Captain Planet’s got nothing on Sony.

In a turn of planetary charity, Sony has announced that they are setting up a program that would allow people to turn in their old broken or unwanted Playstation consoles in for recycling. The Sony “Take Back Recycling Program” will launch September 15th, and will accept any of it’s own consoles for free, and any other consumer electronics for a fee. Yes, if you don’t have a Sony product, you must pay to help conserve resources with your puny Xbox’s or Gamecubes. Imagine that.

The company has partnered with 75 Waste Management (WM) Recycle America eCycling centers across the country, and you can mail your console in if you don’t live near to one. The number of centers to accept the consoles will hope to increase within a year, Sony predicts.

“We believe it is Sony’s responsibility to provide customers with end-of-life solutions for all the products we manufacture,” said Stan Glasgow, president and chief operating officer of Sony Electronics.

What kind of incentive do you get for being so environment-conscious? Nothing. You get the satisfaction of knowing you’re helping to save the planet. Somehow, I can’t see this exactly being a great way of motivating people, when people have enough trouble keeping from throwing their beer and soda cans out their car windows. Though I must admit, it would be pretty humorous to see if people littered the sides of highways with broken and useless Sony consoles in the same fashion.

Taking a page from the SDCC exclusive release of the Goro figure a few weeks ago, the guys over at Jazwares Inc. have decided to continue the line of bigtime bosses from the Mortal Kombat series by releasing a Kintaro figure as well, under the Shaolin Monks line of toys.

Thus far, not much info has been released in tandem with the announcement of the figure, and thusly it’s undetermined whether or not the figure will be an exclusive like it’s Goro predecessor, or if it will be a regular release with the other toys of the line. A release date has not been dropped either, so pretty much the only thing we have to go on is the image of the figure. However, it does look very pretty this far along, and MK fans can only hope that more characters from the Shoalin Monks will be released in the near future.

In a little poof of momentary genius, the Devon Hillard of Digital Sanctuary has brought about a small miracle for those of us plagued by needing temporary email verifications for services and programs – 10 Minute Mail.

Welcome to 10 Minute Mail

By clicking on the link below, you will be given a temporary e-mail address. Any e-mails sent to that address will show up automatically on the web page. You can read them, click on links, and even reply to them. The e-mail address will expire after 10 minutes.

Why would you use this? Maybe you want to sign up for a site which requires that you provide an e-mail address to send a validation e-mail to. And maybe you don’t want to give up your real e-mail address and end up on a bunch of spam lists. This is nice and disposable. And it’s free. Enjoy!

Will such a thing prove to be a savior to those who hate signing up for multiple email accounts to use on stupid things like signing up for free products or programs? Or, will it prove to be the downfall of email as we know it? The world may never know.

Word cycling around the interweb recently is that a new Batman anime movie piece is going to be thrown in as a companion piece to the recent Christian Bale Batman movies. You heard me; a Batman Anime.

The animated film, which will bridge the gap left between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, will introduce a few new characters, as well as develop some already existing ones. The plot has yet to be fully revealed thus far, but hopes for a PG-13 release not long before the second movie drops into theaters. Batman Begins Screenwriter David Goyer has put his talents into this little piece, as well as comic book writer Brian Azzarello and others.

How this will classify as “anime” has yet to be seen, and will be interesting to keep an eye on.

It would appear that there’s more to reveal at the San Diego Comic-Con than just neat toys and teasers for comics. TokyoPop, which is the #1 publisher of manga and graphic novels in the US and the and the largest supplier in the world, has seen fit to team up with in a marketing partnership with the largest touring video game music concert, Video Games Live.

“We are extremely excited to form this exclusive marketing alliance with Video Games Live,” quotes Marco Pavia, Director of Marketing at TOKYOPOP. ”There is strong crossover between manga fans and gamers. Some of our hottest manga is video-game based, including Warcraft, Kingdom Hearts, Devil May Cry 3, .hack, and Archlord. Forming this partnership with the sizzling Video Games Live concert series was a perfect fit.”

For those who don’t know, Video Games Live™ features the best music and exclusive synchronized video clips from the most popular games from the beginning of video gaming to the present, and tours the country in concert-style featuring music from popular games such as Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Final Fantasy.

This partnership makes TokyoPop the exclusive sponsor for Video Games Live, and will be sponsoring shows for the world-renowned tour for the rest of 2007, including special promotions and giveaways for each stop in the tour. Exclusive live video of the concerts will also be featured on the TP.com website.

This, of course, helps bridge the gap between video games and anime/manga a little closer. With big-name games being released as manga and anime, such as the new Devil May Cry anime (and the manga which has been out for a while), this could help signal the beginning of a large-scale boom in game-based manga and anime being created in the near future. Shall we be seeing things such as Metal Gear Solid and Castlevania manga and anime on the horizon? We can only hope.

As many of you may know, Otakon 2007 was last weekend in Baltimore – surprisingly early for the con. A bunch of the Powet crew were present to witness the awesome glory and crazy mayhem that was the largest anime convention on the east coast. Though visual documentary on the convention for us may be a bit on the slim side, I did manage to have enough footage (both my own and a few snippets donated) to put together a small video-tour of the convention.

It also documents just how big a bunch of nutty geeks we here at Powet are.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

With the high anticipation of the PSP-exclusive game God of War: Chains of Olympus game on the horizon, talks of the demo release permeate through the web. I’ve managed to get my hands on some exclusive concept art for the upcoming game, revealing a few interesting points in the game – more importantly the concepts of the “Death Tree”. Whether this takes a page from 300 or not is anyone’s guess.

The game itself focuses on Kratos’s life whilst in servitude to the gods before the storyline of the first God of War game, and brings talk of new areas and new enemies adapted from Greek mythology for the Spartan to endure, including a trip to Hades. (presumably where said Death Tree is)

Chains of Olympus is slated for a November release, with the demo being available to Playstation Underground members in September.

Some more E3 goodness being thrown your way, it would appear that Nintendo has saved one of it’s biggest announcements for the media event. It’s been proclaimed that Super Smash Brother’s Brawl will have a release date of December 3rd of this year.

However, it seems that’s about all Nintendo has released about the game. The company is keeping a tight lip as to any other real details, so seeing much else come about from E3 may be wishful thinking. Regardless, the game’s hype looks to make the later release date well worth the wait.

Here’s a short clip of the announcement with some footage from the game.