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
- With Grand Theft Auto 6 poised to take over the world, I reached out to Jack Thompson and it did not go well – PC Gamer (2026)
- Vib-Ribbon: An oral history – Design Room (2026)
- How a Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game – The New York Times (2026)
- Spore: An oral history – Design Room (2026)
- Diablo IV PC Cooled With Real Human Blood Is Still Going Strong Two Years Later, Says Guy Who Won It – Aftermath (2026)
Most Recent: PC
It looks like Udon will publish a Shovel Knight: Official Design Works artbook in August
We’re still waiting patiently for the release of those children’s books based on Shovel Knight (they’re currently scheduled to arrive in stores on April 18), but it looks like you’ll be able to purchase yet another tome featuring the titular knight later this Summer.
According to a new listing on Amazon, Udon Entertainment will publish Shovel Knight: Official Design Works on August 29. The artbook will include 184 pages of images from the game, as well as new information about Shovel Knight from the development team at Yacht Club Games:
Shovel Knight: Official Design Works collects the fun and original artwork behind this landmark title. Inside you’ll find key art, character concepts, enemy designs, sprite sheets, unused ideas, and an all-new Shovel Knight tribute art gallery! This epic tome is also packed with creator commentary, as well as exclusive interview with the Yacht Club Games team.
Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment, the newest expansion to Shovel Knight’s side-scrolling adventure, will be available to download for the PC beginning tomorrow. If missed its Nintendo Switch launch last month, you might not know that it’s an AMAZING addition to the franchise.
Volition’s Agents of Mayhem gets a new trailer and an August 15 release date
Volition’s Agents of Mayhem roared back into your line of sight yesterday, with a new trailer that cribs heavily from The A-Team, Knight Rider, and today’s superhero-driven cinema.
The world first heard about Agents of Mayhem last year, when the Saints Row-adjacent project was unveiled at the E3 Expo. But now we know when it’ll be released (August 15), and a bit more about the game’s fame-hungry heroes:
After the horrors of Devil’s Night, the world was left in ruins from the devastation that the shadowy supervillain organization LEGION (League of Evil Gentlemen Intent on Obliterating Nations) had left in its wake.
They needed heroes.
They got the Agents of MAYHEM (Multinational AgencY for Hunting Evil Masterminds).
In a case of bad versus evil this elite band of often unstable misfits, armed with a variety of crazy weapons, work under the watchful eye of Persephone Brimstone, ex-LEGION lieutenant, and her assistant Friday, to bring down LEGION and its mysterious leader, the Morningstar.
Explore the city of Seoul with a diverse cast of twelve interchangeable agents that you can assemble into squads of three, each with their own distinct look, sense of humor, weapons, and skillset. Players can build and customize their squads however they choose, switching from Daisy, a mini-gun wielding, beer-swigging, foul-mouthed roller derby girl, to Rama, an immunologist with a futuristic bow firing energy arrows, to Red Card, a loveable but psychotic German soccer hooligan with a temper that can literally clear a crowd.
With a toy box of twelve unique agents to choose from, players can jump between reality TV star/pretty boy Hollywood, to sky pirate and internationally infamous thief Fortune, as the open-world missions demand.
Agents of Mayhem is an open-world action game currently in development for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One… and I cannot stress enough how 80s-tastic the new trailer is.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Agents of Mayhem
4/1: 8-Bit Bayonetta is a REAL game that you can download for free through Steam
It’s April 1st, which means you shouldn’t believe everything anything you read on the Internet today. But Sega really did transform Bayonetta into a pixelated side-scrolling shooter for April Fool’s Day.
8-Bit Bayonetta is now available to download for free from Steam, and its a Horde-like shooter where players help the Umbran Witch fight back against wave after wave of enemies:
Sega’s favourite Umbran Witch climaxes her way onto PC! Thrill to her signature beehive do in 8-bit pixelated glory! Jump! Shoot! Score! Being bad never felt so retro.
This isn’t the first time that Platinum Games has toyed with the idea of a retro-styled version of Bayonetta. 8-Bit Bayonetta is actually an expansion of Bayonetta: Angel Land, a fake trailer the developer put together for April Fool’s Day 2010.
4/1: Blizzard offers “Choose Your Own Adventure” version of BlizzCon on their website
If you can’t make it to BlizzCon this year, don’t worry, Blizzard is offering a backup plan that promises to be just as good.
The BlizzCon Textual Adventure is now available through the convention’s official website, giving non-attendees the chance to “Choose Their Own Adventure” and experience this year’s BlizzCon without the hassles of a long plane ride, noisy crowds, and the latest games:
Experience BlizzCon for FREE! Exercise both your reading ability AND your perceived free will. You decide exactly how epic your BlizzCon will (or won’t) be!
Blizzard definitely did their homework for this April Fool’s Day gag. The first time I went through it, I was greeted by a random pair of aliens (a common occurrence in the real Choose Your Own Adventure books), and I’d assume there’s at least one ending where you die horribly.
