mikeszekely

The other Age of the Primes Voyager is a character that definitely wasn't in the G1 cartoon, but you might know him if you played that pretty awesome Transformers PS2 game back in the day... it's Armada Red Alert. Yeah, that, right there... that's the entire selectable cast of the PS2 game. It's also what I'd consider to be the "main" cast of Autobots from the Armada cartoon- aside from humans and Minicons, this was the entire Autobot force until Smokescreen joined the cast in the tenth episode. As a depiction of Red Alert, the Age of the Primes toy is pretty good! The sculpt, especially his head, strikes me as more cartoony than the original toy. Hasbro was pretty generous with the paint, too, giving him darker kneepads, silver on his bumper and grill, gray around his grill, yellow headlights, and black around the headlights. He's missing a little, though, with no red stripes on his head and no yellow on his biceps (though that could be a good thing, as the yellow on the cartoon came from the gold plastic used for the joints on the original toy). Red Alert does have a bit of a backpack, yes, and some kibble on his legs. However, as the Armada cartoon was much more faithful to the toy designs than G1, this is still pretty accurate. Do note, though, the gap on the left side of his backpack. Red Alert comes with a total of four accessories, one of which you could consider his standard left hand (bottom). Additionally, he's got another translucent red piece, a solid gray piece, and a gun. The gun is, a bit disappointingly, solid white plastic. The original toy had some black/dark gray around one end and some blue over the ribbed middle section. The cartoon traded blue for silver, but it still had more color than we got here. Red Alert's head is on a ball joint that can swivel and look up slightly, but lacks any meaningful sideways or forward tilt. His shoulders rotate and move 90 degrees laterally. His biceps swivel, and his double-jointed elbows can bend 90 degrees. His right hand swivels. He does have a waist swivel, too. His hips can go 90 degrees forward and just a little short of that laterally, but his backpack gives his hips minimal backward range. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. His feet can tilt up 90 degrees due to his transformation, backward about 45 degrees, and his ankles pivot just a little short of 90 degrees. The kibble on his legs can swivel, but he lacks the fold-out Minicon repair bay the G1 toy had. Red Alert can hold his gun in his right hand, as he did in the cartoon, or it can mounted to a double hinge on his backpack to become a shoulder cannon. His left wrist simply ends in a 5mm port that you can use to attach either of the red parts or the gray part. Likewise, there's a 5mm port at the end of his gun that you can also plug the smaller bits into. Red Alert is packing storage for all of his accessories, too. If you lift up his backpack and fold out the flap on the inside, you'll find a tiny peg. This peg fits into the center of the gray part; then you simply fold his backpack back up. The gun, in shoulder cannon mode, can simply flip over and fill in the gap on the left side of his backpack. As for the translucent red parts, there's little spots for them on the inside of his leg kibble. Those spots aren't just for robot storage, mind you. That's where they go in alt mode, too, which is good because you do have to remove whatever part you're using as his left hand before transforming him. Aside from that bit of partsforming, his transformation is very straightforward. Swivel his biceps in 90 degrees, then move his shoulders laterally so the back of his biceps tab into the doors on top of his shoulders. Curl the elbows 180 degrees, then swivel his shoulders so the doors are oriented properly. Life the Autobot badge on top of his chest, flip out the inner flap, tuck his head into the cavity you created, and close the flap over it. Lift his windshield, then his entire backpack, folding out the inner flap, and line the windshield up with the hood, then fold his arms back like you're closing his doors. Tuck in his heels, then fold his feet up to his shins. Joints in his calves will allow you to fold part of his lower legs around to tuck his feet behind the leg kibble. Then you simply bend his torso under his chest to swing his hips and legs back, and line up the kibble on his legs to fill in the rear of the vehicle. Again, his vehicle mode is looking pretty good, what with the paint on his grill, lights, front bumper, etc. There's also the red stripe across the side, and gunmetal trim on the fenders and skirts. It's just a dang shame that the paint budget ran out before they could finish, as his rear bumper, taillights, and and some other details on the rear that should be gunmetal are left bare white. The Red Cross symbol on the original toy has been replaced with the more modern Autobot one. Probably for the best... I understand that the Red Cross sued Hasbro over the original toy, which is why the cartoon had no symbol at all. In a similar fashion, AotP Red Alert loses the gold rims of the original toy, but that seems more cartoon accurate that way. The Minicon ports on the hood and doors have been replaced with 5mm pegs. However, there's still a peg on the translucent red part. Too bad I don't have an original Minicon to try on it. Not too much else to say. It's not activated by a Minicon, but again part of his roof can flip over to be a gun in this mode. And he rolls fine. Honestly, it's a bit of a shame that a lot of you are likely to pass over Red Alert, as the Unicron Trilogy seems pretty overlooked by the G1 crowd. While lacking in gimmicks, Red Alert is solid and straightforward in a way that I wish more modern Transformers were. He's quietly the best Age of the Primes figure so far, and I'd recommend giving him a chance.

