1/1 LowViz Lurker

PMed Update us on what you could get. Probably all gone by now

I used to think this, but when you realise that because of its existance it has killed any chance of fans getting to like the original due to not knowing anything about them, it kinda steals all the fanfare from the original creators. (it doesn't help that from now on toys relating to macross won't be available locally unless as "robotech toys" due to the legal problems. And there are no credits for them in the robotech outro are there?) Yeah robotech is original in the sense it has its own story to it that merges all the series together, but imagine if you saw bits and pieces of star wars, the last star fighter, and battlestar galactica, created your own fanfiction or made your own movie by cutting and editing the footage from each and made a trilogy, and called your college mates to do the voice overs for the characters, then it would be pretty mean to the original creators to take all the credit for this. But robotech would not have existed if it weren't for requirements to have whatever number of eps to get it on air, so on the other hand you can't hold them guilty of intentionally wanting to screw over the originals themselves. Maybe had things been different it would have been brought over more faithfully as the three seperate shows. Now I don't mind the robotech universe, but it existing means people would less likely apreciate where its shows were rooted from. So in a sense it competes with the originals by taking from them and preventing the originals from gaining the attention and credit they deserve. By the time of macross plus, and a gaining of awareness for anime in the US, thank god it was not brought over as some sorta robotech sequel, eh? When I look back, I wish Rtech had a more star blazers/space battleship yamato approach: maybe a little censorship, (because of the attitude that "animation = kid cartoon" stigma back then, similar to the stigma attached to videogames as only kid's entertainment that you get today) and changes of names, but not a story change to merge everything so that it creates the mutant which prevents the originals from shining in the way they were originally intended.

Of course they will need to make the hands also good enough for the GBP that they will have to make. (yes they know they wish to make it *uses hypnosis* *dangling old style stopwatch on chain*) After this SV51/52 and PT Octos will be made..

I thought the reason things go up was because of this fear of being "hard to find" (and as time goes on, fan demand which means people will pay the inflated cost to have it) more than how early the version was. (higher chance earlier release has probs) This is probably why the toynami valks rely so much on being limited edition "masterpiece" because if they did mass produce them people would only pay 2cents. heh I wonder why hikaru is so unpopular? Maybe people just like black heatshield with white skull crossbone better than white skull&crossbone on red. (more true to the pirates )

Interesting about the laser weapon. Would these still be weaker than projectile weapons? Can we expect laser beams so hot that they wil melt through the armour without much fuss? Or will they be weak like the head laser in macross which could barely burn a hole in the zentradi ship wall without overheating too quickly to be any real use? (used mainly to light giant zentradi cigarettes and cook large turkey legs jk - ok so shooting down missiles is pretty handy)

For people who own both the early release and reissues with changes I would love pics. Would be good to see the evolution of the versions in order. Sucks that no matter what, no printed eyeball Can this have been any harder than the printed un spacy symbol on the 1/48 valks?

Wooot! looking good. Like the details and the feet as others have mentioned. That was one of the one things about the vf1 that kinda looked bad. (along with wrists not being strong enough to support the gunpod weight) Of course in gerwalk and battroid modes you very very rarely get to see under the feet but it would stand out if you had them in a dynamic pose (on a stand or hanging from a string or whatever, like they were fighting in space or something) and people saw this and pointed out the imperfection. ^ circle would look better intact rather than split open If this thing was a cake, I would eat it. Looks delicious. Wonder if they are designing it for future gbp upgrade? this way if the shoulders are too huge people can't complain..

Yamato will reissue that like Roy I bet. 1S are the heroes. I know that part of the reason I wanted a VF1S was not so much how rare it was becoming, but because of the character.

Oh well, so did the marines in the movie.. (couldn't even defeat unarmed giant bugs and came back with nothing - had to rely on a stupid robot to rescue them)

So far we have: the androids : see the story about the realistic looking robot girl power loader : see the story about the exoskelton to increase strength atmospheric processors : www.rainengineering.com apc from aliens : the ahed Now show me the pulse rifle.

The 21 has a fat body, the vf11 looks slim, but my only gripe is the robot looks like it would snap in half, kinda. I don't like the skinny arms, or the shoulders which have a thin plate in the front but nothing at the sides or behind. Looks like it was only half finished. I much prefer the vf1 in robot mode to the vf11. I've always preffered my robots to look like if you smashed them around, the rounded shape would distribute the shock evenly rather than put pressure on a single point and risk snapping something off. It also looks cool to have round exterior like yf21/vf22 imo. It's just looks distinct. As for ejecting in yf21, that's good to know it is safe after all. If only they combined the bcs/bdi with vf22s...

