Renato

That is excellent. Very, very nice. The add-on set doesn't even have any parts to let you attach the Gunpod in Fighter, so you've already one-upped them. Jarrod, I looked at your homepage and found that I remember your customs from ages ago... that Variable Hasegawa is incredible. My only question is: I thought Geocities closed down?? Otherwise, really nice work, great skills.

Sounds great... except I don't have a PS3, I would have to figure out how to use XLinkKai and just play it that way. Unless this new Another Century Episode game turns out to be enough of a worthwhile reason to buy the console. I just can't seem to manage to find enough worth in the PS3. And no, there are no movies that interest me enough to see them in Blu-ray. Don't worry about it, man! I figured you had lots of things to do in such a short time anyway.

Just got mine last night. Seems like a very nice toy. There are two pilots, one Brera-style purple, and one green one. They are from identical molds. As for the shades of green, to be honest, I didn't notice it until this morning when I looked properly at the photographs I took last night. Looking at the toy, both last night and this morning, I cannot see any difference at all. The box says "Grace O'Connor/standard type", and that is how it has been advertised all along. I'm going to play around with it a bit more and post my impressions later, but overall I'm finding that it's a very nice toy. The only thing is the price tag... really not enough here or the monies, especially when you consider that with the VF25G (the only other DX I have) you got so much more for less. Of course, that toy is just a flimsy pile of silly putty, though, so I guess Bandai are just charging you for "quality" this time? Who knows. EDIT -- I had totally forgotten it was supposed to come with stickers. I'm one of those that didn't get any, which hopefully means that they should be on the way soon. I can't see where I would use them, though. EDIT 2 -- Oh yeah, you get two pilots, but you can only fit one into the cockpit at a time. That's a pet peeve. Since you can't see anything from the outside I guess it's not a big deal, though.

Dude, you've got to do it at the con. It's a staple.

OK, now that the excitement of the combined forces of DYRL and Japan's World Cup triumph has subsided somewhat, I guess I will provide a brief report on the magical night. The silky curtains opened on the heavenly, pearly screen, where upon the small figure of God incarnate Shoji Kawamori Esq. appeared before a roaring crowd of all ages and mixed gender. As he was bathed in adulation, he introduced the feature presentation with the words "Without further ado, I give you.... Robotech the Movie!!" And then I woke up. No, OK, here's what really happened. I arrived at Roppongi with plenty of time to spare so I could get a hold of the final issue of Macross Chronicle, which could also be used in the occassion, should any autograph opportunity arise, I could at least push that into the celebrity's face. Luckily Roppongi is one of those towns that never sleeps so I had no problem finding bookstores still open at that time. Unluckily, the area seems far too trendy to openly put such embarassing trash such as Macross magazines on their aristocrat shelves, opting rather to devote the space towards porn and hacker publications. After a good 5 minutes of searching, I asked the cashier, who responded with the ubiquitous "Macro... what?" He had to call the manager who went round the back and fetched it after what seems like an eternity. Anyway, with that and the latest issue of Shuukan Diamond (with a huge feature on the possibilities for space business, including the feasibility of the orbital elevator -- Katsuragi Kei, eat your heart out!!), I was on my way. I made my way past the footballing chihuahua (I kid you not) to eventually arrive at the cinema. Wow, the A-Team's FACES sure were big that night. After printing out my ticket at the robotic clerk in true Macross City style, I got a message from Save saying that he was cashing in his Birthday Steak at Outback Steakhouse. Of course, I warned him of the inpending doom at the hands of evil giant alien women that this forebode, but he seemed to have survived the omnidirectional barrier overload without a scratch when he did arrive a while later. So after Tochiro joined us DIRECTLY FROM GETTING OFF A PLANE AT NARITA (bow in his sleep-deprived endurance) and we greeted a few familiar faces including Valk-artist extraordinaire Tenjin Hidetaka, we were on our way to watch the show. The night opened with an announcement from a staff member telling us to be aware that they were going to project an original print which was over 20 years old, so the quality of the visuals and sound would suffer in many places. Admittedly it was pretty bad. I'm kind of on the fence about this. On the one hand, it is true that it makes the texture of the film itself seem much more "tangible" in a way, and it gives you a warm feeling. On the other hand, it made me sad to think that this masterpiece has obviously been given far less attention than it deserves in the years since it was released, and more than ever I think it would benefit from an entire remaster re-release, if anything for culturally celebratory purposes. Yes, that boldly. Japan has been embarassed for too long about its animation, and now that they are finally beginning to think of it as a form of capital, they could do worse than to promote the best of the best. Anyway, the film itself was magnificent. The pacing is excellent, as the two guys sitting next to me (not Save and Tochiro because we were not sitting together) noted -- "there is no filler". It was their first time to see the film on the big screen in 25 years. Save and Tochiro later mentioned lots of visual details they had never seen before, but I had already noted most of them as I had recently rewatched the remastered DVD on my HDTV a couple of months back. That is not to say the visuals were not arrestingly clear and vibrant despite all the damage the film itself had suffered over the years. The first thing I was struck by, however, was how much English is actually in the movie. It is FILLED with it. Now of course we all know about the "All systems green, good luck!" and "This ship is to make a transformation..", but I was amazed at all the other tiny soundbites such as the "I need some coffee" and "Got a cigarette?" which were crystal clear during the peace conference scene. One of these weekends I'm going to watch the monaural DVD version of the film that I have gathering dust on the shelf to compare, because I think I'm too used to the Surround Sound master, and it seems that some details may have been either lost or are just not as prominent as they were. The credits rolled (without the Lynn Minmay concert animation, as it originally was) to a crescendo of applause. OK, so it wasn't exactly a standing oveation with cheers and chants praising the Froating Head, but for usually-subdued Japanese cinema audiences, quite exceptional. And then after a break we watched some Macross Frontier movie, I dunno, the end, bye. (Just kidding, will post part 2 soon!)