The actual BlizzCon will be held in Anaheim on November 3rd and 4th, though it seems unlikely that attendees will run into aliens or die a gruesome death. According to Blizzard, BlizzCon Tickets will go on sale soon.
4/1: Dash through the streets as Ms. Pac-Man with Google Maps “Insert Coin” filter
Back in 2015, Google let Pac-Man and his ghostly adversaries loose on the streets of the world for April Fool’s Day. This year, they’ve recruited Pac-Man’s better half to do it again.
A Ms. Pac-Man filter is now available in Google Maps by clicking on the “Insert Coin” button in the lower left corner of the screen. As long as the location they pick has enough streets, players can gobble up dots for a high score or chase Ghosts after munching on a Power Pellet.
Best of all, the “Insert Coin” filter also works with the Google Maps app on your smartphone or tablet.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged Google, Ms. Pac-Man
4/1: AMC and the creators of Breaking Bad are NOT working on a Grand Theft Auto TV show
It’s April 1st, which means you shouldn’t believe everything anything you read on the Internet today. For example… AMC did not hire the creators of Breaking Bad to develop a television adaptation of Grand Theft Auto V.
The trailer making the rounds today was actually created by IGN, but the narration from Steven Ogg (he played Trevor Phillips in GTA5) gives it that extra jolt of authenticity and might help fool a few people.
While this trailer is just an April Fool’s Day prank, Take-Two Interactive might actually be working on a film adaptation of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Earlier this year, CEO Strauss Zelnick told MCV that his company has “licensed a couple of titles for motion picture production.” The executive didn’t name Grand Theft Auto as one of the titles, but prolific film director Roger Corman has repeatedly claimed that a settlement he signed with Take-Two more than a decade ago prevents the publisher from adapting Grand Theft Auto for the silver screen.
Corman produced Ron Howard’s directorial debut, 1977’s Grand Theft Auto, and he’s been trying to remake it for years. But instead of a gangland drama like The Godfather or Scarface, Howard’s film is a road comedy more closely related to something like The Blues Brothers. But if Corman is holding up the creation of a Grand Theft Auto film, it’s never been publicly acknowledged by Take-Two.
The Video Game Canon – Pac-Man
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon with a look back at the true stories behind some of gaming’s greatest urban legends, most of which seem to revolve around Pac-Man. Here’s a teaser…
With more than 40 years of history behind it, it’s not surprising the video game community has developed its own catalog of urban legends that have been passed from player to player over the years. Everyone who played it desperately tried to resurrect Aerith after her tragic demise in Final Fantasy VII, and we all heard stories about the “nude codes” that supposedly existed in games like Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat II, and The Sims.
Unfortunately, every one of those rumors has more in common with the hook man at lover’s lane than they do with the unvarnished truth. But some of the legends are true. And nearly all of them revolve around Pac-Man in some way.
Pac-Man is a simple creature. Just a yellow circle with a triangular wedge removed to represent his mouth. Some will say his design was simplistic because the designers at Namco were working within the hardware limitations of the day. Those people would be wrong. The inspiration for Pac-Man overcame Namco’s Toru Iwatani after he snatched the first slice at a company pizza party and noticed that it looked like a circle with a mouth.
But it gets weirder from there.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to continue reading this article and to explore the complete Top 1000.
Anarki is a “Transhuman Punk” in the latest Quake Champions trailer
We still don’t know when its Closed Beta will begin, but Bethesda and id Software recently deployed another Character Trailer for Quake Champions. This time around, fans will get a chance to meet “Anarki the Transhuman Punk,” a drug-addled lover of heavy metal and hoverboards:
Anarki (Transhuman Punk)
Anarki’s rebellion began with the usual self-vandalism, but he craved something greater, and found it in transhumanism. Addiction, injury, disease… Why tolerate flesh if he could replace it? Using family riches, he underwent increasingly extreme cybernetic surgeries. After a microelectrode pierced his pineal gland, Anarki perceived a surreal, alien reality breakthrough! He eagerly sought more procedures, ignoring the insomnia. Each strengthened his perception of the hidden realm. But only once he met a girl who saw it, too, was he sure he could reach it.Active Ability – Health Injection: Taking too much damage? Good thing for you Anarki is well-versed in various performance enhancing … treatments. Use the Health Injection Active Ability to give Anarki a quick heal mid-match. Juice it up, baby!
Passive Ability – Hoverboard Air Control: Anarki’s hoverboard is a brutal bonus. Anarki is already one of the fastest Champions in the game, but the hoverboard means he can actually gain speed as he strafe-jumps around the Arenas, reaching a ludicrous velocity. In addition, his hoverboard awards a special Passive Ability that allows players more control in mid-air to turn sharply and chase down enemies or escape those who dare follow him up a jump pad.
Three Champions have been revealed so far, and Anarki will join Nyx the Fathom Agent and Scalebearer the Galactic Warlord on the battlefield in Quake Champions when it launches later this year.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged Quake Champions