1/1 LowViz Lurker

I think it is more about the space issue than price. Some people actually want smaller stuff just because it seems like the right size. An exxample would be the megahouse mospeada ride armour vs the larger beagle. Maybe people like a whole "group display" on the desk vs 1 large toy? Anyway it's just opinion. I like 1/60 scale, just wouldn't mind seeing smaller stuff tried too. The ideal would be something that tries to be as posable as revoltech as much as possible, is PT, and as good as a himetal in transformation simplicity. (ie the shoulders in vf-1 toy) Certain enemy mecha also seems more suitable at the small size too imo (regult, gluag, qrau etc) The emphasis here would naturally be how good they are to pose and how they look in groups.

The companies are strong in different things but yamato could learn from the himetals if they ever decide to attempt version 3 vf-1 1/60 in future. Nobody can deny that they (bandai) have the superior shoulder transformation and I hope for your sake and mine, that they copy this in any future yammy vf-1. It really makes the toy more fun to handle. Take the best things of either toy, combine them together to make the ultimate toy, whilst scrapping all the bad things of either toy. (ie himetal swapping parts, yammie weak shoulders problem etc) Then profit.

Many yamato fans of this board come off as anti bandai since if you think about it yamato cared for us hardcore fans early during the dry years so we owe yamato our respect. However nobody can deny that with smaller, highly-detailed himetals, bandai has shown they can do good toys for those with a smaller toy budget and this is all good news for us macross fans in general because the competitor = more choice now. Now we have mainstream toys, (version 1 mac f chunky munky) the collector grade toys, (over-priced yamato 1/60 made in smaller quantity for desperate nerds with money to burn) and everything in between (models with accurate look with transforming features). What I would like to see is yamato try to one-up bandai by attempting PT 1/100 toys. They can learn from what bandai have done with himetal and not have to worry about competitor since bandai killed this himetal line. Imagine a 1/100 yf-19??? Yamato would make a lot of money doing this and I think releasing something like that before a more detailed 1/60 version 2 in future would be good business. Bandai did 1/100 konig monster and one-upped them there, now it is time to see if yamato can one-up bandai in 1/100 for valks. Yamato still beats them in the 1/60 category (vf-19 is there best work so far imo) so if they wish to "dominate" they need to start showing what they can do on the smaller toy front.

People who hate the himetal are just spoilt for choice imo. The toy is good just that people here love to compare it with the yamato which isn't fair but is done a lot here because of the price of himetal. If the himetal was cheaper, and if bandai did a lot of macross toys in this line (1/100 QRau would be perfect) I bet people would buy these. It's just not going to be bought over the larger toys that's all. And a lot of people who own the larger stuff make those their first preference and might just buy the smaller toys if there was no other macross toy to get at the time. It was the opposite with the ride armor toys. People ended up buying the crappy Megahouse ride armour ("it was more collectible" they said. Whatever that means..) simply because they were impatient and skipped the high end Beagle ride armor. It makes me sad knowing we won't see any future himetal yf-19 or beagle ride armor releases. Oh well at least you can now pose a vf-1 and vf19 next to the konig monster..

I love the vf-1 himetal. It's the "high quality banpresto valk" (or mini yamato) I wished for years ago made into reality but at a high price. hehe I think the one area the himetal beats the 1/60 v2 yamato vf-1 is the gunpod. The gunpod looks chunky on the yamato but it seems more carefully sculpted on the himetal. (ie it looks like it gradually gets skinny close to the end and thick in the middle of the gunpod whereas the yamato gunpod is chunky all over.)

