mikeszekely

23. 24 at the beginning of February.

I love how David provides us with technical information without committing himself to an answer!

For transforming mecha, Zeta Gundam is an excellent choice. In my opinion, it's probably the best Gundam series out there, and probably two thirds of the mobile suits transform in that one.

I don't know about that one. Afterall, the USAF picked the YF-22 over the YF-23, which a lot of us at MW consider the inferior plane. But, the YF-22 was cheaper and more conventional than the YF-23. A government doesn't have to have money problems to limit their military's budget. Usually, if there's an overt threat, the military gets more money, but in times of peace, it's put on a budget. For example, when the ATF competition was going on, the US was still involved in the Cold War. When the YF-22 was declared the winner in 1991, the program called for 648 planes at $86.6 billion. But since the Cold War ended and the subsequent military reviews, by May of 1997 that was cut to 339 planes and $58.3 billion. In 1999, proposals were made to delay funding of the initial aircraft for two years, and in the end some experts predict that there will be as few as 125 for the final production numbers. (source: Superfighters, from AIRtime Publishing Inc.) In the years since Space War One, the UN military has had to deal with Zentraedi seperatists and anti-UN terrorist groups, but at 2040 they were more or less in peace time. The YF-19 would definately have been a lot cheaper than the YF-21 and would use more conventional technologies (no BDS, BDI, or mission adaptive wings), scored high enough with Isamu as the pilot, and perhaps most importantly, was left standing in the dust of the Sharon Apple incident. The UN probably felt that the YF-19 was good enough, and left it at that. (More budget concerns would affect the deployment of the VF-19, again paralleling the F-22). After General Galaxy gets around to re-tooling the YF-21 design, they have eliminated some of the most costly systems, but were still left with superior fighter. General Galaxy re-submitted the design to the UN, and they decided to purchase the design in limited numbers for special ops because it was superior. Data or no data, spec ops groups always get the best equipment, while the grunts get the cannon fodder equipment.

Okay, for those of you who didn't get my first post, I was joking. But because my wife actually likes these kinds of movies, I rented it for her. Now, this was the first time I'd seen it, so I can't say how it's different from the screen version... but I have to admit, although there was absolutely nothing to the movie... it wasn't really that bad. Oh, and the Pussycat Dolls scene was pretty cool, since that's supposed to how they actually do it on stage.

My only beef with Evolution is that it started to reinvent the X-Men (kinda like the Ultimate X-Men comic book), but ended up rehashing comic book storylines (Apocolypse, that whole thing with Gambit, and now maybe Phoenix and Nimrod...). Not to mention that half the rehashed characters whiney teenagers (Shadowcat, Boomer, Rogue, Ice Man) and the other half are bland immitations of their comic book selves (Wolverine, Magneto, Cyclops, etc). Okay, I guess that's two beefs.

If you watch the battle in episode four, it's quite clear that Guld is the better pilot. While Isamu wasted ammo and made very few shots connect, Guld bided his time forcing Isamu to expend his ammo, while carfully removing Isamu's fixed weapons (blowing off his fast packs, stealing his gunpod and even nocking his head laser off). Only after Isamu was rendered virtually defenseless did he try to deliver a killing blow with his micro missiles. But you could argue that althougth both Guld and Isamu were really pissed at each other it was only Guld who was fighting to the death and tring to kill Isamu. isamu knewing the truth had no desire to kill Guld. Plus it would have been Isamu who won the fight. Guld put all his eggs into one basket so to speak and failed. If Isamu had wanted to kill him he could have blwon guld sky high ater Guld thougth he was succesful. Or maybe Guld is a simply a better tactician, while Isamu can handle the vehicle better. We do know from those little colored bar chart thingies that the 22 was killing the 19 until Isamu became the team's test pilot.

In other words, it's bait to get more cash out of the target audience(horny teenagers going "D00d, it has boobies!1111"). ... Which is pretty much what I suspected when they slapped hte unrated label on it. What? You mean there aren't any boobies? I am so taking my copy back to Best Buy.

Don't cry, guys! Check out page 42 of the October issue of Popular Science magazine. Lockheed Martin, with the support of an unnamed backer, is trying to develop a new supersonic business jet. Wind-tunnel tests and computer studies have already show that low-boom jets are possible, they just need to get the full-scale prototype built. According to the article, Gulfstream Aerospace and DARPA also have low-boom jets in the works, but LM is likely to finish theirs first.

The VF-19 is tomorrow's cannon fodder. The reason the aces get the VF-22 is because it's more expensive (and they'd already settled on mass producing the 19), but is still the superior plane.