In the tv show max had blue valk because of his blue hair. Milia had red. (because of her qrau and wanting to show off) Roy had yellow stripe cause he's blonde. Hikaru had black skull because of his hair. Cannon Fodders are brown because they are sh!t pilots. In macross 7 max and milia still have colours matching thier old tv series (see them in vf22s) and there are instance where based on the color of the character's hair the valk is painted to be that color. eg Mylene with pink valk. Given that macross 7 is newer, can we say that a tv series is less correct than a movie just becaue of lower budget? (ie that mylene's valk should be pink, it was all a mistake cuz someone was on drugs when it was made? Both tv series and movie have mistakes, right?) Nah. They just can't make up thier mind, methinks.. Then there are the flightsuits: the yellow stripe for kakizaki, black and grey flightsuit for roy...etc Those events were real weren't they? (that is the designs in DYRL only appeared in the movie to reanact the events in the earlier tv series like a documentary, but due not having access to older valks they used the current day ones with newer cockpit and such, which wouldn't have been canon to the 'real' event in the tv series. After all, kakizaki and roy didn't live past SW I did they? So the guys who made this documentary probably made up the colors from out of thier ass and like what happens in a hollywood movie, you see mistakes ) Trust neither..

In the interview of the macross dvds they mentioned that they got complaints from women and that some of them didn't really like minmay that much because they thought she was a tease.... so there ya go! People love to bash the guy (OMFG Hikaru is such a sleaze for wanting to bed a beautiful girl as a horny teenager in love, the horror!!111) but never analyse the women on these forums and looking at it from a different perspective. (ie was minmay just taking advantage of hikaru?) If hikaru really did go all the way with minmay in the belly of the sdf1 I don't see what's so wrong with it? So long as there is no rape and the girl consents, why would hikaru suddenly not be a man for expressing himself and for not waiting till the end of the war (or until misa stepped in) to finally get the girl that he wants in his heart? I've said it before but I think the reason he didn't go all the way has more to do with shyness and insecurity (understandable cause he is young. Ever gone weak at the knees around somebody you find attractive?) not because he was being polite and gentlemanly. (this is a misconception, that hikaru was always in control of the situation and smooth, actively choosing to wait, rather than unwillingly fumbling or having bad luck and poor opportunities due to circumstances or funny coincidences) He just couldn't come forth with confidence and express his feelings in time before the sudden rescue. And by the time he was getting close; and enjoying it very much, it was too late: her personality changed at the excitement of being saved, and whatever feelings she expressed before suddenly vanished! Had the rescue been 10 minutes late they probably would have been caught humping naked together. On top of this, he overhears the: "He's just a friend.." in the resturant. Minmay had casually shrugged off the meaning of thier time in the ship together and the countless acts of rescue and now hikaru thinks the only reason she acted the way she does was because he was "just a friend" - ie the comfort guy... and only because "he was there" and there was no one else around, then that's the only reason she behaved that way. (not because she actuallywanted "him", not just random dude with a shoulder to cry on, but him, in particular...and was damn serious about it before the rescue) I'm not sure if her comment about "just a friend" was just damage control to ward off attention from what everyone knew could have actually happened 10 more minutes later... or... if she was genuinely naive and did not believe hikaru wanted to actually do "it". But I doubt she was that "innocent" as she claimed to the guys in the resturant. I'm pretty certain the gossiping women would be thinking the same as the soldiers in the resturant: "did she do it? She must have. You don't kiss your friends that way". I can't speak for everyone but if I were hikaru I would be banging my head at the timing of the rescue, wishing they had come at least 10 minutes later.. And I would still be a gentleman for it. There would have been nothing wrong if hikaru had not waited, and instead (after all the role playing of the marriage thing) managed to do the deed. And the same goes with misa, like hikaru with minmay, part of the reason she needed advice from claudia, was because she had that problem of not expressing herself "in time" before it was too late and the thing you want is gone. No one waits for ever. Claudia was telling misa to hurry up or hikaru would not be there and she would live her whole life with regrets wondering "what could have been?" for sitting on her ass waiting. In the movie it is clear why Hikaru chose misa: Being a soldier (and not knowing how long the war would drag on) if he were to die at any moment, do you think he would be nearly as close to minmay as he was misa given the time available and spent together? Hikaru, saving minmay but being distant (and having rsponsibility and chance of dying any moment) is what killed the chance of them going further. Not because hikaru was preferring to wait around patiently.

I like the yf19 in fighter mode but I just realised the other day how awkward the battroid mode is: You have this ugly boob sticking out of your body and these long ass wings on your hips and fins on the ankles that might break off. I wish those little fins retracted into the body like the vf11, cause they look damn ulgy in robot mode. The simpler VF11 chest imo is more practical. It looks good in robot and fighter but a little skinny without GBP armor. As for yf21: ugly head, you can't think about other things while piloting without risk of crashing, and you have to close your eyes and concentrate. Only certain pilots who are used to using this will be any good with it. And even if you wanted to fight a ghost you would have to have a body strong enough to stand up to the stress. (cyborgs?) Also can you even eject out of the plane with all those wires stuck to the helmet? I think cyborg enhancements, and a cyborg-enhanced brain for quicker processing of information are a better solution to increase reaction speed. And it looks like the VF22S could outfperform the 21 in speed anyway, but without the risks of 21, plus you have better head.

