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

The sixteen bit era of video games is considered by many to be the bridge between the past and modern eras of video gaming, and there were two kings of the ring: Nintendo’s Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega’s Genesis. Though there were more powerful systems that sprang up around the time, it would be these two that would outlast and outperform all of them, thanks to their accessibility. This was due not only to the technologies that the two systems boasted under the hood, but also with the library of games that were released for the two. It also gave rise to some of those most heated fanboy wars of our hobby. If you think system wars are bad now, you should have seen how bad it was during the 16-bit days, especially when system manufacturers were openly taking pot shots at each other. However, it was pointless for fanboys of both systems to argue with each other, as both systems not only had an equally impressive library of games (even if many multiplatform releases on the Sega Genesis tended to have inferior audio and visual quality to their SNES counterparts), but they outlasted and outsold the more powerful systems that sprang up around the same period. Click below to take a look back at one of gaming’s most exciting eras.
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April Showers bring digest posts!

Yes, it was another amazing and informative month at Powet. Sure, it was 4 more weeks of regular features like videos, Powet Alphabet, and Lost Classics, but we also had 2 great podcast sessions and some huge news! If you were too busy in April to visit us, or if you took a few days off for spring break you might have missed a lot! Get caught up now!

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

Zombies – they’re a staple of film and games alike. Pioneered by the likes of George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” and its sequels, and followed by the slightly less-serious “Return of the Living Dead” movies and scores of others in the horror genre, zombies have been a tool of the entertainment industry for decades. Games began using them as early as the late 80’s, with Castlevania starting the trend of pixelizing the undead, and the idea taking off with subsequent games such as DOOM and the less-than-terrifying “Zombies Ate my Neighbors”. The idea of the dead coming back to life in order to devour the living has been used to great effect in all types of media, and tend to do rather well because of a good chunk of the populace having a morbid fascination with not only the undead, but more importantly – killing the undead. Capcom decided that, by the mid-1990’s with video games starting to become mainstreamed in the media, that it would try its hand at capitalizing on the concept.

Enter Resident Evil (Biohazard) in 1996 for the Playstation. [Read the rest of this entry…]

Still looking for something to do until Diablo III hits, and you’re done with Torchlight? Iron Lore Entertainment’s Titan Quest is here to bring you some mythological era looting and level grinding. After deciding the name and gender of your character, you arrive on the shores of the village of Helios, you find that the city is besieged by monsters. You are then recruited by the order of Prometheus to help bring order back to the world. Your quest takes you from Greece to Egypt and the Orient. The base game contains three acts, and the Immortal Throne expansion, which is included on this edition, contains an additional act, so the game takes around 40 hours to complete. You’ll encounter several types of mythological monsters, and you’ll even face bosses. Unlike Diablo, the environments aren’t randomly generated, but the custom crafted backdrops are visually pleasing. You can customize your character’s class and abilities, and you can join up to 5 other player on either local area network or online multiplayer. You can even create custom quests with the game’s editing tools. Like Age of Mythology and God of War, Titan Quest shows players shows how cool Greek mythology can be and how well it translates into video games. Not only that, it’s another fun way to get your dungeon-crawling fix until Diablo III hits.

Hell Yeah!

Show Notes after the jump!

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

Not long ago, there began a somewhat off-kilter TV show with an unbelievable premise that nonetheless captured the hearts and minds of America. Guest stars who were associated with it went on to have long careers of their own, even as the principals struggled to escape its overpowering shadow. Despite the sometimes-inexplicable twist and turns of the plot, what really attracted audiences were the touching and realistic character pieces that this show delivered week after week.

I could be talking about ABC’s LOST, but before LOST was NBC’s Quantum Leap. Read on to find out why this show held, and twenty years later continues to hold, a special place in the hearts of science geeks, acting geeks, history buffs, and non-geeks alike.

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I’m part of the crowd that wished Justice League Unlimited was still on the air. Its only been, what, 5 years? Since we left the Bruce Timm universe, Cartoon Network has moved on to The Batman and now Brave & The Bold as the outpost of DC animation.

Certainly one of CN’s most successful (though strangely underrated) series was Teen Titans. I recall when the show premiered a few people around the comic shop suggested a better angle would’ve been Young Justice. Now it looks like they got the hint.

The lineup, from left to right, is: Artemis (or Arrowette?), Robin (Tim Drake?), Kid Flash (no Impulse?), Superboy (looks like Conner Kent), Miss Martian (wait, isn’t she a Titan?), and Aqualad (huh?). OK, so they’re taking some liberties with the team, but I’ll need to see it to know if they ruined it. Aretemis is a character from Wonder Woman’s camp, but the images makes her look a bit more like Green Arrow’s sidekick. Also Aqualad doesn’t exactly look like Aqualad, but this could be another diversification move by the animators to make the show looks less like white people kicking ass.

No voice cast announced, but the series character designs are pretty cool. Well, except Superboy’s cargo pants. No, Bruce Timm is not involved, but Greg Weisman of Gargoyles fame is one of the producers! Sam Register and Brandon Vietti are also producing, who collectively have worked on most DC shows and animated movies in the last 5 years.

The show will premiere this fall for the 2010/2011 season with a full season order of 26 half hour episodes.

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

Today is P for the Powers of Grayskull. The Powers of Grayskull was a line proposed in 1987 that would serve as a sort of prequel to MOTU as we had known it. While some of the figures made it to the prototype phase and licensing material was sent out to interested companies, nothing ever materialized as far as a full scale toy line. After the jump we’ll dig a little deeper into what was really planned for the series based on what has been found.

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