This is going to be simple and quick to the point this week. Full blast and care next week; I pinky swear. Now, blame the HD release of Resident Evil: Code Veronica on the Games on Demand platform as the reason I posted a video of the Elvis Costello song “Veronica.”

Xbox Live Arcade

XBLA Add-Ons

Games On Demand

Also including these 5 weeks will be the special 2-part episode “Origins” which will reveal how the Rangers came together for the first time. These episodes was originally premiered at San Diego Comic Con back in July, it is unknown if they will air separated or edited together as a “TV Movie” that Nickelodeon is known to do a lot.

Also in these 5 weeks, the Halloween special “Party Monsters” will also air, which will feature the creepiest monsters beyond the grave to exchange their stories on their run in with the Rangers.

2 other specials are in the horizon.  ”Christmas Together, Friends Forever” will be the first Christmas special for Power Rangers in 15 years! And another 2-part adventure, “The Clash of the Red Rangers”, will have Samurai team joining up with Scott, Ranger Red, facing both Master Xandred and General Venjix from Power Rangers RPM!

At a signing, he overheard the following (which is paraphrased and second hand, but these are the basic notes)

Fan- Are you going to come back to acting?

Ranger- I’m thinking about it. I’m done with school now.

Fan- Would you come back to Power Rangers?

Ranger- I’d like to. They’ve asked if I’d be interested, I don’t know if it’d be as the same character or someone new.

With Ricardo Medina having returned to Power Rangers as a different character, it’s not unheard of. Currently, casting for the next season is underway, with production likely starting by the end of the year.

Who’s the actor that could come back? People who have seen Goseiger know that one of the supporting cast members is an astronomer. One Ranger has dealt with space travel, and was a genius, so he could easily reprise the role as an adult.

Guys, he was the new Blue Ranger: Blake Foster.

This is fully one of those moments that you overhear at a convention, but it appears that Blake Foster has been contacted about having a role in the upcoming Power Rangers season.

If words fail, the launch trailers are below. And below that, three weeks’ worth of XBLA add-ons and Games on Demand titles. The Xbox Live Indie Games list returns next week.

Xbox Live Arcade

• Bastion (Supergiant Games/WB Games) – 1200 points (demo available)
• From Dust (Ubisoft) – 1200 points (demo available)
• Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (FuelCell/Gagne International/Microsoft Studios) – 1200 points (demo available)

XBLA Add-Ons

• ‘Splosion Man – Prologue to Ms. ‘Splosion Man – free

Games On Demand

• R.U.S.E. (Ubisoft) – $39.99
• Shaun White Skateboarding (Ubisoft) – $29.99
• Prison Break – The Conspiracy (Deep Silver) – $19.99
• Need For Speed Hot Pursuit (Electronic Arts) – $39.99
• Pure Futbol (Ubisoft) – $19.99

Saban’s Masked Rider was primarily an adaptation of Kamen Rider Black RX, Masked Rider ZO came out for the Sega CD, and Adness Entertainment’s adaptation of Kamen Rider Ryuki as Kamen Rider Dragon Knight seemed to falter in American minds. Kamen Rider V3 and Masked Rider The First remain the only legally-subtitled and licensed works in America.

There’s no word what, if anything, Saban know owns of the Kamen Rider franchise. Three episodes of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers featuring the Masked Rider are now on Netflix. If they wanted to use Kamen Rider Decade to it’s fullest, or even do it’s crossover with Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, they’d need the rights to Kamen Rider Ryuki, which are under Adness’ control to our last knowledge.

DSiWare

• Trollboarder ($1.99/200 points, Enjoy Games LTD)
• Kung Fu Dragon ($1.99/200 points, Agetec)
• Antipole ($4.99/500 points, Saturnine)

3DS eShop

• Nintendo Video (Free, Nintendo)
• 3D Classics: Xevious ($4.99, Nintendo)

WiiWare

• Bobby Carrot Forever (800 points, FDG Entertainment GmbH & Co KG)

Originally written for Examiner.

