CoryHolmes

I enjoyed SAAB because the technology, for the the most part, was believable. The bridge was cramped and tight for space, as was the whole ship. The "flight deck" was suitably cramped as well, with all room being given to hoses, cables, mechanical parts, and some extra room squeezed in for the humans to work in. As well, the characters and plots were well written and well realized. And as a show, it wasn't afraid to pull its punches and go for the hard drama, as opposed to the sappy cop-outs that abound in SF today. It really did need a few more seasons for it to realize its full potential. Also, it was nice to see a space-based SF show from the grunts POVs, instead of the command staff

Given their pricing scheme so far, I'd say it would be a safe bet that the MSRP for a Beta fighter would be $80 USD.

Graham, you took the laugh right out of him!

"Finger attack"? Do I even want to ask- oh, wait. Abombz beat me to it.

That's practically impossible on these boards

While I on the other hand collected hundreds of S&M comics Graham Ahh, so *that* explains things.

Well, to be honest, Mospeada never has had the best of animation or line-art for its mecha. So I think it's safe to assume that such control surfaces are supposed to be there, but were simply ommited to save time.

Indeed. SAAB was one of those shows that really deserved another season or two.

By "poorly written" I meant in the sense that the activity level and story tend to wax and wane, not keeping a consistent level. As others have said, it's exessivly wordy, and there are great gleaming parts where nothing but dialog occurs, characters are introduced and given detailed history and descriptions (over many paragraphs) who are never seen again, plot development is rocky, and the novels just seem to sit in neutral for most of the time. Yes, reading and watching movies is entirely about taste and personal preference. Not everyone can write (or direct) to please EVERYONE, but a good writer and a good director can please most people with their works. And judging by the amount of money it's made, the LotR movies have pleased a lot more people than just the ones that enjoyed the novels. That much you have to grant the crew behind them. Doesn't mean he can write well. And though this might be somewhat offensive, to those that say PJ did a good job here because of the source material he had to work with... well, think of Shakespear. Think of all the movies and theater productions of his plays. There's a LOT of source material there to work with, and it's still easy to screw everything up and get a crappy film/play/whatever. And one last thing. If you think PJ is so horrible at what he does, let's see YOU go out and make a good movie.

I will grant Peter Jackson this: He made two (and soon to be three) very entertaining films out of a trilogy of books that I couldn't stand reading past the sixth chapter. The novels are, in my opinion, poorly written and very, very slow. Jackson took that material and managed to lose most of the excess baggage while keeping the spirit and story in one cohesive unit.

Then it becomes a sport

Ummm... no. TTT is a few minutes longer than FOTR (both just under 3 hours), and ROTK is 3hrs 20 mins. Both count as "long" in my book

Same running length as the others: Long. Longer even on DVD. But long, nonetheless.

That's because the Bandai toys are built like a brick! One description I heard is that you could drop your MPC off the desk, and it would break when it hit the floor. You could drop your Yamato off the desk and it would break when it hit the floor. You could drop your Bandai off your desk and watch it crush through the wood flooring and into the room below, still in one piece... I had one of the first 1/60ths, and the legs on that sucker would fall off at a poor glance from the family dog. I was also unfortunate enough to have bought the original VF-11 toy. At least Yamato learned from these mistakes for the most part. And I will grant you that the MPC isn't nearly as well constructed, generally. I think that Toynami learned from it's mistakes, too, and the Alpha will be better.

Now one has to wonder why you keep buying them... I'm a gluten for punishment... Naw...the reason I'm getting them, is that I'm getting them for dirt cheap. They do look good sitting next to each other on the shelf. Its just that they will never come out of the box. Is Toynami's QC that bad? The current gen of mechs are all made in China(Bandai, Yamato). How come the MPC's came out like poo? How do they justify the prices for such bad quality? Is it that Toynami just chooses to use inferior designs? Define "inferior designs", and then we can answer that one. The Yamato valks are designed in fighter mode and transform around that. The MPCs have the best looking Guardian/Gerwalk modes that I've seen in any toy or model. It's an issue of what you like most. I keep my MPC in Guardian mode, simply because of that reason. As for QC issues, look at all the problems the Yamato toys had, up to and including these latest 1/60th series of toys. However, I can say that I'm very interested in these Alpha toys. The sculpt look better than any other Alpha toy available, and for far less money.

Yeah, that sensor pod over the right shoulder is too far forward. It should rest on the shoulder itself, rather than sit in front of it.

Yeah, what Mechamaniac said with that attatched pic. Right now, I'm trying to type around a jaw that's settled on my keyboard. It's not as easy as you'd think. I'd really, really, *really* love to see some more pics of that CF, in various poses. Fantastic just doesn't do that model justice.

I don't recognize most of those names, save for Tiffany Grant. She's a good VA, so there's some hope for the dub.

As a fan of the pen-and-paper D20 SW RPG game, I was a little apprehensive with how well those mechanics would translate over to a computer game. I should've have even bothered worrying. FANTASTIC is the only word that really comes to mind whenever I try to tell someone about the game. I really like the ability to pause the game in-combat and queue up the moves. I tell you, the hardest part for me to get used to was rushing into combat, and not immedially button-mashing to attack (like in Outcast or Academy). The lightsaber combat was everything that it should be, even far above Outcast/Academy. I never once hit any bug in my XBox version. None. Well, the only bug I did hit was the one mentioned above: the game itself I hope to see another SW game done this way. Nothing short of fantastic.

And that whiplash is taken care of by those nice, padded belts that pilots tend to wear at times. And you also have to take intentions into effect. If it's a planned change, then the pilot will presumably kill spead so the change isn't that hard on man or machine. If it's an unplanned change... well, that's what those strappy things are for.

The reason I say that the transluency is the most Tron-esque bit, even though it's not in the show itself, is because it's a hint of the computer world of the setting. Well, that, and it just plain looked cool

Will you be keeping the translucency you had from your first project? That was the one thing that screamed "TRON" to me.

It's not like the New Gen. animation is wholly correct in the first place I'd stick with the line-art more than I would with what's seen in the actual animation.

Yeah, the Alpha's stand a measly 28' tall, when a VF-1 is almost 43' in battloid modes. So yes, the models in the pictures are the same scale and appropriatly sized to each other.

The Robotech people simply saw a way to use something that most Macross fans turn their nose up at. That "animation mistake" is considered to be just that by the majority of the Macross fanbase. RT decided that no, it wasn't an animation mistake, and have run with it to come up with a brand-new mecha. Personally, I think that's better than trying to use the Recon vessel seen for a second and a half in Force of Arms, which is clearly a precursor to the Elintseeker design of DYRL. If RT had done that, Macross fans would've been up in arms over it, bashing away mindlessly about how unoriginal it all is and how they're only stealing the best parts. So leave the YF-1R to RT canon and an animation mistake in Macross and call it even, eh?