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: PS4
Droid Character Pack is exclusive to PS4 and PS3… but everyone can watch this Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens Character Trailer
Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be available in stores starting next week, so you’d be forgiven for assuming there wouldn’t be any more Character Trailers for the game. But Sony has surprised us with another one, this time focusing on the PlayStation-exclusive Droid Character Pack.
Available as a free downloadable bonus on launch day for the PS4 and PS3, the Droid Character Pack will include plenty of familiar faces. Here’s what Jamie Eden, the Game Director at TT Games, had to say about it on the PlayStation Blog:
The Droids have always been some of my favorite characters in Star Wars films. Even though they’re machines, they still seem to have more personality and charm than a lot of humans do! Which is why it’s really exciting to be able to give players a pack that features these awesome characters. To show you what I mean, we’re here to reveal our latest vignette detailing this exciting content.
Some of the franchise’s most memorable droids have made the cut including R5-D4 (the astromech droid Luke buys before R2-D2 in Star Wars), IG-88 (the bounty hunter droid from The Empire Strikes Back), General Grievous, and more. Your droids will also be able to go looking for trouble in two additional vehicles.
Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be released on June 28. In addition to the PS4 and PS3, the game will also be available for the 3DS, PC, Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.
Posted in News, PS3, PS4
Tagged Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan Review: A Kodak Moment
When talking about quality, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise is filled with anomalies. It’s a veritable roller coaster of highs and lows, of amazing stories and embarrassing character designs. It’s kind of a love-hate relationship. Kids of the 80s have fond memories of the original comic, cartoon, and movie. Opinion on the early 2000s cartoon was kind of split, as it is for the current iteration on Nickelodeon. The ongoing IDW comic, which recently released its 50th issue, has been incredible. The 2014 live-action movie resulted in a collective eye roll from the dedicated TMNT fan community, while this Summer’s sequel had many diehards enamored with its representations of favorites Bebop and Rocksteady. And let’s not even talk about The Next Mutation or the Out of Their Shells concert tour.
Yes, the Ninja Turtles actually went on tour back in the day.
Much like the other facets of the franchise, the TMNT video games range in quality from amazing to downright boring. The original arcade game and Turtles in Time are arguably two of the best beat ’em ups ever made. The game based on the 2007 computer-animated feature is also a decent title. On the flipside, the first game based on the 2013 cartoon series was pretty much universally panned, and the first NES game was downright awful. Electric seaweed? Really? Even with the Game Genie, I couldn’t beat that damn game.
Which brings us to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan, the latest game in the ever-popular Turtles universe. Knowing the reputation of the franchise, I started this one up with a bit of understandable trepidation, as history shows that these games have potential to fall anywhere on the TMNT quality bell curve. After giving it my full attention, I can safely say that this one falls right there in the middle. Not quite a Cowabunga, but not a Shell Shock, either. (more…)
Yacht Club sails in with an update on Shovel Knight’s Specter Knight campaign
Yacht Club Games is still toiling away at Shovel Knight‘s heaping helping of post-launch content, and after giving us a quick glimpse at the King Knight campaign a few weeks ago, the developer has returned with an extended profile of Specter Knight’s upcoming adventure.
Using a series of GIFs to illustrate Specter Knight’s moveset on their official website, Yacht Club Games seems to be mining another 8-bit classic, Ninja Gaiden, for inspiration. Specter Knight can slash with his trusty scythe, be he also has a lightning quick dash that can be performed on the ground or in the air. The character’s nimble form will also allow him to wall run to reach greater heights.
Yacht Club Games is developing the add-on campaigns for Specter Knight and King Knight simultaneously, though Specter Knight’s will launch first. The team isn’t ready to talk release dates just yet, but both campaigns will be available for free, alongside the also in-development Body Swap Mode and Battle Mode.
Finally, Yacht Club announced that Shovel Knight will be available on store shelves for the Vita soon. The limited physical version is in production at FanGamer and will be released in early October.
Umbrella Corps, Mighty No. 9, Pac-Man 256, more added to PS Store
With most of the world still recovering from the E3 Expo, Sony dropped a big batch of new games onto the PlayStation Store yesterday.
First up is Capcom Resident Evil-themed team shooter, Umbrella Corps. Available to download now for the PS4, players will battle it out with a second team of mercenaries, all the while avoiding the shambling undead who are also in the arena.
Speaking of the shambling undead, Tequila Works has brought their side-scrolling zombie, Deadlight, to the PS4 as Deadlight: Director’s Cut. In addition to enhanced graphics, the Director’s Cut will include improved gameplay and controls, and extra game modes.