What I would like kawamori to do is keep macross a sci fi show with mecha and physical aliens. Then make a whole new mecha show about the shadow people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWOiSflrAv4 it would be like gundam with far more sprituality and more like the floating rocks thing from macross zero with more weirdness but action like gundam or star wars but with proper guided missiles and stuff. This show could be brought to International audience because it would not use the macross name but be a macross-like show with "new-agey hippie" themes in it like Star Wars or Gundam. There would be a lot darker tone to this other show and more mystery like the original macross at the beginning where we were terrified of the aliens and they were more like giant monsters. The fact is SK has some interesting ideas but the mystical stuff is obviously pissing off the scifi mecha show guys. I liked the theme of macross zero and the end of the world prophecy ideas in it but I don't think many liked the floating rocks and move away from the sci-fi and into sci-fantasy. If he can reboot macross into a new show that can be brought to international audience I would like that. I liked macross plus a lot despite it originally not being part of the macross series. All he has to do is take all his mystical ideas and throw them into a new macross-like show. (like his version of robotech lol with people with psychic powers, telekinetic powers, prophetic visions that allow pilots to avoid death through spiritual awakened powers etc combined with macross-like tranforming mechas. The pilots are the more evolved people that break the limits of the human brain through training but they would still need skills like normal pilots without psychic abilities and sensitivity to alien entities from other dimensions who take control over thier bodies to guide them.) If max jenius was ripped out of macross but given new type abilities and fought demonic aliens then that'd be the show. The zentradi originally refer to themselves as "satan's dolls" and the show would take a much more literal take on that: the aliens are demon-like and are not represented as just the evil intentions of ordinary men but a physical thing that can be killed with mecha or robots that have been posessed by demonic force that turns on humans (ie the sdf1 going out of control in macross plus due to AI thinking it was god and playing around with the minds of humans through mind control as the more highly evolved being) There would be no pacifist ideas in the show but it would be more about taking responsibility for feeding the demons thier energy which they would harvest and use against the humans by exploiting their spiritual weaknesses.We created them from our own minds they came into reality through our ability to create, and we are destined to fight against them to correct ourselves. (think of it like the humans in the movie "terminator" where the tech surpasses the creators and the creators must undo the mistakes of the past to solve the problems they themselves created. Obviously the terminator represents Herod trying to kill the messiah, sarah conner is Mary giving birth to the messiah, and the human resistance is the humans preventing satan from assassinating their savior) In the future, machines would have real souls and humans would ride the mecha like the way you might ride a horse (not literally) where the beast becomes more attuned to you and understands your intentions and pilots could concentrate on aiming their weapons while the mechas act on orders of the pilots. They experience emotions and stuff and can think out of the box like a human with original ideas and a personality. They are mechanical, but there is a spirit inside it and can lose focus, make mistakes, make bad predictions and break its rules to learn like a human. The humans invested a lot of money experimenting in the development of super soldier type mechas with demonically enhanced powers which causes them to go crazy and seek to control its creators as the beings that escaped from their ancient prison are now free to possess all the minds of the weapons and create their own zombie-like army of soldier mechs. All the negative emotions of hate, fear, greed, jealousy, pride etc causes these entities to become more powerful and recruit more humans to their cause as they corrupt the nature of the world they now inhabit. (think of it like the one ring of Lord Of The Rings where friends turn against each other at the amusement of these evil demons that feed off our negative energy and physical/fleshly/worldly insecurity) Like gundam the only solution is when people finally stop fighting against each other and working towards peace to rid themselves of the demons they created. All the technology like in Battlestar Galactica would be semi useful (manual guided weapons) since pilots would not benefit much from automated systems which do not detect these beings. Pilots' own psychic powers would be needed to make accurate attacks. Their brains and heightened awareness would be like the "radar" for being able to hunt these things down. (just like "The Force" is used in star wars to detect the movements of your opponent to give the outward impression of fast reflexes and cat-like agility.)

To the OP yes I would like a remake but try not to change the story around too much. The footage in that pachinko game was nice. Maybe make all the battles as exciting as modern animes and give it close to movie quality smoothness. DYRL is still a movie within SDF and the story in that is not a remake since in that retelling minmay had never met hikaru before she was famous. DYRL was more of a retelling of the story in a different way. I would hope a remake just keeps the canon story of SDF (where they had no space carriers to attach to the ship yet) but upgrade the visuals and redo battlescenes. Keep the old mech designs (maybe make the vf-1 a little rounder like the VF-0) and leave the characters alone though. Maybe they could merge macross zero with SDFM so that we get to see global civil war that was going on before the arrival of the ship which brought peace. (animate this a little and also show us some anti-un fights?) It would not be like a george lucas thing (new cg effects added of objects that were never really there before) but more like Lord of the Rings' upgraded gollum seen in "the two towers".

I think the idea is that the more desperate people react to buying them now, the more will be made kind of thing. It's all a mind game. Make the collectors fear the limited number so they preorder today, then when the preorder numbers are totalled they make only that amount and no more. Less risky. "What if there is not enough made at all?" is not really the way to look at it, but more like "how much should be made based on preorder numbers?" well at least that is what it looks like.. bandai macross toy shortage = the new "furby shortage" lol http://www.nydailyne...rticle-1.815255 1. start out with the desperate guys first by making limited numbers to get them to pay earlier. 2. wait till interest dies down. 3. lower price a bit for the tightasses 4. sell unsold stuff to the tightass 5. move to new toy (back to step 1) and wait for desperation levels of that old toy to rise again before creating reissues of it. The idea of the artificial shortage is to create panic to get hype for something so people will rush out to gett it early. Some people suspect nintendo do this with thier stuff because it always seems overpriced compared to rivals products. If they suspect that demand amongst people to get one ASAP is quite high they will set price high and stagger release to keep the early adopter thinking it is scarce and make others want to rush out to get it. I think this toy was risky to do though since it is not the main hero mech so it's probably why they are taking the scared approach. Remember when the 1/48 low vis was common and nobody wanted one and how over time as it got rarer people were desperate to get one later? Maybe they want to do this with all releases to create stronger demand before they decide to allow more to be made. Was this really supposed to be important compared to the main valk? How does bandai know it won't be like vf-11 for yamato? So they play these games to ensure demand builds up for this release. (which you could argue is more risky than vf-25)

I hope yamato gets the license one day just like with macross 7. Bandai only gives a crap about their gundam models and had to have their arms twisted to meet yamato's standards. Now that they've fixed their old problem they introduce a new one.

if that is true then it means they miss out on sales too. For instance I just recently bought a ps vita and this was money that I had saved up to get some macross toys. When I have money and want to give it to a company like bandai but can't due to how annoying it is, then it will go towards something else. In theory it sounds like a good idea but it also hurts them in another way. I think yamato's way of doing things is better. Make it expensive but easy to get and develop happy community who can share pics, talk about their latest addition to the collection and spread positivity through word of mouth approvals (or disaprovals if the latest toy does not match up to their high standard they set for themselves - eg lack of tampo printed eyeballs on the old konig monster, cracking shoulders, funny proportions on gunpods for the yf-19 etc) . Bandai: follow yamato's way of doing it please. lol I don't hang around enough to be able to snap up the rare toys but I like them enough to want to buy them. I think it hurts them more than it helps them to be honest. But you know what? If I were a collector it would make me feel more special knowing that I own things that are not easy to obtain so I can see the other side of it. If bandai is making those guys happy for being loyal and getting earlier than other by handing them the money first that is cool with me. I think yamato has the right idea more though because it means those guys who love to collect everything but have to save up gradually to get a chance to own things can be happy. Not everyone has loads of money just lying around. Some of us have to budget ahead of the release to ensure we can get it or we want to buy it only after we see what reviews say about the item and whether is it worth the risk to buy at full price.

I had a feeling this was coming. .. I like 17 better though. I like the dark colours and am not a fan of the long nose of the 171 all that much because it blends in too much with the other fighters.

To me the cost should not matter so long as the overall quality steadily increases If you plonk down $300 and are very satisfied with the toy, vs paying less but being angry about them falling apart or not liking the toy in general you are still better off paying more while being happy. Thankfully macross really only has a few mecha in it and then the enemy mecha, while gundam has so much different stuff in a single show. I think yamato can survive better with macross due to how in the show often the differences in mechs is just a new head or change in the paintscheme. This can be a blessing for the guy on the tight budget since he can still afford to get everything in a show if he saves up or waits for sales. But in the meantime, those who have the money to burn and where money is not as big an issue can see the increases in quality over time and have some incentive to buy shiny new things each year to upgrade their collection. Lets take the yf-19 as one example: those who like this a lot are ready to see this updated in line with the vf-19. It is popular enough to make the effort to redo it worth the time and many would be ok with a new update to it provided the increase in quality was present. If the revisited version was not better than the old toy, there would be no reason for those with lots of money to care about buying. As long as people in the high end market keep buying and have reasons to keep buying (quality gradually getting better and standards getting higher; incentive to see and buy "the new shiny thing") then the companies have nothing to worry about since customers are kept happy. Some releases seem more 'safe' than others so perhaps this factors into it too? If you make a a risky toy of a mech that was not really appealing to the general fan of the show due to limited exposure or whatever, there is more reason to charge more for it because of the danger of having only a few hardcore fans of that toy to sell to which is why only the hero valks seem to get done. The guys that want that stuff made into toy form should just accept that they are a small group and eat the cost if they want to see future stuff otherwise the risk would be too great and you will only see popular mechs. (I suppose fans of macross work at these companies so this helps a little) I think preordering also helps: the company guages your interest in something based on how many can't wait to give their money earlier than necessary. Higher numbers might mean cheaper price since they can say whether enough people desire to see the toy created over something else. Maybe the fanatic is all these companies care to sell to anyway? I can't understand bandai's reason of making things hard to get unless they figure only the high end collector is all that matters and everyone else should be ignored. (the web exclusive BS is annoying - you would think that would only hurt them?)

