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
Xbox Store Today: Q
Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet and it rarely appears without a U directly after it.
Q supplies James Bond with all of his amazing spy gadgets.
Q quizzed Captain Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Q is a new Xbox One puzzler from Liica that is… better just watch the trailer embedded above.
Originally released for mobile devices, Q asks players to complete a series of tasks by drawing lines on the screen using a controller or the Kinect sensor. It’s budget-priced at $5.99, so it might just be the perfect pickup for someone looking for a game that’s just a little bit quirky:
Q ($5.99)
Are you capable of getting a ball out of a cup? If you are confident that you can, we challenge you. Take on the challenge by creating a solution on the screen to clear the Q. The solution differs greatly from person to person. There are Q’s that even we developers cannot solve. Interested? We challenge you to complete the Q. You will be able to see how many people in the world have managed to solve each problem.
Nintendo will build 100 levels for Super Mario Maker… more than any previous Mario game
UPDATE: It looks like Super Mario Maker won’t ship with 100 pre-built levels on the disc. Instead, 60 courses will be available when you first boot up the game, which is still a pretty impressive number.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Last week, we learned that Super Mario Maker would ship with a number of pre-built levels, including the four featured during the finals of the 2015 Nintendo World Championships. But those four are apparently just the beginning for the Wii U game (or possibly the end, considering how difficult they were).
It’s been removed in the interim, but yesterday, Super Mario Maker’s page on Nintendo UK included a new bullet point promising the game would ship with 100 pre-made levels. Specifically, the site stated, “There are also 100 courses included that you can play without an internet connection.” Not only is that a very generous number, but the inclusion of 100 courses would actually make Super Mario Maker the biggest Mario game of all time. As you can see from this chart, every other entry in the side-scrolling series pales in comparison:
| Title | Number of Levels |
| Super Mario Bros. | 32 |
| Super Mario Bros. 2 | 20 |
| Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels | 52 |
| Super Mario Bros. 3 | 90 |
| Super Mario World | 72 |
| New Super Mario Bros. | 80 |
| New Super Mario Bros. Wii | 77 |
| New Super Mario Bros. 2 | 92 |
| New Super Mario Bros. U | 73 |
It may not have a World Map, but Super Mario Maker is clearly no mere level editor. And when you add in all the ridiculously creative courses that will surely be created after the game’s September 11 launch, it might be the last Mario side-scroller we’ll ever need.
Posted in News, Wii U
Tagged Super Mario Maker
USA! USA! USA! Splatoon’s first Splatfest has been rescheduled for July 4
After a week of tinkering, Nintendo has worked out all the kinks in Splatoon‘s network code and is ready to reschedule the game’s first North American Splatfest. The all-day “Dogs Versus Cats” showdown will now take place on Saturday, July 4. Hopefully, everyone out there in Nintendo-Land will celebrate the independence of our nation by splatting a large part of it!
The Splatfest will begin bright and early on July 4 at 3:00 AM (Eastern Time). After 24 ink-filled hours, the contest will come to an end at 2:59 AM (Eastern Time) on July 5. And then we’ll finally know which four-legged furball is truly man’s best friend. Spoiler Alert… the correct answer is dogs… regardless of what happens during the Splatfest, the answer is dogs.
You can make your selection now in-game at the Splatfest kiosk in Inkopolis Plaza. Participants will receive a special Splatfest t-shirt with three ability slots. Unfortunately, you have to give it back after the event is over.
Nintendo Download: Art Academy Home Studio, Star Fox Command, Mario & Luigi Partners in Time, more
Indulge your artistic side this week on the Wii U eShop with Art Academy: Home Studio, which offers 30 new art lessons to paint and draw with the Wii U GamePad. Players will be able to share their masterworks through the Miiverse, and even upload time-lapse videos to YouTube. Elsewhere in this week’s Nintendo Download (but still sticking with the Wii U) is Never Alone, an “atmospheric puzzle platformer” developed in collaboration with an Alaska Native people.
Also available the Wii U eShop this week are a pair of DS re-releases. Star Fox Command adds a touch of strategic plotting to the space shooting, while Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time adds time travel to the plumbing duo’s portable RPG series.
More information on all these games (and a bevy of new DSiWare titles) can be found after the break. (more…)
DriveClub: PlayStation Plus Edition is finally available on the PlayStation Store
After a ridiculous number of delays, Sony is finally ready to release the DriveClub: PlayStation Plus Edition on the PlayStation Store today. However, Shuhei Yoshida, the President of SCE Worldwide Studios, posted a warning on the PlayStation Blog that not all features will be available to all players right away:
We’ve spent a long time preparing for this launch after some difficult and unexpected set-backs. To make absolutely certain that all players have the smoothest and most stable experience possible we are going to be duly cautious about how we release the game this time around.