The retro vibe of Deadlight carries through to another pair of new releases this week, Mighty No. 9 and Pac-Man 256. After more than three years in development, Keiji Inafune’s Mighty No. 9 is ready for release as a PS4 + PS3 Cross-Buy title, and fans will finally get the chance to see if his Mega Man successor can live up to the hype. Meanwhile, Pac-Man 256 brought the infinite maze of the mobile hit to the PS4 for the first time.
Finally this week, Grand Kingdom is NIS America’s latest strategy RPG and it’s available to download for the PS4 and Vita.
More information on all of these games (and a few other new release) can be found after the break. And don’t forget, a complete rundown of new add-ons and discounts is available at the PlayStation Blog. (more…)
Posted in News, PS3, PS4, Vita
Tagged Deadlight, Grand Kingdom, Mighty No. 9, Pac-Man 256, Umbrella Corps
Kickstart This! Transmission
Sometimes a game comes along that just speaks to your soul before you have even played it. You fall in love with this game through its character design and music, and marvel at its art style in screenshots and trailers. You eagerly anticipate an exciting new adventure come release day. Of course, many of these games are backed by a studio and publisher that have a budget to spend on PR and marketing, with many coders cracking out footage needed to whet the appetites of potential players. To find a game on Kickstarter that manages to create a trailer so moving, so near to perfect as you could hope for, is remote, and yet, that is exactly what Paper Unicorn has achieved with Transmission.
Prepare for contact. (more…)
Kylo Ren angsts up the latest Character Trailer for Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Exactly a week from today, Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be available on store shelves for the 3DS, PC, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. So WB Games has released one last Character Trailer, this time focusing on Kylo Ren’s exploration of “the lighter side of the Dark Side.”
Featuring new dialogue from Adam Driver, be sure to pause Kylo Ren’s vignette after seven seconds to get a great look at his bedroom. It looks like something of a college comedy, but I think the Warhol-inspired Darth Vader portrait is an especially nice touch.
And in case you missed it, a Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens demo is now available to download through the PlayStation Store and Xbox Games Store for the PS4 and Xbox One.
NetherRealm’s Ed Boon still wants to do a fighting game starring “horror icons”
After Freddy Krueger’s post-launch inclusion in Mortal Kombat was announced back in 2011, Creative Director Ed Boon revealed that when he was employed by Midway, his team considered including characters such as Freddy, Jason, Leatherface, and Michael Myers in a special horror movie-themed entry in the series.
With three-fourths of his wishlist now playable in 2011’s Mortal Kombat or Mortal Kombat X, Game Informer once again pitched Boon on a fighting game filled with “horror icons” ahead of last week’s E3 Expo, and the famed developer still seems into it:
When asked about the possibility of using this trend of guest characters to throw them all together in one big horror icon showdown, Boon was not dismissive of the idea. “Yes, yes! You know, as we’ve been accumulating them, that idea has been coming up more and more frequently,” he says. “You brought it up and a few other people have brought it up like ‘why don’t you do a horror movie fighting game?’ Maybe one day we’ll do it.”
It’s five years later and I’d still sell my soul to make this game become a reality.
Posted in News, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged E3 2016, Mortal Kombat X
New Retail Releases: Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE, Mighty No. 9, Mario & Sonic at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, More
The major game publishers clearly didn’t want to compete with the annual E3 Expo last week, but a number of them are back this week with a handful of intriguing new titles.
Leading the way is Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE, an Atlus/Nintendo collaboration for the Wii U that mashes together characters you’d find in a Fire Emblem game with the mood of a Persona title.
Nintendo is also getting ready for the Summer Games this week with the release of Mario & Sonic at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games for the Wii U. Players will get to try out 14 Olympic sports including soccer, track, and rugby.
Another highly-anticipated title this week, though for very different reasons, is Mighty No. 9 for the PS4, Wii U, and Xbox One (it’ll also be available digitally for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360). Keiji Inafune’s tribute to the Mega Man franchise has been facing development woes since the very beginning, and it’ll be interesting to see how the final product came together.
Elsewhere on store shelves this week will be The Technomancer, an action RPG for the PS4 and Xbox One from Spiders; and MXGP 2, the latest motorcycle racer from Milestone, for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Finally, Microsoft will re-release Minecraft: Xbox One Edition in a special “Favorites Pack” bundle that includes the base game and seven additional add-ons (Battle & Beasts Skin Pack, Battle & Beasts 2 Skin Pack, Natural Texture Pack, City Texture Pack, Fantasy Texture Pack, Festive Mash-up, and Halo Mash-up).
We’ll be back later this week with a look at all the new additions to the PlayStation Store, Xbox Games Store, and Nintendo eShop.
UPDATE: The release of The Technomancer was pushed back a week to June 28.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Wii U, Xbox One
Tagged Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, Mighty No. 9, Minecraft, Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem