Lynx7725

Just waded through all the screenshots.. You guys do know it's supposed to be out Apr 17 right? Anyway, I'm a bit put off by the graphics. I quite like the old cartoony style graphics. It's got.. an abstract sense of realism, especially when you start blasting holes in cornfields. This new version seems to be more surreal, for some reason. Probably lighting.

Oooh yeah. UFO, that was a barrel of fun, mostly because its AI is actually fairly smart. I had a lot of fun with the game, but the most memorable thing I had was the original UFO actually kept its weapons data in an easily accessible method. So I edited it.. and had laspistols that could -- and did -- blow its way through hills, much less aliens. As you might guess, that became pretty much a downhill run.. but fun, while it lasted.

You really handle one to see it.. Mine, the gun hand just cracked, I'm not happy. Anyway, my list of improvements: Redone hands, definitely. POM, maybe, but definitely not the rubbery stuff the MPC comes with. Better joints, as in, joints that are less limited in motion. This is especially true of the shoulders, which is kind of restrictive. Upper arm too. Hips may benefit from using ball joints but the transformation might be a constraint. Better waist joint. There's no real need for a telescopic waist joint, and it jammed on mine once. I rather have waist that can twist rather then the silly telescope. Better joints anywhere it has to take weight, such as in the legs/ ankles. I noticed a tendency for the feet to sag now. Better head/ neck design. The current design encounters too much friction somewhere; the paint is rubbing off for some reason, and the Red/ Zeta type's head is fugly while we are at it. Better missile launcher positioning/ design, especially the forearm missiles. Some of them are so badly positioned that they are shooting into the inner sides of the arms. Definitely need improvements there. Integral side sensor. Currently it needs to be fitted on manually in Diver and Battroid, and it's a fiddly piece that can easily go missing. I rather it be integrated. A proper securing mount for a loaded rifle in Fighter. Right now, you need to remove the clip the mount the rifle, meaning YET another fiddly bit to keep track of. More ground clearance in Fighter. Chest compartment can be reduced (and that fiddly idiotic MOSPEDA deleted from the package!). Better landing gears. Especially the back. I have one wheel with insufficient rubber, such that there's a large and obvious gap in the tyre... Better overall fit in terms of locks. The arched back is mainly due to this (as you need everything to be locked together in Fighter, which introduces a bit of arch), so a better fit would go a long way to removing the arc. LESS f@%#king diecast. Yes, LESS. Or at least, put it where it matters, like in the legs (where it is good for balance), but not in the torso (where it does piddley squat). In review, the best thing would be to redesign from scratch. Too many fiddly problems. And if Aoshima is really picking the MPC for their line, I feel ashamed for them, really... Now that I looked over my list of improvements, I have to conclude that there is no one fatal flaw in the Toynami MPC, but a bunch of minor and irritating flaws that reduces the value. Death by a thousand paper cuts, as they say.

Err, that looked like a big club with wings strapped on for good measure. Ingenuous, yes, but quite ugly.

Guys, this is an aircraft thread. At least post something that's got wings and flies, and rockets/ ICBM doesn't count!

The E-Zaku is great; that's why I have three of them. Only minor issue is that their stock weapon aren't that nice, but once you see a E-Zaku with twin shotguns...

Snarf as the leader....? Hey guys, this might be worth it. I mean, for the sheer comedic value of seeing SNARF as the leader.... Lion-o is a bit scrawny now ain't he? Lion or Alley-Cat? EDIT: And the rock band part? That's not so nice. You guys ever hear a bunch of cats yodelling the night away? Ain't pleasant.

Tomcats do it better! (Bigger belly. ) Tomcats do it better!! (I didn't say everything the Tomcat did was good, just that whatever the Tomcat did, it did it in a "better" manner than other planes! ) Slightly more seriously, the Tomcat is a classic design that screamed predator. For all its ills and problems, it is a significant and beautiful aircraft. While I fully understand the need for a replacement, I can't help but feel the F/A-18 is a poor replacement for such a beautiful and glamourous aircraft.

Generally, in this board's overall opinion, Tomcats do everything better..

