DarkPhoenix

Force Impulse Gundam..

Here's a groupshot of the Impulses and my Astray Red Frame..

Both figures use the same frame, as expected, just different colors for the primary armor area (torso, shoulder, upper calf bulge area, crotch-top, and feet (which are different, but not consistant.. Force has red footies, Sword has black footies). Posability is rather good, although the neck is limited in its up/down movement when the head is facing to the side. Double-jointed elbow, balljoint wrist, clavical joint and shoulder joint. Decent waistjoint, good thigh motion (hampered in part by the bulky side-hip, which stores poor, undersized Schneider Cutter(?, the little switchblades Strike had) replacements. Ankles are okay, but could be better, double-jointed knees. Both come with the.. Core Splender, or whatever the unmanned pack-deployer is, the core fighter, which holds up and inserts into the back G-Gundam style, and the funky shield that unfolds 0083/Gundam mk 2 style. Hands are good. The simple 3 sets of 2 (trigger, grip, fists) are present. The Force pack has balljointed lower fins, but the upper wings are static. The weapons are made of harder plastic, which prevents the horrid drooping the old swords had (My Sword Strike Gundam has to be posed with the beam boomerang.. its entire sword warped from its own weight when posed sideways =\). Force has a beam rifle (very nice and beefy looking without being too cumbersome to weild), two beam sabers, and blades for them. Sword Impulse has its two huge-ass swords, which can be combined together at the hilt Darth Maul style (they are hard to pose this way, though, due to the blades facing opposite sides..), and dual beam boomerangs. Now, on the Rick-Dom.. It's the same figure as the Dom, as to be expected, with the change of the calves to have thrustors instead of the hovering duct-fan system. Colors are a bit darker.. Only 3 sets of hands (fists, trigger, grip).. but it has THE BIG HONKIN' BEAM BAZOOKA!

Okay. The underwear was just so brightly colored that it didn't seem to match the rest of the animation, hence my concerns on the matter.

For those of you that saw it fansubbed/raw, did Flay and whats-her-name have brightly colored underwear on in the bathroom/shower area? O.o The DVD has them with bright blue and pink underwear on in this scene, with one removing it and setting it in a suitcase or bag. Were these garments in the original, or did Bandai edit the scene and leave the edit in despite claiming the DVDs are complete and unedited?

The main problem with the Vanu weapons isn't nesscearily their strength, but that the projectiles are rendered in such a way as to really eat up system resources, providing a large chance for you to get killed while your system is going "omgwtf?! I have to render that?!" You're right about the bases thing, although they're supposedly going to introduce redesigned, larger-scale bases soon that involve multi-building structures connected together underground and all that.

...that means you and a few hundred other people can reach out and touch each other, with armor-piercing rounds if you want. I know there's plenty of FFXI players around, but I started wondering if I'm the only one who plays it. For those of you that haven't heard of it, it's SoE's FPS-player version of Everquest, in very basic terms. You have several continents (8-10, IIRC) with bases on them connected to each other with a lattice system, similar to Onslaught Mode in Unreal Tournament 2004. Your goal as any of the three armies/races is to take over all these bases, thusly securing the continent. You then move on to another, stay and defend that one, etc. There's a nice variety of weaponry and vehicles available, about half of which is common pool and half of which is empire specific. Each empire/race has a concept behind their empire specific vehicles and wepaonry. The Terran Republic is spray'n'pray, with high-ROF weaponry that does lesser damage individually. The New Conglomerate packs a heavy punch but has longer reload times (and, almost inarguably, the cheapest weapon of the game: The Jackhammer), while the Vanu Sovenrity has versatility and mobility on its side. Weapons, armor, and vehicle use are handled by certification points you gain as you go up in the ranks, from Battle Rank 1 to 20 (the cap is at 20, allowing you a total of 23 cert points). You get certified to use a class of weapon, armor, or vehicle and then can equip it from the right terminal available in any base. I figured I'd ask again because the new BFRs (BattleFrame Robotics... or Big F'n Robots) are coming out soon, which may or may not grab the attention of some here. More info can be had at planetside.com

Hey, nuffin' wrong with taking inspiration from the Pyro. Although that beautiful ship had a far stubbier nose.. and its missile racks on the tailfins.

It did come out of the crotch, yes. If you want something even worse, I think in 'Gundam: The Origin' it spooged foam over itself to survive re-entry..

Bigbadtoystore.com has it. http://www.bigbadtoystore.com/toystan.asp?Queryid=ban356

When is that coming out, anyways? I really, really hope Funimation isn't seriously planning to release it 3 eps to a disc.. that's just greedy now at days.

I've found Front Mission 4 a suitable, and time consuming, replacement for Armored Core.

Yeah. The 'Nine Breaker' is the/a top-ranked raven. Refers to Nineball dominating the arena during 'his' (Nineball didn't have a pilot, just an AI) era.

Sadly, my imagination wasn't so kind. I imagined Darth Maul doing the whole nerd-laugh thing after making QuiGon-ka-bobs.

