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JB0

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Everything posted by JB0

  1. JB0
    That's just because we drove out all the people that genuinely wanted the franchise to move forward and made this a haven for weak-willed Macross apologists! ... Actually, I thought the thing that really made it more peaceful was the death of the Mac7 flame wars.
  2. JB0
    So, got my Gipsy Danger, and while it is pretty awesome, I can't help but think it could be better. This is my third SoC, and the other two just had much more presence and presentation. (Dancouga and Voltron are my in-hand references.) Executive summary: There's a lot of empty space inside a rather massive box that feels designed to mislead, and the stand feels like it is there just to pad the parts count. If I had no SoC experience, I'd be quite happy. Having some, I feel like the overall package was phoned in, though I have no complaints with the actual robot. Certainly, Gipsy leaves less room for accessories than, say, Voltron did. I don't hold a grudge on accessory count. They inclusion of both mid-formation and completed chainsword accessories was a nice touch, as was the boat-bat. And I have no complaints with the engineering of the robot. Or build quality, beyond the fidgety-bordering-on-unusuable plasma cannons. But I'd happily sacrifice the chest lighting for a few more inches of height. For such a canonically massive machine, Gispy feels very short, especially after coming out of such a tall box. I'd say half the space of the box is actually used, with a scant quarter dedicated to the star attraction, and it does serve to make the machine feel shorter than it is. Gipsy's eye-level with Voltron's chin, but I'd've sworn it was more like chest-high.(That said, if they were the same scale, Voltron would be staring just below Gipsy's chest turbine.) The instructions that came with Dancouga and Voltron felt like part of an experience, while Gipsy's single folded sheet of paper seems more of an afterthought. Not an issue, per se. The toy is simple and straightforward, it doesn't need much in the way of instructions. But it is a notable enough difference in quality to warrant a mention. While I gather the display stands vary a lot from release to release in the SoC line, this one feels like it is there to pad the box out and justify the large swath of mostly-empty space more than anything else. I wasn't honestly expecting much*, but it is kind of in the position where no stand would have been a better option. It doesn't hold any of the accessories, it doesn't look exceptional, and it doesn't support any of the dynamic posing you might want a support arm for. What bugs me most about the stand is it comes CLOSE to utility without ever getting there. I'd really like to see the same base plate, just wider. And with a couple of swappable arms of different heights, so it could support Gipsy in some more dynamic poses. Or a single articulated arm, like a comically overbuilt Figma stand(and comical is definitely the adjective of choice, because Gipsy's pretty darn heavy). * As far as personal expectations go, my Dancouga came with no stand, Voltron came with a castle-themed weapon storage locker. And I've seen pictures of Gunbuster's awesome launch pad/service gantry. I figured I wasn't getting a Gunbuster stand, just because lightning doesn't strike twice.
  3. JB0
    That is definitely a concern, and I judge no one for playing old games on new displays. CRTs take up a lot of space, even the smaller ones. But there are definite issues caused by the mix. Old systems do things that modern displays don't expect to happen, and vice versa. And that "old system on modern display" situation is exactly what the Super NT is designed to handle. The SD2SNES simulates the C4 chip used in the Megaman X sequels, actually. Star Ocean is playable if you have the decompression hack that turns it into a 12 megabyte Super Nintendo game, but removes the S-DD1 chip from the equation. The Super NT doesn't simulate the S-DD1 either yet, though it is a distinct possibility for future "jailbreak" development(if you own an original cartridge, it will work fine inserted in the Super NT, but it'll work fine in a real Super Nintendo too). SD2SNES development has largely stalled due to ikari's real life situation, so it's unclear if it will ever see more coprocessor support than it already has. Which is not to say the current support isn't pretty good, but it doesn't include the high-profile SuperFX or fairly prolific SA1(and it isn't clear that the cartridge's FPGA actually has room to support the SA1. ikari suspected it would be a very tight fit).
  4. JB0
    There's an argument to be made there, now that you can run ROM images off a Super NT. Personally, I prefer an original console and a CRT TV. I don't like playing games from that era on LCD.
  5. JB0
    SD2SNES is the best Spper Nintendo flash cart. Everdrive is a good brand, though. Super Everdrive's limitation next to SD2SNES is mainly in coprocessor support. I believe the 3.3-5v mismatch is universal across all flash carts, though.
  6. JB0
    Once you asked. Until then, paid money is paid money.
  7. JB0
    Then you haven't been following the Robotech comic book thread.
  8. JB0
    Yeah, I picked up Sludge and Snarl today too. Wasn't expecting too, it's just been a couple pegs full of Dreadwind for ages now. Never picked up Grimlock, never going to. He's sad in tyrannosaur mode, he's sad in humanoid mode, and he's sad in black lion mode(though there's some neat concepts there). Far as I'm concerned, these four are teamed with Classics Grimlock. No, I'm not particularly bothered by the fact that he's a much more modern take on the concept than his buddies. He was involved in a nucleon spill or something, that's why he's different. But hell, I was buying them mainly to attach to Combiner Wars Sky Lynx*. The scale problem is a lot smaller there, given that Sky Lynx is SUPPOSED to be bigger than the dinobots. Expect pictures of Dino-Soar™ soon as I figure out which bot is which limb. ... When you think about it, dinobot scale works very strangely. We want a brontosaurus, a triceratops, a stegosaurus, a pterodactyl, and a tyrannosaurus to all be the same size. And if one is larger, it should be the tyrannosaur, not the brontosaur. *Except Slash. I bought her because she's about 90% awesome.
