Warp Zoned Presents
Most Recent: Features
It Came From 200X: Spider-Man
The tail-end of the 90s wasn’t a great time for superhero games. With the likes of Superman 64, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, and Spawn: The Eternal clogging store shelves, the average comic geek had few options for playable superheroics. That is, until Neversoft and Activision took it upon themselves to create one of the best comic book-based games of all time: Spider-Man!
Okay, so the title is lazy — but it also set the expectation that gamers could finally become Spider-Man like no previous video game could achieve. Launching in 2000 for the Sony PlayStation (with ports appearing over the next 12 months on the Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and PC), this game oozed authenticity from minute one. From the very beginning, we were living an adventure narrated by Stan Lee, hanging out with the acrobatic Black Cat, swinging by the famous Baxter Building (home of the Fantastic Four), and putting an end to a daring bank robbery.
It was, quite frankly, a revelation. Suddenly, superhero games didn’t have to be cheap cash-ins like all of those terrible movie-based atrocities. There were a few pioneers on earlier consoles, to be sure — Batman on NES and Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage for SNES/Sega Genesis come to mind — but this gem captured my imagination like no other. However, does it hold up to those sugary-sweet memories in these darker modern times? (more…)
The Video Game Canon: Tomb Raider (1996)
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon by checking in with Tomb Raider (1996), the debut adventure of one of gaming’s most famous female characters. Here’s a teaser…
For better or worse, Lara Croft is the most famous woman in all of gaming. But all her fame might be a fluke, because the developers behind her creation claim it was all an accident.
Formed in the late 80s, Core Design was an unlikely candidate to be creating a wide open 3D title like Tomb Raider. The developer’s biggest claim to fame at the time was Rick Dangerous, a game that could charitably be called an “homage” to Indiana Jones. Other gamers might remember Chuck Rock, a platformer created by Core that starred a dimwitted caveman. But like many British developers of the time, they didn’t think about their limitations and just went for it. This definitely applied to Toby Gard, the artist behind Lara Croft’s original look.
Like Rick Dangerous, Lara began life as a man with no name that bore a striking resemblance to Harrison Ford. Fearing a lawsuit, Gard redrew the character as a woman and began tinkering with a number of different personalities. The artist told IGN in 2008 that the proto-Tomb Raider began life as a “sociopathic blonde” before morphing into a muscle woman, a “flat topped hip hopster,” and a “Nazi-like militant in a baseball cap.” None of these looks fit the game that Core envisioned, but Gard’s final pass at it proved to be the winner. Laura Cruz, “a tough South American woman in a long braid and hot pants,” was born.
We’ll never know if Laura Cruz would have received the same reception, but Gard continued to tinker, and eventually, the character became a descendant of British royalty when the developers plucked the name Lara Croft out of a City of Derby phone book. The final piece of the puzzle fell into place when Gard was playing with a slider that controlled the size of Lara’s breasts and accidentally inflated them to 150% their original size. The Core Design team gathered around Gard’s computer and hooted their approval, even if the artist himself was skeptical of the character’s inflated curves.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to continue reading this article and to explore the complete Top 1000.
The Video Game Canon: Ms. Pac-Man
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon with a look at the accidental creation of Ms. Pac-Man. Here’s a teaser…
It’s easy to forget nowadays, but Ms. Pac-Man was actually created by accident. Like Doc Brown’s invention of time travel after a tumble from the toilet, Ms. Pac-Man was created when a group of game developers from MIT attempted to release an unauthorized sequel to Pac-Man known as “Crazy Otto.”
Before turning their sights on the biggest arcade game of the day, the development team, General Computer, first used their programming skills to create an “enhancement kit” for Atari’s Missile Command. Instead of creating their own game from scratch, the enhancement kit hooked into Atari’s code and altered it to provide a new gameplay experience. Essentially, General Computer created the first expansion pack.
Even though the enhancement kit required an original Missile Command cabinet, Atari later attempted to sue General Computer for copyright infringement. But rather than become mired in a protracted court case, the arcade giant and the enterprising college students reached a settlement. Atari would hire General Computer to design original arcade games so long as they agreed not to create any additional enhancement kits without the permission of the original game publisher. The developers quickly signed on, but first they took a nearly complete version of “Crazy Otto” to Midway, the North American distributor of Pac-Man.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to continue reading this article and to explore the complete Top 1000.
The Video Game Canon: Super Mario 64
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon with an exploration of all the ways Nintendo tried to teach the world about 3D games with Super Mario 64. Here’s a teaser…
For Mario’s first foray into “The Third Dimension,” Nintendo wanted to ensure that everything was perfect. In fact, the Nintendo 64, its unique three-pronged controller, and the controller’s analog stick designed to better simulate 3D movement were all created with the needs of Super Mario 64 in mind.
