JsARCLIGHT

I'll drink to that. And I'll take it one further that nowadays there are a lot of mediocre games being trumped up as big hub-bub first level titles. Every other week they are pimping the new "best thing ever" game with massive print and television marketing blitzes. Games have become just like Hollywood... they deluge you with ads to try to get you to buy their "crap game of the week" game before you can figure out it's crap. Does anyone in the video game market know if it's still like the old ET days? If a big push title sells for crap can the retailers charge back all the unsold games? You'd think if that was still in place all the crap game makers would be closing their doors eventually... or maybee it IS just like Hollywood and the one or two really big games end up subsidizing all the crap games.

That then begs the question are games rated by their own merits, based on some nebulous "general level of quality" or are they unconsciously compared to other games resulting in their benchmarking? To a degree everything is cross-compared, mostly because the "general level of quality" varies from person to person. I myself find it impossible to not play a game and think about other games while playing it, especially when games frustrate me. It's so common to hear me say stuff like "well game X did this RIGHT and this game does it WRONG"... that is not so much true as it is our perceptions of what should and shouldn't be. To that degree everyone will respond differently to everything, and your response will only be genuine if we go in NOT reading all the reviews and hearing all the hype. The hype colors our opinions just as much as the actual game does... if you see a "10" you expect things.

Well, using Duke's standpoint they did not receive "good marks". If you view the 1 to 10 system as flawed then a game receiving a "7" or an "8" being average gives the jaded reader the impression the game is "bland" or even bad. People are pre-programmed these days to look for the 9.5's and the 10's. In a market that is becoming saturated with clones and product rushed to market there is a lot of crap out there, and a lot of it is both overrated and underrated. I mean, if you showed me ten new game numerical reviews (only the numbers) and out of those one was a 10, one was a 9, six where 7's and '8s and two were sub 6 I'd instantly gravitate towards the 10 and the 9, dismissing the rest as "average" and the lowest scores as total crap. And if you then have already taken that dismissive attitude, it's easy to see it one step further and think that the lone 10 is the only one true "good" game, then the 9 becomes the "ok" game and the rest become sub par. Once you see a "10" everything else starts to look bad and the numerical system supports this trend, bolsters it even. It's human nature. Fill a room with 8 average people, one really beautiful one and one really ugly one and the ugly one makes the average people look much better and all the average people make the lone beautiful person look even more stunning. It's all in how you look at it. Are you focusing on the top mount Olympus or are you trying to see the beauty in the everyday? If you stand among gods then the mortals look terrible by comparison. In the end it's all personal opinion. Someone who loves something can't be "wrong" in their opinion just as someone who hate something also can't be wrong... it's the folks who take it personally when their pet game gets bad reviews or has a naysayer that irks me. It can become mob mentality... say something good about a bad game and people question your taste, call you an idiot and denounce you. Say something bad about a "good" game and they do the same.

I think he meant average as in across the board the lion's share of game releases rate a 7 or an 8 on a 10 scale. It's kind of rare that you see a sub 7 or a above 9 rating. In a sense that exposes the flaw of using a numerical ratings system. If your system is based on 1 to 10 and you mainly hand out 7's then that makes "7" the "norm", or the "average", which in turn makes anything below that "bad" and everything above that "exemplary". Personally I think numerical ratings systems are dumb. I'd rather read what someone has to say then see their numerical guesstimate of what they felt their experience entailed. I mean, how do you get a number out of a game play experience? Isn't it more "human" to simply write and read "it sucked and here's why" or "it's great because". Giving something a number really doesn't fill you in on how the game actually plays. What is the real difference between a 7 and an 8? It's all kind of a sham, a thing to emblazon on packaging to justify something's worth.

I tend to discount most "professional" game reviews. I feel the hand of the game developers on their shoulders more often than not. It could just be my own personal "reading too deeply" but when you hear things like "well the game has this, this and this wrong with it and it crashed twice and corrupted my saves once and lags a lot... but I still LOVE it!" it always raises my eyebrow.

I've wanted super high detail single mode toys of my favorite anime transforming things for years, no one will make them... mostly because everyone sees transforming toys for what they are: a gimmick. Take the gimmick of transformation away from a toy and nobody but me wants it it seems. I mean almost all of us buy these things, transform them once, put them on a shelf or into a display cabinet and let them sit there and look at them. I just figure if that is what many people do you'd think someone would capitalize on that. I would pay big money for a super high detail Legioss in fighter mode that had opening hatches and stuff. That would totally kill.

