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: Articles
Microsoft will definitely include splitscreen multiplayer in Halo 6
Many fans were disappointed in Halo 5: Guardians‘s lack of splitscreen multiplayer, and it looks like Microsoft will remedy that in future installments of the franchise.
Bonnie Ross, the Head of Halo developer 343 Industries, spoke at the 2017 DICE Summit this week as part of a session highlighting the “Stewards of a Sci-Fi Universe.” According to GameSpot, Ross confirmed during her talk that all future entries in the Halo franchise, including the upcoming Halo 6, will include splitscreen multiplayer:
“For any FPS going out forward, we will always have splitscreen in,” she said.
Halo 5: Guardians was released in October 2015, and Halo 6 has yet to be officially announced by Microsoft, so it might be a while before we don the Master Chief’s armor for a sixth time.
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged Halo Infinite
First poster from Netflix’s Castlevania series revealed by Producer Adi Shankar
A Castlevania television series will make its way to Netflix this year, and Producer Adi Shankar recently revealed the first poster for the animated adaptation on his Facebook page. We still don’t know when the series will debut, but the gothic vibe that Shankar is going for is certainly evident in this image.
According to Netflix, the first season will be comprised of four half-hour episodes:
Inspired by the classic video game series, Castlevania is a dark medieval fantasy following the last surviving member of the disgraced Belmont clan, trying to save Eastern Europe from extinction at the hand of Vlad Dracula Tepe himself.
Based on Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, the Castlevania series will be written by Warren Ellis, and a second season is said to be in production for release in 2018.
Posted in Etcetera, News, Retro
Tagged Castlevania
The Video Game Canon – Halo: Combat Evolved
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon with a look at Microsoft’s first attempt to enter the console market and the birth of Halo: Combat Evolved. Here’s a teaser…
Microsoft is usually portrayed as the stodgy suit in contrast to Apple’s hip turtleneck, but would you believe that the first Xbox prototype was built on a whim by a quartet of guys from the company’s engineering department?
Kevin Bachus, Otto Berkes, Seamus Blackley, and Ted Hase first took their “DirectX Box” to Ed Fries, the head of Microsoft’s video game division, in 1998. Even though everyone in the world had played a dozen hands (or more) of Windows Solitaire, Microsoft wasn’t a big player in the game development arena at the time. Similar to today’s line of console-like PCs, the original “DirectX Box” was an off-the-shelf Windows PC with a video card and a hard drive that hid the Windows-ness of the system from the player.
Before the “DirectX Box” could move forward, Fries and his team had to fight off a challenge from a separate team within Microsoft that had worked with Sega to produce some of the system software for the Dreamcast. They were pushing for the company to create a more traditional console (no Windows, no hard drive), and Bill Gates himself ultimately stepped in to give his blessing to Fries and his “DirectX Box.”
[…]
[Eventually,] Microsoft toted their Xbox prototype, which was a massive X-shaped silver box with a glowing green core, to the 2000 Game Developers Conference, and officially announced their intention to take over the living room (with an assist from Bill Gates and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson). A few months after that, the company purchased Bungie Studios and their upcoming game, Halo: Combat Evolved.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to continue reading this article and to explore the complete Top 1000.
Posted in Features, PC, Retro, Top Story, Video Game Canon, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Halo: Combat Evolved
Graveyard Keeper brings medieval cemetery management to PC, Xbox One in 2017
Have you ever wanted to play a game about graveyards and capitalism with a medieval twist? Yeah, neither did I, but then I learned about Graveyard Keeper, a strange new game in production at Lazy Bear.
Graveyard Keeper is a unique take on the simulation genre, challenging players to take control of a medieval graveyard and transform it into a booming business. In doing so, players will be faced with making tough, ethically compromising decisions, all in the name of capitalism.
You, the caretaker, will have the option to explore beyond the graveyard, venturing into mysterious dungeons and the surrounding area, in search of resources that will help to make your business better. You will also be faced with choices, both dark and comedic, such as whether to team up with the local vampire and provide him with the blood of those buried in your graveyard. Players can even go the extra mile by crafting poisons with the resources they’ve found, in order to murder villagers and fill up those empty plots.