That is true: but like any arcade games, they were out of everyone's price range and so we had to make do with conversions of those games to home consoles. What I'm saying is: software developers who focus on fine tuning the conversions to be as faithful in gameplay to the original, but take a hit in other areas like graphics, sounds, and cosmetic stuff, open the door to the GAMEPLAY of those arcade games to people who could not afford to play them in the homes. So long as the core gameplay of the original will not change in the conversion process, I don't care so much as to what platform it runs on. The neogeo version will be better for having that power but if the gameplay is the same it is cosmetic. And this is what happened when conversions of arcade titles started getting really good due to skill and care put into them. (At the time I thought Street Fighter II and NBA Jam were some of the best arcade conversions at the time) If you owned a neogeo you were one lucky SOB, but the core of a game is its gameplay, not its sounds, or how high quality the image is or the size of the sprites. (these are bonuses for liking the game, and we can apreciate the technology helping to bring it but the spirit of the game lies in the gameplay itself not necessarily the technology or specific hardware platform that helped bring it) As an example I can play Street Fighter Alpha III Dash on my gameboy advance the same way I would play it on the arcade. And the GBA version adds more characters to the original and even the much-more-graphically-close-to-the-original DC version. Which would I rather play: the dc or GBA version? At first you might think the DC because of the closeness (in everything) to the original arcade, but in fact the GBA version is more attractive to me because not only does the gameplay from the arcade version remain intact, but it has even more depth than it. The deeper gameplay from the GBA version is what mattered more to me so I would choose that one to play over the DC version. (and I own both) So long as the original creator's gameplay intent is retained in the conversion, the ports will compete for dollars against the arcades and that is why you won't find people playing a game in the arcade that has already been ported to the homes as much as if it hadn't been ported. What is my point in all this? That a higher spec system with higher spec capabilities will always be the closest to the original intention of the creators of the game, but if the core GAMEPLAY is translated well to lesser-capable, crappier systems through skillful developers who care about the game, then in the end....in the grand scheme of things: what matters was the game's gameplay! NOT that it ran on the best hardware of its time or that the hardware was some blanket garantee that the gameplay of a game is even deep or fun. The emphasis today seems to be that the highest spec system will necessarily be the best console to buy. That's bullshit because it just means it wil be easier and more convenient to the developers (some of them may be sloppy) and it doesn't take into account workarounds like compression and such. In a lot of cases, crappy developers that whine about limits should blame their own lack of skills, not a platform. If you've played the GBA version of SFA3 you will really apreciate how great a conversion this game is in gameplay compared to the arcade. Yeah the sprites are smaller than what they were originally intended to be, but it plays exactly like what you would expect it to play, CONTROLS exactly like you would expect it to control, RESPONDS like you would expect it to respond had you played the game years ago when the original was made for the arcades. (and let's be honest its not like the arcade ran on anything special) Strategies you employ in the GBA version would work exactly like they would from the arcade. At the time of the genny and snes, what mattered was that gameplay retained the depth of the game. This took prime importance over whether the graphics were 100% exact (in terms of retaining pixel perfect details) or the sounds had been accurate. Yes there are minute details missing when you scale down something for a weaker platform but when handled with care and compatence, gameplay remains intact. No different if I had played DOOM in a slightly smaller window box and got less detail than I had if it were fullscreen, but the core gameplay was retained either way. All the strategies I use, would not suddenly change due to the scale down process. Anyone who claims a big difference in gameplay from that tiny change would be exaggerating. And yes I know about the scaling effect in samurai spirits which is very beautiful. But gloating about owning a neo only because you have a more powerful system (which is silly) and not because of the games you could access (which is sensible) are two different things. Most people would have to settle for a scaled down version at affordable price if it meant gameplay was as accurate as possible through skilled conversion over the unaffordable "perfect arcade in your home" experience. The SF II conversion to home was just a good example of me choosing a game for its depth in gameplay, not because it ran on a much higher spec machine. Compare SFII on a snes or genesis to Fatal Fury? (FF was an early neogeo fighter) I would say that because FF has less gameplay depth, the fact that is contains bigger sprites, crisper sounds, is outweighed by the fact that is has shallower gameplay. This is because it was designed less well and is poorer in quality where it counts.(in gameplay) Not because the platform let it down but because of por game design. Notice how my choice had nothing to do with hardware? I play both. I see one game having more depth. I choose to play the one with more depth. Simple. Similarly Samurai spirits is a great game NOT because it runs on a high spec machine but because the creators deserve credit for designing such a great game. Again notice how it has nothing to do with hardware? Back then this is how gamers thought. Today it is almost assumed that the platform a title runs on, makes huge differences to gameplay when they don't. (mainly due to lazy cross platform conversions.) Hardware will have very little to do with my decision to buy a next gen system unless that next gen system has fresh content and well-designed and well-thought-out concepts that make me want to buy the system to play the game. But there are some who just buy the system for the platform itself - disregarding the fact there is nothing worth playing on the system yet - "brand worshippers". I won't praise a good movie by the choice of theatre I chose to sit in. So why should people suddenly expect quality games by the system it runs on? Every system has a limit, a great game won't sudenlly suck because it runs on a lower spec machine. It will suck because the conversion process was handled poorly, or the developers were lazy, or if it is just imposible to do. There are good conversions and bad conversions. (take final fight on GBA - poorly done and lazily handled and it didn't even have to be so. Then compare it with SFA III on GBA. Well done! This would be like comparing toynami valk with a yamato valk they are both based on a cool design - the VF1 - but one is handled more competantly than another. The credit for the good design should go to the creator of the VF1, (and this is why people want a accurate toy of it) but the praise for the quality toy should go to the company who made the more accurate "conversion" from idea on paper... to physical object. (the well made toy) In game terms I'm saying the gameplay is that "idea" or "concept" on paper and there are various ways this "idea" can be put into reality. (either done craply or done well) So long as the conversion is competently done, I no longer feel so bad about playing the