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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- 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: PC
Top 100 Best Sellers on Steam in 2016 include Dark Souls III, Civ 6, No Man’s Sky, and more
A day after revealing the winners of the first-ever Steam Awards, Valve is back with a breakdown of the “Top 100 Best Sellers of 2016” on Steam.
The list is unnumbered, but Valve has broken it down into four tiers… Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze. Based on total gross revenue (not copies sold) for 2016, the games in the Platinum tier include Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Civilization VI, XCOM 2, Total War: Warhammer, Fallout 4, Grand Theft Auto V, Tom Clancy’s The Division, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, No Man’s Sky, Dark Souls III, Rocket League, and DOTA 2.
Most of 2016’s biggest releases made the cut, including Doom (Gold), Watch Dogs 2 (Silver), Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (Silver), and Dishonored 2 (Bronze).
The complete list can be found at Valve’s SteamPowered.com storefront.
The Video Game Canon – An Introduction and the Top 100 (Version 1.0)
The Video Game Canon is a statistical meta-ranking of dozens of “Best Video Games of All Time” lists that began in 2017 with Version 1.0, and the ranking has been updated several times since then. Which game is #1? There’s only one way to find out…
Is it possible to rank the greatest video games of all time in a “scientific” way? Do you just throw the question to so-called experts and let them hash it out in a no-holds-barred debate? Or is there some way to create a “Video Game Canon” that the wide-ranging community of developers, critics, and players can all agree on?
Probably not. But we can try.
Since gaming’s earliest days, dozens of publications have tried to sort through the noise and compile their own list of “The Best Video Games of All Time.” By analyzing all of these attempts at ranking the greatest games and combining them into a single list, we can apply a little scientific rigor to the process and possibly create a “Best Video Games of All Time” list that everyone can agree on.
Before we go any further, let me just say… no matter how we try to justify it, it’s impossible to prove, by “science” or otherwise, that one game is definitively better than another. My attempt at adding “science” to the mix is just a way to add some zing to the numerical formula doing all the work behind the scenes.
Ideally, this project will give us the chance to look back at the history of video games reflected through some the medium’s greatest titles. The list itself will serve as something of a road map to help us learn how the best games of all time are connected to each other, to better appreciate how players interacted with video games in the past, and to explore what video games might become in the future.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com for all future updates to this project and to explore the complete Top 1000.
Fans decide to give Steam Awards to Doom 2016, GTA5, Portal 2, and many more
With just hours to go before we celebrate the end of 2016, Valve has announced the winners of the first-ever Steam Awards.
Rather than ask Steam shoppers to select a traditional “Best of 2016” slate, Valve offered up a rather unique class of categories and let community members nominate any game from the digital storefront’s catalog. This freeform approach even gave voters the chance to create a few additional categories out of thin air.
After casting votes for the past two weeks (and browsing bargains during the digital storefront’s Winter Sale, which continues through January 2), the winners of the first-ever Steam Awards include Doom (“The “Boom Boom” Award”), Portal 2 (“The “Villain Most In Need Of A Hug” Award”), Grand Theft Auto V (“The “Game Within A Game” Award” and “The “Whoooaaaaaaa, Dude” Award”), and many more.
You can find the complete list of winners after the break, and let’s hope Valve does this again next year. (more…)
Posted in News, PC
Tagged Dark Souls III, Doom (2016), Grand Theft Auto V, Portal 2, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Walking Dead
GalaxyTrail will bring Freedom Planet 2 demo to PAX South; Demo will also be released as a free download after the show
GalaxyTrail got dressed up in a big red coat and a bushy white beard and played Santa on Christmas as they delivered a series of tweets about their upcoming plans for Freedom Planet 2.
