Author: VGC | John

John Scalzo has been writing about video games since 2001, and he co-founded Warp Zoned in 2011. Growing out of his interest in game history, the launch of Video Game Canon followed in 2017.

The New Yorker’s Simon Parkin Launches “My Perfect Console” Podcast

Simon Parkin is the video game guru for both The New Yorker and The Observer, but it looks like the famed journalist will add podcast host to his resume in the very near future with the announcement of My Perfect Console.

Each episode of the interview podcast will introduce a new guest (“from the worlds of gaming, film and television, music, comedy and more”) who will sit down with Parkin and discuss the five games that mean the most to them:

In My Perfect Console, Simon Parkin, New Yorker journalist and video game critic for The Observer invites guests from the worlds of gaming, film and television, music, comedy and more to choose the five video games they would like to immortalise on their very own fictional games machine, and discuss what their choices mean to them.

There’s no start date for My Perfect Console just yet, but Parkin has shared a short preview to give listeners a taste of what’s to come. The first episode will feature Josh Wardle, the creator of Wordle, while a subsequent episode will bring in Charles Cecil, the co-founder of Revolution Software and creator of the Broken Sword franchise.

My Perfect Console will be produced by Acast, and each episode will be available to download through your favorite podcast service.

Google Launches Worm Game on Stadia… 5 Days Before Service Shuts Down

Google plans to pull the plug on its game streaming service, Stadia, on January 18. But even though the end is nigh, the team behind the project has given players one last game to play over the final five days.

Worm Game, an impressive adaptation of Snake, was used internally to test some of Stadia’s features, and it’s now free to play for all Stadia users. The game’s surprise release was accompanied by a short note from the development team:

Play the game that came to Stadia before Stadia came to the world. “Worm Game” is a humble title we used to test many of Stadia’s features, starting well before our 2019 public launch, right through 2022. It won’t win Game of the Year, but the Stadia team spent a LOT of time playing it, and we thought we’d share it with you. Thanks for playing, and for everything.

Worm Game features full controller support, a single-player campaign, leaderboards, online multiplayer, and a level editor. Play it now (before it’s gone forever on the 18th) in your browser at Stadia.Google.com.

UPDATE (1/19/23): Worm Game, and the rest of the Google Stadia service, was taken offline during the early morning hours of January 19. An official gameplay video of the title was never uploaded by Google, but multiple players have uploaded full playthroughs to YouTube (including from Watch the Gameplay and Helix Plays Games).

Good luck to the development team as they move on to new projects.

Jordan Minor’s “Video Game of the Year” Will Feature “The Best, Boldest, and Most Bizarre Games” from 1977-2022 When it Releases in July 2023

PC Magazine’s Jordan Minor will publish his first book in 2023, and for the subject of this tome, the journalist has zeroed in one that’s very near and dear to my heart.

In Video Game of the Year, Minor will sort through thousands of titles in his quest to compile… and here comes the subtitle… A Year-By-Year Guide to the Best, Boldest, and Most Bizarre Games from Every Year Since 1977.

Minor, along with a small army of contributors (including Jason Schreier, Rebekah Valentine, and others), will choose the defining game from each year and explore how they “captured the zeitgeist and left a legacy for all games that followed” through a series of essays:

Pong. The Legend of Zelda. Final Fantasy VII. Rock Band. Fortnite. Animal Crossing: New Horizons. For each of the 40 years of video game history, there is a defining game, a game that captured the zeitgeist and left a legacy for all games that followed. Through a series of entertaining, informative, and opinionated critical essays, author and tech journalist Jordan Minor investigates, in chronological order, the innovative, genre-bending, and earth-shattering games from 1977 through 2022. Minor explores development stories, critical reception, and legacy, and also looks at how gaming intersects with and eventually influences society at large while reveling in how uniquely and delightfully bizarre even the most famous games tend to be.

From portly plumbers to armor-clad space marines and the speedy rodents in between, Video Game of the Year paints individual portraits that, as a whole, give readers a stronger appreciation for the vibrant variety and long-lasting impact of this fresh, exciting, and massively popular art form. Illustrated throughout with retro-inspired imagery and featuring contributions from dozens of leading industry voices, including New York Times bestselling author Jason Schreier (Blood, Sweat, and Pixels; Kotaku), Max Scoville (IGN), Rebekah Valentine (IGN), Blessing Adeoye Jr. (Kinda Funny), and Devindra Hardawar (Engadget), this year-by-year anthology is a loving reflection on the world’s most popular art form.

Video Game of the Year will be published by Abrams in paperback and all ebook formats on July 11, 2023.

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Shacknews Hall of Fame’s Class of 2022 Includes Final Fantasy VII, GoldenEye 007, Mario Kart 64, and Many More

The Council of the Old, better known as the editorial team at Shacknews, has announced the latest inductees into the Shacknews Hall of Fame.