Nintendo had good reason to be worried about getting all of the details just right, as most video gamers had never even seen a 3D platformer before Super Mario 64. Aside from a few experimental titles from the late 80s and early 90s, 3D movement was only found in a handful of titles on the market at the time, the most famous of which was probably EA’s Fade To Black. Naughty Dog’s Crash Bandicoot, which included pseudo-3D movement, beat Super Mario 64 to store shelves by about five weeks, but a majority of the game took place on a 2D plane.
So Nintendo used Super Mario 64 as an opportunity to introduce players to what was, in their mind, an entirely new genre. Shigeru Miyamoto’s exacting attention to detail helped mold every part of the game. The first interaction players had with the game was the appearance of an actual cameraman (Lakitu the Cloud), and instructions on how to control the camera’s angle with the diamond-shaped set of C-Buttons on the right side of the Nintendo 64 controller.
Actually, let me back up… the very first thing most players experienced after booting up Super Mario 64 was the interactive Mario face on the Title Screen. Miyamoto saw fit to even offer players a primer on polygons as the squares, rectangles, and rhombi that made up Mario’s face could be grabbed and manipulated in dozens of different ways. In a way, “It’s-a me, Mario! Hello!” was a coded message that encouraged players to jump right into this new 3D world.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to continue reading this article and to explore the complete Top 1000.
Posted in DS, Features, Retro, Top Story, Video Game Canon, Wii, Wii U
Tagged Super Mario 64
The Games of March 2017
Well, it’s no surprise that here at Warp Zoned, we’re all talking about the same thing: Nintendo’s Switch! Nicole didn’t manage to snag a pre-order because she is some kind of newbie, but everyone else got one. Read on to see what they’ll be playing as soon as they pick up their Switch consoles! (more…)
Warpback: What We Played in February 2017
The month of February was a cold one, but at least we had our games to keep us nice and warm! We all did a little bit of dipping into our various backlogs, trying to get some gaming done before so many other games we’re looking forward to hit the shelves. Hit the jump to see what games we were playing here at Warp Zoned in February! (more…)
Interview: Serving Up Conversation About Joysticks, Pints, and Kickstarter With the Owner of Glasgow’s First Arcade Bar
One of the rare delights of following projects on Kickstarter is when you spot someone trying to build something in your own town or city, be it a video game, an album, a film, or, in this case, a bar. There is an instant, and intimate, connection of homegrown pride and creative curiosity. That’s especially true after Super Bario popped up on my radar late in its campaign.
For my sins, I never contributed to Super Bario when the project was live, despite my love of both video games and tasty craft beer. The arcade bar occupies a small space on King Street in Glasgow, Scotland, in an area teeming with art and creative spirit. It backs onto the Tron Theatre, while directly opposite there is Trongate 103, home to Glasgow Print Studio, Street Level Photography, and the Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre.
I have now become a patron of the bar, and try to pop in when I can, enticing friends who love video games, or those who remember being a kid standing before that monolith of entertainment… a cabinet of wood and a CRT display flickering sprites into our awestruck eyes.
Super Bario has proven to be a great success, a space for gamers to chill and enjoy a drink while sucking in the sweet smell of nostalgia. Amidst the craziness, I managed to chat with co-owner Shaun Murawski, who along with Scott McLauchlan and George Black, conceived of the arcade bar back in 2015, and fought hard to make it a reality with the backing of 166 donors. (more…)
Posted in Features, Interviews, Retro, Top Story
The Video Game Canon: Halo: Combat Evolved
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon with a look at Microsoft’s first attempt to enter the console market and the birth of Halo: Combat Evolved. Here’s a teaser…
Microsoft is usually portrayed as the stodgy suit in contrast to Apple’s hip turtleneck, but would you believe that the first Xbox prototype was built on a whim by a quartet of guys from the company’s engineering department?
Kevin Bachus, Otto Berkes, Seamus Blackley, and Ted Hase first took their “DirectX Box” to Ed Fries, the head of Microsoft’s video game division, in 1998. Even though everyone in the world had played a dozen hands (or more) of Windows Solitaire, Microsoft wasn’t a big player in the game development arena at the time. Similar to today’s line of console-like PCs, the original “DirectX Box” was an off-the-shelf Windows PC with a video card and a hard drive that hid the Windows-ness of the system from the player.
Before the “DirectX Box” could move forward, Fries and his team had to fight off a challenge from a separate team within Microsoft that had worked with Sega to produce some of the system software for the Dreamcast. They were pushing for the company to create a more traditional console (no Windows, no hard drive), and Bill Gates himself ultimately stepped in to give his blessing to Fries and his “DirectX Box.”
[…]
[Eventually,] Microsoft toted their Xbox prototype, which was a massive X-shaped silver box with a glowing green core, to the 2000 Game Developers Conference, and officially announced their intention to take over the living room (with an assist from Bill Gates and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson). A few months after that, the company purchased Bungie Studios and their upcoming game, Halo: Combat Evolved.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to continue reading this article and to explore the complete Top 1000.
Posted in Features, PC, Retro, Top Story, Video Game Canon, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Halo: Combat Evolved