So it's a choice between the vibrant colors and rich blacks of an OLED screen on a potato, or an LCD on a less-underpowered device (that likely incorporates DLSS)? Bye, Switch OLED. Same. It's a Nintendo console. Even if I do 90% of my gaming on PC I still love most of Nintendo's first-party games, and I'm confident that there'll be something I want to play at launch.

Rumor, so take it with a grain of salt, but there's some buzz going around that preorders will open for the Switch 2 on Wednesday, April 2nd at 10:00am EDT.

Thanks for the feedback! I figure everyone should be familiar with the main cartoon cast, but not everyone is aware of the deeper lore and real-world history behind anyone who wasn't in the cartoon, so I've been trying to present them with context. I'm happy to know that the effort is appreciated!

Still haven't had any luck finding Slingshot, and I'm skipping Wasp, so how about we start our week off checking out the Wave 1 Voyagers? And since it's Age of the Primes, it seems fitting that our first Voyager will be the very first Prime, Prima. Due to the various lores and retcons, Prima is arguable the most-depicted but least-consistent in said depictions. In the original Marvel The Transformers #61, there's an extremely boxy orange and blue robot being given the Matrix in a flashback about Primus creating the first Transformers that's identified as Primus. In Transformers Generation 2 #5 another flashback shows skeletal mechanical being arises from sludge on the surface of Cybertron before being formatted into a rounder red and gold body. While not identified by name, it's said to be the first Transformer, which would be Primus. In the cartoon episode "The Five Faces of Darkness Part 4" Rodimus has a Matrix vision of a blue-and-white Cyconlus-esque gladiator who rose up against the Quintessons that's supposed to be Primus (despite NOT being the first Transformer in the cartoon). The Covenant of Primus depicted Primus as a silver knight, a design which was also the basis for his brief appearance in the IDW comics. And Transformers One depicted him as a white and gold warrior with a head vaguely like Optimus Prime's, but without a mask. Hasbro's Prima, with the segmented, armored chest and downward-angled shoulder pads, two-toed feet, and limited color pallet can largely be thought of as the Covenant of Primus design smushed into a boxier, more G1 shape, though his head is actually the Sunbow cartoon one. The armored warrior look is pretty good from the front, but a peak around the back does reveal a fairly large backpack (or perhaps it's a short cape?), and hollow calves that aren't quite filled in by wheels. Primus comes with a sword blade, a sword hilt, and a silver Matrix of Leadership. These all combine to form the Star Saber, Prima's unique artifact (the Covenant of Primus says they each get one). Prima's head is on a ball joint. There's not much downward or sideways tilt, but it swivels and he can look up a fair bit. His shoulder pads are double hinged to give him the clearance he needs to swivel his shoulders freely and move them just about 90 degrees laterally. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend a little over 90 degrees. His wrists swivel, and he's got pinned fingers. Although they're all molded together in a single permanently-curled part, he can at least open his hands. His waist swivels, but his hip skirts are connected to his sides so they swivel with him. Fortunately they're hinged, so they don't impeded said swivel. His hips can go forward and laterally 90 degrees, but his backpack/cape limits him to about 45 degrees backward. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend a bit over 90 degrees. His feet have a little up/down tilt, and his ankles pivot nearly 90 degrees. Prima can hold the Star Saber in either hand, no issues there. While most intentional depictions of Prima have made the Matrix of Leadership part of the Star Saber, as the first Matrix bearer Prima does have a panel on his chest that opens, allowing the Matrix to be stored inside. As for the rest of the Star Saber, a 5mm peg on the other side of the hilt can plug into a 5mm port near the top of either side of his backpack. Prima additionally has 5mm ports on both shoulder pads, both forearms, and under each foot. Prima's transformation is fairly involved, but things move and line up better and things tab more solidly than Solus. And no parts fell off! Basically you splay open his forearms, tuck in his hands, spin his biceps, lock the shoulder pads down, then hinge his backpack with his arms away from his torso. That gives you room to swivel the top of his torso (just above his waist swivel), behind which you'll find his front wheels. Tuck in his head down, shift his shoulder joints together so that his forearms fill in the sides of his backpack, then bring his backpack back toward his torso so that little tab-like protrusions on the top of his chest tuck into the gaps on the insides of his forearms. With that done, just fold the wheels out of his calves, tuck his feet into his calves, then bend his knees such that his lower legs cover his thighs and his toes tuck under the backpack. Prima is, I suppose, some kind of space truck. Although the rear is still a bit gappy, I think I generally prefer Prima's alt mode to Solus'. It's got an almost lunar rover sort of vibe going on (though the front half seems a bit crooked... it took me a hot minute to realize it's meant to be be that way). That said, much like Solus, I think Prima still works best in robot mode. Prima does have storage for the Star Saber in alt mode, though you kind of have to take it apart. The blade tucks between his leg and protrudes slightly from the rear. The hilt, though, uses a 3mm peg to plug into a port behind either set of rear wheels, riding under the vehicle with or without the Matrix (which can be stored in his chest while he's in alt mode). If you prefer a more violent vehicle, the 5mm ports on his shoulder pads and forearms are available on the sides of the vehicle, plus a new one is revealed on his front bumper. Finally, the manual does offer one more official gimmick. The front wheels can fold down halfway, while the rear ones can hinge up, giving him a sort of hover mode. While the story of the Thirteen has become established canon across multiple Transformers series, it's a bit of lore that wasn't canonized until most of us G1 fans were into adulthood and may not resonate with fans who grew up largely on the cartoon alone. However, even the cartoon acknowledged a lineage of Primes, a series of Matrix bearers extending from Optimus or Rodimus in the present back into Cybertron's ancient history. In that, I think Prima may have more appeal to a lot of collectors than his siblings, because Prima isn't just the first of the Thirteen, he's the first Matrix bearer, the one who begat that lineage that ends with Optimus/Rodimus. So, it probably good to know that he's a pretty good figure. Sure, the colors are a bit monotonous, and his alt mode is a sort of generic alien space truck, but he's also decently-articulated, poses well, and solidly-built with no parts falling off on me. That's enough to make him the best of the three figures we've looked at so far, and I'd recommend checking him out.

I think we're eventually going to go with the vehicles, too. My wife's parents stay with us for extended periods, and on the weekends we like to take mine out for lunch. We got a Kia EV9, and it's really nice (like, surprisingly so to someone who learned drive in the '90s and remembers when Kias were cheap crap), but my wife decided it's too big for her daily commute. When the lease is up we're going to turn it back in and maybe get her a Macan EV. Then, because a charger in the garage makes EVs great for local driving but the public charging infrastructure is somehow both expensive and terrible I was thinking maybe a Chrysler Pacifica for hauling extra people/cargo. I love your Jag, but my wife works way too much and I'm usually the one driving my kid around during the week so I really couldn't go with a two-seater or 2+2... yet. After my daughter's grown, if we get to that three-car point, I could see myself swapping the Taycan for a 911.