The Shacknews Hall of Fame was created in 2021 to honor “the creators, the platforms, the technology, the publications, and the games that have influenced the direction of our industry and shaped our favorite hobby.” Like any good Best Games list, last year’s wide-ranging inaugural class (comprised of more than 100 titles in total) featured many beloved favorites alongside a few more obscure surprises. The Class of 2022 has blown the doors open even wider, with 57 additional titles, all released before May 31, 1998.

As you might expect, multiple games from the heyday of the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 can be found amongst the more than four dozen selections. The PlayStation faithful will be pleased to see that Bushido Blade, Final Fantasy VII, Gran Turismo, Grand Theft Auto, and PaRappa the Rapper all made the cut. The Nintendo 64 was famous for its multiplayer games, and they’re now well-represented in the Shacknews Hall of Fame by GoldenEye 007, Mario Kart 64, Star Fox 64, and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter.

You also don’t have to look very far to find a few PC titles in the Class of 2022, including Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Fallout, and Quake II.

An eclectic group of people were also inducted into the Shacknews Hall of Fame this year. There’s a quintet of Mario actors (“Captain” Lou Albano, Danny Wells, Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, and Charles Martinet), a few athletes (John Madden and Ivan “Ironman” Stewart, a trio of Midway men (Ed Boon, John Tobias, and Dan Forden), and the unmatched Raul Julia.

All of the games included in the Shacknews Hall of Fame’s Class of 2022 will be added to the Video Game Canon in a future update.

Elden Ring Wins “Game of the Year” in Bizarre Finale to the 2022 Game Awards

Though it’s faced some stiff competition over the last year, Elden Ring‘s coronation as “Game of the Year” has sometimes felt like an inevitability ever since it was released all the way back in February.

That expectation became a reality during last night’s Game Awards ceremony, as From Software’s already stellar reputation was burnished with “Game of the Year” and three additional statuettes (“Best Game Direction,” “Best Art Direction,” and “Best Role Playing Game”). But what happened next threatened to overshadow the entire show, as a teenager bypassed security and walked on stage alongside the developers. After Game Director Hidetaka Miyazaki delivered his acceptance speech, the teenager addressed the audience, and dedicated the award to “my reformed Orthodox Rabbi Bill Clinton.”

It was certainly one of the oddest moments from the show’s history.

But before all that, the night certainly belonged to God of War: Ragnarok. Though it missed out on “Game of the Year,” Sony Santa Monica’s game took home a half-dozen statuettes, including for “Best Action/Adventure Game,” “Best Audio Design,” “Best Score and Music,” and “Best Narrative.” Ragnarok also won the “Innovation in Accessibility” award for its expansive accessibility options and Christopher Judge’s portrayal of Kratos won “Best Performance.”

Stray was also denied “Game of the Year” honors, but it did win a pair of prizes for “Best Independent Game” and (unsurprisingly) “Best Debut Indie.”

Finally, Nintendo had a good night with multiple wins spread across its impressive 2022 lineup. The consolemaker collected statuettes for “Best Family Game” (for Kirby and the Forgotten Land), “Best Sim/Strategy Game” (for Mario + Rabbids: Spark of Hope), and “Best Multiplayer” (for Splatoon 3). Things are also looking good for 2023 as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom won “Most Anticipated Game.”

A video replay of the 2022 Game Awards can be found after the break (skip to 3:53:00 if you’re solely interested in “my reformed Orthodox Rabbi Bill Clinton”), along with all the winners and nominees.

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Lists From the Past: The Library of Congress’s “Game Canon”

Henry Lowood has served as the Curator of the History of Science and Technology Collections at Stanford University since 1983. Thanks to this role, he’s been part of the growing field of Game Studies practically since its very beginning, and in 2006 he used his position to pitch a proposal to the Library of Congress about the importance of the academic study of games.

Partly inspired by the National Film Preservation Board’s National Film Registry and his own efforts to preserve important game-related artifacts since 1998, Lowood asked for the Library’s assistance in creating a “Game Canon,” a group of titles that would best represent the cultural and historical significance of video games. He got his wish a year later, and a committee (comprised of Lowood, his Stanford colleague Matteo Bittanti, game designers Warren Spector and Steve Meretzky, and Joystiq’s Christopher Grant) was formed to decide on the canon’s initial composition.

After a lot of debate, the committee delivered ten recommendations for the “Game Canon,” ultimately highlighting 15 titles in total. Civilization and Civilization II were grouped together as part of this initial batch of games, as were the four games in the Warcraft series (Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and World of Warcraft). The rest of the eight selections covered a wide range of genres from the first three decades of game history, starting with 1962’s Spacewar! and moving forward through time to the aforementioned Warcraft series.

In between you’ll find 1985’s Tetris, 1989’s SimCity, 1993’s Doom, and a few other foundational games…

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Bite-Sized Game History: Early Box Art for Zelda and Punch-Out!!, Marketing Marvel Vs Capcom Origins, and Jurassic World’s Secret Origin

Like with any creative endeavor, actually completing development of a video game is only half the battle. The other half involves getting eyeballs in front of your completed game and getting these new fans to (hopefully) tell their friends all about it.

