Gary Coleman, rest in peace.

Source: Washington Post Obituary

Regarded by many as the first successful business game, Trevor Chen’s Capitalism puts players in the shoes of a CEO. Your goal is to amass profit while keeping your company from going bankrupt or being bought out by another CEO. You can pursue your entrepreneurial path in several industries, including retail, factories, research and development, farming, and mining. You make decisions involving everything from what cities to build in, what products to sell, what crops to grow, and how much marketing you spend on your product. You have to take into consideration climate, supply and demand, location, and land value for each of your firms. You’;; be competing against other firms in the region too, and just like in the real world, the market is fierce.

You can either start from scratch with a brand new business, or play through one of the game’s 17 scenarios. If you’re a novice, then it pays to explore the game’s many tutorials, and even then there is a steep learning curve. The first few times I played, I found myself constantly issuing shares of my own stock just to keep from going broke. Once you do get the hang of things however, the game becomes fun, educational, and addictive. A sequel was released in 2001, and both games are available on GOG.com.

Michael Bay may be knee deep in directing the third act of the live action Transformers, but his production company Platinum Dunes is moving forward with the reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Platinum Dunes thus far has stuck to horror remakes of Friday The 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the recent Nightmare On Elm Street.

Nickelodeon bought TMNT for $60 Million last year, and they’ve been eager to get a new series on the air and a new movie in theaters. A script for a new TMNT movie by John Fusco has been bouncing around Hollywood for a year or so, but it will be scrapped for a fresh look at the team.

Platnium Dunes has been pretty hit or miss (mostly miss) with the horror remakes, but delving into the all-ages world of TMNT could be very profitable. Its obvious Nickelodeon wants to capitalize on Bay’s huge Transformers franchise.

What do you think? Would you like to see a lower budget but action packed new live action TMNT?

Source: Deadline

Get ready, Poweteers! Its time to crash some castles and rescue some princesses!

On Saturday, June 12, 2010, Powet.TV staffers will be logging in to Castle Crashers on XBox Live and we ask all of you to join us for some fun. We will be starting around 7PM EST and continue on until there is noone left to play. All are welcome to leave or join whenever they wish.

If you think you’re going to be around and want to play, be sure to post your gamertag in this thread.

The Nintendo DS’s library is a recipient of a huge amount of shovelware. As an unfortunate side effect, many good games get lost in the shuffle because their publishers and developers had inadequate funding behind them. Such is the case of THQ’s Desktop Tower Defense. Basically a DS version of the online flash game of the same name, DTD is your basic tower defense game with a few twists. Like in other games of its kind, DTD has you building and upgrading towers to prevent waves of creeps from crossing the screen. You can even control how fast the waves approach for an increased challenge. You can customize the look and animations of each of the creeps and towers, and share your creations with other friends. There are several different modes you can play, adding variety. While the interface isn’t always as intuitive as one would like it to be, it gets the job done, and for a stylus driven interface, you could do worse. While the pixel-based editing tools aren’t exactly LittleBigPlanet, they help you put your own personal touch on the game.

If you’re into casual games, this is a good addition to your DS lineup. Although it would have been better suited as a DSIware title, it’s still a fun game at a good price. You can also play the flash-based game online for free here.