Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

One of the things the Venture Brothers is known for is its diverse cast of characters. Just seeing the logo or mentioning it by name automatically brings images of Doc, Brock, Hank, Dean, The Monarch and his henchmen to mind. One of the characters who is often overlooked is Thaddeus “Rusty” Venture’s own father, Jonas.

Jonas is an obvious parody of Hanna Barbera’s Benton Quest (Johnny Quest’s father) and other “Adventurer” characters from the late 60’s and 70’s. Jonas’ voice (provided by voice actor Paul Boocock) and physical appearance are a definite nod to characters of that era. Unlike most Hanna Barbera action-dads, he is much colder towards his son and generally has a somewhat of a disregard for his feelings and general well being. If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll probably know all of this, but if not be warned, there are plenty of spoilers after the break.
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Back in the days, Nintendo made sports games. During the 16-bit days, Ken Griffey Jr was to them what Joe Montana was the Sega, that is an athlete that was perfectly marketable for a video game. Ken Griffey Jr’s Winning Run, named after the final play of Game 5 of the 1995 American League Wild Card playoffs (where Griffey scored from first base to win the game in the 11th inning), is the sequel to 1994’s Kenny Griffey jr presents Major League Baseball. Developed by Rare, it has received a major graphical overhaul. It was one of the first sports games to feature computer rendered graphics, similar to Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct. As a result, it was one of the finest looking sports games of its day. The stadiums looked so awesome, and the players were well animated. The game features 28 MLB teams (including the unlockable Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays, who had just been named around the time of this game’s development), but as there is no player’s association license, the only real player in the game is Ken Griffey, although many of the players have pun names that allude to real-life players, Fire Pro Wrestling style. You can play in exhibition mode, franchise, MLB Challenge Mode, and All Star Mode. It’s probably not likely that this game will be available on virtual console, so your best chance is to seek out the cartridge. If you can find it, definitely get it, as Winning Run is one of the best sports games of the 16-bit era.

Video Games are murder simulators. This was declared by recently disbarred attorney Jack Thompson. He then came up with a proposal that could be considered no less than genius: create a game in which the player plays as the vengeful father of a kid who was killed by another kid who played video games. The father then goes on a rampage, killing the head of the software company who created the game, then expanding his rampage to killing as many of the people involved in the games industry as possible. If such a game was made, Mr, Thompson promised that he would donate $10,000 to the charity of the choice of Paul Eibeler, the head of Take-Two Interactive. A group of programmers (consisting of 3 alcoholics and a foreign exchange student) dubbed themselves “Thompsonsoft” and created I’m O.K, a tongue-in-cheek ‘murder simulator’. However,Thompson went back on his word to make a donation claiming that his proposal was a joke, and web comic artists Penny Arcade made the donation themselves. Although it’s not a game so much as political satire, I’m O.K is fun in its own right. Taking inspiration from the 8 and 16 bit days of gaming, I’m O.K is a 2D action platformer. Taking control of Osaki Kim, the father of a kid who was killed by a gamer, you take your revenge on the game industry using several weapons. Starting off by killing the head of fictional gaming company “Take-This”, he then takes his revenge on the entire gaming industry, from the lawyers at “Blank Stare” to an arcade, O.K makes his move to E3 2006, where the heads of the gaming industry will gather. In between levels, you take part in a gallery shooting bonus stage where you go into retail shops killing gamers and earning more money to buy more weapons. The game is gory and hilarious, and it is available for download over at http://www.imok.gzwn.net/.

We had seen the vehicle mode and character art for Transtech Cheetor at the end of November, but we never got to see a picture of the finalized robot mode. Today that has been revealed and we get our first look at the new head based on the previously shown character art.

It might be just me, but I think a little something was lost in translation.

  

The next installment of BioWare’s epic fantasy RPG will be out in just one week. After the Dragon Age 2 demo went live last week, fans are already alternately welcoming and decrying BioWare’s moves to make this property more like its Sci Fi cousin Mass Effect.

After we saw the first impressions from Game Informer and preliminary reviews from GamesCom last year, I put together a list of five unique features of Dragon Age: Origins that I hoped would not get trampled in that process. We’ve only seen the demo so far, but we can already answer most of those questions.

So how does Dragon Age 2 fare compared to its Origins? Read on!

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The new Italian Sailor Moon Nintendo DS game will be released at the end of this month. The game is now available from pre-order from a number of sites that offer international shipping. For ease of use users may prefer to order from this link at the Italian Amazon which just went up today. Aside from it’s familiar layout Amazon.it is also compatible with existing amazon accounts. The game itself is 31 euros (~$42 US). I just put an order in with express shipping for 20 euros (~$27.50 US), which isn’t cheap. Slower shipping is also available for a slightly less expensive 14 euros (~$19.30). The game is also available from bol.it for 27 euros (~$37.20 US) but shipping seems to be over 30$.

Earlier this week Sailor Moon fan site Moon Chase reported that the game’s release date was moved up to the 21st of March. This reference a press release by TOEI that used that date, though various online stores included the new Amazon link still show a March 31st a release date.

Keep checking out Powet.tv for all your Sailor Moon news as well as information about this game. You’ll surely be sick of hearing about it once I get my hands on it.

I am the danger that fights evil by moonlight! I am the middle schooler that wins love by daylight! I am … Sailor … Duck?

Here’s Drake Malard aka Darkwing Duck from issue #8 of Boom’s recent Darkwing Duck comic, dressed as Sailor Moon! This is hardly the only cameo in this issue, as a seemingly endless number of alternate Darkwing Ducks all appear and it seems any mildly relevant comic or pop culture character from the past several decades makes an appearance. Tron, Sherlock Holmes, Where’s Waldo and more and more and more and … more.

Just check out a few examples from just that frame:

Thanks to poster Twighligh Ghost for bringing this to my attention in a post in the otherwise deserted alt.fan.sailor-moon newsgroup.

I’m a huge Deadpool fan. Since I’m such a big fan, I (and about 19,000 other people) follow Deadpool’s creator Rob Liefeld on twitter. One thing I’ve noticed during my time following him is that the man isn’t stingy when it comes to using exclamation points.

Last night instead of being subjected to the Oscars, I decided to find out if it was just my imagination, or does Liefled really use too many exclamation points. I wrote a simple script that downloads his tweets and counts the exclamation points. I ignored any retweets and downloaded as many as I could (Twitter limits how many historical tweets you can download). I ended up with 3016 tweets by Rob Liefeld. Time for some results.

Results after the jump
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