This week’s $20 GOTY and lost classics segments focus on the eventual re-emergence of the brawler.  Ever since the golden age of titles such as Final Fight and Double Dragon, arcade and console gamers have enjoyed bashing thier way to the other side of the screen using an assortment of moves.  However, after the 16-bit generation, the popularity of true brawlers has waned, due in fact to developer’s instance of making games in 3-d, including our belover beat-em-ups.  In recent years however, there has been a resurgance of intrest in the brawler, mostly due to the fact that developers have managed to do it the right way.  Lets take a look at two such games, one you may have missed, and the other being more recent.  BTW, starting this week, or whenever I stop being lazy, I’m moving this back to the weekend.  (Will’s week-in gaming.  Get it?)

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Die Cast Construction isn’t so lost after all!

Captain America scribe Ed Brubaker joins artist Billy Tan on Uncanny X-men for the 12-part series, “Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire“. Basically, Vulcan (the other Summers brother) resurfaced, left Earth, and is hell-bent on seeking revenge on the Shi’ar for killing his mother and making him a slave. Of course, the X-men must stop him.

I was not familiar with Billy Tan before this arc, but I must say I quickly became a fan. He and inker Danny Miki have put together a book that is crisp and vibrant. His characters convey real emotion and his action scenes are fluid. For anyone unfamiliar with Ed Brubaker (and shame on you), he’s the current writer of Captain America and Daredevil and recently finished a six-issue mini, Books of Doom. He is currently one of the best writers in the field and Shi’ar is no exception. He’s put together a great and dynamix X-team: Professor Xavier, Marvel Girl, Havoc, Polaris, Nightcrawler, Warpath, and a mutant I was unaware of, Darwin. The team dynamic is excellent and has many moments of pure, unadulterated baddassitude. With most of the Marvel universe preoccupied with the evnts of Civil War, it’s nice to have a story that is seperate from that. This series gets my highest recommendation.

Parts 1-4 (of 12) already in stores.

A powet.tv exclusive! A review of advanced copies of the new Star Wars DVDs planned to be released on next Tuesday September 12th 2006.

Special thanks to Dave for giving me the heads up that the Zellers at Place d’Orleans in Ottawa was selling these DVDs a week early and to Janine my loving and patient camerawoman/stunt double/lover.

Update – September 9th

Compare the video quality between the new updated versions (left) and original vesions (right) images have been scaled to a common size and correct aspect ratio for easier comparison

From now on, instead of writing 2 different columns each week, my $20 GOTY and Buried Treasures sections will be combined into 1 big juicy post. This will ensure that you don’t miss anything, especially from the other writers. Also, this is important becuase this week will be extra big. You’ll know why as soon as you finish reading this sentence.

It’s the day after labor day, and while other news sites might chill out after the holidays, I double up! That means you get 2 articles this week. Oh waitaminute, it’s been 1 year since I started doing the $20 GOTY, so that means I gotta add in 1 more to celebrate. Two of these games you may have seen before, becuase they got lost when we switched to word press and they were so dope, I needed an excuse to look at them again. Besides, it will be a first time a lot of you will be seeing them anyhow, especially if you’re reading this on Area 4:51. So without further ado, come ride with me [to the bargin bin at your local gamestop]. [Read the rest of this entry…]

This is the second episode of Powet Toys. Today I am sharing with you Transformers Cybertron QuickMix.

The ratings system here in Canada differs from that in the states and it takes a lot more to get yourself an R rating then it would down south. Mainly if there’s a sliver of nudity in a movie State side you’re pretty much guaranteed to get an R while the violence is more likely to get by. And I understand and respect that because a tit isn’t going to make kids go out and screw like crazy. Crank’s another story.

This movie got an “A” rating which means you have to be 14 to see it unless you’re with an adult in which case they could bring their 8 years old. And how they do! I still remember the time the mother and her 6 and 8 year old child made it all the way to the abortion joke in South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut before leaving. The onus is on the parents to decide what they want their kids to watch. Unfortunately the parents don’t know what the hell’s going on.

This movie is, simply put, the most offensive movie I’ve ever seen. It makes fun of black people, Jamaicans, Somalians, whites, Asians, Latinos, Muslims, gays, women and pretty much any group they thought of. A running joke of the movie is the main character verbally berating the vilains saying that he’s a “fag” and having sex with his brother. Women are nothing but objects and stereotypes. Amy Smart is his idiotic piece of ass girlfriend who he has sex with in public a number of times. Other women in the movie are the excessive number of prostitutes made to do extremely kinky things for both heroes and vilains as well as a number of Asian sterotypes mainly the Japanese schoolgirls and old Asian ladies.
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‘Starfox Command’ is Nintendo’s fifth Starfox game (if you count ‘Starfox Adventures’) and their first Starfox game for the DS. I’ve been a long time ‘Starfox’ fan, ever since the original was released back in 1993 (wow, it’s been 13 years already?). I’ve always been a fan of non-simulation shooters and since I’ve been craving a new game for my DS, so ‘Starfox Command’ was an instant buy for me. I jumped on this title the day it was released, but was I too quick to throw my thirty bucks at it so eagerly?

Starting Out:
The game starts out just as you’d expect, you’ve got your basic start menu for single-player, download play (multiplayer modes which I’ll cover later in the review), wi-fi play (again, I’ll cover later) and your options menu, all complete with dramatic Starfox music! You’ll probably want to hit up the options menu first, considering that the game starts out with non-inverted controls and if you’re anything like me, you’d normally expect them inverted in a flight game. You can also adjust your sound settings with the ability to change the characters voices. You have “normal”, “recorded” and “machine”. Normal goes back to the classic “Starfox” sounding voices, if you never played the original, they’re basically the same gibberish, “Microsoft Sam” sounding voices like in ‘Animal Crossing’. “Recorded” is actually really cool because it asks you a bunch of questions, getting a range of sound from your own voice and cutting it up and mixing your phrases into fake words, giving the characters the tone of your or a friend’s voice. “Machine” is just the old-school beeps and bloops during text. Also in the options menu, you can set up your nickname for Multiplayer and Wi-Fi modes.
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