My comments are mostly in regard to the older shows like Mospeada in which the designs where nowhere near accomplishable correctly in real life. When there were tons of rescaling and parts warping and bending to allow things to transform and look really good on the screen. Heck, most of the stuff was off model half the time anyway. All the junk today is made and rendered in 3D and the creators themselves can address the transformation issues which make the toys much easier to make IMHO... but stuff like the Tread was almost as if the creators said "have fun with THAT toy companies!" when they made it, but then again perhaps they never even thought of that. They just wanted to make something look cool on TV. Same thing with the Ride Armors... they look so good on the show but the toys, until recently (Beagle) have all looked really janky because so many concessions had to be made just to get some of the basic features to work. I've always said my dream toy for Mospeada would be a Ride Armor that was ONLY in bike mode and that had tons of "real detail" features like working shocks, etc. and the rider would be like a Dragon 12" doll complete with real fabric armor pieces, real helmet that fits on and off with little weapons that really cock and have removable magazines. The Beagle appears to be -this- close to being my dream toy. But that speaks to who I am as a fan, I'm a 12" army doll guy and not a transforming toy guy. The modern army dolls have spoiled me in terms of detail and attention to "correctness". I suppose I'm waiting for a robot anime with toys to achieve this level of detail without so much of what I see as kluge.

A little bit of parts swapping would fix nearly 90% of all the issues transforming toys from old series have. Half this stuff is "magic" to begin with and a little parts swapping is completely tolerable. It's the slavish dedication to "perfect transformation" that dicks up most transforming toys IMHO. It's not all about the play, the "fun" of fiddling with something for an hour... to some of us the appearance is paramount. I mean, who cares if the thing is "perfect transformation" but looks terrible when transformed? Or can't achieve a mode or pose right the way it can in the show simply because a joint is in the way, or a piece could not be the right size or durability because it had to "perfectly transform" and fit somewhere. A Tread IMHO is the prime example of "just make some parts swapping in these few areas" and the design would probably work near perfect.

I have never quite understood the whole fan backlash against part swapping. Personally I'd rather have a better looking toy/model that was sturdier, simpler to use and cheaper to manufacture than the dainty, complex compromises we see around the market. The altar of "perfect transformation" hurts a lot of really good designs. As for the apples to oranges, you can't directly compare a toy to a model but you can compare the mechanics between the two. From first appearances this guy's design choices seem much more logical and sturdy than the toys I've seen. His ideas could be easily adapted to a toy.

Another to add to my "really bad but really good" list from the '80s is Peter Jackson's "Bad Taste". Eat lead suckas!

Wasn't Smokey and the Bandit from like 1977/8? It came out either just before or the same year as the original Star Wars if I remember right. If we're going to go into the late '70s then I nominate "The Cat From Outer Space". I don't know why I like that stupid movie, but I liked it.

I think The Jerk qualifies, it was made in '80 or '81 if I remember right. I saw it with my dad at a drive in of all places. I was never a big fan of Steve Martin. He's funny and all but I never really liked his movies... too "one note" for my tastes. To crown this thread "Big Trouble in Little China" is on Fox Movie Channel right now, watching it on my big screen posting from my laptop. I have officially won the dork race.

OK, a terrible movie that I still own on VHS somewhere: Doctor Detroit. Edit: others that are somewhere in my VHS boxes in the basement are Transylvania 6-5000, Earth Girls are Easy, Streets of Fire (which I actually own on HD DVD, which makes it a double lemon) and The Gate. I think I also own House (the '80s horror movie not the new TV show) and Return to Horror High on VHS but I'm not sure... it's been a long time since looking in those old dusty VHS boxes.

I'm not embarrassed, and even proud to say I saw and love: Night of the Comet To Live and Die in LA Day of the Dead Flash Gordon I could name more but I can only see a third of my DVD rack from here.

Those aren't first tier catalog titles though, they fall under "new movie of the month" to me. And to make matters worse the Kill Bill release isn't going to offer anything new (Whole Bloody Affair, anyone?). I was talking about all the glimmering golden titles these studios are sitting on like the Aliens franchise, Indy, etc. Who really wants PS I Love You on Blu Ray? Or 90% of the other crap new movies they have been dumping into the market? I'm not going to pay $35 for Dude Where's My Car, "digital copy included" or not. At least they are saying they are going to start to release Bond movies in a few months... too bad they are releasing them in a weird order so you can't just buy all the "good ones" now. Then again the transfer quality could be totally balls on the Bond films, like it's been on a LOT of Blu Ray releases. It's hard to sell people on this technology being the best around when a portion of the releases don't look or sound much better than an upscaled DVD. This Christmas better be spectacular release wise...