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Most Recent: Top Story
The Video Game Canon: Tetris
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon with a look at how moms helped Tetris become the gaming gargantuan it is today. Here’s a teaser…
In 1989, most mothers believed that video games were a childhood distraction that eventually would be brushed aside as their offspring grew into responsible adults. But something happened along the way that prevented this. Perhaps the Nintendo Entertainment System, the most popular console of its day, was just that much better than previous attempts to bring video games into the living room. But I have a different theory. I believe it was Tetris.
Tetris brought mothers and their children together to play video games for the first time. And then something magical happened. Instead of jerkily moonwalking Mario into a pit or being the most unrad racer on the planet, the mothers were good at Tetris. They were so good that brother and sister soon had to compete with mom for control of the television. And mom wasn’t going to be finished until she made the castle take off into the stratosphere.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to continue reading this article and to explore the complete Top 1000.
The Games of January 2017
We’re all super tired from the holidays, and have tons to play in our backlog! So there’s not much that interests us this month of January. That’s not true… quite a few of us are into Double Dragon IV! Read on to see which one of us plan to pick that up when it releases. (more…)
Warpback: What We Played in December 2016
We here at Warp Zoned were all about gaming this month! We played everything from old games in our backlogs to new games, spanning every console possible, including our phones. Hit the jump to check out our full list of games we played… it’s exhausting! (more…)
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
The Video Game Canon: An Introduction and The Top 100 (Version 1.0)
The Video Game Canon is a statistical meta-ranking of dozens of “Best Video Games of All Time” lists that began in 2017 with Version 1.0, and the ranking has been updated several times since then. Which game is #1? There’s only one way to find out…
Is it possible to rank the greatest video games of all time in a “scientific” way? Do you just throw the question to so-called experts and let them hash it out in a no-holds-barred debate? Or is there some way to create a “Video Game Canon” that the wide-ranging community of developers, critics, and players can all agree on?
Probably not. But we can try.
Since gaming’s earliest days, dozens of publications have tried to sort through the noise and compile their own list of “The Best Video Games of All Time.” By analyzing all of these attempts at ranking the greatest games and combining them into a single list, we can apply a little scientific rigor to the process and possibly create a “Best Video Games of All Time” list that everyone can agree on.
Before we go any further, let me just say… no matter how we try to justify it, it’s impossible to prove, by “science” or otherwise, that one game is definitively better than another. My attempt at adding “science” to the mix is just a way to add some zing to the numerical formula doing all the work behind the scenes.
Ideally, this project will give us the chance to look back at the history of video games reflected through some the medium’s greatest titles. The list itself will serve as something of a road map to help us learn how the best games of all time are connected to each other, to better appreciate how players interacted with video games in the past, and to explore what video games might become in the future.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com for all future updates to this project and to explore the complete Top 1000.
Gravity Rush 2 Hands-On Preview: Stylishly Falling Under the Spell of Sony Japan’s Sequel
I have no real familiarity with Gravity Rush, a gravity-defying action game first released for the PS Vita in 2012, and later remastered for the PlayStation 4 in 2015. I had heard it was a Japanese superhero game with a unique style, but never took the time to look into it further. With the Gravity Rush 2 demo now available on the PlayStation Network, I decided to jump in blind and see what awaited. (more…)
Posted in Previews, PS4, Top Story
Tagged Gravity Rush 2
Super Mario Run Review: Nintendo’s Got A Winner After Plumbing New Depths on iOS
Whether you’re a video game fan looking for more games on the go or a stock market analyst fixated on profit margins, you’ve likely spent the last few years wondering when Nintendo would finally break into mobile game development. Earlier this year, the consolemaker dipped their toe into those waters with the Miitomo communication app, but now they’re finally ready to dive into that big blue ocean with their first mobile game, Super Mario Run. (more…)
Posted in Mobile, Reviews, Top Story
Tagged Super Mario Run
Kickstart This! Super Red-Hot Hero
In what will be the final Kickstart This of 2016, a year many of us would like to forget, I thought it would be prudent to end the year on a “Red-Hot” high. For this edition, I have chosen Super Red-Hot Hero, a game from an exciting team of developers based in Barcelona. (more…)