You’ve got the Varia Suit Samus, Corrupted Samus, and Dark Samus. Enjoy all of them on August 20th.

Shortly after the fighting game X-men Children of the Atom, Capcom wasted no time in putting out more games featuring Marvel’s pantheon of super heroes. This game in particular is one of the more slept-on Capcom fighters (although not to the degree of Project Justice and Tech Romancer). Taking control of one of six Marvel heroes (Spider-man, Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Wolverine, Psylocke) or one of six villains (Shuma Gorath, Blackheart, Juggernaut, Magneto, and Thanos and Dr Doom via use of a code), you must fight your way up the ladder to meet Thanos in a plot loosely based on 1992’s Infinity Gauntlet storyline.

The game play is similar to most other Capcom fighters, with six attack buttons, three for punches, three for kicks, each differing in speed in power. Special moves are done via quarter and half circle motions, as well as charging. However, since these are superheroes, don’t expect your garden-variety martial-arts maneuvers like in street fighter. Your fighter can jump up to several feet high, ‘normal’ attacks fire projectiles, special attacks can cause serious damage, and super moves take up the entire screen. It’s not as zany as in Darkstalkers, but you’re still not gonna see any of these moves in the next Street Fighter game. The main difference that sets this game apart from other Capcom fighters, although it isn’t much, is the addition of the Infinity Gems. They appear throughout the match, and grant your character special powers when you use them. Of course this regulates multiplayer games into bouts of “who can get to the gems the fastest” although an experienced player can destroy any newbie player who plays in that manner.

This game is often overlooked due to the fact that at the time of it’s release, it was just one of many 2-d fighting games. However, it was a Capcom fighter. Moreover, it was a good game based on a Marvel property. Capcom of course went on to use the engine to produce several more Capcom fighters, most important of which being the Marvel Vs Capcom games. This is still a good game to check out if you run across the arcade cabinet, even better if you can find a copy of any of the home ports. Also of interest is the SNES spin-off “War of the Gems”, which is a side scrolling beat-em-up in the vein of Capcom’s “X-men Mutant Apocalypse”.

As a sort of Powet Exclusive, here are all the television ads for the GM “Transform Your Ride” ad campaign paired with the Transformers movie opening next week. Note there are many variations on the final ad, which are all placed here for the sake of being complete. They look very similar, but you’ll note different vehicles in the promotions and the actor has slightly different reactions.

Over this past weekend, a milestone was hit when Sonic the Hedgehog officially turned 16 years old. Sega’s mascot has been a teenager for some time now, but still has quite a rich reputation that he’s brought to the table in the gaming world, along with bringing a few friends with him for the ride on the gaming rollarcoaster.

What does this mean in terms of what is going to happen in the future for the blue speed-demon? Well, lets first recap on our beloved hedgehog’s life thus far.
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Last night, Level Up reported via their Newsweek blog that NOA President Reggie Fils-Aime will be making an announcement about new WiiWare downloadable games: original titles similar to those of Xbox Live Arcade or the Playstation Network. Today it has become a reality!

According to the release, WiiWare™ is “a game-creation service that will allow developers large and small to create new downloadable video game content for sale by Nintendo through the Wii Shop Channel” that “paves the way for smaller, more creative games to make their way to the public at lower prices, without any inventory risk to developers.”

Projects will be announced a later date, with first WiiWare offerings will not be available until early 2008. There is no indication of who is involved, nor how the independent developers they hope to foster can gain access to this development kit.

Compare this to Microsoft’s XNA Studio, which allows developers to create games cross-compatible in both Windows XP/Vista and Xbox 360. The technology is readily available (and free!), although the development kit that allows you to test your code on your 360 has a subscription cost of $100 a year — a drop in the bucket for the development budget of any serious offering.

Check back with us as more news develops. In the mean time, leave a comment and let us know what kinds of games you’d make for the Wii!

With the animated Doctor Strange DVD approaching its release date (August 18th, available for standard DVD format preorder here, and in Blu-Ray format here), there’s a ton of information available on it already. Read on after the jump to find out details on the DVD extras, Steve McNiven’s art process, and about the next Marvel/Lionsgate animated film – Avengers Reborn!
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X-Men #200
Written by Mike Carey, art by Humberto Ramos & Chris Bachalo, cover by David Finch

Just look at that David Finch variant cover. Beautiful, no? I imagine that the gatefold variant we have showing will be wildly overpriced in your local shop, but if it’s not, that’s definitely the version I’d get.

As for the book itself, Mike Carey’s been writing some strong X-Men stories lately, if not as epic as Brubaker’s space opera in Uncanny. And with the arrival of last week’s Endangered Species crossover/prologue-to-the-real-crossover, this book is the big kickoff to not only that, but what may well be an important story for the upcoming fall crossover, Messiah CompleX. If you’re planning on following the X-stories for the next few months, this is a book you definitely don’t want to miss. And hopefully, if Carey’s previous work is a good indicator, we’ll even get some good storytelling out of it.

To be perfectly honest though, I really just want to own that cover. Awesome.