According to the developer, they’re going to make an appearance at PAX South in January with a playable demo of the side-scrolling homage to Sonic the Hedgehog. But if you can’t make it to the first major gaming convention of the year, GalaxyTrail also revealed that they plan to make the demo available as a free download (presumably for the PC) after the show:
Lastly, we'll be showing off the demo in person at PAX South! Find us in San Antonio, TX on January 27-29. https://t.co/zfujNak8ZL
— GalaxyTrail (@galaxytrail) December 25, 2016
Freedom Planet 2: Sample Version will be available at the end of January as a free download, and include all playable characters. pic.twitter.com/nOps8QcGFt
— GalaxyTrail (@galaxytrail) December 25, 2016
But wait, there’s more… GalaxyTrail also released a brand new trailer for the game, and it’s been embedded above. More trailers will be uploaded over the next few weeks.
Freedom Planet 2 will be released for the PC this Summer. It’ll also be available for “Nintendo Platforms” (probably the 3DS and/or Switch) sometime later.
Posted in 3DS, News, PC, Switch
Tagged Freedom Planet 2, PAX South 2017
PC/Xbox One owners will be able to purchase Halo Wars: Definitive Edition as a standalone game in 2017
Microsoft sent out codes for an “Xbox Game Preview” version of Halo Wars: Definitive Edition to everyone who pre-ordered Halo Wars 2 last week. The remaster will continue to be tweaked and enhanced ahead of its “final” release, but the consolemaker had yet to announce if it would ever be available to PC and Xbox One owners who weren’t interested in the sequel… until now.
Buried deep within an Xbox Support page for Halo Wars 2 is a single paragraph confirming that Halo Wars: Definitive Edition will indeed receive a standalone release sometime in 2017:
When you pre-order Halo Wars 2, you’ll receive a code for Halo Wars: Definitive Edition when the game is made available early on December 20, 2016. The game won’t be available to purchase separately until later in 2017.
Halo Wars 2 will be available for the PC and Xbox One on February 21, so there’s still time to pre-order it to receive early access to Halo Wars: Definitive Edition.
Arc System Works will release NES-styled Double Dragon IV on January 30
Well this is a surprise. After acquiring the rights to the Double Dragon franchise in 2015, Arc System Works has announced that Double Dragon IV will be released for the PC and PS4 on January 30, 2017.
To help create an authentic sequel, Arc System Works recruited several members of the Technos team that originally worked on the franchise back in the 1980s including Producer Takaomi Kaneko, Director Yoshihisa Kishimoto, Character Designer Koji Ogata, Composer Kazunaka Yamane, and Programmer Kei Oyama.
The last game in the series, 2012’s Double Dragon Neon, was an affectionate parody designed by WayForward. But for Double Dragon IV, Arc System Works will employ NES-style graphics in a game that’ll also serve as a direct sequel to the storyline found in the NES adaptations of Double Dragon, Double Dragon II: The Revenge, and Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones.
Interestingly enough, this won’t be the first game to be thought of as “Double Dragon IV.” Super Double Dragon, developed by Technos and originally released for the Super NES in 1992, was often informally referred to as the fourth Double Dragon game. It was followed by Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls, a one-on-one fighting game based on the Double Dragon animated series, in 1994.
Fans can get their first look at the new Double Dragon IV in the game’s first teaser trailer, which has been embedded above.
Posted in News, PC, PS4
Tagged Double Dragon IV
See the first gameplay trailer for Super Mega Baseball 2
Today’s the second day of Winter, so it seems like the perfect time for Metalhead Software’s Scott Drader to stoke the Hot Stove with the first gameplay trailer for Super Mega Baseball 2. The development team has big plans for the upcoming sequel, starting with a brand new art style. New customizable features and the addition of online multiplayer are also on the docket for Super Mega Baseball 2.
The gameplay trailer is embedded above, and Super Mega Baseball 2 will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One in Summer 2017.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Super Mega Baseball 2
Kickstart This! Super Red-Hot Hero
In what will be the final Kickstart This of 2016, a year many of us would like to forget, I thought it would be prudent to end the year on a “Red-Hot” high. For this edition, I have chosen Super Red-Hot Hero, a game from an exciting team of developers based in Barcelona. (more…)