game on a lower spec system with hardware limits since what was important (the gameplay) has made it intact due to a competant conversion by skilled developers. Therefore we shoud not assume higher spec system necessarily will bring improvements in gameplay right across the board. (it will make it easier for a game demanding it however, but that makes no difference to the consumer on the other end who doesn't care how something was made or apreciate how much effort was behind it, just that is it quality product in final form) But what I'm saying is that today there is an "assumption" that better system means better games, and showing off specs and hyping them to be more important than they are is more rampant than in the past, where there was more focus on appreciating the depth in the design of a game and not technobabble which may or may not have an end effect to enhancing the gameplay in drastic ways. I disagree, see tomb raider or crash bandicoot as past examples. Look even at metal slug. This only survives because it has no competition. Even popular franchises can turn people off (I have no more interest in japanese rpgs anymore) once they get sick of the same stuff over and over again. Eventually what happens is people see the same engine, the same type of things and they become desensitised to it all. This is no different to people seeing sequels to bond style FPS and knowing what to expect because it becomes a staple part of the diet. (they go with what they know cuz its there, its convenient and there is little risk. but disregardng the falling quality.) Maybe they just have little time to research something else? Remember when FPS were the poo because of DOOM and how many clones of it were made? Now people are demanding much more from the FPS because these days they have evolved to create more new experiences and deeper gameplay. It's not just technologically either, but new ideas (through mods) are what spark renewed interest in flooded genres. Just because people do buy something it doesn't mean they are not sick of seeing the same stuff. They buy it not because they want it, they buy it because the market is flooded with it and as creatures of habit they go with what they know. It's like how critics of a bad star wars movie will actually see all the movies just so they can complain how crap they are. They might even buy the dvds or action figures or whatever but still reserve the right to complain. And people bought the GBA and complained didn't they? It's a misconception to think that just because people criticise something for lack of originality they won't still buy it. This is no different from people who use a microsoft product and complain about how bloated and buggy the software is but still tolerate it enough to use it. Using it and tolerating it, and even paying for it does not mean they necessarily love MS. but is it on the same scale as today? As gaming has become more mainstream and less of a kid's niche interest and as the market has grown, its gotten worse and more widespread. Whereby people won't even consider another system because they want the safety of getting what others are going to be getting. People are less focused on individual games and more on whose ads are cooler, who made more noise at a show, the image of the brand (how nice the outer casing looks, and how sophisticated they will be in front of others who watch them with one: even the color of the casing matters) and specs. (there is a word for these people: graphic whores who salivate at tech demos that aren't even full games) Not so much looking at the games themselves. The balance is shifting more away from each manufacturer focusing on itself, to one of putting all its energy on watching what the other is doing and this is going to cost them. People don't want to be decieved into believing something that is not true. Ever heard the boy who cried wolf? Hyping something out to be better than it is, is a double edged sword. But its annoying to not be able to tell someone thier system sucks for various reasons and not have them get defensive or abusive. Criticism is taken as a personal insult, not a truth about the weakness of one platform to another. You can't for example say how underpowered the GBA is, without having fanboys think you are a troll. Previously you couldn't complain about the price of cartridges (neogeo fanboys. Not neogeo fans; but fanboys) without someone trying to defend the actions of the company (as if they were an employee of it themselves) and attacking you back. Instead of being seen as a voice of reason, and constructive, and helpful, you are seen as an enemy! When in fact the advice (say for example advice on ditching a silly feature or arguing aginst poor design) can only bring good. I remember early on during the GBA launch, all those people complaining about the GBA's lack of light as being labelled anti-nintendo trolls on game boards but now the feature to include one is welcomed by all. (even the people formely bashing the critics of the faults) Do you see what I'm saying? Without honest objective criticism anymore, we can't move forward. But fanboyism I think has gotten much worse than in the past. I'm not saying it didn't always exist, but due to the change in power and the size of the industry it just isn't the same as the old 50/50 rivalry in the sega/nintendo years. The one thing sega had was that they came first (cpaturing makret) and so it was natural for nintendo to release a system with more colours, fx, better sound chip etc. So there was a kind of equilibrium at least and some respect by game fans for the quality on either side as developers could exploit and maximise each system's strength and bring out the best in each other to try harder. People who played sonic would likely not stop themselves from liking a mario game, and people who liked zelda would not ignore the wonderboy games. There was a respect for the game titles themselves, and hardware wasn't as big a deal. Fans who played the genny version of Street fighter knew they had a better controller than the snes people, and the snes people got slightly clearer picture due to increased amount of colours on screen. Yeah I suppose that's possible. This is true, maybe due to saturn's strength in 2d. By not showing or encouraging development for any 2d games for PS1, people then can't say how much weaker the ps is to the saturn. But this brings us to the chicken and egg thing: do fanboys who believe it, choose to agree with sony because that's what they always believed and are helping to spread the hype by being vocal? or were they persuaded to believe this idea by the sony hype itself which cuased a chain reaction? To me it makes no difference because those who hate 2d for no other reason that they believe the gameplay is shallow will continue to create this demand by developers for more 3d games due to the fact that they are fanboys being vocal about this silly idea, which developers are pressured to respond to. Both types have potential but there is a huge imbalance and death of one type that makes people who want more of that missing type, have to suffer. I think that had the GBA not come out there would be no outlet for the 2d fans, and even then many of the gba 2d games pale in gameplay to what was available in the golden years of the 16bit era. It's hard to say what really caused the move away from 2d. (I believe the need to have perfect ports of arcade games was the cause and popularity of FPS by pc gamers - before that mainly flight sims were 3d) Had history been different and saturn was the dominant one, (assume sega had the marketing techniques for a second) maybe we would have seen advancements in 2d in all modern games the way it happens with 3d? (kind of like the jump that we saw in street fighter II to Street Fighter III in terms of quality sprite animation.)

