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: Xbox One
You should watch this great Shovel Knight speedrun race from Awesome Games Done Quick 2017
Awesome Games Done Quick is hosting their first speedrunning marathon of the year this week, and some of the best players from all across the world have descended on the Washington D.C. area to play through a huge number of games as fast as they can. In addition to putting on an excellent show, the AGDQ2017 participants are also raising money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
It’s a pretty fun week of gaming, and for further proof, just look at this year’s Shovel Knight race. Not only is it an extremely competitive contest, but you can watch two experts masterfully pick apart the new side-scrolling classic. The two players going head-to-head are “Smaugy” and “Munchakoopas,” and they provide a great match featuring plenty of platforming acrobatics, multiple lead changes, and an amazing photo finish.
Yacht Club Games will release the next expansion for Shovel Knight, Specter of Torment, sometime this year.
Tetsuya Nomura says we’ll have to wait “a little longer” for release of Final Fantasy VII Remake and Kingdom Hearts III
Like Valve and Blizzard, Square Enix is well-known for taking their sweet time with projects they have in development. Not surprisingly, the publisher is using the same deliberate pace to produce Kingdom Hearts III and Final Fantasy VII Remake, which have been in the works since 2013 and 2015, respectively.
Director Tetsuya Nomura recently offered an update on both titles to Famitsu (translated by Siliconera), and while progress is being made, it might be quite a while before either is released:
Famitsu: What’s the development status on Kingdom Hearts III?
Nomura: The production process is different than what we’ve had up until now, so I can’t just give you a general idea, but I can say that there are worlds that still remain untouched. We’ve advanced on the production of worlds that have yet to be announced, so we can’t show them for now. As far as development status goes, there’s still a ways to go.
Famitsu: What’s the development status on Final Fantasy VII Remake?
Nomura: We’re making steady progress on its production. While we are indeed working on it, I think we’ll have you guys wait a little longer for both Kingdom Hearts III and Final Fantasy VII Remake.
Nomura apologized for the delays, but assured fans that it takes time to create “something that will meet expectations.” Hopefully, we’ll get the chance to see how both games are progressing later this year, as the Director also said he’s looking forward to showcasing both games at at least one event in 2017.
It sounds unlikely that Kingdom Hearts III or Final Fantasy VII Remake will launch in 2017, especially after Nomura said, “[Square Enix has] many titles releasing this year,” implying that neither game will be available by the end of the year. Though he did say that fans should look forward to some “surprises.”
Posted in News, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts III
Square Enix has shipped six million copies of Final Fantasy XV so far
After shipping more than five million copies at launch, Square Enix continues to make Final Fantasy XV available to consumers in a big way.
In a press release this morning, Square Enix announced that shipments and digital sales of Final Fantasy XV have now reached more than six million copies total. The publisher didn’t release any additional information about this latest milestone, so we can’t make any comparisons for physical versus digital or PS4 versus Xbox One.
But Square Enix wants fans to stay excited about Final Fantasy XV in 2017, and they plan to make a large amount of post-launch content (both free and paid) available to players. They recently kicked off the game’s second life with the launch of the Holiday Pack and Holiday Pack Plus expansions, which also includes access to the “Moogle Chocobo Carnival,” an in-game event that starts on Tuesday, January 24.
Posted in News, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Final Fantasy XV
Bethesda has no plans to remake Oblivion or Morrowind; Skyrim Special Edition was a “one-off”
Bethesda will probably forever be linked with the Elder Scrolls franchise, but the publisher has spent the better part of a decade branching out beyond the RPG genre. And after launching games like Dishonored, Doom, and Wolfenstein: The New Order, they’ve begun to present themselves to the public as a place for all genres… and high production values. But according to Pete Hines, this desire to move in new directions make it unlikely that Bethesda will ever look to the past to create remakes of Oblivion or Morrowind.
Speaking to Xbox: The Official Magazine (via GamesRadar), Hines said that the Skyrim Special Edition was a “one-off” born out of a very unique set of circumstances:
OXM: You’ve got some big-name games and you’ve never really fallen into the remake culture that a lot of people are getting into. Skyrim Special Edition feels like a one-off. Would you say that’s true, are you more about moving forward?
Hines: Generally speaking, yeah. We did one for Dishonored but that was a unique case where it was a new IP at the very end of the last generation of consoles. So remastering it and bringing it to this gen wasn’t a ton of work and it made a lot of sense given the proximity of those two. Skyrim was more about the work that Bethesda Game Studios had done in the early days of getting ready for Fallout 4 on this generation of consoles – moving the Skyrim engine and doing some work to run it on this generation of consoles just to see how it worked, and so forth, before they started doing all their Fallout stuff. It’s the most recent thing they did.
Instead of remaking past titles, Hines said that Bethesda’s culture is very much focused on creating “something new”:
Hines:But these things take time, it takes effort and manpower. Generally speaking, our approach has usually been that instead of spending all this time on a thing we’ve already made, why don’t we instead spend that effort on something new, or on the next version of that thing?
