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)
All Articles: PC
Street Fighter X Tekken gets trailer, adds PC version
Above you’ll find the first trailer from Street Fighter X Tekken, Capcom’s latest crossover event. Watch as Ryu, Ken, Guile, Abel and Chun-Li from the Street Fighter series take on Kazuya, Nina, King, Marduk, and Bob from the Tekken franchise. You’ll get a glimpse at the game’s Tag Battle fighting system as well as a view of the Capcomized versions of the Tekken cast.
Street Fighter X Tekken will be coming to the PS3 and Xbox 360 sometime in 2012. Capcom used their Captivate event to confirm that a version is in the works for the PC as well.
Head on over to the Capcom-Unity blog to see the first screenshots of SFxT and another trailer.
Posted in News
Tagged PC, PS3, Street Fighter X Tekken, Xbox 360
Welcome back Frank! Dead Rising 2: Off the Record announced
Frank West is back! The photojournalist who’s covered wars will return to experience his second zombie outbreak in Dead Rising 2: Off the Record. Available for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 this Fall, the game will reveal what Frank was up to during Dead Rising 2 in a brand new Fortune City attraction.
More than a mere spinoff, Capcom has promised that Off the Record will include “more twisted enemies” and “more outrageous combo weapons” as well as “enhancements to the save system and the co-op experience.” We also get to see Frank West deliver a suplex to a zombie while wearing wrestling tights. Oh yeah, welcome back Frank!
Frank’s return will also bring back the picture taking from the original Dead Rising and the Prestige Points (PP) exerpience system. And Frank’s camera will have plenty of new subjects as Capcom has said that Off the Record will include new enemies and new Psychos.
Posted in News
Tagged Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
CoD: Black Ops Escalation Map Pack coming May 3
Activision has announced that the second map pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops, Escalation, will be available to download on May 3. As with all other CoD DLC, the Escalation pack will exclusively be available on the Xbox Live Marketplace before eventually being added to the PlayStation Store and PC download sites.
The pack will include four new multiplayer maps, along with something Activision is referring to as Call of the Dead, “a Zombies experience like none before it.”
“In crafting the Escalation multiplayer maps – Zoo, Convoy, Hotel and Stockpile – the team developed them to be distinct experiences in their own right, giving players the variety they crave in both setting and gameplay,” said Treyarch Studio Head, Mark Lamia. “And I don’t want to spoil any surprises for Zombies fans, but Call of the Dead takes it to a whole new level.”
To celebrate the upcoming release of Escalation , Treyarch will host a Double XP weekend beginning Friday, May 6th.
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Tagged Call of Duty: Black Ops, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Brink release date moved up to May 10
Bethesda Softworks has announced that Spalsh Damage’s parkour-inspired shooter, Brink, will be available in stores sooner than expected. The game, which was previously penciled in for May 17, will now be released a week earlier on May 10.
“Production wrapped on Brink earlier than we planned and we didn’t see any reason to keep gamers from getting their hands on this highly anticipated game as soon as it was ready,” said Pete Hines, VP of PR and Marketing for Bethesda Softworks. “It’s apparent from the tremendous reaction so far that people are eager to jump online and play, and if we can make that happen earlier – we’re going to.”
Getting a week’s headstart on the May 17 release of the hugely hyped L.A. Noire was probably a part of the decision process as well.
PopCap goes experimental with 4th & Battery label
As if Plants vs Zombies wasn’t weird enough, PopCap Games has announced 4th & Battery, a new label for “smaller, simpler, and sometimes edgier games.”
“4th & Battery is a pressure valve intended to keep our heads from exploding,” explained Ed Allard, Executive Vice President of Studios at PopCap. “The PopCap brand has become closely associated with ultra-high quality, polish and attention to detail – which is a great thing. But our standard game development process is therefore long and involved, and doesn’t really accommodate all of the creativity pumping through our collective veins. 4th & Battery gives us a way to quickly try really strange or marginal ideas, and to give our designers a safe area to hone their chops.”
“Expect weirdness,” Jason Kapalka, Chief Creative Officer at PopCap, added.
To that end, 4th & Battery has announced their first game, Unpleasant Horse. The iPhone title will be added to the App Store later this month and it definitely brings the crazy:
Players take on the role of – wait for it! – a strikingly unpleasant horse that sports wings and advances through the game by destroying small birds and landing on more pleasant horses from above. Landing atop other horses enables the player to force them earthward into a perpetual meat grinder for extra points and special bonuses.
Guitar Hero III tops biggest moneymakers list
Guitar Hero may be dead (for now at least), but the franchise has certainly left its mark on the gaming world. In a report released by The NPD Group yesterday, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock was crowned the king of all video games… in terms of total sales dollars that is. The music game has brought $830.9 million into Activision’s coffers, no doubt thanks to the expensive guitar bundle you see above.
Activision can also lay claim to the number two game on the list, Call of Duty: Black Ops (even though gamers have bought more copies of CODBLOPS than any other game ever). All told, the publisher snapped up half of the spots in the top ten.
But when it comes to printing money, the only other name that comes to mind is Nintendo. The consolemaker has four games in the top ten: both versions of Wii Fit, Wii Play and Mario Kart Wii. The only non-Activision/Nintendo title in the top ten was MTV Games’ Rock Band.
Interestingly, no game on the list was released before 2007, but CNBC pointed out that the list may not be entirely accurate as Super Mario Bros. 3 sold 18 million copies back in 1990 (before The NPD Group started tracking game sales). Originally retailing for $50, the game’s $900 million dollar tally would surpass every other game on the list.
Hit the jump for the full top ten. (more…)
Hail to Duke Nukem Forever’s Mature rating
Every game that has ever been threatened with an Adults Only rating from the ESRB is an amateur next to Duke Nukem Forever. As expected, the ESRB has awarded the game a Mature rating. And the reasons behind the rating have likely got every member of the “Won’t someone think of the children!” brigade salivating at the chance to denounce it in public.
According to the ESRB, Duke Nukem Forever was given a Mature rating for “Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Mature Humor, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs and Alcohol.” That mouthful is topped by the game’s Rating Summary, which reads like a laundry list of every complaint Fox News has ever lobbed against video games (and then some).
So who wants some? Hit the break to find out exactly why the ESRB gave Duke Nukem Forever a Mature rating. (more…)
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Tagged Duke Nukem Forever, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
June release scared up for Alice: Madness Returns, Shadows of the Damned
This June is going to be a scary time, that is if EA has anything to say about it. The megapublisher used the Game Developers Conference to reveal when two of their scariest games will be in stores.
Shadows of the Damned is the brainchild of Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil) and Suda 51 (No More Heroes), so you know it’ll be pretty disturbing. We also now know that the PS3 and Xbox 360 game will be released on June 7.
A week later, on June 14, EA will push Alice: Madness Returns out the door. The PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 sequel to the classic American McGee’s Alice is being developed by Spicy Horse under McGee’s supervision. It also has the freakiest trailer I’ve seen this year.
Posted in News
Tagged Alice: Madness Returns, PC, PS3, Shadows of the Damned, Xbox 360