http://www.mahq.net ^ good site for pictures of mecha from various anime. Click through to the mecha area under macross.

Voted VF22S. I like the design of the body, the weapons, (both battroid and fighter modes) the shape of the armor on its limbs (round like the old regults and qrau, kinda looks sporty and high tech but strong and bulky too) and the hood that protects the head in battroid mode. (looks like an H.R Giger alien) I also like the bending and folding of the wings and the long legs as well as the tucking away of parts to gain an advantage in stealth. Its feet look well curved and have a feminine quality to them but still look still cool for males to use. The battroid combines the best stuff of human and zentradi imo. It looks agile and fast like any VF but it retains the shapes and style of fighting of the alien mecha (lots of rounded edge like the zentradi "green poo" warships) with its inbuilt arm guns for attitude and as a good close combat weapon. (I can see myself killing people by strafing and dodging fire with expert precision just so I can finish them off with a PPB punch and point blank range shot.) I also like the cockpit canopy. It just looks different. I think head turrets are useless now that pilots have wrap around monitors to see 360 degrees. Mecha with no necks, protected by armor around this area are the future imo. Like the Zeon from Gundam, the zentradi are more advanced for mass production robots. (its just that un spacy are too cheap to make them for everyone. For elites only )

But back in previous generations so long as there were ways around a problem, and the game was a faithful recreation of the gameplay that the original creator had intended, that was what mattered. The reason I used street fighter II as an example was because this was one of the games that really needed to recreate that depth of gameplay you had in the arcades or people would really complain. Given the limits of consoles, and the budget of the average kid who is a fan of the arcade version of the game, the consoles versions would have competed with the arcade versions for money had the conversions been accurate enough gameplay recreations of the better arcade versions of the game. And this was what mattered: people saw that gameplay was the focus first, and could tolerate the reduction in graphics and sounds if it meant the game PLAYED the same. You see, it no longer mattered now that neo geo as a hardware platform kicked the sega genesis or the snes's ass in all those technological areas and that they as little kids with little pocket change couldn't afford to have the system due to how expensive it was: because so long as the gameplay was accurate on a sh1ttier system we would be happy enough. A slightly lower res sprite, a crappier choice of colours, a missing frame of animation, sound fx that might not have sounded as good as the arcade etc were cosmetic trivial things compared to important factors like: the game controlling perfectly, the combos working as they did, the collision detection being accurate, damage levels balanced etc... ie actual gameplay-related sh1t. But what I'm trying to say in all of this is: I think that is all changing now due to the "business" side of things and the need for fanboys to "justfiy thier expensive purchase" such that they would go so far as to bully people on a forum and insult others based on thier less popular choices of platform, not on thier taste of games. And they would bully them for the sole purpose of encouraging others to buy or support the platform that they favour. (fanboys that are kind of like free agents trying to bring a change of opinion) This sort of thing wasn't as common imho in early days, not compared to today at least, and that was what the original poster that I was responding to was trying to say. (which I agree with) If you think very carefully about why the arcade industry has slowly died out over these past years you will see it is due to home consoles being more powerful and competing with them. Now that the conversions of arcade games to the home are very close, and so long as they keep the crucual important gameplay intact (in a fighting game, slight changes may be big enough difference to tournment players) people disregard the platform they are playing that game on. Which is my point about previous generations: they were more gameplay conscious about the reasons for why they would buy something - not necessarily caring about the hardware itself. And this is why I believe next gen systems will fail to live up to the hype of the fanboys because they want high technology but to the rest, if there is very little difference in gameplay of games in the next gen, all it will do is fragment the industry more. The incentive to wanting a new system is to play a game you have never experienced before. The difference I wanted to make clear was that today if you have an increased level of detail in a game environment, automatically people think that this = a much much better game overall. (emphasis being on the cosmetic stuff) People then use that as a basis for thier argument that owning a high spec system means more fun. (just not true unless the game was designed for a higher spec machine from the beginning and allows for gameplay advantages from it - ie more resolution meaning you can see further or have a larger radar for eg) It may be true for certain genres, but I think we have reached a level where companies will try to one-up each other by only attacking thier competitor platform's tech specs, ignoring the quality of the content, the ideas behind those games, the depth of the games themselves, and whether they are actually any fun. Fanboys join in and take sides and nobody cares about how good the game's gameplay is. (because they will never try it firsthand - they'd rather be part of a system war which divides the gamefans into platform loyalists rather than apreciators of the games) This is why we saw the death of 2d gameplay because what happened was that these types of games do not display a system's 3d capabilities to the masses and wow the "platform loyalists". The platform loyalists prefer a game to sort of demonstrate what the system's hardware can do against the competition, (a pissing match) disregarding whether that game has been carefuly made and crafted with refinements that make a gameplay difference. (something that you can't actually "see", but something that is noticable and that you can "feel" after many hours of playing the game first hand) There is a difference, some people just won't admit it because nowadays games are just ported over from system to system. (not necessarily a bad thing, but can be annoying for those who want to see new content, with new ideas rather than a quick cashing in or a milking of a tired franchise through yearly sequels.) How much a game sold, how fast the framerate is, how much more detailed models there are, whether the fx are convincing, how well animated a character runs, how many levels there are, the number of weapons, the textures, etc are all the small trivial stuff (the dot points) that people focus on and forget the bigger picture of why they are playing the game and paying for it in the first place. If a game feels good to play even after many decades of technological improvments and changes in platforms, this is the sign of a well-made game. It has nothing to do with nostalgia, nothing to do with you "being in that age", or liking it because it made good use of a system's capabilities and limits for its time - these are pure technological things which mtter very little in the grand scheme of things. Nope: it is because they are still very deep games with very well thought out game design that even stands out to the depth of gameplay of games in later (more technologically advanced) ages: You still sweat your ass off while playing them and they still thrill you and challenge your mind and reflexes and various other skills that makes them fun and replayable that you'd keep playing and being addicted to it, until something better than it, comes along. And what I'm saying is an advancement in specs to a lot of game types or throwing money around isn't what is needed to necessarily make them better. It is a bit like watching a movie with very high production values and admiring the amount of effort that went in to the making of it, but realising that the movie really sucked still. It was an expensive turd. Then watching a movie which is very entertaining, was made cheaply, and one you'd watch over and over again and not get tired of it no matter when it was made or caring about the limits those people may have had in making it at the time. The quality is there despite the amount of money thrown behind it.