The GoBots got a single, 65-episode series, and one movie where they battled a spinoff toy franchise, Rock Lords. The Transformers, meanwhile, garnered over a dozen television series produced by multiple countries and is getting its third summer movie (or its fourth, if you count the original The Transformers: The Movie). The GoBots featured minimal transformation capabilities compared to their Autobot and Decepticon foes, and…

Oh, let’s just list the similarities.

An American toy company acquires the rights to a Japanese toy line that focuses on robots that can disguise themselves, but they create a new storyline for them, in which heroic heroes led by their singular male leader fight crazed opponents who are willing to do anything to acquire special power. The war has been brought to Earth, where the heroes team up with civilian youths while the villains will inevitably team up with human threats.

Leader-1, meet Optimus Prime.
GoBotron, meet Cybertron.
Scooter? Bumblebee.
Nick Burns? Apparently, not your company’s computer guy. (SNL flashback, sorry).

The similarities are unending, except when it comes to being a success. It was a decade before the Transformers had to try something new to recapture the public consciousness (Beast Wars), but GoBots just came and went in three years (1984 to 1987). Hilariously, both got movies to promote new toy lines at the same time, which had critics assuming that one was a knockoff or a cash-in on the other. (For the record, the GoBots movie beat The Transformers to theaters, but the latter film had been in production longer.)

Indignities continue. The Challenge of the GoBots now gets a DVD release via Warner Archive.

The series plot, maddeningly, is uninventive on two fronts. For starters, it too closely tracks The Transformers’ “escape to Earth for various reasons and fight alongside audience-relatable child characters” plot. Unfortunately, it interprets the plot through Hanna-Barbera’s late ’70s/early ’80s action-adventure style. So you have the goofy, cackling villain; the oddly accented female villain (who seems perpetually on the verge of taking off after Moose and Squirrel); and animation that just isn’t a good fit for giant robots. Characters such as Scooter come off as a goofy Bumblebee or as a transforming Jabberjaw, and it all feels as if it needs a laugh track. It would be a good decade until Hanna-Barbera got the action beats down in SWAT Kats (another Warner Archive release). At least it has a theme song that will drill its way deep into your brain, to resurface at the worst times. Movie theater? “The GoBots! The GoBots!” Buying groceries? “The GoBots! The GoBots!” Writing a review about Challenge of The GoBots? “The GoBots! The GoBots!” It’s a very minimal song, but something about those few beats and chanting of the name will echo and reverberate through your very being.

Warner Archive is known for releasing shows that wouldn’t otherwise have a chance on shelves (and in fact, most Warner Archive titles don’t ever hit shelves, being made-to-order), and since they’re not looking to be promoted by special features and the like, there’s none to be found. Even things you’d consider normal, like menus made for the disc, are completely nonexistent. If this was released by contemporary robot DVD releaser Shout! Factory, there’d be toy commercials, commentaries, notes on the original Japanese toyline Machine Robo, and the like. As it stands, there’s no word on if the rest of the series or whether the movie will ever be released on DVD, even in this format, so chances are high that things like this will be relegated to YouTube.

Challenge of The GoBots, like many other Warner Archive releases, stands out purely as an appeal to nostalgia, or for collectors’ sakes. Transformers fans may pick up the release to feel a sort of completeness with 1980′s transforming robots, but there’s nothing here that wasn’t done better or more memorably in other series. While to this day the Transformers transform and roll out, the GoBots should go back to where they came from.

Originally written for toonzone.

The title’s progress became a question when Keiji Inafune, creator of Megaman, left the company (and therefore, the project). Capcom claims that Inafune’s departure, in the announcement, has nothing to do with the project’s cancellation.

The iteration of Megaman as seen in this franchise recently battled as part of Tatsunoko VS. Cpacom: Ultimate All-Stars for the Wii. The original title recently saw a rerelease on the PSP.

Originally written for Examiner.

