Year Zero, the new album from Nine Inch Nails has a teaser trailer.

Yeah, that spooked me too.

The viral marketing campaign to get the word out on this has gone above and beyond youtube videos or strategicly placed lite brites. Following tour dates in Portugal and Spain, NIN concertgoers have been finding USB flash drives left in bathroom stalls containing new songs from the album. Some of these drives contain files of static that when analyzed through a spectrogram reveal images or phone numbers leading to clips of more songs or bizarre 911 calls. Its a good thing NIN fans are so willing to dissect every bit of info they get because I doubt other artists would live up to this scrutiny.

Year Zero has been described by NIN Mastermind Trent Reznor as a concept album and a “soundtrack to a film that doesn’t exist” about anything from the future, politics, to the end of the world. Naturally, Reznor mentions Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad production as an influence. Those less educated with Public Enemy’s work might think Nine Inch Nails is making a rap record, but he’s actually referring to the mechanical and static nature of loops and samples. The first single, “Survivalism” is already being played on many radio stations and will be added to many more today. Dial up your local rock station and request it.

This is perhaps the best movie poster we’ll see all year. Reminiscent of the work of Drew Struzan, it’s got a classic quality and fully conveys how ridiculous this movie will be. Do note that all credits at the bottom say “BLAH BLAH BLAH.” Thats not placeholder text, thats the real deal.

Our favorite animated extra value meal will also appear on Playstation 2 with… a combat golf game. It’ll be written by series creators Matt Mallerio and David Willis, Midway will publish. Apparently Frylock has been admitted to a country club to play golf, but Shake and various villains from the show ruin your game with traps and boss attacks. If games based on comedy series in the past are any indication, this has the makings of a terrible game. Of course, it couldn’t be any worse than Home Improvement, and with the talent behind the show actually writing it, it may at least be funny if not fun to play.

The breakout release on the download circuit this week has to go to Playstation Network’s “fl0w”

Fl0w comes from Jenova Chen, the lead behind the highly creative PC game Cloud. It looks like a mash up between Katamari Damacy and Geometry Wars. You control a small organism in a vast expanse of water, and can gobble up those smaller than you, but avoid anything bigger. Naturally, with everything you eat, your microscopic character grows and you’ll be able to take on larger organisms.

Wii Virtual Console gets one of my all time favorites this week with Donkey Kong Country. I mentioned to fellow Powet Army solider Phil Bond that this game is every bit as good as Super Mario World, and I stand by that. Going in for a few levels of Co-op and then beating that giant beaver, all the platforming fun came rushing back. This was truly a special game that resides somewhere between the retro cool of the NES days and the less favorably remembered 32-bit revolution. Back when this came out, the Playstation and Saturn hype machines were getting ready to roar, then Rare and Nintendo dropped a Super NES game that looked better than anything on a CD based system! Sure it wasn’t 3D, but 3D was pretty much a disaster until Mario 64 came along, so this remains one of the great 2D games from the days when 2D was starting to fade.

Xbox Live is taking the shaft 2 weeks in a row now. Wednesday used to be the day to grab new Live Arcade games, but the most notable release to Marketplace recently has been the Borat dashboard theme and picture pack (I’ve taken Azamat as my avatar!). Team 17 hopes to have Worms ready soon, but have been frustrated by Microsoft’s constant delays. THQ announced they’re releasing in a box, much to our surprise. Tetris Evolution better be budget priced, because theres no reason that the world’s most popular puzzle game wouldn’t fit Live Arcade’s standards. An even though I own many other versions of Tetris (in arms reach, I have no less than 5 copies ready to go), I’ll probably buy this Xbox 360 version too.

The Brave & The Bold
written by Mark Waid, art by George Perez

The name might sound more like the title of a soap opera than a comic book, but those that know, know that “The Brave & The Bold” is a proud, longstanding DC tradition. Similar to Marvel’s “Marvel Team-Up” (which has a name that’s a bit more to the point), the book will feature a pairing of DC characters, working together to do superheroic things. The plot is going to spin larger and larger, bringing in new people to help out in some areas, and leaving other people to work on others, but the starting point is a mystery that Hal Jordan needs help to solve – so he turns to Earth’s greatest detective. Something about him finding a corpse in orbit, I think. I can’t remember now.

With the DC-tastic Mark Waid on writing, and the legendary George Perez on art, this book is a must buy for any one that has even a passing interest in superheroes. I’m not as dedicated a fan of DC as I am of Marvel, but I fully anticipate this being one of the best books in a while, based on the skills of the creative team alone. If they can even live up to half their proven potential, this book should be a must-buy every single month.

Newsarama just broke the news that Rich Johnston’s Lying In The Gutters has been talking about for weeks now: After we reach issue #52 of DC’s wallet-devouring “52” series, the new book “Countdown” takes over and counts down back to Zero. Or to One. I’m not sure, but going to Zero would give them another even 52, and my feeble mind likes symmetry.

Regardless, you can see the mirrored image from May Previews right at the beginning of the post. And as far as the writing team, it looks like Paul Dini’s heading up the writing staff, with Keith Giffen still chained to the table to provide page breakdowns. The books start arriving in stores on May 9th, at which point DC will no doubt celebrate by using money for toilet paper and setting their most loyal fanboys on fire.

Submitted by Powet reader Nathanael Wade, we have some blurry video from an Animal Crossing E-Reader card. I’ll take some legible video once I track the card down for myself, but for now: here’s some of what you get when you scan Animal Crossing card #P15…

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As an added note the original mold for G1 Jetfire was a Macross VF-1S Valkyrie with “Super Valkyrie” armor according to wikipedia.

Without a doubt, we associate Acclaim with some of the worst games ever made. However, they’ve also had the longest run with the WWF licence. Up until the late 90s though, wrestling titles were only limited to a niche audience. All that changed with WWF Warzone. This title laid the foundation for wrestling games today as we know them. It included solid presentation, color commentary, and the one thing that’s pretty much a requirement in today’s wrestling games: create-a-wrestler. With this feature, it was possible to put yourself in the game, bring in a wrestler that was left out the cast, or even recreate a character from another wrestling organization. However, there were two major issues players had with the game, namely the small and out-of-date roster and lack of match types.  In an attempt to address these issues, (and perhaps spurred on by THQ’s WCW/NWO Revenge released later that year) Acclaim went back to work on WWF Attitude, which stands as one of the finest early wrestling games made at the time.
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