Thanks, I had to go to Dallas for it. All the ones around here (Pittsburgh) are white or black.

My new (used) car arrived today.

Guess I'll wait for AMD's french toast special... yeah, it'll still be overpriced, but not as badly, and it'll be filling enough that everyone will talk about what a great deal it is by comparison.

Will Denny's also honor Nvidia by charging $200 for the Breakfast Bytes, but only to like two or three people before they're sold out?😒

Well, I picked up AC Shadows on PC. My first though was, "how does this even run on consoles?" With an i7-9700K, an RTX 4070, and 32GB of RAM I'm getting 40-50fps at 5120x1440 on medium with dynamic resolution off and with DLSS set to quality. I can get 60-70 if I turn on frame gen, but aside from intolerable input lag it was causing my PC to hard reboot until I set my monitor's refresh rate to 120Hz, so I turned it back off. Even after I seemed to have the game in a playable state I had one DX12 error that caused the game to crash back to desktop. After restarting and playing a bit more I didn't encounter any more issues in-game, but after exiting to desktop properly Windows itself was jacked up (clicking on start menu did nothing, wallpaper was gone, right-clicking and opening display properties gave me an error) which forced me to reboot a third time. So maybe the answer to my original thought is, "apparently better than it does on PC." I think I need a patch, a new PC, or both before I get back to it.

As predicted, Perceptor with Ratbat and Ramhorn are up to preorder on Pulse

I mean, at an MP level with an MP budget and MP engineering, yeah, I want the real alt mode. On one of Hasbro's $25 Deluxes, though? When's the last time we had a real licensed alt mode that wasn't from the live action movies? Close enough's been close enough for years. Sometimes not even close enough... looking at you, Legacy Breakdown.😠 But here, specifically, I know stuff like Siege Sideswipe gets a pass, but the Aerialbots are going to get nitpicked to death for real-world inaccuracies that are still cartoon accurate.🤷‍♂️

You can have real-world accuracy (if Hasbro would bother to license the alt modes, which they won't) or you can have cartoon accuracy. You can't have both. Does Slingshot look like a real Harrier? Nope. But that's looking pretty dang cartoon accurate.

