Graham

With the 1/60 DX VF-25F/S, Bandai already have 90%+ common tooling to make Luca's RFV-25, so costs are minimal. For a VF-171, it means starting from scratch. Big expense. Graham

Err....is this anything to do with Macross Frontier? Graham

Guys, If Yamato were to make a non-transforming Fighter mode GN-U toy, how many of you would buy it? I've been extremely impressed by the scupt, quality and materials of the GN-U Macross Plus battroids and I'd love to see a GN-U fighter mode as well, that being my favorite mode. I think a GN-U fighter in scale with the battroids would by the perfect size for play and display. So assuming the following points, how many of you would be interested? Would come with a display stand. Would come with detachable landing gear to allow it to be posed either wheels down or flying with wheels up. Canopy would be clear, with a pilot figure inside, but may not open. Cost would be comparable to or slightly cheaper than GN-U battroids. Would use the same materials and have same high stand of finishing as GN-U battroids. Wings would move. Foot thrusters would also likely move (to simulate thrust vectoring). While the 1/200 VFC are nice, I'd prefer GN-U size and quality. Graham

That's the plan, or so I've been told. Graham

I certainly hope not. IMO, the Revoltingtech VF-1 toys are absolutely horrible looking. Graham

Do you even need to ask? Of course the answer is yes. However, I reckon It's unlikely that Bandai will make one in 1/60 scale though. At least we are getting one in 1/100 scale. Hopefully Bandai will release all three variants: VF-171, RVF-171 and VF-171EX. Graham

Not really, just a few words and simple sentences. Graham

In the Frontier news section in the TV series forum, Kresphy just posted a link to the new Macross Ace Frontier commercial. mms://221.243.119.235/macross_acefrontier/pv2_1009_1m_df87.wmv The game looks even more awesome. And it's confirmed, you can customize the colors of your mecha! Graham

I'm trying to get confirmation from Yamato about what (if anything), is happening. Whether anything is actually happening depends on who at Yamato Overdrive spoke to. If it was just some junior sales flunky, they may have just given Overdrive a line of sales BS. If however, it was the CEO or head of product development, that may be another story. Stay tuned. Graham

And of course back in the day, Arii released a couple of plastic models of the Zentraedi cucumber ships. Graham

While Bandai generally makes quite durable toys, they are not without their share of breakages also. Two breakage-prone Bandai toys that spring to mind are the hips on the first Soul of SPEC EVA and the extremely fragile shoulders on the New Material Model Turn A toy. Cross fingers the 1/60 DX VF-25 will be sturdy enough. Graham

That 1/60 has obviously been eating a whole lotta pork chops then. (BTW, here in Hong Kong, 'Pork Chop', is slang for a fat ugly girl). Graham

That's just a Test shot or painted resin sample in that pic, not the production version. The final production version will likely have tampo printed markings. We get this we every release. prototype pics turn up online showing the toy with stickers and people start complaining, then when the toy is released it has tampo printed markings. You guys should know the rountine after all these years! The only toy that Yamato really should have tampoed but didn't IMO was the Uran Camo 1/48 GBP. Graham

No, no and no! As much as I love the original series, I don't want them to repeat what's been done before. IMO, there's no need to remake everything, just cus' it's a couple of decades old. Graham

Sorry, I didn't quite catch that. So is it a toy, or a model? Graham

No trust me, I would lose. I really, really suck at painting. Hey, perhaps we could run two contests, one for the pros like WM Cheng to see who can build the best model and one for people like us, to see who can do the crapiest build......LOL! Graham

Agreed, but I'm still going to get one as a substitute toy, until the real toys come out. My craving for a VF-25 is too strong and I need my fix now man. Can't wait until December or January or whenever the damn 1/60 DX VF-25 Chunky is coming out. Graham

Scan? Will try to pick up tomorrow. Hmm.....'Macross Begins'...........perhaps it will be a new TV series or OVA based on the 1999 to 2009 period, i.e. from when the ASS-1 crashes to the start of the orignal SDFM TV series. I'd still love a season 2 of Frontier though. Anway, unless Sketchley is pulling our collective legs about the writing on the back of the poster it sounds like Frontier was a big enough success that we may be getting some form of new Macross anime next year.....yippee! I do hope it's something set in the 2050s or beyond though. I'm personally not keen on retreading old ground with an origin story. Graham

I usually use the terms 'TV games' (HK-English) or 'console games' for stuff like Playstation, X-Box etc. 'Handheld games' for PSP, gameboy etc 'Arcade games' for well, arcade games. And computer games for any game played on a computer. If you say 'video games' here in HK, most people would just look at you blankly. Graham

Love that NT pic of Sheryl as Basara and Ranka as Minmay. Fantastic pic of the VF-171EX battroid as well. Graham

While I haven't read a Marvel comic since my teens (except for Marvel Zombies), isn't Captain America supposed to be white, and Will Smith is err.......not? Mind you I've been wrong about the race thing before. I could have sworn that when I last read some Nick Fury stuff back in the 80s', he was a grizzled old white dude with an eyepatch, yet he was played by Samuel L. Jackson in the recent Iron Man movie. Not that there's anything wrong with using actors of a different race to portray a character, but I would have thought that most fans would have a reasonable expectation that a character be the same race in a movie adaptation as in the printed source material. Graham

While I love the original TV series and OVAs, Pailsen files just leaves me cold. I only watched up to ep # 6, but just couldn't get into it at all. It's a shame, cus' I really wanted to like this OVA. Part of the problem for me anyway, is that ATs need to be cell animated. Unlike Valks, which actually look good in CG, ATs in Pailsen files look like they come from an early PS2 cut scene movie. Graham

IMO, no video games should be made into movies. And why do we even call them 'video games'? I much prefer the HK-English term 'TV games', as we play them on our TVs, not on our VCRs. Graham

At least they should come with a display stand and a good selection of accessories (FAST Packs, missiles etc). Perfect transformation may not necessarily be desirable at this scale. You need to remember that in toy design, especially at this scale and doubly especially with complex transforming toys there are a lot of trade-offs involved. If you want line-art accuracy, a high level of articulation AND perfect transformation, then these ideals while desirable are not necessarily compatible with durability. The more complex you make a toy, especially thre smaller the scale, the more potential there is for durability issues to arise. Graham

I understand why people are extremely upset if their expensive toy breaks and there is no way to repair it, I'd be too. However, I'm surprised that some people are against the extra articulation that Yamato added to the shoulder. IMO, it really improves the poseablity of the toy. And I'd hardly describe the shoulder as flapping around. If we get no reported breaks on the VF-1A Hikaru, that makes me wonder how much of the problem is user error VS. design and material issues. Graham