Warp Zoned Presents
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Netflix’s Castlevania series will debut on July 7… and here’s the first teaser trailer
For quite a while now, all we’ve really known about Netflix’s Castlevania series is that it’s an animated adaptation of one of the franchise’s best games, Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, and that it was penned by the award-winning Warren Ellis. But today, we finally got our first peak at a teaser trailer and confirmation that it’ll premiere on the streaming service on July 7.
After watching the teaser, we still don’t know much about Netflix’s Castlevania, but we did get this rather awesome exchange:
Woman: “Who are you?”
Alucard: “The man who’ll kill Dracula.”
The first season of Castlevania will include four 30-minute episodes, and a second season is said to be in production for release in 2018.
Posted in Etcetera, News, Retro
Tagged Castlevania
The Video Game Canon: Contra
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon by calling up the two commandos from Contra to examine the history of gaming’s most famous cheat code. Here’s a teaser…
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start.
The rhythm of the words made them sound less like a controller input and more like a prayer. By “speaking” the correct phrase with their controller as the Contra title screen rolled into view, players were able to invoke the spirit of the developers and begin the game with 27 additional lives. In a way, the Konami Code was quite literally a gift from the gods behind the game’s creation, and not so dissimilar from the God Mode cheat that was included in early first-person shooters like Doom.
The Konami Code was originally programmed into 1986’s Gradius by Kazuhisa Hashimoto as a way to unlock a huge weapons cache in the notoriously difficult shooter. He has even joked that the button sequence was left in the game by accident. The Code quickly became an accepted part of the of the publisher’s identity, and its inclusion in Contra (along with Super Mario Bros.‘s Warp Zones and Metroid‘s password system) changed the way people progressed through a game’s levels. These features meant that players were no longer forced to follow the same trail through a game. Now, they could veer off in new directions, and discover what secrets a game held on their own.
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Posted in Features, Retro, Top Story, Video Game Canon
Tagged Contra
Contra is being adapted into a live-action movie in China
Konami gleefully ripped off Aliens and Predator when they were developing Contra back in 1987, but they also wound up creating one of the greatest side-scrolling shooters of all time. so I’d call it a wash. But 30 years later, it looks like Contra will finally be going the other way, as a group of Chinese filmmakers have stepped forward to create a live-action adaptation of the game.
According to China Film Insider, Contra: The Movie will shift the action to an island in the South China Sea, but it’ll otherwise stick to the same story beats:
In 1988, a huge meteorite lands on an uninhabited island in the South China Sea. Chen Qiang and Li Zhiyong investigate but come up empty handed. 29 years later, Chen sends commandos Bill and Lance into a combat mission there to neutralize the villainous Red Falcon Organization, but end up facing a different enemy altogether.
Contra: The Movie is being produced by Beijing Starlit Movie and TV Culture, and a short teaser video has been embedded above.
The World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2017 includes Halo, Pokemon Red/Blue, Street Fighter II, and Donkey Kong
The debate has ended for another year and the induction committee from the World Video Game Hall of Fame is ready to announce their Class of 2017. Drum roll, please…
This year’s first new addition to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games’s Hall of Fame is Donkey Kong. Nintendo’s first big hit became an arcade sensation in 1980, and also introduced the world to a mustachioed plumber named Mario. On the game’s selection, ICHEG Director Jon-Paul Dyson said, “[Donkey Kong’s] overarching narrative of love and its vibrant graphics brought the game to life in a way that few other games could in the early 1980s. It captured the hearts of a generation.”
This year’s class also includes Halo: Combat Evolved, Bungie’s groundbreaking first person shooter and the game that put Microsoft’s Xbox on the map. Curator Shannon Symonds said, “[Halo] boasted one of the strongest multiplayer experiences of its time and created a legion of hardcore fans that refer to themselves as the ‘Halo Nation.’ ”
Hot off the heels of the launch of Pokemon Go, the Hall of Fame also chose to induct Pokemon Red and Blue, the first pair of games released in the far-reaching RPG franchise. The universal appeal of the franchise was a major factor in its selection, as Symonds added: “Pokemon Red and Blue launched a franchise that has taken the world by storm, vaulting many of its characters, such as Pikachu, into popular, mainstream culture. Nearly two decades after its inception and with the introduction of Pokemon Go, ‘Poke-mania’ shows little sign of fading.”
Finally, Capcom’s Street Fighter II: The World Warrior became the first one-on-one fighting game to be added to the Hall of Fame as the final member of the Class of 2017. ICHEG Assistant Director Jeremy Saucier believes that Street Fighter II’s social component fueled its popularity, adding, “This communal style of game play reinvigorated the arcade industry in the 1990s and helped give birth to a generation of fighting games.”
Congratulations to all of this year’s inductees.
The World Video Game Hall of Fame chose to deny entry to eight other finalists this year including Final Fantasy VII, Microsoft Windows Solitaire, Mortal Kombat, Myst, Portal, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, and Wii Sports. But they’ll get another shot. Nominations are already being accepted for the Class of 2018.
Posted in News, Retro
Tagged Donkey Kong, Halo: Combat Evolved, Street Fighter II, World Video Game Hall of Fame
Can you smell the plot description The Rock is cooking up for the Rampage movie…
Rampage is the beloved arcade classic about giant monsters destroying city after city as they crisscross the globe, though we haven’t seen a new entry in the franchise since 2006’s Rampage: Total Destruction. That’ll all change in a year from now, when Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson returns to the big screen as the star of a Rampage film adaptation.