  9. JB0
    Oh, NintendoLife... we've known about Hayter and Belgrade since 2015.
  10. JB0
    Keijo! Is pretty fantastic.
  11. JB0
    It'd be nice if the success of Nier: Automata led to a refresh of the original Nier, but... it seems unlikely.
  12. JB0
    The BEST version of Mazinger Z.
  13. JB0
    It is popular enough that they can always sell another one. Like Optimus Prime. That said some versions of Mazinger have been pretty good.
  14. JB0
    Anime ja nai! Anime ja nai! Hontou no koto sa.
  15. JB0
    Releasing the Bismarck means NOT releasing yet another revision of Mazinger Z.
  16. JB0
    That's good. The trailer CG is kind of... not good? I'm still gonna wait until this is at the dollar movies, or "on Netflix", but there's actually a chance I'll watch it. I don't go to the movies very often anyways, and full price movie tickets are even rarer. There's only one movie I've ever watched twice at full-price, but Pacific Rim was worth it. This doesn't look like it is.
  17. JB0
    NOT MY PRIME. Seriously, they may be popular, but there's no room on my shelf for ugly robots, unless I REALLY like them. And if I really dislike them, all the cool-looking in the world won't overcome that.
  18. JB0
    I disagree that a sequel should do the opposite of the first movie. If the first movie didn't have something to it, you wouldn't be making a sequel. (I also disagree about how good or bad Pacific Rim was, but that isn't really material to my argument.) If you don't want to make something kind of like the first movie, then why are you doing a sequel at all? Do your own thing, not beholden to any prior expectations. Don't slap the name of something else onto your thing while completely ignoring everything that original thing did. It just makes people mad. It is like making another Fast and the Furious movie, but this time it is about building model cars, or racing boats. Not that I advocate making another F&F movie. The first was an act of cinematic terrorism, and I remain baffled that it did well enough for a second, much less however many there are now. But I'm clearly missing something, since the damn things keep raking in the cash. A common problem with big-budget sequels. The first movie does something interesting, and does really well for it. The sequel gets more corporate attention, and as the higher-ups attempt to polish it to perfect mainstream appeal, they buff out every facet of the original that ever endeared it to anyone. I noticed a very long time ago that Hollywood doesn't actually understand WHY movies are successful, and their attempts to make them better tend to backfire horribly. The two examples that really made me notice it... After The Matrix came out, everything had a "bullet-time" sequence, no matter what was actually going on. Often very awkwardly. Because that was what Hollywood took from The Matrix's success, that slow-mo action shots are a guaranteed get-rich-quick scheme(which I guess they were, if you' happened to be selling cameras...). After Spiderman came out and broke records, alongside a bunch of movies with R ratings that bombed because they were absolute dreck, the suits in charge concluded that people didn't want to see R-rated movies, and they wanted kid-friendly affairs instead. Never mind that Spidey was not kid-friendly. The rule went from "force in some gore and nudity to get an R, no matter what" to "cut stuff out to make sure you don't get an R, no matter what." It never even registered for a moment that quality of a production might matter more than the rating, or what kind of camera shots were involved. And that brings us back to the present. We have Pacific Rim, a movie that did very well in spite of all expectations, so they made a sequel. And the sequel is nothing like the movie whose name it bears, because the original movie doesn't do a whole bunch of things that a successful movie "has" to do. I guarantee that somewhere in a board room, the Pacific Rim 2 conversation started with "What if we made it more like Transformers? A robot movie can't be successful if it isn't full of hyper-caffeinated jumpcuts and a complete lack of momenteum. Also, the cast needs to be teens. No one old enough to drink on our cast!"
  19. JB0
    Who DOESN'T?
  20. JB0
    The hate is coming from people that DIDN'T give it those reviews. The people that liked the movie, and appreciated its unique take on the theme. The people that made it a surprise hit. Faster and shinier is not the same thing as better. In some respects, faster and shinier are antithetical to what Pacific Rim is. We're talking about a movie with a dedication to Ray Harryhausen and Ishiro Honda in the credits, that has "could be implemented as a rubber suit" as a key point in the monster design. It is a love letter to old-school monster movies, in all their melodramatic plodding. This movie is throwing everything we loved away to make it check a bunch of bullet points. It is a slap in the face. I have no interest in seeing something I love being screwed up by people that want it to be something different. They may both be "dumb fun", but this is NOT a sequel to Pacific Rim and it shouldn't be branded as such.
  21. JB0
    I wanted a five-star movie, not a three-star.
  22. JB0
    I blame Tommy Yune.
  23. JB0
    Yeah. The VF-11 was pretty cool, but we only ever saw it in the same three stock animation clips.
  24. JB0
    Wasn't that Children's Palace?
  25. JB0
    I was just being cheeky and dragging it onto a side route. Though I do remember back in the days when they DID redub songs. It usually didn't go well, which strikes me as the main reason that redoing the songs isn't an option these days.
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