Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- 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
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Wins “Game of the Year” at 2025-2026 GDC Awards
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- 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)
- In 2005, games started rewiring our brains – The AV Club (2025)
Most Recent: PC
Doom: Annihilation will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on October 1
Universal Pictures Home Entertainment has announced they’ll release Doom: Annihilation on Blu-ray and DVD on October 1… just in time for the spooky season.
Doom: Annihilation is a Direct-To-Video reboot for the film franchise, and it won’t have any connection to 2005’s Doom (which, believe it or not, starred The Rock before he became one of the biggest movie stars in the world). Nor is it based on id Software’s excellent Doom 2016 or it’s upcoming sequel, Doom Eternal. However, it is rated R (for “bloody violence and language throughout”), and it has portals to Hell, a bunch of nasty demons, and a platoon of space marines to serve as gory cannon fodder:
Based on the popular original video game, Doom: Annihilation is an explosive, terrifying thrill ride. On the darkest moon of Mars, scientists have found an ancient portal which allows teleportation throughout the universe. Considered to be mankind’s greatest discovery, it’s actually a gateway from Hell, unleashing a swarm of demons looking to steal the souls of everyone who gets in their way. It’s up to Lieutenant Joan Dark and an elite unit of Marines to destroy an ever-growing horde of bloodsucking and soul-stealing beasts and prevent them from taking over planet Earth.
Doom: Annihilation probably won’t be a cinematic masterpiece, but there’s surely worse ways to fill time on a dreary October day.
Tetris Effect will be released for PC on July 23
Enhance has announced plans to bring their psychedelic puzzle experience, Tetris Effect, to the PC later this month.
With its wide array of pulsating colors and shimmering lights, Tetris Effect is easily the most visually-impressive version of Tetris ever. On the PC, players will be able to play through the game with an unlocked resolution and uncapped framerate, or they can strap on a VR headset (specifically an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive) and optionally experience the game in virtual reality:
As the ultimate version of Tetris Effect, the PC version is capable of running at resolutions of 4K or more, with an uncapped framerate (if Vsync is disabled), and includes ultra-wide monitor support as well as other expanded game and graphical options for both 2D and VR play (including adjustable particle volume and size, texture filtering, and more) not found in the PlayStation 4 console release.
Music, backgrounds, sounds, special effects—everything, down to the Tetriminos themselves, pulse, dance, shimmer, and explode in perfect sync with how you’re playing, making any of the game’s 30+ stages and 10+ modes something you’ll want to experience over and over again.
Originally released for the PS4 last Fall, Tetris Effect will be available to download for the PC platform exclusively through the Epic Games Store on July 23. A trailer for Tetris Effect’s PC debut (featuring an eye-popping amount of “Best of” awards) has been embedded above.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged Tetris Effect
Activision will reveal Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s “Multiplayer Universe” on August 1
Activision and Infinity Ward have announced that fans will get their first glimpse at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare‘s brand new “Multiplayer Universe” on August 1. Fans are encouraged to tune in to Call of Duty’s official Twitch channel for the full reveal:
As players enlist in the heart-racing Modern Warfare story, multiplayer continues the experience as players head online into the ultimate playground for the global balance of power. Featuring unified progression across modes, Modern Warfare seeks to unite the community with plans to support cross-play across platforms and the removal of the traditional season pass in order to deliver a greater mix of more free maps, content, and community events post-launch.
In the meantime, the publisher has unveiled one piece of Modern Warfare’s new online muliplayer experience, the 2v2 Gunfight Mode, on their Activision Games Blog. Gunfight is a made scramble that features 40-second rounds which take place on a series of “custom-made [and] confined” maps. A duo is victorious after securing six wins, and Activision has described the mode as very similar to “a fighting game with armaments and set in the Call of Duty universe.”
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on October 25.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Blazing Chrome’s Launch Trailer includes one last blast of the game’s Contra-inspired visuals
The Arcade Crew and JoyMasher have finally put all the finishing touches on Blazing Chrome, and the two companies launched the side-scrolling shooter for the PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One earlier today. They also delivered a retro-tastic Launch Trailer for the game, which was inspired by Contra and Metal Slug, that includes a very era-appropriate live-action intro:
The Arcade Crew has released a fittingly retro gameplay trailer celebrating humanity’s uprising to properly introduce the resistance’s two leading warriors; Marva, a resilient soldier who’s here to chew bubblegum while kicking ass, and Doyle, a robot who’s had a deadly change of heart.
With a varied arsenal of distinctive weapons, badass pilotable mechs and vehicles, and unlockable characters to help curb the AI army’s ruthless oppression, Blazing Chrome plays the way you remember classic action games feeling. JoyMasher’s modern refinements to that satisfying shoot-em-up playstyle will make scrapping hordes of mechanized foes and skyscraper-sized bosses feel as comfortable as getting back on that hoverbike you haven’t rode in years.