Does anyone have a pic of a bootleg vf17? I would like to see a comparison of them vs the bandai. I actually don't mind the look of the bandai mac7 toys in battroid mode. They are too expensive for what you get though.

The characters did save the earth from aliens, so thier usefulness has expired and so who cares if they die? We were only there to watch them to see what part they have in the war effort. That's how I see it. After Kamjin's death there were no more threats and all the main bad guys were defeated. End of story. The good guys still died but thier service left a mark on the others and changed the fate of the human race, becoming memorable events in world history. They are still important to the rest of macross universe, though. (see the flashback episode in macross 7 where they reenact the SWI event) I'm pretty sure Global's mission to send misa to spread the human race onto as many different planets as possible so that we would never make the same mistake of the PC was a fitting conclusion. (the extinction of the PC is a warning to us to not make war. Which is what the human race was doing constantly before, during, and after the arrival of the ASS. The lesson = love each other) Sure the love triangle was what everyone was interested in, but on a bigger scale, thier love was merely a tool to get them to care for each other enough so that they would risk thier lives to save each other's asses which would result in saving the human race. Once that was done we can just forget them. Sounds cold but its true. Same sort of thing happens with macross plus: Guld and Isamu's competition to see who was better, was merely the tool to make them be good enough to save the human race from some mad scientist's crazy plan to use his creation of a synthetic lifeform AI to take control of the world and leave his mark on society. Without these pilot's messed up lives and need to keep fighting, maybe sharon apple would have had her way with us and history would have been different? The lesson: fighting is good, yes its true love is important, we learn this from SDF:Macross, but Myung was full of crap when she kept stopping the two men from fighting against each other. Healthy competition breeds strong men, stopping them from being too much like pussies and allowing them to use thier abilities to protect people. (the sword can be used for defence too. People will fight and argue for what they believe is right or wrong and to protect something. This is natural and good and has its place, since it brings about freedom for those too weak to defend themselves. The zentradi soldier's inbuilt need to fight isn't ALL evil as we've been led to believe from SDF:Macross, but can be seen as something helpful when used as a force for good.) So although Guld's and Hikaru's deaths were sad, they being dead is no less heroic imo for what they did while they were alive. (very much why I like the ending of gladiator or braveheart where the heroes die but leave thier mark on little kids or those close to them even after they are gone. Snooze, I would encourage you to watch the 1st season tv series of space battleship Yamato and then the ending of the space battleship yamato 1st movie as another example, very sad, but it doesn't cheapen the lives of the heroes by having them die, rather it makes what they did more memorable by showing how important the brave sacrifices they made to pay for the freedom of others while they were alive) But I think the characters aren't so much as important as the messages in the story and the events those characters took part in. True Max and Milia may have lived through space war I but no way would I consider him or her more of the main characters or necessarily more important than hikaru just cause Hikaru is killed off. (yeah so don't be discouraged by it and go and buy his toy! He still pulled off some crazy stunts and poo in the tv series and the movie that not many other pilots would have been able to pull off)

hehe Well if it helps: they did get married in the Robotech universe (See: robotech II: the Sentinels). Just exchange the us names for the macross ones. They even show a micronised breetai wearing a strange helmet. Minmay is there at the wedding and I think she even sings at the wedding too.