Game publishers have tried lots of different marketing methods over the years, and we look at two of them in this edition of Bite-Sized Game History, as well as what happens when you need to pitch your game to the most famous film director in the world.

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Cliff Bleszinski Takes Readers Behind the Chainsaw in “Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games”

Whether you know him as CliffyB, Dude Huge, or The Guy Who Made Gears of War, game developer Cliff Bleszinski just added another title to his long list of monikers… Memoirist.

Bleszinski has been promising for years to pen a book about his life in game development, and it finally became a reality earlier this week with the release of Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games. Published by Simon & Schuster, Bleszinski’s memoir will chart his career from teenage programmer through his post-Epic projects, as well as include his thoughts on the games industry of today:

Video games are dominating the planet. In 2020, they brought in $180 billion dollars globally—nearly $34 billion in the United States alone. So who are the brilliant designers who create these stunning virtual worlds? Cliff Bleszinski—or CliffyB as he is known to gamers—is one of the few who’ve reached mythical, rock star status. In Control Freak, he gives an unvarnished, all-access tour of the business.

Toiling away in his bedroom, Bleszinski created and shipped his first game before graduating high school, and at just seventeen joined a fledgling company called Epic Games. He describes the grueling hours, obscene amounts of Mountain Dew and obsessive focus necessary to achieve his singular creative visions. He details Epic’s rise to industry leader, thanks largely to his work on bestselling franchises Unreal and Gears of War (and, later, his input on a little game called Fortnite), as well as his own awkward ascent from shy, acne-riddled introvert to sports car-driving celebrity rubbing shoulders with Bill Gates. As he writes, “No one is weirder than a nerd with money.” While the book is laced with such self-deprecating humor, Bleszinski also bluntly addresses the challenges that have long-faced the gaming community, including sexism and a lack of representation among both designers and the characters they create.

Control Freak is a hilarious, thoughtful, and inspiring memoir. Even if you don’t play games, you’ll walk away from this book recognizing them as a true art form and appreciating the genius of their creators.

Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games is now available in stores.

UPDATE (12/9/22): Literary Hub recently shared an excerpt from Control Freak about Bleszinski’s quest to climb the leaderboard in Super Mario Bros.

Over 1000 Games Have Been Ranked by Hardcore Gaming 101’s “The Top 47,858 Games of All Time” Podcast

The folks behind Hardcore Gaming 101’s “The Top 47,858 Games of All Time” podcast have been ranking their favorite games for nearly seven years, and while they haven’t reached their goal just yet, they hit a major milestone last month when they added the 1,000th game to their list.

The visually-impressive Vectorman, a side-scroller from Sega that debuted during the waning days of the Genesis, was the subject of the landmark episode, and the podcast’s hosts ranked it at #385 (just ahead of BioShock and just behind Wasteland).

“The Top 47,858 Games of All Time” features a dynamically-ordered list, and each new episode of the podcast adds at least one more game to the overall ranking. Unfortunately, Vectorman hasn’t been able to hold onto its position in the weeks since, and as of today, the game has fallen to #403 (where it’s still just ahead of BioShock and just behind Wasteland). You can visit Hardcore Gaming 101 to see where your favorite game is currently ranked.

Tetris currently holds the #1 spot, and you’ll find some interesting choices in the rest of the Top Ten (including NetHack at #2, Nier: Automata at #4, and Katamari Damacy at #7). There’s also a lot of Mario near the upper reaches of the list (including Super Mario Bros. at #3, Super Mario 64 at #6, and Super Mario Bros. 3 at #9), but things get pretty wild pretty fast (Minesweeper at #76!), and Mirage’s infamous Rise of the Robots sits at the very bottom at #1023.

Congratulations to everyone at “The Top 47,858 Games of All Time” podcast on this accomplishment. Just 46,835 games to go!

Bite-Sized Game History: Celebrating 30 Years of Mortal Kombat with Ed Boon and John Tobias

Ed Boon has nurtured the soul of the Mortal Kombat franchise for more than 30 years now. Development began in 1991 when Boon, alongside co-creator John Tobias, pitched a fighting game starring Jean-Claude Van Damme to their bosses at Midway. That part of the plan quickly fizzled out, but the decisionmakers at the company were still interested in creating an original fighting game to piggyback on the success of Street Fighter II.

A year later, Boon and Tobias (and John Vogel and Dan Forden) were ready to deliver the first cabinets for Mortal Kombat to arcade operators on October 8, 1992. Pre-release reactions to the game, both within Midway and from the public, were trending in the right direction, but the team had no idea just how much of an impact their creation would soon have on the game industry… and the entire world.

To celebrate the fighting franchise’s 30th anniversary, Boon and Tobias have been sharing stories from Mortal Kombat‘s development over the last year on Twitter. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

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