Starting today, all players will have access to the game’s Offline Mode. But Sony and Evolution Studios plan to soft launch the game’s Online Mode with a small number of players that will slowly grow as long as all game systems continue to operate smoothly. Yoshida apologized for this new delay, but asked fans to be patient as the Online Mode of DriveClub is actually very demanding:
We know that this might be frustrating after your extra wait already, but hope you can understand that we are taking extra precautions to protect your experience when you do get online. We want to make sure we don’t overload the servers as we invite millions of PS Plus members to download the game tomorrow.
We have to take this precaution because DriveClub connectivity is demanding for a multiplayer game, with countless ever-growing social connections across clubs, challenges, multiplayer, and hundreds of thousands of dynamic leaderboards and activity feeds.
Players will be able to monitor the status of DriveClub’s online component at the game’s official website.
Blizzard has released five more gameplay videos from Overwatch
Blizzard is at it again, releasing five more gameplay videos for Overwatch, their upcoming free-to-play arena shooter.
This time out, the developer has shone a spotlight on a “super-intelligent, genetically engineered” battle gorilla named Winston, a deadly assassin (appropriately) named Widowmaker, a soldier with a specialization in heavy weaponry named Pharah, a hulking German brawler named Reinhardt, and a defensive robot named Bastion.
Wilson’s trailer has been embedded above because he is literally the 800-pound gorilla in the room. The other four can be found after the break. All together, Blizzard has released 13 gameplay trailers for Overwatch totaling more than two hours. If you’ve been putting it off, it’s time to get watching. (more…)
WB Games suspends future sales of Batman: Arkham Knight’s PC version while a patch can be created
PS4 and Xbox One owners have been enjoying Batman: Arkham Knight since its release yesterday, but PC players were given a game that was more riddled with bugs than Poison Ivy’s lair. WB Games has been trying to quickly issue a patch to fix the performance issues and graphical glitches, but they’ve also taken the very drastic step of suspending future sales of the PC version until everything can be fixed.
News of the suspension was posted to the game’s official forums a few hours ago:
We want to apologize to those of you who are experiencing performance issues with Batman: Arkham Knight on PC. We take these issues very seriously and have therefore decided to suspend future game sales of the PC version while we work to address these issues to satisfy our quality standards. We greatly value our customers and know that while there are a significant amount of players who are enjoying the game on PC, we want to do whatever we can to make the experience better for PC players overall.
Thank you to those players who have already given valuable feedback. We are continuously monitoring all threads posted in the Official Batman: Arkham Knight Community and Steam forums, as well as any issues logged with our Customer Support (support.wbgames.com). If you purchased your copy of the game and are not satisfied with your experience, then we ask for your patience while these issues are resolved. If desired, you can request a refund at help.steampowered.com (Steam refund policies can be found here: store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds) or the retail location where you purchased the game.
The Batman: Arkham fans have continually supported the franchise to its current height of success, and we want to thank you for your patience as we work to deliver an updated version of Batman: Arkham Knight on PC so you can all enjoy the final chapter of the Batman: Arkham series as it was meant to be played.
I’d make a “WB Games wasn’t prepared” joke, but this situation is a very serious breach of trust between the publisher and their fans. An apology is nice, and the sales suspension protects WB Games from future complaints, but it’s very clear the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight wasn’t ready to be released this past Tuesday, June 23.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged Batman: Arkham Knight
Xbox Store Today: Batman Arkham Knight, Devil May Cry 4, Tales From Borderlands Ep3
Three new games are now available on the Xbox Games Store, and all three involve rather unorthodox heroes.
Batman: Arkham Knight leads the way on the Xbox One with the finale of Rocksteady’s Arkham trilogy. While “The Batman” himself is possibly the most well-known superhero in the world, his methods often verge on madness. And in Arkham Knight, that includes taking on an army of supervillains by tearing through the streets of Gotham in a heavily-armed Batmobile. As the game’s trailers often say, this is war.
Capcom’s Dante is not quite as well known as Bruce Wayne, but his penchant for stylish demon slaying has made him a favorite among gamers. And Capcom has responded by remaking his fourth adventure for the Xbox One as Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition. The Special Edition includes additional playable characters, new game modes, and a sparkling 1080p/60FPS graphical upgrade.
Finally this week, Telltale Games released the third episode of their Borderlands spinoff, Tales From the Borderlands: Catch A Ride. It’s available for the Xbox One and Xbox 360, and it stars a pair of heroes who escaped “very-near-almost-certain-death” in the previous episode with the assistance of “statuesque buttocks.”
OK, there’s the unorthodoxy I’m looking for. More information on all of these games can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged Batman: Arkham Knight, Devil May Cry 4, Tales From the Borderlands