MSW

yeah, I'm also partial to the 70.5 through 73s myself (no offence but I drool over blue 72's w/white stripe )...but they wern't produced in the volume that the later years were, and they are especialy rare around here...so "beggers can't be choosers" and I built the car seen above (IMHO 77 and 78 were the second best looking versions of the 2ed gen bird)...I pretty much stopped haveing an intrest in newer birds once Pontiac quit produceing motors for them (not that there is anything wrong with Chevy, to me Pontiac performance should be pontiac basied ) and I have no real intrest in 3rd + 4th gen cars ... I did have a 88 305cid 5-speed Formula for a while as a daily driver, not bad...just not the same....course if I win the lottery, I'd have a different 2ed gen car for every day of the week

Whoa! hold on now, I wasn't trying to start an argument or anything...just laying out the way I see things. For about a decade I was an auto mechanic here in Illinois...part of the time at a local little private shop, the rest at a Pontiac dealership...I'm a big fan of the second generation TA, at one point I had 3 of them when building up my ride...and I've owned 5 of them so far...I'm no "god of knowledge" but I do know the cars quite well, even thier shortcomeings... this is a old worn out pic of my old ride...a modified 1977 SE T/A, muncie 4-speed, thirty over 455 cid ponco with 10:1 pistons. Edelbrock aluminum heads and torker 2 intake, roller cam and rockers, headers and 3" exaust...and seen here with a 850 double pumper (later replaced with a pro-jection unit hidden under the stock shaker scoop) a 8.75" 4:11 gear 10-bolt posi...welded in boxed subframe connectors and heavy duity 6 leaf springs with traction bars (ain't air shocks holding her up) N50-15s on 15 x 12 out back, G60-15s on 15 X 9 in front...converted to 12" rotors up front with nylon bushings all around, and she still has both f+r sway bars...ran mid to high 11's on 99 octane, and still could handle curves...I did everything except the paint and recorverd seats...by far not the quickest, fastest, or most noteworthy T/A out there...be she was mine

almost forgot about that one...I used to have an issue of Hobby Japan that featured a couple of scratch built variations on it with tiger/leopard striped paint jobs....very cool got anything else?

The 80's were a huge improvement over the 1970's...by 73 compression ratios had dropped...we got the cat convertors in 75...we switch from high octain leaded fuel to low octain unleaded, switched from bias-ply to radials...and for a while after that not even big blocks were makeing much over 200hp...by 1982 the little 5.0 stang was doing that with far less weight to hull around then the big boats of the 70's. A stock 305cid 86 Montie Carlo SS can outperform a stock 76 T/A (last year for the 455 engine)...yeah, the 80's wern't great, but the 70's largely sucked worse

My avatar if you haven't noticed is of a 3D model of Cruise Chaser Blassty.... this is where I got the image: http://myhome.shinbiro.com/~lufy/gallery.html also if you click on the link to the 1999 3D gallery or here: http://myhome.shinbiro.com/~lufy/3d1999.html first image is a 800 by 600 wallpaperable render of this guys 3D blassty model...additionaly there are a couple of little videos of it in action (one showing it transform, the other being chased and shot at) anyway I used to have the game rom, but it was on the crashed hard drive...never found a emulator that would play it though

Whoot! so that was you Sarensaas over at 4chan. awsome! thanks to barphy for pointing it out too Here is another...I also had images of a scratch built model of this, but that hard drive died

Cruise Chaser Blassty is a RPG-ish Square game from 1986 for the PC-88...original mecha design by Nagano Mamoru (L-Gaim, Five Star Stories)...a bit later Akitaka Mika redesigned a number of mecha (tis what the Art of Cruise Chaser Blassty is about) http://www5a.biglobe.ne.jp/~bais_d/blassty/blassty_index.htm That is a web page that contains several links to lineart scans of the redesigns...also included at the top is pics of the game packageing showing Nagano's Cruise Chaser Blasty design (Nagano's work appeared in the game...Akitaka's work appeared in Hobby Japan, etc..) I've done tons of searching for Cruise Chaser Blassty...at one point even found a japanese site that had animated .gifs of all the game mech animations, but now the link is dead ...but you can still find pics of Nagano's designs by searching through game related sites...pics of the (much cooler IMHO) Akitaka designs seem more difficult to come by. anyway, as far as I know, there was one resin model kit produced of Akitaka's redesigned Cruise Chaser Blassty...released by Volks in 1/300 scale and could be built in either bot or ship mode.

I had a carrier in autorepair, I'm a car guy too! but bikes are more my thing these days, and I much prefer good old american muscle cars and real hot rods (34' fords, T-buckets, etc) over the new stuff... Hmm...a binaltec 1957 Chevy Bel Air, now that would be cool

How is Gradius V anyway? Honestly, I never really got into that gradius/Nemesis series much...I'm more a vertical scrolling Psyiko/Cave/Treasure type fan....and honestly after Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga, Mars Matrix and the like..."power-ups" are just...well ...boreing Anyway, I haven't graduated beyond my Dreamcast as of yet...With Ikaruga, Mars Matrix, Gigawing, Gun Bird...even newer releases like Boarder Down and Psyvariar2...it's still holding up well for being such an "obsolite" console Course, I'll never get rid of it either as its home to the insanely brillient Bangai-O (I've not played the N64 version yet...but I don't see how it could top the DC version)...prolly my favorite game of all time LOL!...just remembered last year my oldest nephiew (he was 14 at the time) came over to visit and we played around a bit with Phantasy Star Online...he started getting cocky about beating games, how good his "skillz" were and a games hasn't been made that he could beat...so I plopped in Mars Matrix...explained how to play...at first he was reluctant cause it sounded so simple...but he quickly found out that simple does not mean easy, not by a long shot!