I probably won't have enough time to fit another epic rpg in my schedule. I still have XenoBlade on wii and Tales of the Abyss on 3ds to get through along with zelda and skyrim. So many games, so little time.. Anyone else feel like they can barely keep up?

I think it was someone else. As I was reading through it all there were many talking about the subject. lol So I got all confused. I think the only reason 3d graphics are used for fighting games now is cost cutting reasons. heh Anyone who plays them knows that gameplay is 2d and 3d is not necessary for these popular titles that got by ok without it in the past. I don't think we will ever see capcom do a new Street Fighter game using 2d hand drawn sprites again like they did with street fighter 3; which I might add has aged nicely. Most likely they will just cel shade a cg model (ie tatsunoko vs capcom). Which is why I am happy there are still 2d hand drawn games like king of fighters 13 and rayman origins that use that style of graphics. yes the guy in cyberbots features in mvc 1 & 2. The robot helps as a screen filling super move. I'm more of a sf guy than mvc though.

Bought this on release but occupied by skyrim. Will probably start this after I complete the main quest in skyrim. Problem with skyrim is how easy it is to get sidetracked doing sidequests so if you set yourself a goal you end up having 50 other things you want to do on the way. 50 hours is just the right length. And I'm glad you mention backtracking is kept down to reasonable levels. I have a lot of games I want to play but I fall behind and end up half completing them and starting another game.

If you get a big enough house: see if you can get that. Street Fighter combined with mecha from Armored Warriors = cyberbots. Man I feel old. The only recent sprites based beat up was that batman game on the Wii that I played made by WayForward. I wish capcom went back and did sequels to some of this stuff. Maybe remake Final Fight 1 and upgrade the game. Make it have multiple pathways, loads of levels, and more characters to choose from. It is interesting that you mention you don't like 3d, (or was that someone else) because one of my fave beat em ups is actually a sega game known as diehard arcade. I tend to prefer 2d beat em ups because I like the sprites, but I will play any good 3d one too. I didn't like the 3d final fight game on ps2 though..

The mid-late 80s? I think for me it was around the same time of after burner, outrun, shinobi, that time.. Loads of beat em ups were around this time. Ninja Gaiden (arcade version) River City Ransom (nes) POW (you play a soldier trying to escape using mostly your punches and kicks and occassionally guns. Then there were games in the 90s by other companies like Konami which had their own beat em ups, and capcom obviously continued their final fight games through sequels. example of a 90s beat em up: I think DD was what really popularised the genre though.. Interesting mech beat em up that might suit this board (you guys are into giant robots and stuff) ^ I loved that game. metal music mixed with mecha and parts that you can add to your character to enhance it. Ask your friend to get you a cabinet of that!

myk: There is also a funny double dragon minigame within "The Warriors" videogame lol