Need I mention that a good number of anime viewers will probably end up not buying official releases after downloading or buying HK bootlegs... Not particularly. With Keiji Inafune as my witness (he's the guy that created Megaman, and Abombz!! can testify that that means a lot coming from me), I swear that if Macross Zero ever sees a commercial US release, I will definately purchase it. Before anyone remarks that my oath only covers Macross Zero, I'd like to point out that I'm not an anime fan. I used to be back in high school, but I kinda lost interest in all except Macross and Gundam. And most of the good Gundam stuff hasn't been commercially released... yet.

1. I'd rather watch it on the 27" TV than the 17" monitor. 2. I'd rather enjoy the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound on the speaker than the tiny sound my little PC speakers would put out. 3. Believe it or not, broadband internet is not available everywhere. (Comcast technically services my area, but the wiring in my building is too old, and as of yet the landlord doesn't see fit to do anything about it.) I don't care to tie up my bandwidth for two days to download it when for $10 I can have a disc and a case that play on aforementioned TV and surround sound and looks nice with the rest of my DVDs, subs be damned. Anymore questions? <_<

Point.

At least you're okay, and at least it was your car. Like a week after I got my license, I was speeding to make a greenlight, understeered, over-corrected, didn't re-correct to avoid hitting some old guy's 'vette at the intersection, and wrapped my mom's car around a phone pole. The front end was pushed halfway to the dash (thank god for the cabin's frame!), and I wrenched my shoulder to boot. For that reason, I got to ride the ambulance to the emergency room... which was good, because if I wasn't hurt, my mom probably would have sent me!

Is there a decent PCEngine emu that's not Magic Engine? The idea of paying for an emulator doesn't sit well with me. I tried Hugo 2.10, and just a regular pce rom file to test it out... at first it's okay, just a little flickery... then all the sudden it jams up.

Not to mention passive stealth. The active stealth on the VF-19 goes down, it's gonna have one mean radar signature...

F-22 and the YF-23. It's a shame we couldn't have had both...

Not big enough, IMHO. VF-22, hands down.

Pretty modest for a walking dictionary on the subject, David.

That'll learn me. Don't sweat it.

Is it possible to rip the audio and video from the DVDs I have, and then add different subs? If so, what do I need, and where can I find good subs?

Exactly! The YF/VF-19 is cheaper and more conventional, and thus is declared the winner. The YF-21/VF-22 is actually the superior plane, but is costlier and less conventional (even the VF-22, which has a more conventional cockpit and controls, requires a special flight suit). Kinda like the whole YF-22/YF-23 thing in real life.

Um, yeah, he asked about Macross Zero, not Macross TV. And I honestly can't answer the question. Everyone must be using the R2 DVDs as their source. With reguards to subtitles, though, I haven't seen or heard anything about any except the MI versions, and eBay sellers simply seem to know that they have a Macross Zero DVD to sell, not who made it. For the MI versions, the audio is excellent Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sounce, probably identical to what is on the R2's. People have complained about the video quality, but I don't really have any complaints there. I'm starting to wonder if it's pixelation that shows up on something like a computer monitor, which has a much higher resolution, since I really only watched them on my home theater (DVD player connected via S-Video to a Panasonic 27" CRT TV). The subs, though, we can all unanimously agree are attrocious. It's like the subbers had some mild understanding of the story and the names for the characters, so they threw something in whenever someone is talking, and yet it doesn't make sense. A perfect example is in the first episode, when Shin goes outside the hut and seems some chickens. He says "Tori," which is Japanese for bird or chicken, but the subtitle reads "Sara and Mao." Rather than dick around with eBay (I got burned when I bought Zeta Gundam off of one seller, only to find that it was a bootleg of the MI version... that is, a boot of a boot, with the worst video I've seen on a DVD yet), I buy my DVDs from Animeniacs, who carry the MI versions. The MI DVDs aren't a bad way to go, just got to mahq.net and check out their summaries after you watch them. It helps clear some things up.

Not to alarm anyone, but Rebel Strike was reviewed in the new issue of Game Informer... and it didn't do very well. 6.5 (out of 10) from one reviewer, and a 6.75 from the other. A quote from the article, "The butchery that Factor 5 has inflicted upon this game has led to a disasterous release that will likely be remembered as one of the biggest dissapointements in all of gaming." The gist of the review, from both reviewers, is that the on foot stuff is terrible, with bad controls and a useless targeting system. The flying parts are still supposed to control fluidly, but the enemy AI is supposed to be terrible, making the game way to easy (and boring) this time. Doesn't sound good, guys. I'm gonna save my money for Castlevania instead.

I used the VF-22 for that mission.