Looks like it’s that time of year again.
What’s that you say? Fall?
Wrong.
It’s EA buyout time! Earlier today Electronic Arts Inc. issued a press release stating their plans to purchase VG Holding Corp., owners of both BioWare Corp. & Pandemic Studios. BioWare is, of course, known for both the original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the upcoming Mass Effect for the Xbox 360. Pandemic Studios are the brains behind the Destroy All Humans! and Mercenaries series. Yahoo! Finance has all the gory, monetary details here.

Today Marvel unveiled the new Captain America, designed by renowned painter of super grandpas heroes; Alex Ross. While the design shares much with the classic Cap design there are some notable changes such as the black pants, the lack of chainmail, and the gat. Writer Ed Brubaker states that this new Cap isn’t Steve Rogers and indeed all signs point to Cap’s former partner and the Winter Soldier; Bucky Barnes. We’ve got more pictures after the jump.
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Some new images and video of Mario Kart for the Wii have been released. Check them out on Jeux France. The video shows some very impressive half pipe stunts and we can see motorcycles as new driveable vehicles!

Now excuse me while I take a cold shower.

Here’s a nice independant documentary about the lives of out of work actors who dress up as comic characters. No indication of a wide release, but keep and eye on your local art house.

Light gun shooters, fighting games, and Dance Dance Revolution are pretty much the only reasons people visit arcades these days. Even so, with so many gun games available, it takes more than just pasting a gun onto a cabinet to get a gamer’s attention, and Konami has never disappointed in this regard. Even back in the days with Lethal Enforcers and its realistic digitized graphics, Konami created many innovative entries in the genre. One of its best additions is the Silent Scope. It featured a huge sniper-rifle peripheral attached to the cabinet, and it simulated the experience of being a real anti-terrorist sniper (to a certain extent of course). You had to use strategy and planning in taking your shots. Shooting erratically like in other shooters will only alert the enemy to your presence quicker and make your mission that much harder. This tense atmosphere made Silent Scope unique from other light gun games. Several versions of the game have appeared on Dreamcast, Playstation 2, and even the Game Boy Advance. However, Konami has put all the games from the series on this Xbox compilation. It contains Silent Scope 1 and 2, EX (the exclusive arcade game) and Silent Scope 3 (a Playstation 2 exclusive entry featuring a stage select). Like most shooters, the games tend to be short. However, the games contain several unlockable extras that should extend the replay value some. There is also a light gun available for use with this compilation. Although its a bit hard to find, it should act as a suitable replacement for the arcade game’s huge gun. Even without it, the controls work quite responsively. Getting 4 games on one disc isn’t a bad thing, and its one of the best gun franchises besides Time Crisis. Fans of the genre should check it out.

DeadlineHollywood reports that Warner Bros studios, based solely on some low numbers for the Jodie Foster movie “The Brave One” and Nicole Kidman’s “The Invasion” is putting an immediate ban on any movies with female leads.

Sure Hollywood has always been sexist, but this is seriously a new low. The Movie Blog does an excellent job pointing out that movies with men in the lead bomb too. Specifically the Kevin Bacon revenge movie “Death Sentence” did much worse than the similarly themed “The Brave One.” John Campea of The Movie Blog is calling for a boycott of Warners and is challenging other sites to join him.

On a personal note I think this policy is so stupid and arbitrary, that I’ll be joining up with this boycott. You can forget about me reporting on any Dark Knight or Justice League stuff. I’m not even going to finish watching the Superman: Doomsday DVD I already bought and opened. I won’t watch the CW television network (Ok, so that ones going to be easy). I’d encourage anyone who cares about fairness and equality to leave a comment and don’t give a dime to WB until they publicly retract this policy. Yes that means you should not buy DC comics. My views are not necessarily the views of Powet.TV as a whole, but that because we’re independent and no one voice speaks for all.

We’ve already heard quite about all the changes they’ve made to The GI JOE team for the movie, and while they’re cold to fans who grew up with the team, its something Hollywood feels they need to do and we can’t change it.
Thankfully, Cobra The Enemy seems to be making the transition to the screen seemlessly. IESB reports.

The villains of course are Destro, the Baroness and Cobra but we have been told that Cobra Commander will have more of a “Emperor Palpatine”-like character arch. The Joes will be mainly facing Destro and the Baroness.

Helping Cobra will be one of the coolest groups of characters from the G.I. Joe comics and cartoons…the Dreadnoks.

The mercenaries known as Dreadnoks lead by Zartan including his brother and sister Zarana and Zandar will be the hired muscle that Cobra will use in its day to day operations. Zartan is known for his martial arts ability as well as his mastery of disguise. Additionally, through genetic manipulation, Zartan is able to change the color of his skin to blend in with his surroundings.

Thank you screenwriter Stuart Beattie, for preserving the incredible awesome that is Cobra. His draft also included Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow as focal characters and reports that the team is still based in the US. The Dreadnoks were always some of the better characters from the GI Joe canon, serving both as an unpredictable threat and a great source of comic relief. They’ll be a welcome inclusion in this movie.

If you’re a regular visitor to Powet, then chances are, you know of my love of robot ninjas. It’s like putting together two different kinds of awesome. On two separate occasions, I featured games in this column featuring robot ninjas in all of their glory. The characters in this little known Super Nintendo game that was developed by Hori Electric and published by Atlus may not exactly be ninjas, but they’re close enough. In Run Saber, players take control of either Allen or Sheena (or both if playing a 2-player game) as they make their way across 5 levels battling robots and aliens in a bid to save Earth. It’s pretty much your typical mid-90s SNES platformer, with jumping and powerups. The way they climb on walls and move however, is quite similar to Capcom’s Strider. In fact, it wouldn’t be far fetched to say that is Strider had a 2-player co-op mode, it would look something like this. That’s not to say it’s a ripoff, just that as great minds think alike, so in particular do great game designers. The game manages to make an identity all on its own with its level layouts and boss encounters (including a giant witch whose face decomposes). Who knows when, or even if, Atlus will bring this game over to the Virtual Console, so it looks like this is one of those gens you have to hunt down for yourself. It might not be original, but it does what it does very well. Besides, you can never go wrong with games featuring robot ninjas.