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: PC
Star Wars: X-Wing, Star Wars: TIE Fighter, other LucasArts titles added to GOG.com
Before today, Star Wars: X-Wing and Star Wars: TIE Fighter had never been made available for purchase through any digital download service. But that changes now as GOG.com has announced that both games (along with several other LucasArts favorites) are now available to download for the first time ever.
Considered by many critics to be two of the greatest space combat simulators ever, X-Wing and TIE Fighter were originally released in 1993 and 1995, respectively, on floppy disks. Both games would eventually be released on CD-ROM by LucasArts as an enhanced “Collector’s Edition” in 1998, the last time before today both games were officially in print.
The GOG.com Special Edition of each game (priced at $9.99 apiece) includes the original floppy disk version as well as the enhanced CD-ROM edition. Both games also come bundled with their expansion packs (Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing for X-Wing and Defender of the Empire for TIE Fighter).
Four other LucasArts titles were also added to GOG.com this morning: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, and Sam & Max Hit the Road. Additional games published by LucasArts will be available to download from the digital download service soon.
New Releases: Sunset Overdrive, WWE 2K15, Lords of the Fallen, More
Sunset Overdrive, Insomniac’s wild hipsters vs mutants shooter, leads this week’s new release report. With no new Halo or Gears of War game in the pipeline, Microsoft is promoting Sunset Overdrive as one of the biggest Xbox One exclusives of the Fall. To that end, they have also teamed up with Insomniac to offer the Sunset Overdrive Xbox One System Bundle which will include the game itself and a snazzy all-white Xbox One.
Also available this week is WWE 2K15 (PS3, Xbox 360), the first game in the series fully produced by 2K Games; Lords of the Fallen (PS4, Xbox One), Bandai Namco’s attempt at entering the medieval hack and slash market; and NBA Live 15 (PS4, Xbox One), EA’s latest entry in their basketball simulation series.
More new releases from the upcoming week can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Lords of the Fallen, NBA Live 15, Sunset Overdrive, WWE 2K15
Insert Quarter: The History of Music Games
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
Almost 50 years ago, Paul and Art Garfunkel asked, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?” in their hit song, “Mrs. Robinson.” DiMaggio would later tell Simon that he hadn’t gone anywhere, even though his playing days were long behind him. Likewise, today’s gamers have probably asked themselves, what happened to all the music games? The conventional wisdom says that they just don’t sell anymore, but who can turn down an invitation to rock out with your plastic guitar out?
IGN’s Chris Reed dug in to the history of the music from its humble roots (1996’s PaRappa the Rapper) all the way through the Guitar Here/Rock Band rivalry and into the future of the genre:
Music/rhythm games have run a surprisingly dynamic path through gaming history. Some genres drift into popularity and gradually fade out as technology and popular taste change. You might not even realize it’s happened until one day you look around and wonder, for instance, where all the 3D platformers went. Music games, on the other hand, moseyed along under the radar for the better part of a decade before taking off like a shot, attaining meteoric success before drying up nearly all at once.
You can read the rest of the article at IGN.
Outlast 2 announced by Red Barrels
Speaking to Bloody Disgusting, Red Barrels co-founder Philippe Morin confirmed that the development company is hard at work on Outlast 2.
Outlast 2 won’t return to the Mount Massive Asylum featured in Outlast, nor will it bring back that game’s star, Miles Upshur. Instead, Morin confirmed it will have “different characters and a different setting,” though it will be set in the same universe:
The game will be a survival horror experience and it will take place in the same universe as Outlast, but it will have different characters and a different setting. We might go back to Mount Massive Asylum one day, but for now we have new ideas and themes we’d like to explore and we think we’re cooking up something special.
It’s currently unknown what platforms it’ll be available for or when it’ll be released, but Morin says it might be a while: “We’re still a small indie studio (12 people), so we’ll need a little bit of time to ship our next game, but hopefully it will be worth it.”
UPDATE: VG247 is reporting that whenever Outlast 2 is released, it’ll be released simultaneously for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Warner Bros. is creating a Mortal Kombat X tie-in web series
It’s unlikely we’ll ever get to see Mortal Kombat: Legacy III now that Kevin Tancharoen has departed the web series that became an Internet sensation after the director publicly released a proof-of-concept short by accident. But Warner Bros. is picking up the slack with the creation of a new Direct-To-Internet production house, Blue Ribbon Content.
Blue Ribbon’s first project will be a live-action web series that ties in to the story of the upcoming Mortal Kombat X. Like the game, it will pick up after the events of 2011’s Mortal Kombat and “[showcase] some of the franchise’s most storied characters, [as well as] introducing a new generation of fighters.” As of now, Warner Bros. isn’t ready to reveal who they have in mind for the cast or the director’s chair.