Blazing Chrome is now available to download, but it’ll also be available this Fall as a physical release from Limited Run Games for the PS4 and Switch.
Netflix teams up with Studio MDHR to produce The Cuphead Show!
Chad and Jared Moldenhauer poured their hearts and souls into the development of Studio MDHR’s debut title, Cuphead. In the works for more than seven years, the brothers parlayed their love of 1930s animation and the gameplay stylings of Contra III: The Alien Wars to create a platform shooter for the ages.
Now, Netflix has signed on to adapt the game into a new animated series known as The Cuphead Show! The series will follow the adventures of Cuphead and Mugman throughout Inkwell Isles and, naturally, it’ll employ “an animation style inspired by the classic Fleischer cartoons from the 1930s”:
The game that has won the hearts and minds of fans with its gorgeous retro hand-animated style, crazy boss-brawls, and challenging gameplay will come to life on television for the first time ever in The Cuphead Show! The new series will expand on the characters and world of Cuphead, with an animation style inspired by the classic Fleischer cartoons from the 1930s.
The character-driven comedy follows the unique misadventures of the impulsive Cuphead and his cautious but easily swayed brother Mugman. Through their many misadventures across their surreal home of the Inkwell Isles, they’ve always got one another’s backs.
We don’t know when the first episodes from The Cuphead Show! will be available to stream through Netflix, but hopefully it’s pretty soon.
Level-5’s Hino Yoshihiro confirms that multiple Ni No Kuni games are currently in development
Hino Yoshihiro, the President of Level-5, recently sat down for an interview with Japanese newspaper Nikkei, and he had a few things to say about the future of the Ni No Kuni franchise.
Yoshihiro told the newspaper that he wants to release multiple new games in the series after the animated film adaptation, which will be released in Japan in August. The developer will start this ambitious plan right away with the launch of a Remastered version of Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch for the PC, PS4, and Switch in September.
After that, Yoshihiro said he would like to take “a new approach” with future installments in the franchise (all but confirming Ni No Kuni 3), while also adding that Ni No Kuni games will also continue to be associated with smartphones.
Aside from Wrath of the White Witch Remastered, nothing is known about most of the new Ni No Kuni games in development, and it’s possible it could be a very long time before we learn more.
USA Network has ordered a Masters of Doom adaptation produced by James Franco
David Kushner originally published Masters of Doom back in 2003, and the book-length exploration of id Software’s early days became an instant hit with readers everywhere (it even spawned a quasi-sequel in 2012 with Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto). And now, more than 15 years later, Variety is reporting that the USA Network is looking to adapt the story as part of a new anthology series focused on video game history:
Masters of Doom is the amazing true story of the Lennon and McCartney of video games: John Carmack and John Romero. Together, they ruled big business. They transformed popular culture. And they provoked a national controversy. More than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to co-create the most notoriously successful game franchises in history—Doom and Quake—until the games they made tore them apart.
As of right now, no one has agreed to play Romero or Carmack, but we do know that James Franco will executive produce the series with his brother Dave. Both siblings worked on The Disaster Artist with writer Tom Bissell, and the three will be teaming up again for Masters of Doom. Bissell, who also wrote the book Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, will serve as a writer and executive producer on the show.
USA Network wants to create a pilot for Masters of Doom before agreeing to air the series, but hopefully the story of gaming’s two most famous Johns will come to television sometime soon.
Posted in Etcetera, News, PC
Tagged Doom (1993)
Game Critics Awards’s Best of E3 2019 bestows “Best of Show” on Final Fantasy VII Remake
Final Fantasy VII is more than 20 years old, but Square Enix’s radically reimagined Final Fantasy VII Remake received top marks at E3 2019 from the Game Critics Awards’s judging panel. The game, which will launch next Spring, took home the coveted “Best of Show” award, and it was also honored as “Best RPG” and “Best Console Game.”
The judging panel spread the rest of the awards around, and Bethesda’s Doom Eternal was the only other game to collect multiple wins (“Best PC Game” and “Best Action Game”). The wide range of other winners included Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds (“Best Original Game”), Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs Legion (“Best Action/Adventure Game”), Nintendo Luigi’s Mansion 3 (“Best Family/Social Game”), among others.
While Sony and Microsoft kept fairly quiet about the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett, Microsoft still managed to lock down “Best Hardware/Peripheral” with the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2. And CD Projekt Red took home yet another “Special Commendation for Graphics” thanks to Cyberpunk 2077.
The full list of winners from the Game Critics Awards’s Best of E3 2019 Awards can be found after the break. (more…)