Regarding the stand, I had answered your question two posts before you even asked it. If anything, I was the one ignored... As for the missiles, I just remembered the deal with them so I added the info on that.

So... has anyone played this game two- or three-player yet? I have no PSP friends. Failing that, anyone tried the XLinkKai method, or even Ad-hoc party? I thought about trying the former a while back, but if I cannot guarantee that anyone is going to be online, I wouldn't want to bother. We should really get a tournament or something organised.

The problem is that it's not a "sheet" in the technical/practical sense -- it's printed on the inside of the back cover, meaning that you cannot file it together with the rest of the content.

This is absolutely amazing. Thanks! Pity you have to use a keyboard, though, I can't seem to play it properly. Has anyone heard of Megaman 8-bit Deathmatch? It's like Doom but with Megaman, and apparently they're trying to recreate the levels as they appeared in the original games, except in 3D. Last I heard, it was still in development and no playable versions were available yet (I think they made one and took it offline because it was outdated). http://cutstuff.net/blog/?page_id=1928 What?? No! I didn't know that. I only knew about the "Bleem" thing, that PS1 emulator for Dreamcast.

Sorry if this has been mentioned before, I didn't see it. Underneath the (alarmingly extensive, then again 48 out of 1500+ pages might be forgivable) errata compilation, is a note saying that the following sheets will remain missing: M7 Mechanic sheet: UN Spacy #11 M7 Character Sheets: Civilian #9-13 (wow!) MII Character sheet: Civilian #3 Wonder what the missing stuff was going to be (or rather, if they rearranged some stuff to cut down on the number of sheets).

IIRC the latest Figure Oh mentions that landing gear, fists and the stand will be included with the 19S. One other thing is that the missiles are separate pieces that you attach to the inside of the leg cover: in other words, they do not actually physically store inside the leg. You need to take them off, then replace the cover onto the leg.

It "even" comes with a stand. Bandai, why do you hate the Fire Valk (fans) so much?

I never really played Area 88, but I have heard it is good. You have to earn money to buy weapons and stuff. For me, the best shooter is Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie, though. It's just that awesome. Don't forget Super Aleste, that's good, too. Not particularly hard, but the levels are extremely long. How about other robot games like Cybernator/Valken, Metal Warriors? Anybody play those? I had never even heard about Metal Warriors until Destroy All Podcasts mentioned it once when they talked about oldschool stuff, and it turned out to be pretty cool.

Yeah, they made a whole bunch of GB variations before they finally made the Color one. They had the Fatboys in like 5 or 6 colours, then the GB Pocket in the same colours again, and after those I got a GB Light which is the one with the Indiglo backlight which was pretty cool, then the GB Color, but that has an extremely short lifespan before the GBA came out. At that point I stopped playing video games altogether. As for Mechwarrior, that sounds familiar. Is that the one which has an isometric-style view? It's related to Battletech, right? I read in the RT/HG thread that they were coming out with a new version but got C&D-slapped or something because of Destroids, or is that another thing entirely?

Heh, I see what you did there.

I still find it incredible that the PC Engine had a CD-drive even before the Megadrive or SNES had come out. I was still listening to music on cassettes back then. Soldier Blade and Gunhed forever!

Tickets are on sale from Wednesday. Apparently you have the option of buying online from Tuesday midnight or getting them at the cinema when it opens on Wednesday morning. I hope this thing doesn't become another instant sell-out fiasco.

Ah. A lot of these games have had re-releases on newer platforms, of course. On the PSP alone you can find the "PC Engine Soldier Collection" with all the Star Soldier shooters, Konami did a bunch of them with Gradius Portable, Parodius Portable, Twinbee Portable and Salamander Portable, and each of those had 5 games on one disc, including Life-Force and stuff like that. Another game I had was Jurassic Park on the SNES. That thing took hours and hours of my life away precisely because of the lack of battery-backed memory.I recently saw the ending on Youtube. I'm glad I never finished it: it was such a half-assed ending sequence that I would've smashed the TV set. Lastly, I have to give a shout out to Terminator 2 on the Gameboy. Not the Arcade Game version, the platform shooter one that came before that. I had somehow convinced myself that that game was so great, even though I look back now and it is awful, awful, LJN trash. Its only charm is its nostalgic value, really. Any similar betrayals of memory?

What's a GBP when it's not a currency nor fat giant robot?

Goddammit, you know how to torture me. I'll get back to you on this. (Egan's got the inside on everything, doesn't he?)

What? I don't get it. I read the "Requiem" script but that was an unproduced episode.

It's out in France and Spain. And please don't ask for remakes.

"But when your wheels get you there...... THINGS WILL TURN OUT RIIIIIIIIIIGHT!!!" Yeah, this may have been my favourite of the non-Transformer shows at the time. Shame they never made a final episode which concluded the story, that would have been epic. Same with Dungeons & Dragons, for that matter.

Absolutely agree, that and the Silverhawks opening was style-oozing awesome. The shows themselves were bland. I heard one of the animators is a lecturer at the Manga Faculty in Kyoto Seika University where I was working up until a while back. Unfortunately, we never managed to meet. Otherwise... bah, more remakes. I want some company to come up with something cool.

I just flipped through the book at a shop, so I couldn't tell you the page number, sorry. But I do remember that it had an illustration of just the gun on the top left-hand corner of a left page, with the description text below that, somewhere in the book. It should be in the big section where they describe the armaments of the craft one by one. Hope that helps. Maybe I'm confusing them with the laser cannons you described, if so, sorry for the confusion, they looked like the chest guns to me.