The other Age of the Primes Deluxe I managed to pick up so far was Air Raid. Sadly, this means we'll have to wait a bit longer for Slingshot, but at least we've got one Aerialbot to look at. In some ways, I think Air Raid had his work cut out for him. Compared to basically all of the other Prime Wars-era combiners the Aerialbots were arguably the best ones, good enough that a company called Ju Jiang tweaked and embiggened them and sold it as an alternative to Zeta's MP-scaled bots. Side-by-side, though, AotP Air Raid really does look like an improvement to me. The overall proportions are better. His chest doesn't need to be extra wide to accommodate that chunky Combiner Wars peg. The gold sticker-esque details are gone, and the excess red on his knees and shins has been reduced to small squares. The Autobot badge as been moved from his shoulder to his chest (and said shoulders don't have those spikes). He can wear is backpack with the wings open. It all adds up to being far, far more cartoon accurate. I do have a few notes, though. I actually still prefer the metallic blue on CW Air Raid's head. It's weird, because the G1 toy had silver on top of his head, and I feel like Sunbow colored him grayish blue to reflect that it's a different color than the white that makes up the rest of his head, but the blue on CW strikes me as more correct. Maybe because Sunbow did use a different gray for Air Raid's face? CW Air Raid interpreted that as blue head, silver face, but AotP is walking it back to silver head, gray face. My only other complaint are the black hips. I get that he'd only get so many runners, and perhaps that black plastic makes for stronger joints, but it really doesn't match anything. Red or white would have been a better choice. For that matter, I think maybe a white torso with red paint instead of a red torso with white paint might have been a better (if unrealistic by budget) call, based on the Sunbow art. Air Raid comes with two guns. They're not super detailed, but as near as I can tell they are a pretty decent match for the cartoon. You also get his vertical stabilizers, which are separate parts that peg in place. Air Raid's head is on a ball joint. He doesn't have much downward or sideways tilt, but he can look up pretty well in addition to turning his head. His shoulders swivel and move laterally a bit over 90 degrees. Unlike CW Air Raid, they're not ball joints. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. No wrist swivels, though they are at least separate parts this time. His waist swivels. His hips can go 90 degrees laterally and backward, and slightly over that forward. And, again, not ball joints this time. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. Like his hands, his feet are seperate parts now. They can't tilt down, but they do tilt up, plus his ankles can pivot 90 degrees. He can hold his guns in either hand. He also puts the "stab" in "stabilizer," as he can wield them like some kind of knives. That said, you'll probably just plug them into the ports on the backs of his legs. The only other 5mm ports he has are on the undersides of his wings, if you're looking for a place to stow his guns. In broad strokes, Air Raid's transformation is not that different than the Combiner Wars toy. Turn the head around, and double-hinge the nose and intakes up and over. Open the legs and double hinge the backs up and over the thighs. Fold down the horizontal stabs. Tuck the arms into the sides. The only real differences are that you either need to spin the vertical stabs (assuming you already had them plugged in), fold in his fists, and (and this is the big one) instead of doubling-hinging his shin up and over his thigh his shin flips up 180 degrees over the thigh, and his feet fold down against the inside of his shins. Aside from his arms not being tucked in as tightly, when viewed from some angles AotP Air Raid is definitely an improvement. For one thing, the silhouette is a lot closer to a legally-distinct F-15 than the more F-14-ish CW version (even with the vertical stabs are too far inward, sitting on top of the engine bulges instead of along side them). Two, while perhaps a bit less interesting visually, the simple white stripes on the wings and the stubbier nose are both more cartoon accurate. From other angles, though, Air Raid's definitely got some issues. As I noted, the arms jut out from the sides. This is because while they do peg in place, they don't actually tuck in at all. The molded exhaust details are a nice touch, but they don't line up at all with the engine humps. And then there's his feet. Look, I know as Macross fans a lot of us are used to more streamlined transforming planes, and I've often suggested that it's an unrealistic expectation for Transformers given that, a.) they have to be cartoon accurate, b.) often were bricks of robot strapped to the underside of a plane in the G1 days, and c.) are limited in engineering due to their limited budget. That said, is there really nothing better they could have done with his shins and feet? They take an already chunky block of robot hanging under a plane and make it even thicker! Why not swivel them around to the sides, behind his arms? Honestly, without the added thickness of his feet, the jet mode really wouldn't be that bad (by Transformers standards). As I mentioned, if the vertical stabs were already plugged into his legs, all you need to do is turn them 180 degrees. They never need to be removed. As for his guns, you can plug them into the undersides of his wings and it looks fine. The panel on his chest with the Autobot insignia can flip forward as "landing gear". Nevermind that it's like a quarter plane-length behind where an F-15's actual landing gear would be, it's at least enough to keep him from tipping forward onto his nose. For the most part, Air Raid's a definite improvement over the Combiner Wars version. In bot mode, it's amazing how much better proportions and working ankles can make for more dynamic poses, and honestly just replacing the ball joints in the shoulders and hips with hinges and swivels is a big upgrade in my book, plus the deco is far more cartoon accurate. The jet mode is also much closer to the cartoon (and an F-15) than the Combiner Wars version. It's just a shame that his shins and feet add so much thickness to the underside, turning what could have been a slam dunk into more of a goofy-looking underhanded free throw. Still, the greatly-improved robot mode and the mostly-from-some-angles improvements to the alt mode are enough to make me prefer Air Raid over not only his Combiner Wars version, but also over his wave mate Solus Prime. He makes me eager to get my hands on Slingshot. Frankly, that's enough for me that I'll give him a recommend.