Skull Leader

I was so very happy the day I completed my 1/60 Skull Squadron....

Amen to that. Unfortunately, it looks like that's going to take someone putting their foot down and telling HG where their place is.... strangely enough, not even the mighty Bandai gods are ready to step into this (I SO wish they would...)

Why is it so friggin hard for you to accept??? Your statement as FFVII as "the best in the series" is a blanket statement and invalid. If you'd just say "FOR ME it was the best in the series" and we could drop this whole thing.

An excellent article to show those of us who CAN'T recast how this process is done... it's enough to make me want to try it sometime. Where do you guys typically buy your supplies from? Is this the sort of thing one can find at the local hardware stores? Or should we be looking more upscale?

Chief, I hope you didn't waste too much time looking up those sales numbers, because I'm about to shoot that down. What we have here is a classic case of card-stacking. Just because that many people BOUGHT the game doesn't mean they liked it..... how many people have bought a game in anticipation that it would be good and it turned out it wasnt? (I can name several titles like that.... FFVII, VIII, and just to be generous, I'll name games outside the series... Unlimited Saga, Auto Modelista, The Matrix reloaded, Macross VF-X1, R-tech: Battlecry, and well... the list goes on) Do you think any company with even a FEW brains would show anything less than their total sales? Yeah, lots of people bought the game, and I'm sure there were more than enough who bought the game because it was an FF title and assumed that it would be as-good, if not better than it's predecessors. Those numbers represent the number of copies sold PERIOD.... Duke, YOUR purchase is included in that number, but guess what... so is MINE. While the numbers are certainly strong, I would hesitate to use those as a sole basis for an argument. No one ever wins an argument with numbers alone. Look, I can see the direction this is heading in (exactly where we started from)....and I think it appropriate at this point to say that I would never gainsay someone their like for FFVII. I just think the game is a stinking pile of monkey-poop. Anyone who can walk out and say "It's the greatest game in the series" really can't make an accurate statement. HOWEVER, if you tack the words "in my opinion" or "I think" to said statement, all of a sudden, it can become a true thing. I'm not trying to sway you (Duke) to my side of thinking, I'm simply saying that you're but ONE voice in that 9+ million. I am another. I've got onto Keith for the same thing before, just because you say it's so, or think you have conclusive evidence does not make it so. Maybe conclusive enough for you.

LOL, that article did NOTHING to clear the situation up... even if it WAS in good english, I doubt anything new or groundbreaking would come up.

well, that's certainly how *I* felt after playing it.... I was pretty let down.

I've always thought the J model was way over-rated. I don't know why.. I just don't like it.

So...to sum up, HG is a benevolent corproate entity that selflessly gives it's all to provide the fans what they want, but as usual those greedy ogres at BW have derailed Trash just because they're bad, bad men. Come on, this is the same uber-biased garbage he's been peddling here since before I stopped lurking and joined. Without any facts (at least, none that are presented in his ramblings) he paints BW as the usual baddies that rain on HG's big happy Robo-parade. Hey, what if HG had no business getting a piece of the action for Trash to begin with? Well, first of all, that entire statement of Bankie's is flawed because it's BASED off of his idea that this is all Big Wests fault. He has no proof to back that up. We here on the other side of the chess board do not always see everything that goes on. What's more, Bankie fails to realize that BW's "silence" isn't such a bad thing... BW doesn't go making announcements that blow sunshine up people's asses (*coughcoughHGcoughcough*). In fact, they say precious little at all. That's because they don't feel the need to make every little announcement to the public. If anything, it's HG's bad for announcing the American release before they KNEW they had it in the bag... and it's not the first time it's happened (they keep promising a new series... they've been doing it for a couple of years now) BW's silence isn't such a new thing, or even something to worry over. In all honesty I've never even read a statement that was posted by a PR person from BW. If something needs to be said or done, then BW does it and doesn't bullshit over who's right it is. *IF* in fact they are the ones withholding M7trash from seeing a stateside release, I'm sure they have good reason. I wouldn't want to deal with the leeches at HG either, they have no cut in M7s profit. Also, HG hyped up M7trash as a super-hot manga that most fans absolutely could not live without.... while I enjoy it as much as any other M7 fan, I'm fairly certain this wasn't such a hot manga in Japan... but I could be wrong. If that is the case, BW doesn't have a lot to loose if they opt NOT to market that in the US.