I'm a big Shoot-em-up fan myself...haven't gotten Raycrisis yet ...but I have the others....which is why I thought these might have come from that game seeing how the one ship is labeled R-Grey and all that...in the end its just fan redesigns, really nice ones too but if you like the rayforce games...hunt down a little PC basied shooter titled Kemui ... its by a little Japanese developer that goes by the name of SITER SKAIN. tis a most excellent game, one of my all time favorites

emailer sent me this too which lead me to think it was from rayforce... edit: nevermind, found the webpage these came from: http://www.ne.jp/asahi/curse/666/gallary.html apparently its some Raystorm fan art ... still looks cool though

Got sent a email with this image attached ... it looks cool IMHO, a bit Cruise Chaser Blassty like (see my avatar) Is this from one of the Rayforce games? maybe Raycrisis? Just wondering if there is more where this came from... Thanks

The Y2K turbine bike is a real but limited production model, not a one off show bike like the Tomahawk. (that is Jay Leno rideing the one he owns in that picture I posted ... to be fair it's 1/4 mile performance isn't exactly eye opening (mid 9's...right where the "busa", R-1, etc are at....those bikes modded out like the "Fast and the Furious" cars can dip into the 6's )...but the Y2Ks strong suit is above 70mph or so, as the turbine engine really builds it's power...a silver Y2K is featured in that gawd awful movie Torque from last year...the film DVD even includes a little featurette on it... Problem number one with the Tomahawk...as well as the Boss Hoss (both small and big block V-8 powered bikes...as well as the dozen or so one-offs with 2000+hp aircraft engines) is that they use tourquey car/truck basied engines mounted inline with the direction of travel...pretty much makeing all of that power unuseable, those arn't bikes they are little more then rolling engine displays snap open the throttle of even a little V-6 in a mustang, and you are treated to the engine moveing about ... put the same engine in a bike...mounted inline with the direction of travel...and when you rev the engine it tries to lean the bike causeing you to make a right turn...possably a hard, damageing, even painfull right turn! ... and thus you will never be able to harness the full power of V-8, V-10, even V-12 car/truck basied engined motorcycles in a controlled manner when mounted inline...but hey, as long as you don't open her up quickly, so as to avoid that nasty engine torque induced right turning habit...well it's all good, except even then that comparitively dinky little 833 Sportster just beat you Tis' why performance bikes...even with counter balancer equiped engines specificly developed for motorcycles... transversely mount the engine from the direction of travel...

*Cough... I said DRAG RACE Showroom stock 600cc class sportbikes can run 10 second quarter mile times...showroom stock liter class bikes (R-1s, 1000RRs, "busas", etc) can run in the 9's...showroom stock production cars, as MC Hammer used to sing "can't touch this"...bikes have been, and always will be the best "bang for the buck" buys on the planet....its HP/WEIGHT that accounts for this... Besides, as long as we are talking about exotic expensive sportscars and top speed...for $250k you can get yourself a McIntyre Y2K, a equaly exotic 250 mph jet turbine powered bike.

I don't know if those were from the completed film, Maybe it willbe CGI and that's why he doesn't have a second head in the photo. Yeah...look at the way Sam Rockwell (perfect casting choice, IMHO) is leaning in that picture...doesn't look natural at all...shoot the scene once as the right head...lean the other way and shoot it again as the left head...pass off to the CGI wizards to seemlessly blend it all together... Remember, they may not want to release pics of a two headed Zaphod yet...not because of shoddy or incomplete SFX...but because the general filmgoing public has no idea Zaphod has two heads, and they may not want that "joke" to slip out to soon

well...keeping with the English theme... You could save yourself a WHOLE lot of money just by forking out the $8k for one of these babies. Even better it will out and out "rip the doors right off" even the 700hp Jag in a drag race. It will outstop it too...and it will get better gas mileage from its little 600CC engine then not only the Jag, but most every car made on the planet...not to mention insurence for this is cheaper then the Jag too (even cheaper then it's bigger 955I brother) And you still have room for the misses, and about the same "trunk" space too ...

Looks okay...sorta a reimagined Getter Robo that could sorta work in toy form (three ships, combineing different ways to make three mechs) looks like there are some figures in the works...doesn't look like they do the combination thing (the shoulders of one form the legs of another...but in this pic the parts are all distinctly different sculpts...so these figures likely arn't of the "DX" figure that would likely come out eventualy if this show were to be a hit)

They already have...its called Alexander And yes, the gayness is intentional As for Aeon Flux live-action flick ... I don't really care, just so long as they re-release the original animated series on DVD

Another one...dunno how many have seen it yet

a shield of some kind...dunno where it comes from originaly, but it appears with many a bootleg... http://www22.pos.to/%7Ebutto/tth0-11.html same shield different mech (more of a freeky conglomeration of sorts then mech ) ... BTW: that is a cool site with all sorts of bootleg and gashapen info

haven't seen that yet...but how about this?

another, better valky edit: opps...sorry, didn't know

And a little Go-Lion (Voltron) action

And here are some VFs (different artist, still cool though )

Well not really, but its pretty cool all the same...and you thought the twin towers was huge the site this pic came from (sort of a mecha fan paradise): http://www108.sakura.ne.jp/~fun_bolt/ VERY COOL CHECK IT OUT! click on the bottom of each page for seperate pages going back (this SDF-1 came from around page 53) ... love some of those nagano-ish redesigns