Should Nintendo be scared? Since the launch of the iPhone — which encouraged the rise of the Android platform — smartphone gaming is set to become a majority of the handheld market, eclipsing Nintendo for the first time since the release of the Game Boy in 1989. Sean and Vinnk explain their misgivings with GameStop, why they’re sure Nintendo expects Xenoblade to fail (or at least doesn’t care if it succeeds), and actual precedents that should exonerate Nintendo for being so cautious.

[Listen to the episode after the jump…!]

This was the big one for a lot of those following at home. Mattel had some big announcements to make including Ghostbusters, Voltron, DC Universe and most especially Masters of the Universe (MOTU). ActionFigurePics actually got video of the whole presentation (seen above). I will not attempt to summarize in neat bullet point form the contents of the panel after the jump. Get ready because there were some big announcements!

[Read the rest of this entry…]

It’s been infinity years since new Sailor Moon merchandise has come out in this continent so it’s great to see these 4 shirt designs available on the Hot Topic web site. The shirts are in girls junior sizes so they’re not exactly aimed at the adult man child demographic. Here’s hoping I fit into the 3XL shirts I ordered…

The four designs include a white shirt featuring Sailor Moon with her Cutie Moon Rod and black shirts featuring Sailor Mercury, Jupiter, Moon, Mars and Venus, Artemis and Luna with the slogan “We’re Purrrfect Together and Tuxedo Mask with the slogan “I Need A Hero!”.

Thanks to Mercurius at the Genvid Forums for noticing these and thanks to Sabrblade for making higher quality pictures of the shirts.

Don’t forget that the rerelease of the Sailor Moon manga in English starts on September 13th! Support Powet by preordering the Sailor Moon and Sailor V manga through the links below:

Xenoblade, Pandora’s Tower, and The Last Story have been released in Japan and Europe, but the US has been passed over. That’s where Operation Rainfall comes in: to urge Nintendo of America to release these games that have already been localized for the major languages spoken in North America. At a time when the Wii is suffering a drought of games — let alone good ones — don’t we deserve better?

Direct Link: Famicom Dojo Podcast 08: Operation Rainfall

Find links to support Operation Rainfall in the show notes:
http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/8

[Read the rest of this entry…]

Who puts the future in your hands? Robotix! Robotix!

As a child of about 5 or 6 and later, my mother would often take my sister and I to the local The Video Store. That is capitalized because, as I recall, that was the actual name of the business. Local businesses renting vhs tapes of movies and television was the norm back then, long before national chains like Blockbuster Video moved in and undercut them and even longer before Netflix would establish itself undercutting the national chains and let us not mention YouTube or Hulu just yet. Going to The Video Store was quite the treat. My mother would allow us to rent one or two videos of our choice. It would not be out of the norm for me to rent a couple episodes of The Transformers or Challenge of the Go-Bots. That was my proverbial jam in those days and, truthfully, still is. There was one movie in that children’s section that I really adored and rented many many times that was neither Transformers, Go-Bots, nor any other wildly popular franchise at the time (and there were a lot of them). This 90 minute movie was called Robotix. And that is why today is R for Robotix.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

To think it was over 5 years ago when I first put out a hands-on feature about this game. With Skryim right around the corner, now is the perfect time to do a follow up. For those of you who missed the hands on, Oblivion is the follow up to ES3: Morrowind, which was one of my favorite games on the original Xbox. As much as I liked Morrowind, it was far from perfect, so naturally when I heard about Oblivion, I was buzzed. Not only would it be a next generation installment of the franchise, the folks at Bethesda Softworks would fix all the issues in Morrowind. When the end product was released, it was a beautiful thing indeed. Not only did Bethesda live up to its promises, it (along with EA’s Fight Night Round 3 which was also released that week) helped to put a definitive end to the “Xbox 1.5” jokes and created one of the greatest games in any console generation.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Mortal Kombat Trilogy is a home console exclusive version of Mortal Kombat 3, designed for the Playstation and Nintendo 64, with Sega Saturn and PC versions being made available a year later and being ports of the Playstation version (meanwhile, the Genesis and SNES got crappy ports of Ultimate MK3 while the Saturn got a ‘just okay’ version of UMK3). It’s intention was to basically close out the current storyarc, as Ed Boon and company was beginning work on Mortal Kombat 4. It does so in a pretty big way, as Raiden and Johnny Cage (among others) were added to the cast so that players could play as every character who was ever in a Mortal Kombat game. Many of the characters have new moves that were never before seen in any previous MK, such as Baraka’s spinning blades and Kung Lao’s dive. There was a new character, Chameleon (on the PS1) or Khameleon (if you played on N64). This character could randomly switch between any of the palette-swapped ninjas (male for PS1 and female for N64) and adopt their movesets. There are also several battlegrounds from MK2 thrown in. The PS1 version of the game has a few select levels from MK1.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

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

The Kingdom Hearts franchise is a series of video games which varies in quality from amazing to barely playable. Let’s look at the series at it’s best and worst.

The concept was a weird one that didn’t seem to mesh at all. Take some Disney characters, throw them in with a bunch of Final Fantasy characters, toss in a few Keyblades and see what comes up. The result, it would seem, was something gamers really took to.

Though the game was Japanese first, it included a ton of Disney characters. The concept in the first game on the PlayStation 2 was basically that each new world was based on a new Disney movie which brought it’s characters into the fold as well. Even amongst the Disney characters the range of types of movies varied greatly, but they still managed to coexist in the rich world that was created quite well.

The game’s Hero is accompanied by Donald Duck, Goofy and Jiminy Cricket. Disney themed worlds are based on Alice in Wonderland, Hercules, Tarzan, Winnie the Pooh, Aladdin, Pinnochio, The Little Mermaid, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Peter Pan. Beyond these worlds other characters from other Disney properties make appearances. We see Mickey, Minnie, the Brooms from Fantasia, Merlin, 101 Dalmatians, the Fairy Godmother and Cinderella, Aurora and Maleficent, Snow White, Belle and the Beast, Simba, Dumbo, Bambi, Mushu, Chip and Dale and Huey, Dewey and Louis.

[Read the rest of this entry…]