I know. It was the one system every kid wanted but could not afford! Kind of like certain toys hehe The ads were all about bigger badder better, and you could see it was a pissing match. But none of that mattered then because ultimately people had to choose between the staples. It is still possible to have great gameplay without the need for the baddest and meanest machine with the best specs. Just compare the ports of any street fighter II game on the 16 bit systems to say fatal fury 1 on neo geo or something. (I would still much rather play street fighter even if it is running on a crappier system and not 100% perfect: smaller sprites, lower resolutions, less memory, crappier sound, etc) I wanted to point out that there are still gamers out there (I consider myself one of them) that can see through just specs and make purchases based on depth and quality of gameplay alone without only caring about hardware. But these days it is hard to even have a conversation about the quality of games and thier depth of gameplay without someone looking down on you for being retro. I've had people think: "dude, you must be some poor person to still like those old games. Play something new! Buy the best system, comment with us on how great these framerates are, how detailed that textured building is, how much larger these levels are, how much clearer these sound fx sound to the ears etc"....as if this technology has any bearing on whether a game is actually going to be good or not. These days its embarassing to show apreciation for something just on its gameplay alone and because of the "system war" mentality of people on forums, they are very defensive if you try to praise something they do not like or does not support thier system. It's like they are defending a political party or a footy team or soemthing! And that because they have an agenda right from the start - which is to promote the system they favour and bash the one they hate - you can't really have an intelligent discussion anymore because its cool now to just randomly type in some BS specs or sales figures and gloat "how well X system" is doing or "how doomed your system is!!11", you know what I mean? There may have been a time when we all got along and apreciated each other's library and envied the systems mainly for the games that were made for them by the talented companies who made those games, not envied them because X hardware had this feature which a allowed a cleaner image and less loading time, or a slightly better framerate. Trivial poo that in 100 years time won't matter because like with the example of the NeoGeo, we remember GAMES (specific titles) and the quality of thier gameplay, not the specs. (it may have been a beast back then but is primitive now - and its not 100 years - which brings up my point about how silly we were all then to argue over this trivial stuff. But history repeats and its happening again with these next gen systems: people falling for the hype, people highlighting strengths and exaggerating thier worth, then sweeping the weaknesses under the table "to win an argument" and look good. (politics: not seeing the actual worth of a system objectively due to personal bias or because of thier own sense of brand "loyalty" to whatever company they've invested thier money in. I call this the "lock in" effect. You have already spent X amount of dollars on a platform so you are less likely to want to support a competitor platform or give a fair opinion of it. Therefore you ignore all criticism about your platform to justify to yourself the money you spent/invested.) Nah, I'm pretty certain there were games displaying more than that. (see thunderforce III or maybe I used the wrong tech term) I can't provide the sources but you might want to ask others as my history is fuzzy. Look to people who are shoot em up fanatics and they might be able to provide examples. there are probably various ways to cheat the effect of having more depth in the backgrounds of games: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_scroll but me != a games programmer I don't care how it works, so long as it looked pretty and gave a pseudo 3d effect it was enough. This whole one-upping thing is all because the fanboys who feel insecure if you judge thier system objectively and try tell them the truth about the weaknesses of owning thier platform, will feel like they got to defend thier system against trolls when all people want to do is provide honest criticism. (criticism that will be used in future to improve something.) There is this whole "I gotta defend my system against the evil bashers" belief that gets to me. Any criticism is seen as attacking, and that somehow owners of that system are victims. They have these delusions of being persecuted by haters of thier system when all the critics are doing is being honest about why certain platforms suck more than others. So then what has happened is all the gamers have had to flock (like birds that are alike) to people who think similarly to them and hold the same opinions as them and what you have is masses of mind-controlled, easily-marketed-and-targeted-to zombies who will only want to see the good things about that particular system they like, ignoring the bad things, ....as opposed what it was like in the good ole days where both sides could apreciate good games on either platform and bash each other on the game titles, not just the hardware. (it was about sonic vs mario, not X-brand hardware vs Y-brand hardware. - irrelevant stuff that won't affect gameplay. True we had BLAST PROCESSING and other such nonsense, but not on the scale it is today where the media seem to place more importance of who got more attention at a showing of new hardware, rather than what full games are coming and advances in gameplay depth.) No longer do people comment on how much worse X game is to y game by observing the gameplay depth and fun of the game. Now its about specs, sales, how big something is compared to its prequels in budget, and marketing dot points. Fanboys will try to then highlight that the game is ONLY so awesome because of what the hardware did, rather than highlight what talent the makers of the game had or how carefully and well put together that game was compared to other games. People criticised games more than systems because back then everyone had relied more on thier personal experience with the games and imo were more informed than today's gamers. The hype (marketing something to be a big event which steals a competition's "thunder" - rather than just providing info) and fear (fanboys who won't accept criticism of thier platform because they've been hanging out on forums with people who think too alike to them and have lived a sheltered existance) are the true reasons why companies go to all this trouble to wow people and "piss in cereal" instead of doing thier own thing and just doing that thing well. But it has a side effect: it's the cause of why there are all the fanboy wars on forums, and why people get disapointed when a release can't live up to the hype. A game that can't live up to the hype (generated by fanboys as opposed to objective gamers) is going to be seen by the bashers as a negative thing, because the creation of that hype was partially generated by fanboys who won't think objectively and allow some space to be disapointed. Whereas a sleeper hit that came out of nowhere is a positive thing. If fanboys on forums (whose only purpose is promoting thier platform) could just relax and enjoy something without the need to bash other systems due to this pressure to look good in front of thier "team", the gaming community would be much better informed rather than at war with each other, constantly needing to spread propaganda or cut and paste review scores from bribed critics, reviewers and magazine editors who have thier own agendas. (people who do that can't think for themselves, they would rather not try a game out first-hand and this has led to the same games always making the top ten charts and the growth of only the biggest developers, who will develop an attitude to not take risks anymore) Things definately were different back in the day due to the idea that gaming wasn't so mainstream (no need to promote the brand and show off) and people in my personal opinion were more like a closeknit community and relaxed. You could still have a discussion on videogames without getting into a system war because people apreciated the games themselves more than focused on whose system was dominating the market. It's when you go to a forum and all you see is people gloating about userbases and top ten charts and sales figures that has sort of corrupted people. You could be mistaken for thinking that they are more interested in the business end of gaming and the side of making the most money, (the actual industry itself) than they are about games themselves. They sound more like unpaid agents for the companies who want to sell thier systems, not game fans.