people give the Mario RPG a damned sight less recognition than it deserves. It was a total genre bender and was quite possibly the best SNES game out there (I never got to finish it, but I enjoyed it far more than I enjoyed FFVII) Maybe FFVII WAS a flagship title for the PSX, but it doesn't matter. Beyond a few points (the music was good, and the materia system was so-so) the game was lackluster at best. I'm serious, take those two things away and what's left? Not much worth playing, really.

yes, ladies and gentlemen... 9 out of 10 MW members agree.... it's a radar dish!

I would encourage AGAINST generalizations about paintschemes....that's hardly a conclusive piece of evidence towards it being a VT. Given what we see in the picture, there really isn't much of a way for us to tell if it's a VT of VF. It really could be either. And just as a side note, VF-1Ds were NOT just trainers. They may have been used in the final phases of most pilot's training, but they were most certainly combat aircraft.

I was always touched/moved by the scene where Bodolza's fleet puts earth to the sword ("Love floats away"). I thought it was a big step in animation to show young children along with adults getting killed.... it really hit home the horror of global genocide to me.

I have a list of people I try to impress man, and *surprise surprise*, you're nowhere on it. I'm not bashing FFVII because of popular opinion or anything like that... I don't even "champion" FFVI. It was a good game but hardly my favorite. The key detail you're missing here is that there are OTHERS who have played all 11+ (I'm counting the game boy games, mystic quest, AND I have a friend beta-testing FFXI online, so I've seen it in action) I've also played several of the dragon quest series, Xenogears, Suikoden I&II (III is hard to find around here), Breath of Fire series, and countless others not worth mentioning. The fact is, there are several others who can draw from the exact same pool of experience YOU so proudly invoke and come up with different answers. I used to be a moderator for the boards over at FFonline (WAAAYYY back in the day... try when 7 was just becoming hot and 8 was still an anticipated rumor)...and I saw plenty of people who would up and change opinions about 7 in the middle of a discussion. I was a moderator on the FFIV board, but I ventured over enough to see what was going on. You want to see people surfing the popular opinon, go over there. (btw: I left those boards when they became little more than a comparison for what one FF had that was better than the other... I really stopped liking it then) Others can make educated answers here man... I understand it's all opinion, but just because I don't like FFVII doesn't mean I don't know about Final Fantasy. I'm not an elitist or a bandwagon kind of person. I likewise understand that your statements may or may not have been aimed at me, but there are others here who may sit in similar situations.

Were you playing chronicles on a PS2? The save/load time was considerably reduced when I played it on my PS2 over my PS1. What did they mess up on Chronotrigger? I played and beat it when I had it on SNES, but I'm not recalling much difference... what did I miss?

man, just how many people does HG plan on pissing off before this is all said and done??? *sigh* another project we can slap in the "cancelled" bin (along with English VF-X2 and Toynami American valkyrie releases) just my opinion... but it seems like when any one of these projects hits a legal snag, it just gets cancelled instead of worked out.

Man, that thing's about as ugly as the day is long..... a variant only a stonewell-bellcom engineer could love... Head unit's kinda cool though

Ahh, the graphics weren't the best, but I certainly found it very colorful. So what if the characters were some 10 pixels (exaggeration) tall and there weren't any FMVs?? The characters were in traditional FF Style, I loved it! That was back before big-flashy graphics became mainstream and Square still counted on other things, like a solid story, quality music, and good gameplay to sell a title. I seriously doubt I will ever encounter another RPG that did it for me the way FFIV did. yeah, once I played the japanese version of IV I wondered how I ever put up with the watered down version that got sold stateside... but I ate up FFII (US) when it first came out. you can imagine my joy at the FFIV"Chronicles" release... I picked it up opening day! BUT... I'd still prefer the watered down US version of IV to most final fantasies after VI.

