Warp Zoned Presents
Most Recent: Features
Double Dragon: Neon Interview: Mixing It Up With Majesco’s Pete Rosky
A surefire way to build buzz for your retro-tinged throwback game is to announce that it’ll be playable on the PAX show floor just a few hours before the doors open. It worked for Duke Nukem Forever at PAX Prime 2010 and it worked for Double Dragon: Neon, which made its debut at this year’s PAX East.
After getting some hands-on time with the game, we were able to sit down with Pete Rosky, an Assistant Product Manager at Majesco, the game’s publisher. During our short chat, we talked about the genesis of the game, weapons, enemies, and a certain actress who everyone agrees is the boss. (more…)
Posted in Features, Interviews, Previews, PS3, Top Story, Xbox 360
Tagged Double Dragon: Neon, PAX East 2012
My Golden Age of Gaming
Once upon a time and long, LONG ago, I stood with my little brother, my face pressed against a glass case at Electronics Boutique, looking at all of the precious gray cartridges inside. We wanted Super Mario Bros. 3, but the gentleman behind the counter informed us that it was all sold out, and we walked out of the store in tears.
My young brain scrambled for an alternative, and once we arrived at the spot the car was parked, I reminded my mother that the local movie rental place had started renting video games, and begged her to take us there to see if THEY had the game. I informed her I was likely to die if I didn’t somehow get a copy THAT DAY, and I was certain she didn’t want to kill her eldest child. Clearly irritated, she started to tell me no, but my quivering lower lip must have changed her mind, because she told me to shut up and get in the car instead.
All of the copies of Super Mario Bros. 3 but one had been rented, and I held the remaining copy to my chest as though it was a life preserver and I was adrift in the ocean, surrounded by sharks. When we got home, I put it right in the NES and turned it on. I even let my little brother play a few levels when I was tired or frustrated. I think this was the point of no return for me, when I realized gaming was what I wanted to do in my spare time, and no other leisure activity would do. I was a gamer. (more…)
Posted in Features, Top Story
Tagged PAX East 2012
PAX East Primer For the Regular Guy
There might be few of you out there who have read the reviews of all the playable games at PAX East, and all of the interviews with the hot developers of the moment, but are wondering what the PAX experience was like for the unwashed masses without a shiny press pass. Allow me to paint you a picture with words, if you will, which might help you determine if you wanna spend the ducats to go to this crazy thing sometime. (more…)
Posted in Features, Top Story
Tagged PAX East 2012
Living in a Discless World?
A couple of weeks ago, a rumour spread like wildfire across the Internet, proclaiming that the next iteration of Microsoft’s Xbox console would have no optical disc drive (a similar rumour cropped up about the PS4/Orbis last week as well). Many wrote it off as idle speculation, although a minority seemed not only to believe the rumour as truth but welcome the news. Those who debunked the rumours cited the fact that the last console war between Sony and Microsoft was not actually about the consoles themselves, but the medium their respective consoles used. It seemed Sony had learned its lessons in its past defeats in format wars, from Betamax to Minidisc, with Blu-ray winning the battle against the slightly inferior HD-DVD for dominance in the home movie market. The suggestion now is that Microsoft would now have to kneel down and pucker up to Sony’s Blu-rimmed hole if it wished to brand their next console as a home entertainment system, and their strategy with the Xbox 360 would suggest as much. (more…)
The Games of April 2012
April, April, April. In 2011 you showered the gaming community with riches such as Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat. But in 2012, the year’s fourth month just can’t compete with titles like that. However, there’s still a steady stream of new releases this month (OK, it’s actually more of a trickle) and there’s bound to be a few gold nuggets in the pan. (more…)
Warpback: What We Played in March 2012
March certainly did come in like a lion and go out like a lamb! Heavy hitter Mass Effect 3 dominated a lot of our play lists in the beginning, while we went out on a softer note with the puzzles of Final Fantasy XIII-2. But it seems that most of us were just slogging through our backlogs, as we always seem to be when either we can’t afford the newer games or we just don’t care for them. Read on, friends, and find out what we played in the last month! (more…)
Developers From thatgamecompany Hold Court at GameFest
Thatgamecompany was on hand at this weekend’s GameFest at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. President Kellee Santiago, Core Engineer Martin Middleton, Lead Artist Matt Nava, Producer Robin Hunicke, and Community Manager Aaron Grommesh were at a table in the center of the courtyard on Saturday, March 17, signing books and posters and posing with fans. This friendly, down-to-earth group sat and talked with me and a friend of mine, Nikkolai Davenport, who works at indie developer Cipher Prime in Philadelphia, PA. But they did so much more than just sit and talk with us. What we got that day was a unique and memorable experience. (more…)
The Cross and The Controller: Mass Effect’s Picture of Faith
SPOILER WARNING: This article will talk about the death of a major character in Mass Effect 3 that takes place about a third of the way through the game… unless, of course, that character died in your playthrough of Mass Effect 2.
Prayer is a very strange thing. It takes numerous forms, from the recitation of memorized words, often ancient, to the spontaneous utterances of exuberant or anguished hearts. It can be practiced in deep silence, and it can be as informal as a muttered word for help before a surgery or a battle. Prayer flows out of human beings; we seem to be hardwired for it, either by some quirk of natural selection or through deep enculturation. The old saying “there are no atheists in foxholes” suggests the fact that, at our core, humanity is a praying species.
It’s important to note that none of this is an apologetic for the existence of God. One needs a particular understanding of the bare facts to interpret them in any particular way. Our penchant for prayer may be a quirk of genetic mutation; it may be a result of millennia of conditioning. Neither suggests that there is anyone listening to our prayer. So, while I do believe that our prayers are heard, I do not think the fact that we pray is somehow proof of that. (more…)