Mortal Kombat X will be released for the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One on April 14, 2015. Presumably, this new web series will be released in a similar timeframe.
Posted in Etcetera, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Mortal Kombat X, Mortal Kombat: Legacy
Kickstart This! Elegy For A Rough Year Edition
Analysts from ICO Partners recently reported that donations to video game projects on Kickstarter have seen a dramatic decline. They estimate that by the end of 2014, $27 million will have been pledged, compared to $58 million at the end of the previous year. A 50% reduction makes for grim reading if you are a game developer looking to launch a project, though it should be noted that 2014 is lacking in many of the big name campaigns that were launched in 2013.
Perhaps the bubble has already burst, or perhaps people have become pickier about which projects they participate in, disenfranchised by the multitude of disreputable characters who have tried time and again to launch projects with no aim of actually keeping their promises. As Evil As A Hobby discovered during their broad analysis back in January 2014, only one in three game projects launched between 2009 and 2012 delivered a finished product and accompanying rewards.
As I was finishing up this month’s edition of Kickstart This!, Boston-based Dejobaan Games reached their funding goal for Elegy For A Dead World, “a game about writing fiction,” according to the official description. It is awe-inspiring in its art design, offering a uniquely free reign in crafting the story of the game itself. Thankfully, there are more projects worthy of bringing to your attention. And that’s the point. There will always be great games begging to be made. If there is less money out there, it means less great games, but perhaps it will also add some quality control to a system untamed by accountability.
Unfortunately, the game’s deadline did not meet my own (although I did go on Twitter and rave about it). Thankfully, there are more projects worthy of bringing to your attention. And that’s the point. There will always be great games begging to be made. If there is less money out there, it means less great games, but perhaps it will also add some quality control to a system untamed by accountability.
We kick things off with side-scrolling puzzle shooter Red Cobra, survival adventure Impact Winter, and sci-fi survival horror Extract 237. After that, there is mech vombat MOBA Voxelfield, and last, but not least, The Interactive Adventures of Dog Mendonça and Pizza Boy.
Yes, that last one is real. (more…)
First Alien: Isolation add-on, Corporate Lockdown, will be available on October 28
Just in time for Halloween, Sega has announced that the first Alien: Isolation add-on, Corporate Lockdown, will be released on October 28. Priced at $7.99, the add-on will add three new Challenge Maps and a brand new character in an arc that takes place before the events of Isolation:
In Corporate Lockdown, Seegson Executive Ransome has learnt that he has been abandoned by his paymasters. Knowing that the Torrens is on the way, he decides to make his escape and hitch a ride on board, taking decoded Nostromo data with him. However, while escaping he wants to tie up a few loose ends…
Across three new Challenge Maps (“Severance,” “Scorched Earth,” and “Loose Ends”), players are challenged to compete against others through Alien: Isolation’s online leaderboards, to escape the station in the fastest possible time or attain the top score through numerous side quests and hidden bonus objectives. New to Corporate Lockdown is the addition of Gauntlet Mode where players are challenged to top the Gauntlet Mode leaderboards by completing all three Challenge Maps back-to-back without dying.
Corporate Lockdown will also be available as part of the Alien: Isolation Season Pass, which can be purchased for $29.99, a 25% discount versus purchasing all give planned add-on packs separately.
Guns, Gore & Cannoli brings zombie-killing mobsters to Kickstarter
There are too many zombie games. You know it. I know it. Actual dead people know it. But there are still ways to make zombie games interesting. For example, you could do what Crazy Monkey Studios did and create a hand-drawn side-scrolling shooter where 1920s mobsters shoot zombies while spouting wiseguy catchphrases. To finance their project, Crazy Monkey has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Guns, Gore & Cannoli that concludes on November 17. They’re seeking $30,000 and, as of this writing, have currently collected a little under $800.
Need more convincing? The developer has also made a demo version available on the game’s official website and released this fantastic plot summary:
Welcome to Thugtown in the roaring twenties. A city run by two rival mafia families who skirmish over every inch of the city to distribute their illegal liquor. Meet Vinnie Cannoli, a hard-boiled gangster who comes to Thugtown to straighten a few things out. Vinnie is sent to a messed up city, looking for a “goodfella” who’s gone missing since the zombie-outbreak. Nothing that can’t be solved with a kind word with the local gangsters though. Especially when you’re packing a Tommy gun and a double barrel shotgun to be a little more persuasive. There’s only one thing that’s holding him back… Every friggin’ lowlife in the city turned into a flesh-eating maniac. This is survival horror, wiseguy style… Capiche?
If they reach their goal, Crazy Monkey plans to release Guns, Gore & Cannoli for the PC, PS4, Wii U, and Xbox One in early 2015.