Seriously? DD was the game every guy at the arcades had to line up for to play because it was so popular. Basically this game got ported to every system known to man lol There was even a live action movie. Then final Fight came along and showed us much smoother looking animation and larger sprites. (but it is not necessarily as fun since you can chain moves together how you like in the DD games which makes the game more free-flowing) The various ports to nes were actually not bad but for me the arcade had the 32 bit crunchy sound effects that made each impact sound convincing. My fave DD is super double dragon on Super Nintendo and Double Dragon Advance. I hope one day nintendo allows for GBA games to be downloadable on their 3DS Eshop. Maybe they could upgrade the GBA edition to have 3D (not polygon 3d I mean the 3d screen) So far they have already done it for those who bought 3DS early, but I think they should do it for all games not just a few nintendo first party titles for early adopters of 3DS. My fave track in Double Dragon is the one from Double Dragon 2 where you reach the final boss: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnO6t6q_mwo the twin brothers (much like the two guys in "fist of the north star" who have to fight over the girl in a post-apoc world) must work to beat the guy with the only gun in the entire game, in the butt, and then kill each other. Whoever survives get's the girl and proves he is the tougher guy who can protect the lady. (must be the last woman on earth?) Funnily enough, when I first played in co-op with a friend I never told him that is what you have to do and he thought I had gone crazy beating him up to win the game. More games need to have ending like that where you must beat up and kill the people you co-op with. heh SOR was pretty daring by letting you join the bad guys if you wanted to. There is not enough story in these types of games to keep the interest of people who are not hardcore into the genre and get scared off by the repetition.

This thing better not break if it is going to be expensive. lol I don't think I can afford more than one if it will be even more pricey than mac 7 toys. Graham should show us how much abuse it can take before release to assure us it really can survive ordinary handling. I get scared purchasing first releases. Not trying to panic people but the fact is yamato toys as good as they are, are still expensive. You never felt scared to buy the good ole chunky munkeys. But it wasn't always rosy. People actually complained that there wasn't enough robotech/macross toys anymore and that they had to pay huge $ for vintage toys that are not easy to obtain thanks to lack of new shows. Finally now that the vf-4 is being made, people now say they won't get it because they know it going to cost an arm and a leg. lol I don't believe them because back when the VF-1 1/48 came out, people said that they would only get one of them, and then later what happened is people got addicted and then bought many of the variant paintschemes. I think if you can only get one VF-4, but it is HIGH quality, it will be justifiable at high price just so long as the thing won't crumble to dust. The bar has been raised so if the price goes higher the expectations will also be higher too. The days of owning multiples of the same thing are over for me. I will be looking at reviews before I get one. Unlike the VF-19S and YF-19 I'm not that obsessed over this compared to them. True it does look cool in fighter mode, but the battroid mode isn't as nice as vf-25 or yf-19 imo. I think those things hanging off its shoulder like a letterbox is what turns me off it. What are they anyway?

I hope this thing doesn't topple over too easily. Looks like a very top heavy battroid design.

30th anniversary valk should just be a 1/48 vf-1J with all the extra articulation of the 1/60 plus a gunpod that can act as a cigarette lighter. You get as an online exclusive the giant cigarette used by the zentradi who had it lit by a valk lighting it up with the gunpod.

The big gunpod really stands out. You can tell its a heavy weapons robot. Really intimidating compared to the tiny one the 1/60 yf-19 has. VF-17 is a gorilla holding a big rape cannon. heh YF-19 (at its size compared to vf-19) uses a sub-machinegun. Now that this is coming out do you think bandai will attempt a vf-171 by looking at sales of this?

I agree here. But am ok if there is minor part swapping as a little bonus feature when it is necessary to clean up the robot or make it look good in final form. (eg cover up ugly bits, or intakes etc) I'm still surprised that vf-1 toys don't come with side chest coverings as standard (we see this is part of the robot mode) but yamato go to all the trouble to have gimmicks like rotating cockpits and stuff. You'd think they would give you easy-to-do stuff as well. lol The same company that gave you back pieces and coverings at the top of the vf-1 1/48 in robot mode (to seal up gaps from that angle) refuses to give you side coverings. VF-19 gets extra shield but the vf-1 can't get the side parts.

Being a VF means it has to be variable though in order to be consistent with the whole macross universe regardless of the game.If the game never existed he would still have to have some idea in his head about this. I can't accept a non-transforming valkyrie. It would be like having a ghost drone with a basara style vf-19 face on it and not try to be sneaky looking or threatening. ie it would just stick out too much. lol I know I know. He is also the guy who introduced floating rocks in macross zero but a valk that does not transform is weirder than rocks that can float with people flying on them. The rocks floating may be special magickal PC enhanced technology we just can't understand. But a non-transforming valkyrie would make macross uncool.