Welcome to the Powet Top 5, where we explore the top (and bottom) 5 items we think are relevant to any of a variety of topics that span the imagination. Sit back, read, and respond

Aiight, gather around folks, we need to talk.

Lets be clear now. Video Games aren’t dead or dying. They aren’t on life support or in the intensive care unit either. They aren’t even out with a broken arm, pulled hamstring, or 3-day flu. Nope, video games are just fine. Yeah I know how everyone loves the classics, but now is a good time to be involved with this hobby. We got high quality games like Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, and Deus EX being released on a regular basis, a thriving independent scene, and developers stretching the limits of what’s possible in video games. With that said, there are at least 5 big issues that video gaming could use less of. Some of these are on the part of publishers, others on the part of developers, and still others are even on the gaming community itself. Many of you will agree, many of you will not.
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Many younger Poweteers recognize Factor 5 from their PS3 disappointment Lair. A few older poweteers remember them for their awesome N64 and Gamecube Rogue Squadron games. Before those however, they created the equally awesome, yet severely overlooked Turrican games, which hit the Sega Genesis, Commodore 64, Amiga, and the Super Nintendo. Super Turrican 2 for the Super Nintendo is actually the third Turrican game released on 16-bit systems, with Super Turrican being released on SNES and Mega Turrican being released on Genesis. Like its predecessors, Super Turrican 2 is a side-scrolling platformer in the vein of Metroid (although the stages are linear). However unlike other games, Super Turrican frequently incorporates other styles of play, mainly vehicles. Many levels you’ll take control of a tank or jeep. Sometimes you’ll even engage enemies in a Mode-7 sequence. When he is on foot, your character has several weapons, including a grappling hook straight out of Bionic Commando. While Super Turrican 2 was nothing groundbreaking, it was still an excellent game that exemplified what was great about SNES platformers back then. All three Turrican games are available on Virtual Console, so check them out.

Raventhorne is another indie Xbox game, which brings back memories of games like Actraiser and Castlevania. This 2D side scroller cast players in the role of Raventhorne, a recently slain Viking cast who finds himself in the underworld. How was he killed and why is he not in Valhalla? This is for you to find out. Along with your fighting stances, you’ll make use of several magic spells, and you’ll level up as you go along. While there isn’t a lot of variety in the game’s enemies, the game’s combat mechanics and art style make it a must buy for indie gaming fans, especially since the game is only $1. With more independent games of this caliber, we might be seeing developer Milkstone Studios’s games on Xbox Live Arcade pretty soon.

Your eyes do not deceive you. This is an actual Sonic game on the Super Nintendo. “But Sonic is a Sega game!” Yes I know. So how is this possible? Did Tengen get another Sega license? Did Sega know that they were going to fail as a console manufacturer and decided to test the waters as a third party developer years early? Is this the second coming of Color Dreams? Nope. This Super Nintendo game is a product of the wonderful world of foreign bootlegging! A Peruvian-based organization known as Twin Eagles Group hacked a Super Nintendo game called Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos, stripped out all the good stuff, and replaced the main character with Sonic. Basically, you run through each stage repeatedly freeing Mario from cages. While it’s fun for all of 3 minutes, the charm of having a Sonic game on the SNES wore off and players would realize how shitty this game was compared to the Sega titles. It wouldn’t be until Sonic Adventure 2 hit GameCube that gamers would get an actual Sonic game on a Nintendo system. As bad as this game was however, it was nowhere near as bad as the NES Sonic the Hedgehog.

These past few weeks have seen ‘gamers’ exhibit some of the worst and most embarrassing behavior seen in the fandom. Weather it’s sexual harassment of female fighting game players, angry fanboys spamming metacritic over Mass Effect 3’s dlc, or those same fanboys making the charity Child’s Play an unwitting endorser of their campaign to have Mass Effect 3’s ending changed (and spoiling it for everyone else who didn’t play through the whole game in a week in the process of doing so), it seems that the behavior of certain subsets of the gaming community are hellbent on reaffirming the stereotype of gamers being losers. With that said, I thought I might use this week’s $20 Free Game of the week to showcase gamers doing good. In fact, how about showing gamers assisting with the cure of diseases?
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Okay, so this isn’t a video game, or even video game related (although War Machine is a playable character in Marvel vs Capcom 1 and 2, and makes appearances in other games that feature Iron Man), but it is a slept-on classic. In 2001, Marvel introduced Max comics, a sub-line of books aimed at mature audiences (a’la DC’s Vertigo). Although many of the books were hit or miss, the line was used to introduce some pretty creative concepts at the time. Alias introduced the character of Jessica Jones to the Marvel Universe, while Garth Ennis’s hideously gory take on The Punisher was a hit with readers. Writer Chuck Austen contributed a brand new take on War Machine, Iron Man’s buddy. Although he may have been one of comicdom’s most hated writers, Austen scored a hit with this series.
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Evilquest is yet another Xbox Live Indie title that deserves its time in the spotlight. Built in the vein of classic 8 and 16-bit Action-RPGS like Chrystalis and SoulBlazer, Evilquest brings back that retro action that you love. Of course, there is a twist; instead of playing the hero intent on saving the world, you play as the villain who wishes to destroy it. You play as a legendary dark knight who is thrown into prison after being betrayed by a subordinate. After escaping, you vow revenge, killing everyone in your way. Evilquest is easy to pick up and play, and of course you can build your character’s skill levels as you go along. For $1, Evilquest is an excellent throwback to the games of old, so check it out and support independent game developers.

Quake III, along with Unreal Tournament (which was released 10 days earlier) introduced the concept of multiplayer-centered play in FPS games. These days, FPS multiplayer is just as important of a component in many FPS franchises as the single player experience, if not more important. However, from the late 90s to the early 2000s, it was unheard of to build an FPS game around it’s multiplayer component, even with the popularity of Doom deathmatches and Goldeneye. However, ID software did just that with Quake 3, and just like they did before with Doom so many years ago, they changed the way we look at the FPS genre.
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