To expand your graveyard business, players can even host a Witch Burning Festival and feed the villagers the recycled meat of their dead loved ones, in order to cut operation costs. Or you can take the opposite path and scare the locals into attending church.
Graveyard Keeper will be available on the Xbox One and PC sometime in 2017. It’ll also be playable within the TinyBuild booth at the 2017 PAX East convention, which begins on March 10.
In the meantime, check out the first trailer above, as well as a handful of screenshots and a GIF of some rather unsanitary body dumping, after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, Xbox One
Tagged Graveyard Keeper, PAX East 2017
Daily Scoop: February 24, 2017 – Gods Eater 2: Rage Burst on sale
It’s been a desperate race to get to the end of this week, which felt like it was four weeks rolled into one. Here’s hoping this weekend is relaxing and feels like four weekends!
Anyway, let’s talk about all the beautiful games on sale, shall we? Over at the Humble Store, the Daily Deal is Batman: Arkham Knight which is on sale for $7.99. Their other deals include Berserk and the Band of the Hawk for $53.99, Sky Sanctuary for $11.69, and Kingdom: New Lands for $7.49.
There are some great deals at Steam as well! The Weekend Deal is Gods Eater 2: Rage Burst, which is currently just $19.99. The Daily Deal is Styx: Master of Shadows, which is $5.99.
Hit the jump to check out the last of this week’s t-shirts! (more…)
Posted in Daily Scoop
Snipperclips: Cut It Out Together will launch alongside the Switch on March 3
We’re less than a week away from the launch of the Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo has announced that yet another game will be ready for the console’s debut on March 3. Snipperclips: Cut It Out Together, a co-op puzzle game starring a pair of anthropomorphic pieces of paper, will be available to download through the Nintendo eShop on Day One.
To better familiarize yourself with Snipperclips: Cut It Out Together, feel free to press Play on the latest episode of the consolemaker’s “Nintendo Minute” show. Hosts Kit and Krysta provide a pretty decent overview of the game as they work their way through three adorable puzzles.
Snipperclips: Cut It Out Together will be priced at $19.99 and offer three game modes including World Mode (which can also be played solo), Party Mode, and Blitz Mode.
Posted in News, Switch
Tagged Snipperclips: Cut It Out Together
Xbox Store Today: Forma.8, Riptide GP Renegade, World Heroes, more
A big batch of new Xbox One games were added to the Xbox Games Store today…
Xbox One owners now have the opportunity to download Forma.8, a “MetroidVania” that stars a small exploration probe known as Forma.8. This little guy is stranded on an alien planet, and it has to search through ancient alien civilizations for a powerful energy source that will save the world.
Also available to download this week for the Xbox One is Riptide GP: Renegade, a futuristic racing game that features “illicit hydrojet racing.”
And lastly this week, SNK is has begun to bring games from the NeoGeo back catalog to the Xbox One, and they’ve decided to start with World Heroes, one-on-one fighting game, and Neo Turf Masters, a classic golf game.
More details about all of these games (and more than a half dozen other new releases) can be found after the break. (more…)
More than 80 games will be on display in the Indie Megabooth at PAX East 2017
PAX East 2017 will open its doors in exactly 336 hours, and the Indie Megabooth has finally announced which games it’ll have on display at the Boston-based convention this year.
Dozens upon dozens of indie titles will get a chance to shine in a couple of weeks, including some of our favorites from years past. We selected Vertex Pop’s Graceful Explosion Machine, Hypersect’s Inversus, and Pocketwatch’s Tooth & Tail for our Best of PAX East 2016 roundup and all of them will be on display in the Indie Megabooth this year. Refactor, an alumnus of our Best of PAX East 2014 roundup (when it was known as Tetropolis) has also earned a spot in the PAX East 2017 edition of the Indie Megabooth.
The Indie Megabooth continues to grow and change, and this year, in addition to the Minibooth area and the Tabletop area, it’ll also have a “Visual Novel Reading Room” within its carpeted confines for PAX East attendees.
You can find the full list of games set to be included in the Indie Megabooth at PAX East 2017 after the break. (more…)
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
Tagged Graceful Explosion Machine, Inversus, PAX East 2017, Refactor, Tabletop Games, Tooth and Tail