One of those new things that Bethesda is working on is The Elder Scrolls 6. However, Studio Director Todd Howard said “it’s a very long way off” back in June.
Posted in PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Microsoft officially cancels Platinum’s Scalebound
Earlier this morning, we heard rumblings that Microsoft was thinking about canceling Platinum’s Scalebound. The game’s “hostile world” and “formidable dragon” were originally unveiled during the 2014 E3 Expo with a cinematic trailer, but the public hasn’t heard much about it since. And now it looks like we never will.
In a short statement to Eurogamer, Microsoft confirmed that Scalebound has officially been canceled:
After careful deliberation, Microsoft Studios has come to the decision to end production for Scalebound. We’re working hard to deliver an amazing lineup of games to our fans this year, including Halo Wars 2, Crackdown 3, State of Decay 2, Sea of Thieves and other great experiences.
According to Eurogamer’s earlier report, it appears that Scalebound was the victim of an overly ambitious design and scheduling problems:
Work on the game took a serious knock last autumn, Eurogamer sources say, when several senior members of the development team were forced to take a month away from the pressure of the project’s heavy workload.
These project members then returned, but Scalebound was now behind schedule. With continuing issues surrounding the game’s engine and overdue deadlines, the decision was made that the project could no longer continue.
As they said in their statement, Microsoft has several other games lined up for release in 2017. Hopefully, we’ll hear more about them soon.
Posted in News, PC, Xbox One
Tagged Scalebound
2017 IGF Awards nominees include Hyper Light Drifter, Inside, Stardew Valley, more
The Independent Games Festival has announced the finalists for this year’s IGF Awards, and it should come as no surprise that critical darlings such as Hyper Light Drifter and Inside have scored multiple nominations. But leading the way is Variable State’s Virigina, which received four nominations (“Best Audio,” “Excellence in Narrative,” “Excellence in Visual Art,” and “The Nuovo Award”) and an Honorable Mention for the “Seumas McNally Grand Prize.”
Other games in competition for the IGF’s “Grand Prize” include the aforementioned Hyper Light Drifter and Inside, along with Concerned Ape’s Stardew Valley, Blendo Games’s Quadrilateral Cowboy, Ocelot Society’s Event[0], and Ghost Town Games’s Overcooked.
The 2017 IGF Awards ceremony will be hosted by developer Nina Freeman on March 1. Fans will be able to tune in to the Twitch channel for the Game Developers Conference to watch the show, and GDC attendees will be able to test out every nominated game at the IGF Pavilion area on the expo floor.
A complete list of the nominees and honorable mentions for the 2017 Independent Games Festival Awards can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged GDC 2017, Hyper Light Drifter, Inside, Stardew Valley
Warp Zoned’s 2016 Golden Pixel Awards: A Look Back at the Year in Video Games
In a very real way, the game industry wiped the slate clean in 2016.
After nearly a decade of development difficulties, Square Enix unleashed Final Fantasy XV on the world. Fumito Ueda and Sony Japan Studio overcame similar troubles to finally release The Last Guardian. Id Software shook off the past and was reborn after the launch of the fourth game in the Doom franchise. Blizzard closed the book on their failed “Titan Project” with the release of Overwatch. Naughty Dog said goodbye to Nathan Drake, but gamers said hello to altered realities that were both “augmented” and “virtual.” Nintendo found new kingdoms to conquer with Super Mario Run. And the launch of No Man’s Sky taught us that while the hype machine sometimes fails to deliver, the chance for a brighter tomorrow is always there.
But before we venture off into that great unknown, let’s look back at some of gaming’s highlights from 2016. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, Etcetera, Features, Mobile, PC, PS4, Top Story, Xbox One
Tagged Dangerous Golf, Dark Souls III, Doom (2016), Dragon Quest Builders, Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past, Final Fantasy XV, Hyper Light Drifter, No Man's Sky, Overwatch, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2, Pokemon Go, Pokemon Sun/Moon, Superhot, The Last Guardian, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
Ed Boon reveals May 16, 2017 release date for Injustice 2
It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about Injustice 2, but Ed Boon hopped on Twitter this afternoon to reveal a release date for the DC Comics fighting game. Like Batman, fans should begin preparing now, because Injustice 2 will be available for the PS4 and Xbox One on May 16:
— Ed Boon (@noobde) January 6, 2017
The Injustice series takes place in an alternate version of the DC Universe where Superman has taken over the world after The Joker kills Lois Lane, though he’s opposed by a small resistance lead by Batman and… believe it or not… Harley Quinn.
The sequel will add a Gear System that lets players customize their favorite superhero or supervillain with unique armor pieces, and include appearances by Batman, Superman, Aquaman, Supergirl, Atrocitus, Gorilla Grodd, Wonder Woman, Blue Beetle, Harley Quinn and Deadshot. Presumably, we’ll learn more about the rest of the game’s roster in the coming weeks.
Posted in News, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Injustice 2