics, environments, lighting and visual effects.”
Posted in News, PS4
Tagged Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4, Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7
Nintendo Download: Ace Attorney Spirit of Justice, Jotun, Super Castlevania IV, more
Objection! You need to read all about the new games in this week’s Nintendo Download…
New to the 3DS eShop this week is Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice, the latest game in Capcom’s Ace Attorney series. This time, Phoenix Wright and his colleagues will need to explore crime scenes, dust for fingerprints, and contact the dead to win the case.
Hopping over to the Wii U, the Nindies Summer Jam continues this week with Jotun: Valhalla Edition, an overhead action game from Thunder Lotus Games. The game features hand-drawn artwork and plunges players into the world of Norse mythology as Thora tries to enter Valhalla by provig herself to the Gods. Also available to download for the Wii U this week is Mario Strikers Charged, a Mario-centric soccer title that was originally released for the Wii in 2007.
Finally this week, we drop back down to the 3DS eShop for the digital launch of Super Castlevania IV. Originally released for the Super NES all the way back in 1991, it would be the last time that Simon Belmont battled Dracula in the franchise.
More information on all of these games (and a few other new releases) can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, News, Wii U
Tagged Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice
Pokemon Go reaches 500 million downloads; Plus accessory coming next week with Apple Watch support later in 2016
Are you still Pokemon Go-ing like a maniac? As of today, the mobile app has dropped to #27 on the iOS App Store Chart, so it’s not quite as popular as it once was. But plenty of people are still obsessed with catching ’em all. So yesterday’s flurry of Pokemon Go announcements should definitely please fans of the game.
First, Niantic has announced that Pokemon Go has exceeded 500 million downloads worldwide since launching in July. The developer followed up this milestone by confirming that the Pokemon Go Plus will be available beginning next week, on September 16. The Plus is a wristwatch-shaped companion device that pairs with your smartphone and vibrates and and lights up when you approach a PokeStop or a Pokemon hiding nearby. And speaking of watches, Niantic’s final announcement was that Pokemon Go will receive Apple Watch support later this year.
“The globally loved Pokemon brand paired with Niantic’s platform and game design that encourages exploration, exercise and making real world social connections has inspired millions of people of all ages to go outdoors together,” said John Hanke, Niantic’s CEO. “We are encouraged by the fast adoption of the game and are pleased to see so many people walk and play every day. Pokemon Go for Apple Watch will be another way people can incorporate the game into their daily lives, even more seamlessly.”
Those 500 million Pokemon Go players have done a lot of walking since the game’s launch. Niantic’s last announcement revealed that players have collectively walked 4.6 billion kilometers, “which is the distance from Earth to Pluto.”
Posted in Mobile, News
Tagged Pokemon Go
Just Shapes & Beats tentatively scheduled for January 2017 release
Berzerk Studios’ Just Shapes & Beats was in the Indie MEGABOOTH at PAX West, and I got a chance to get destroyed by that incredibly addictive game. You’re Shapes, and you’re trying to evade bullets and lasers and other Shapes, and you’re doing it all to the Beat of some amazing chiptunes – in this case, the beats were by Danimal Cannon. I had a chance to ask the developers a few questions while I was getting wrecked, and they said that the game could be coming out as soon as January 2017.
Wondering how the game plays? Think the frenetic, can-I-blink insanity of Super Hexagon, but as a bullet hell that is full of neon and the best chiptunes. That’s Just Shapes & Beats. If that sounds like it’s for you, then be on the lookout for this to be released in January on PC.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged Just Shapes and Beats, PAX West 2016