Key members of the staff and crew from the TV series have returned for this new feature length follow-up including director Satoshi Nishimura, character designer Takahiro Yoshimatsu, and the impeccable composer Tsuneo Imahori. Writer Yasuko Kobayashi wrote the screenplay from a story developed by Nishimura and the original Trigun and Trigun Maximum manga-ka, Yasuhiro Nightow. The staff ultimately opted for a standalone story set in the timeline of the 1990’s TV series for Trigun. The show looks to take place before Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson started accompanying the humanoid typhoon and before Vash was pursued by the Gung Ho Guns, Legato, and his brother Knives. One could call this a light-hearted filler tale, but that doesn’t make it bad.

In this story, the prologue starts twenty years before the action of the main story. Vash (Bosch) gets mixed up in a bank robbery involving the extremely serious bank robber, Gasback (John Swasey). Gasback’s cohorts however betray him, but Vash intervenes in order to prevent anyone from dying due to his pacifist nature and belief that no one should be killed or murdered. Gasback ultimately escapes. Twenty years later, Gasback has put a long-gestating plan of vengeance into action. Gasback’s former partners have become rich and influential over the years, and one has even become mayor of a thriving city. Gasback intends to cause some trouble and possibly steal the city’s expensive statue which is being insured by the Bernardelli Insurance Agency who send their top employees Meryl Stryfe (Luci Christian) and Milly Thompson (Trina Nishimura) on the case to make sure nothing goes sour. The mayor has also conscripted countless mercenaries and bounty hunters to protect himself and his heirlooms. A situation like this cannot keep a personality like Vash away. Vash meets up with a mysterious and gorgeous bounty hunter by the name of Amelia (Colleen Clinkenbeard) who has a seemingly personal stake in Gasback’s capture or possibly death.

I loved seeing this group of characters together again with new, updated animation. The characters generally look as the same as the TV series counterparts but slightly tweaked. Since this is basically like an extended episode of the TV series it is still very much set in the unique sort of western, steampunk-esque world of Planet Gunsmoke. The animation quality is top notch and the CG visuals and mechanics are well integrated into the picture and story. The gargantuan plants which power the desert cities of Gunsmoke look much better and drawn out.

Bosch has not lost a beat as Vash and reinforces why Bosch’s portrayal of Vash is one of my personal favorites. Unfortunately, he is the only voice actor among the English cast form the TV series to reprise their role for the new movie.  Luci Christian actually does well in matching the attitude and character of Meryl similar to Dorothy Melendrez who I also liked. I think Lia Sargent left a better impression as Milly in the TV series. Brad Hawkins is the new English voice of Wolfwood. He does the character OK, but he just lacks the strong and deep base of Jeff Nimoy so much that I really missed the original voice actor. Swasey is strong as Gasback, a character not too unlike Brilliant Dynamite Neon from the TV series.

The good news is that the movie will also be getting a limited theatrical release in the US with the help of Eleven Arts. The visuals and soundtrack are definitely something work checking out on a big screen if given the chance.  Imahori does a nice little remix of the show’s original theme song, “H.T.,” but the original “The Wind Blows To The Future” by AKIMA and NEOS was well missed.  Movies such as Trigun: Badlands Rumble most certainly proves that traditional animation is far from a dead medium in feature storytelling. It simply needs the right people and story given the opportunity to do something special.

15 minutes: $51
For our final countdown, specific to ranger fans, spend $51 dollars and get 15 minutes of my time over phone or skype to talk about whatever you’d like.

Answering Machine/Ring Tone: $101
Spend $101 and I’ll record a personalized voice message or ring tone (mp3 file) for you to use which ever way you like. “Sorry, _____ isn’t here right now because his zord is under attack. I must have grabbed his phone by mistake. Oops. Anyway, I’ll make sure to pass on the message. Just make sure it’s buttery. This is Bridge Carson, Green Ranger, aka Matt Austin . Over and out.

Upon following up with Matt, we’ve also learned that each of these perk levels gains you a DVD of the short film. These also join the previously-announced “Buttery” perk that enters you to win a real Red SPD Ranger suit he wore.

Make sure to donate; you’ve got half a day!