Sadly, the removal of Human-Plus/OP-Intensify from Armored Core: Nexus made the series jump the shark for me. It was already getting close with its increased leanings towards 'realism' with the introduction of heat, and further down that path having to worry about heat build up from normal boosting and more stringent energy managment. AC started as a nice, semi-realistic 'anime' mecha build'n'shoot game. It seems to have forgotten the 'semi-realistic' part and just gone off and made itself TOO realistic.. I LOVED the AC games. I got a PSX for Armored Core. I spent the longest time playing the demo in videogame stores, then finally got the real game. I played it religiously. I blindly bought the sequels on the promise of more missions and parts. I got a PS2 MAINLY for Armored Core 2. I even left my PS2 on for several days straight because I didn't have a memory card yet but wanted to play the game. Another Age was bought and conquered, AC3 was lusted for then bought, mastered and played into the ground. Silent Line was bitched about, but conquered after over a month of hard work. Then I heard of Nexus. Lots of missions, the 'Past' disc.. I was excited! VERY excited. Revisiting the best parts of the previous games in addition to a whole new game? What was there to hate? Then the rumors of OP-I's removal started to come in.. the changes to the gameplay engine.. Nexus sounded good despite these changes. Surely OP-I would help remove the problems of decreased energy supply and gaining heat from boosting that were introduced. No, it wouldn't. Because FROM SOFTWARE gave into the whinings of some hard-asses and removing a part/system that had become tradition. Something that had been part of the game since the beginning and survived 7 games. P-Intensify kept getting more balanced and useful with each game and as of AC3 became easily switched off when you wanted it to be. From the initial 'go 50K in the hole alot of times' way of getting it, and your inability to be rid of it, to the vastly improved OP-Intensify system of AC3/AC3:SL where you actually had to EARN the abilities, HumanPlus/OP-Intensify was a part of the game. A controversial part, but a fun part for many players. With the improvements to the system in AC3, it finally became BALANCED. You sacraficied all your optional parts for it. You had to EARN it, you couldn't even get a grasp at it until you finished the game. Yet it was still stupid, unfair, unbalancing, and marked you as a 'n00b'. When the hell did the opinion of a few 'hardcore' gamers get any authority to determine how others could enjoy a game? They seem to have with the AC series, and this former 'hardcore' player of the games, who enjoyed it purely for the single-player experience, has been turned off from the series. Front Mission 4 is the closest to a replacement I've found.. although Naval Ops: Commander helps fulfill my 'build something to blow stuff up with!' urges a bit better.

>maybe one of the crew had a little too much "fun" with the plants. Kinda like sheparders having "fun" with their sheep. Or the gov'ts explanation that AIDS came from some sicko having "fun" with primates. Not to side-track, but I think the official explanation is that infected animals were eaten and the human infections began that way. They do eat monkeys on Africa (and probally Asia?) after all.

Update. I did infact receive my R-L2 from hlj.com. It installed just fine.. It was expensive, at ~$20, but the other option seems to sit on a waiting list forever and hope to get one..

Hate to reply to my own post, but a picture of the upcoming MSiA Ginn and Miguel's Ginn (Bandai is marketing the customized Ginn of a character that dies in the first episode and whos Ginn is never seen. ) has surfaces. http://www.zincpanic.com/articles/pics/17604/msiaGinn.jpg

Bigbadtoystore.com just got them in stock! The Red & Blue Astrays lack the shoulder emblems that the imported version had, but seem unchanged otherwise in regard to their accessories and appearance. They have the Active and Deactive Strike Gundam units, Duel Gundam, and Buster Gundam 7.5" fig.

For those trying to get L-R2 or L-L2, the 'hip'/intake pieces, I was able to order one from hlj.com using their parts service. It's expensive ($20! ) but given how few are avaible here, it's better then not getting any..

There's nothing wrong with that. The MegamanX series jumped the shark HARD with X7, while the Megaman Zero series on the GBA seems to be workin' just fine.

I don't think it would.. that'd look rather odd. though.

You simply take them out and pop up the top of the forearm, flip the 'wrist' around to expose the molded 'wrist cover' things, and close upper forearm. Nothing gets in the way of the backpack plate or the legs. In the 'real' transformation the hands retract right into the forearm and the plates slide down over the opening they'd leave, but in the toy the plates are just molded detail on the back of the wrist block you flip. If I remember correctly, the word was that Yamato was going to try and accurately model the entire retracting hands and covers thing, but decided it was more trouble then it was worth and went to the simpler and, honestly, just as good flip-the-hands-into-the-forearm design that they ended up using. There's the larger spread hand and trigger finger, plus closed fists. It also includes the smaller, floppy-ish articulated hands as well.

From what I've read in Popular Mechanic (or was it Popular Science. Gah..) they do intend to do atleast suborbital trajectories. It likely won't be as difficult to heatshield such a shell, due to its extremly small size and, thus, lower surface area for friction.

Best theory I've heard is that they make their morphing metal mimic organic material.