Which won't be much of an issue. What can be glued can be unglued... Then again, I'm not getting Meggie. Just didn't think Prime needed the company.

For those who missed this the first two times (like me!), HLJ is now taking orders for its June Restock.

GArh. I was hoping this thread won't come back up. I spent a few days bittorrenting it. Wish I didn't. It's... not terrible, but not good either. I mean, some shows make an effort to be so terrible that you remember them for it, but ShadC isn't one of those. It also didn't make enough effort to be good enough to be memorable either. And I'm saying this as a moderate -- I'm not a RT basher, nor a full-blown Macross diehard. Lots of loose ends/ untidiness. Vince Grant looking like a slab of meat with occassional mouth motion. After a few minutes, I wanted to punch him just to see if his face could actually deform. Jean Grant looking like a teeny-booper in the army. The irritating Louie Nichols. The whole gang felt like a bunch of teenagers dressed in mecha playing army. The only one halfway decent is Scott Bernard, but I guess they didn't had much creative license there, did they? There are also inconsistencies in the story; for example, Skull took off with 10 planes, lost one pilot (the ever irritating Sidekick) and barely an hour later they took off with exactly 10 Super Alphas.. sigh, people DO keep track of these things, and by missing out on these you make it painfully obvious where you cut corners. And how exactly did the Incarus managed to repair its fold drive after the black hole encounter so quickly? Louie might be a genius but God he ain't. Mecha sequences that had a tight perfect straight line deployment of mecha in space when they should be deployed in (at least) a loose semi-sphere for coverage. (Not to mention they cut corners and just C&P all the formations across the board, so you get a whole fleet all flying in perfect tight formation with EXACTLY 10 Alphas at precisely the same distance in front of them...) Mecha combat is senseless; instead of the famous massed missile fire that Macross is known for, we get little spurts of missile fire, and the invids could only shoot in straight lines.. and ever noticed that the volume of fire expected from an Invid Clamship full of Armoured Scouts is surprisingly low? You expect the space to be filled with random bursts of energy going all over the place, but no, it's always a few streams going off in a straight line. Even when you get a closeup of the Invid Scout giving the coup de grace to the Wolf CO, it looked like a bloody touchlight flashing. BAARGH! Big boobs all over the place (but you start to ignore them after a while.. meaning, the characters with the boobs aren't very engaging to begin with). Mecha that are inconsistent with published art (Since when did an Alpha deploy its legs in Guardian mode when linked with a Beta?). Then the whole plot full of plotholes.. ah well, you guys can spot them better than I can. Voice acting was more of Voice Reading. No emotional ties to the characters being portrayed. The only character halfway decent is Maia Sterling, but even then, gargh, she's passable, nothing great. It came off as an attempt to showcase some company's CG stuff, with a plot tacked on as an afterthought. Even then, it felt like the budget was either too small, or has been siphoned off into someone's account. Not terrible, but very low value IMO.

From the Nether Regions of Page 4, I summon thee! Ahem. Anyways, some good news. HLJ sent me an email last week stating that the Type Zero Revoltech is shipping. When it gets here I'll let you guys know.

How's the Ingram supposed to catch a Max Special?? EDIT: But the thought of Oda going all postal on Max is quite entertaining.

Well FINALLY. How about the Sazabi-E? Got it yet? The Sazabi-Pro is a great piece but I love the Sazabi-E more, problems and all.

Aye, but he'll also be one poor Mowe too. The Alphonse is good-looking, but I'm really waiting for a Zero. That'll get my money.