Brad Peyton, who previously teamed with Johnson on San Andreas will direct Rampage, and filming began earlier this week in Georgia. But rather than issue a bland press release, Warner Bros. let Johnson deliver a plot description to fans through his Instagram account.
It sounds absolutely bonkers (just like the game) and it looks like the special effects will be handled by WETA (The Lord of the Rings, King Kong). Also, you don’t see the phrase “I will not lick them” in enough plot descriptions:
Goin’ primal.
Good to finally have boots on the ground here in Georgia for production of #RAMPAGE.
I head up an anti poaching unit out of Rwanda. My best friend is a rare albino gorilla named, George. Very bad people infect George, an alligator and a wolf with a serum. All three animals grow at an unprecedented rate. Their size, speed, agility and violent aggression is off the charts. They go on a deadly rampage and want to destroy the world.
George not happy. Me not happy. When animals like you, they lick you. When they don’t like you, they kill you. I will hunt down the bad people who did this to my best friend. And when I find them, I will not lick them.
We have the best VFX monster making team (WETA) on the planet. Our actors and crew have been working very hard to raise the monster genre bar.
As always, let’s have some fun. Let’s shoot. #PrimalDNA #George #Lizzy #Ralph #RAMPAGE
Rampage will open in theaters on April 20, 2018.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the NES fangame transforms Breath of the Wild into an 8-bit adventure
Nintendo famously created an 8-bit prototype of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to help the development team get acclimated to working with its many interlocking systems. Fans have been clamoring for a chance to play this prototype since its reveal, but Nintendo doesn’t appear to be in any rush to make it available for public use.
Naturally, a dedicated Nintendo fan, Winter Drake, has decided to create a playable version of the prototype in his spare time.
The fangame is known as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the NES, and a demo is currently available as a free download through Itch.io. Nintendo is usually quick to ask their lawyers to issue a “Cease and Desist” order when their characters are used in a fan-created game, but the developer of Breath of the NES has vowed to finish at any costs. Specifically, they told Kotaku that he plans to swap out Link and his Hyrulian enemies with original characters when the time comes:
“When a lot of people hear about this project, they jump to worrying about a cease and desist from Nintendo,” Winter Drake told Kotaku. “While I’m going to stay hardworking on Breath of the NES for as long as I can, if Nintendo asks me to stop using their IP, I do plan to continue development with my own original characters. I’m having way too much fun creating this world to just give up.”
Winter Drake also said they’re not creating a direct conversion of Breath of the Wild, but want to “capture the spirit” of the game:
“This project is still in its early stages… I’ll be adding more areas with distinct elements and atmospheres, puzzle elements for dungeons, and lots of ways to creatively kill enemies,” Winter Drake, the developer behind Breath of the NES, told Kotaku.
“I have a lot of plans for original features in the game, and although I’d like to capture the spirit of BotW and NES Zelda, I’m not restricting myself to be perfectly faithful.”
Winter Drake will be providing additional updates on Breath of the NES’s development on Twitter.
The Video Game Canon: Final Fantasy VII
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon with a look back at Final Fantasy VII and Square’s desire to bring cinematic storytelling to the early days of Sony’s PlayStation. Here’s a teaser…
Since the beginning, every new console cycle has existed as its own separate era that video game players speak of with as much reverence as comic fans who use “Golden Age” and “Silver Age” as a shorthand to represent the different decades of comic production. Ralph Baer’s Odyssey (1st Generation) directly lead to Nolan Bushnell’s Atari 2600 (2nd Generation). Atari’s machine gave way to the rise of Nintendo’s NES (3rd Generation), which in turn lead to the “16-Bit Wars” of the Super NES and the Genesis (4th Generation).
Up to this point, Square had only released three Final Fantasy games in America: 1990’s Final Fantasy, 1991’s Final Fantasy II (released in Japan as Final Fantasy IV), and 1994’s Final Fantasy III (released in Japan as Final Fantasy VI). Even though the remaining three games had yet to make their way across the Pacific, the publisher was determined to unify the franchise’s numbering across all regions with the next sequel. But they still had to find the right home for their game.
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Posted in Features, PC, PS4, Retro, Top Story, Video Game Canon
Tagged Final Fantasy VII
The Video Game Canon: The Sims
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon as we contemplate the futility of determining the best-selling video game of all time and The Sims. Here’s a teaser…
What is the best-selling video game of all time? It’s a surprisingly hard question to answer as game publishers, unlike Hollywood film studios, refuse to release sales figures for their games on a title-by-title basis. But for years now, the conventional narrative has been that The Sims became the best-selling PC game of all time in 2002 after dethroning Myst, the graphical adventure game that sold more CD-ROM drives than every other piece of “multimedia” software combined.
Developed by Maxis, The Sims delivered a smaller, more personal, simulation that differed greatly from the macro scale of designer Will Wright’s previous games, SimCity and SimCity 2000. Instead of pulling the camera back, giving the “mayor” control of an entire city, The Sims moved the camera in close, allowing the player to interact with the day-to-day minutiae of a single family. Part Real World, part Demon Seed, and part Barbie Dream House, this approach allowed players to bypass the mayoral office and step right into the shoes of a god. However, it was a literal “Act of God” that encouraged developer Will Wright to create The Sims in the first place.
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