Don't forget the neogeo ads complete with specs showing the superiority of the beast in graphics and sound and how it brought the arcade home. Ahhh the days of fighting over crappy system capabilities and minute crap instead of focusing on the games. Brings back memories.. Genesis imo was king because you could play games by Treasure (Gunstar Heroes) and all kinds of shoot em ups, and the snes was the 2d platformer system showing off its mode 7 fx and bragging to the genesis:"we don't need no fancy 6 layers of parrallax scrolling in the background when we can just use mode 7" But play an intense shooting game on the snes' slower processor, and expect slow down and flickering. (some exceptions like space megaforce showed what it could do when good developers put there minds to it though) Looking back, all that stuff is taken for granted. One thing you've got to understand though, is that this rivalry was healthy for us consumers. The competition only brings out the best in each side. The only thing now is: with all this technology who is going to truly exploit a machine so that thier games show any noticable degree of difference? It's now easier to just port stuff on to multiple systems and there is less chance of seeing games unique to each platform, giving less incentive for each person to want to own all systems. Eventually the most "mainstream" system gets everything ported to it (apart from first party titles which is nintendo's one strength) and those developers won't want to offend the leader. The thing that worries me is when all kinds of unecessary crap to generate buzz (eg. the emotion engine hype of the ps2) is used to trick people into believing thier system is really superior when it isn't. This kind of media attention and hype between rivals is all propaganda until we see full games running on actual hardware that is the same system we will be playing in our homes. As long as people stay focused on the games, you can be immune from all hype/fanboy crap and viral marketing agents lurking on game forums and who probably work for the retailers who are being pressured by the manufacturers to support thier platform behind the scenes or else pull support. (don't let fanboys use fear of "slow sales" or percieved poor performance trick you into making decisions based on numbers they pull out of thier ass. None of that poo matters if total number of best titles of one platform beats the total number of best titles on rival platforms - this is how hype can slowly kill off the more-competant-but-less-mainstream systems and help bring about another 80's-era nintendo-like monopoly) One of the good things about being laid back and not being an early adopter is that you can observe what moves they make and not feel ripped off after the crucual price drops. Another thing that worries me is when game releases are rushed to make a strategic date. I'm of the "if the game isn't ready to be released, don't release it, keep fine tuning it to perfection instead of spreading improvements over several generations of sequels and forcing us to buy slightly-more-improved versions of the same bloody thing"-school of thought.

Almost there. (the one year anniversary of the thread) Can't wait to see it! I've been patient. jk I just thought it would be fun to bump this thread once every year to remind them we are still waiting..

partially because they were not reissued like the vf17 and fire valk were, which are still available. (packed in fighter mode) I got a vf17 and like it (except for fighter mode which looks fat) Maybe people who have bandais think that because the bootlegs are so cheap, selling thiers on ebay won't get them any buyers? (not knowing if there is any big difference and thinking its not worth selling, just a theory.) Even if the bandais are wrong as well, I still want one. (hehe I actually like the long wings combined with the cooler head combination.) ..that is after they release YF19FP which ppl are still waiting/wishing for.