Oh, you did not mean to say anyone is jumping the gun, just that everyone is jumping the gun? Of course. But that is added effort that I find isn't really worth my while. Previously, Toynami was the only game in town, so it was unavoidable. Now, the consumer potentially has a choice (certainly in the case of the Alpha and Beta, and likely for the Cyclones too), so I'm a lot more price sensitive and choosy -- which would give me more value for money? Even at 50% off, I'm not sure whether a Toynami Alpha would bring me value, but that's a personal opinion. If I want a toy, I pay the best price I can find and afford for it at a given point in time. If I could find say, a Yammie 1/48 VF-1S with a good price now, and my wallet isn't screaming, I can pay for it (and also the inevitable FAST packs...). If my wallet is screaming, I might salivate but I'll pass. Otherwise it just boils down to how badly I want the toy. Do I think I want a Scott Cyclone? Not hard enough grab at the heartstrings, so no, I'll pass. May the 1 of 10,000 that I passed on get to somebody who really wants it. I dunno. Toynami claims tend to be a bit on the wild side for my taste. I don't really care about the production numbers of a toy, so long enough is in the market to make it affordable. 10K or 100K is meaningless since I would never be able to gather so many in a single location. The theortical question is, once the toy gets a bit rarer -- as 9K of them find good homes -- is the price on the remaining 1K of items going to go up or go down? Despite a claimed limited run for their Veritechs and Alphas, I think in the main the secondary market prices for MPCs are steadying at MSRP or slightly lower. Maybe it's too soon to ask, but it seems a good sign that market forces are valuing Toynami products at their true worth. Does that mean the same would happen for the Cyclone? I like to think humanity is a race of habits...

I think the issue is that Germany and/ or France would bail Airbus out. A governmental bailout solves short term problems, but the long term impact to the commercial aviation industry cannot be ignored.

$79.99 ??!!? (Ok, $69.99.. so let's discount that to "??!!" instead..) Sorry, my wallet insist on me not spending so much on a box and air. As good as that seems, it's simply not on the "buy" list for me.

Sigh. I missed the second offering from HLJ. Looks so much better than the Mediacom Jin Roh.. So tempting. But oh so expensive..

Pulling up some ancient history.. Remember the mystery GOL crash last year? The one where the juggernaut Boeing apparently ran over a small Embracer jet... and the Embracer got away? Well, wikipedia had some updates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gol_Transport...eos_Flight_1907 In summary, the two were assigned to the same flight level and just ran into each other. I think what happened is that the Boeing crew just didn't understand the extent of the damage until it was too late..

It's not just you. It doesn't lock.

Don't think that would be viable. Toynami's chest looks to be overly large in comparison, and there's that popping upper torso mechanism you have to cater for. It might turn out to be too much work for too little effort. Do we have anyone on CM's payroll?

Focus on the Legioss, guys. Try not to drift into unwanted territory. I can understand why some people might not like this interpretation of the Legioss and Tread, but that's really personal taste. I happen to like a Tread that looks like it might stay in the air with something other than brute rockets from its tail end... I think I like CM's interpretation better than Toynami's "prototype". The Legioss, there are points I don't like about CM's approach, particularly around the chest area. I hope they can adjust it but I think it's unlikely. I can live with it though, especially if I get a working Tread out of it.

Make no mistakes, I'm expecting this to be expensive. USD200? For 2 transformables, I think it's more likely USD250. But don't quote me, it's just a gut feel thing. Thing is, I'll still pay the price, barring horrid reviews. The engineering on the Legioss looks solid, better than the Alphas ever did in photos. If you think back, the Alphas looked alright but something's always a bit subtly wrong with them. Comparatively, while there are areas where the Legioss can be improved, I think it's almost a shoo-in as an Alpha replacement. (The key decision point is how the Jupiter head looks like.) The Tread? It's hard to know how Toynami would react. They could do a self-review and decide that their Beta doesn't match up in quality (just base on sculpt alone), or they can decide that there is a sufficient interest to release their Beta in competition. They could wait till they have a copy of the CM Tread to study the engineering, or they could try to rush it out the door to say they got it out first. Toynami makes odd business decisions from a consumer's viewpoint. So, without knowing if Toynami intends to sell their Beta at whatever pricepoint they would set (which, from all reports, is going to be an expensive one), it's safer to go with the CM Tread. Even though I know very little of CM's QC -- tempted to get the CM Patlabour just to figure it out -- I do know Toynami has a history of design and QC flaws. So, yeah, it's rolling dice a bit, but I think CM's Tread got better odds than Toynami's Beta.