The hero in MG3 will be Big boss in his youthful days.

bah, such debate can be a healthy thing... no one's getting hurt, right? I could happily make an evening out of watching my dog relieve his bowels on my copy of FFVII (if I weren't such a damn completist..).... I respect that others out there may not feel the same, just thought I'd say that. In all honesty, I've never heard someone bash VI before (my second favorite)... most people I've talked to seemed to think that it was the immaculate version of Final Fantasy. I still think IV was the best mix of good music, colorful graphics, and a wonderful storyline. And in terms of playability, well... what other game allows you to stock multiple sets of 99 hi-potions??

This is so much of what the bull leaves behind him on the road. FFVII was an insult to the FF series. It was a decent game in it's own right, but hardly worthy of the Final Fantasy title. Shallow story (c'mon, what happened to multiple plot lines occuring at once??). If they'd spent less memory on graphics and more memory on story depth and sideplots (I'm very sorry to say that this is one area where FFVIII whips the holy crap out of VII)... and when random "special" monsters have to be ADDED to the American version just to make it more desirable?? Probably the worst ending in the History of an FF game (okay, it LOOKS pretty... and you freaks that think you can hear the grass grow "think" you know how it ends.....but let's get real here..... "transcendence".... "salvation..." OKAAAAAYYYY......they could have AT LEAST said "and they lived happily ever after") This isn't to say there weren't cool gimmicks in the game, but not enough to save it... here is where Square strayed too far from the formula. I will admit, it probably made the console... but it destroyed the series in the process... hardly an acceptable tradeoff. FF games AFTER FFVI "AREN'T" (with the exception of "Tactics"). Period. I say let bad enough lie... VII has already done enough damage... maybe it DID bring in a flow of RPGs that might never have seen the light of day in the US, but most people will admit that a GOOD RPG is getting harder and harder to find.

Ok, I have to be honest.... the chances that this movie can be good are minimal, but there IS hope... wanna save this movie before it dies the "before-silverscreen sequel death"??? Call in Michael Biehn (yes, Hollywood's universal soldier), KICK ALIEN3 and ALIEN RESSURRECTION OUT OF THE TIMELINE and let him and ripley survive to fight the aliens with the clan of predators.... (as for Carrie Hienn, well.... she's probably my age by now) LASTLY, bring back James Cameron, because this movie is certain to flop without him... I'm not saying this is the ONLY way this movie will be saved... I'm just saying it's got a snowball's chance in hell of being worth seeing as they list it now.

*sigh* we can but hope.... I'm fairly certain that script WAS submitted to fox. The arcade game was cool, I remember her name was "Lt. Kurosawa" (can't remember the guy's name), but I always played as one of them...HOWEVER, I always wanted to play as a more conventional Marine, as a smart-gunner! I always thought it was strange that your character "one-handed" the smartgun if you picked one up.

If they had stuck with their original script plan that was laid out in the mid-90s (I have it in the premier issue of "cinemascape") this movie would've rocked to no end (basically a female samurai and a predator face off against aliens and a couple of predator-alien hybrids until the USCM shows up and "rocks and rolls").... now I'm worried....

you don't HAVE to seal the undercoat... if you're confident enough that you'll weather exactly the way you want to the first time you don't have to worry about that (but who does?). Cheng's method, however, allows for trial and error until you get it exactly how you want it to be. It's more of a precautionary move than anything.... and in all honesty it makes me nervous when I start mixing protective coats and new layers of paint. You have to make sure that the clearcoat you're using is chemically compatible with your weathering paint.