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
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- Clair Obscur Completes the Sweep by Winning “Best Game” at 2025-2026 BAFTA Games Awards
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- 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
Firewatch will be available for the Xbox One on September 21
Ever since its release for the PC and PS4 back in February, people have been talking about Firewatch, a narrative-driven adventure from developer Campo Santo. Yesterday, Microsoft announced that Firewatch will make its way to the Xbox One on September 21, while also giving Campo Santo’s Sean Vanaman a chance to convince Xbox fans to to see what all the fuss is about on the Xbox Wire:
“What is Firewatch?” A great question that’s been asked many times over by folks that have come before. As I intimated above, Firewatch is a first person mystery set in the woods of Wyoming. You play as a man named Henry and you’ve escaped your messy life for some peaceful time alone in the woods. Except you’re not alone: you’re in constant contact with a woman named Delilah who works in a nearby tower and your time quickly stops being peaceful. I won’t spoil anything more than that but I’ll add that the group to came together to make Firewatch worked on games like the Bioshock series, Mark of the Ninja, Brutal Legend, and The Walking Dead Season One (if you’re mad about how that series ended, you can fill my personal emails with your complaints). Now, if the test-tube baby of all of those games sounds exciting to you, we think you’ll like Firewatch.
Campo Santo will expand Firewatch for its Xbox One debut, and the developer has revealed plans to include an optional “Firewatch Audio Tour” in the game that turns it into “turns it into one part Director’s Commentary, one part Game Dev Workshop, and wraps that all around a scavenger hunt.” A new Free Roam Mode will also let players discover additional secrets out in the woods.
You can learn even more about Firewatch from the brand new Announcement Trailer embedded above.
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged Firewatch, PAX West 2016
Classic Duke Nukem returns in Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour
Forget Captain America, Duke Nukem is the real “Man Out of Time.” Even though nineties nostalgia has seeped into every corner of our culture, Duke has felt like a relic from a bygone era for years now…
So it makes perfect sense that Gearbox has decided to bring him back for Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour.
Originally released in 1996, Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour will bring the classic shooter to the PS4 and Xbox One for the first time (a PC release is also planned). More than a simple remake, Gearbox plans to update Duke Nukem 3D’s visuals with True3D Rendering Mode, which will deliver the game “rendered at high fidelity and [a] blistering frame rate.” However, fans will also be able to toggle between the updated visuals and the original images with the press of a button.
Do you want some more? 20th Anniversary World Tour will also include eight all-new levels created by the original designers of Duke Nukem 3D, Allen Blum III and Richard “Levelord” Gray. This new episode will be accompanied by new music from original composer Lee Jackson, and additional vocal work from Duke himself, Jon St. John. The developers will also provide behind-the-scenes commentary that’ll be accessible in-game.
The second season of Ash vs Evil Dead will air on Starz this Fall, so at the very least, the developers will have a familiar place to “borrow” Duke’s new one-liners from.
“When I first moved out to Texas to join the Duke Nukem 3D development team in the mid-nineties, I could not possibly predict that we were all going to be part of the emergence of the 3D first-person video game genre that would ultimately impact the entire video game industry,” said Randy Pitchford, the President of Gearbox Software. “Making it possible for Allen, Richard, Lee, and Jon to all come back together 20 years later to bring a whole new episode to the classic game is just one of those rare and incredible things that I hope will bring joy and happiness to hardcore video game fans new and old.”
Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour will be priced at $19.99, and it’ll be available on October 11.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Duke Nukem 3D, PAX West 2016
Rumor: Another insider is saying the NX will use cartridges instead of optical discs
Citing “people familiar with the matter,” The Wall Street Journal is claiming that games for Nintendo’s NX console will come on cartridges.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard that the NX will use cartridges instead of the currently-much-more-common optical discs (Eurogamer made a similar claim in July), but if the console is also meant to function as a handheld, it makes a certain amount of sense.
The Wall Street Journal argues that the near-indestructibility of cartridges is something the family-friendly Nintendo is very interested in:
Industry watchers said cartridges were a reasonable choice for Nintendo’s next-generation system, code-named NX, because the company targets a wider range of consumers than Sony or Microsoft. Nintendo’s core fans include small children, who might scratch discs but find cartridges tougher to damage. Cartridges also allow games to load faster, are harder to copy and can be mass-produced faster than discs, they said.
The Wii U currently uses a Nintendo-specific flavor of Blu-ray, so if the NX were to use cartridges instead of discs, it’s unlikely that the NX would have any kind of backwards compatibility features, which have become a standard part of Nintendo’s consoles over the years.
Nintendo is widely expected to officially unveil the NX sometime this month. But bear in mind that even that is just a rumor at this point.
The Walking Dead Season 3 gets a new name and a November launch date
Developers from Telltale Games have always said they never liked referring to the third game in their Walking Dead series as The Walking Dead Season 3. Today, during a PAX West panel hosted by the publisher, the game’s official title was finally revealed…
So say hello to The Walking Dead: A New Frontier.
“This third new season will serve as both a continuation of what’s come before in our story, as well as an all-new beginning set nearly four years after the outbreak events of Season One,” said Kevin Bruner, the CEO of Telltale Games. “As a harrowing and horrific drama, A New Frontier will explore beyond what it means to survive in a world ravaged by the undead, and will see our characters confronting the new rules of order and justice in a land being brutally reclaimed and rediscovered by what’s left of humanity itself.”
“When we began this series, we explored what it meant to protect a character like Clementine at all costs,” said Kevin Boyle, an Executive Producer on the Walking Dead series. “Years later, meeting her for the first time, Javier will begin to unravel the mystery of who Clementine has become, as her story intersects with his – both of them still driven by the things they value most long after society’s collapse.”
The Walking Dead: A New Frontier’s first episode will be available this November for consoles, mobile devices, and the PC. Like other recent Telltale titles, a Season Pass Disc will also be available that includes the first episodes and gives players downloadable access to each subsequent episode as they’re released.
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged PAX West 2016, The Walking Dead: A New Frontier
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King’s 3DS debut pushed back to 2017
Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past will be available for the 3DS in exactly two weeks, but did you know that Nintendo and Square Enix are also toiling away at a brand new version of Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King for the handheld?
Unfortunately, a short blurb during yesterday’s Nintendo Direct presentation confirmed the RPG re-release won’t make its 3DS debut until sometime in 2017.
Previously expected to be available in North America before the end of the year, no reason was given for the delay, but the 3DS version of Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King was described by a Nintendo Direct host as “more feature-rich than ever.”
Posted in 3DS, News
Tagged Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King
Xbox Store Today: Earthlock Festival of Magic, Assetto Corsa, The Final Station, more
It’s time for another end-of-the-week update to the Xbox Games Store, and here’s what Microsoft has in store for you…
We start things off with Earthlock: Festival of Magic, a turn-based fantasy RPG for the Xbox One with a Norwegian influence. If that sounds like an interesting combination to you, then you’ll be pleased to learn that Earthlock is also one of this month’s Games With Gold freebies, and you’ll Xbox Live Gold subscribers will be able to pick up for free all this month.
Also available to download today is Assetto Corsa, a racing sim from Kunos for the Xbox One. Keepnig with our international theme, Assetto Corsa has an Italian flavor and features over 90 dream cars, “all rendered to an obsessive level of detail, each with bespoke handling and performance modelling taken from manufacturer’s real-life data and telemetry.”
Finally this week, The Final Station turns onto the Xbox One track from Russia, and it brings with it a train full of refugees trying to survive in a zombie-infested world.
More info on all of these games (and a few other new releases) can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged Earthlock: Festival of Magic
Batman: The Telltale Series – Episode 2 will be released on September 20
Telltale Games has announced that the next episode in Batman: The Telltale Series, Children of Arkham, will be available to download for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on September 20. The episode will be released for the PS3, Xbox 360, and mobile devices at a later date.
Story details from Episode 2 are still being kept under wraps, but it sounds like The Penguin might complicate Batman’s plan to take down Carmine Falcone:
An old friend becomes a new adversary as Bruce learns more about the Wayne family legacy and Batman escalates the fight against crime and corruption throughout Gotham.
PAX West attendees interested in learning more about the future of Batman: The Telltale Series should head out to a special Crowd Play event at the Wyvern Theatre on Saturday, September 3. Hosted by The Nerdist’s Dan Casey, a noted “Batman Expert,” fans will get the chance to see the worldwide debut of Episode 2: Children of Arkham before anyone else.
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Batman: The Telltale Series, PAX West 2016
New Zelda Amiibo coming December 2: 8-Bit Link, OoT Link, Wind Waker Link/Zelda 2-Pack
While the crazed fervor for Amiibo figures has died down considerably since their 2014 debut, the collectible toys are still quite popular with fans, and Nintendo doesn’t look to be slowing down production on new figures anytime soon.
Earlier this morning, Nintendo announced plans to celebrate The Legend of Zelda‘s 30th anniversary with four new Amiibo figures, all of which will be available on December 2. An NES-inspired “8-Bit Link” figure will certainly get fans talking, and it’ll be joined on store shelves by another Link based on his Ocarina of Time appearance, and a two-pack that includes both Toon Link and Zelda from The Wind Waker.
These Amiibo figures will feature the same functionality as the other Link, Toon Link, and Zelda figures from the Super Smash Bros. series, but they’ll also provide special functionality in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild when it launches next year.
The exact specifics of this special functionality will be announced at a later date.
Posted in 3DS, News, Switch, Wii U
Tagged Super Smash Bros. For 3DS, Super Smash Bros. For Wii U, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild