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JB0

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Everything posted by JB0

  1. JB0
    I don't disagree, but... it is kind of like the Aliens to the previous games' Alien, the Terminator 2 to their Terminator. Or, arguably more topically, the Resident Evil 4 of the series. They took a horror story and turned it into a guns-blazing action spectacular. It has a very different core essence to it. And so many of Samus' new abilities are there simple because "wouldn't it be cool if... ", it makes for a game that is somewhat cluttered. Heck, one of her now-iconic abilities is basically there because "Dudes, what if she could fly through enemies and ram stuff like Getter Robo G? C'mon, I already have the ASM for a shine spark attack coded, just try it out it is SO COOL!" Most importantly, it changed "space pirate" from a career to a species. And that bugs me.... but it doesn't bug me as much as the subsequent "chozo did everything ever" rampage the Prime games and Zero went on after Super Metroid's US manual created the name in a translation error(and the Nintendo Power comic then ran with it and made them Samus's foster parents and creators of her power suit... seriously, that lore originates in a US-authored tie-in comic). I can almost guarantee that Samus Returns changes SR-388 into a chozo colony world. I love Prime, but would be just as happy to see most of the chozo lore erased.
  2. JB0
    I honestly don't remember. I read so many of them, and for the most part I just have isolated scenes bouncing around in my head now. The traditional outlook from the crew's perspective was always some flavor of "she is NOT Yar's daughter, her story is ridiculous whether she believes it or not... but she sure does LOOK like Yar..." The tale she spun them was obviously crazy, but... there was always this nagging doubt floating around. Surely if she were going to lie it would be a better one, right? From the reader's perspective, as from Sela's perspective, her story was an obvious factual truth. But the crew of the Enterprise-D was completely ignorant of the time-travelling parallel-universe version of Tasha Yar that DIDN'T die a senseless death in a puddle of black ink(except Guinan, of course, because she has space magic). ... Come to think of it, Sela was probably ignorant of the primary timeline's own Tasha Yar, so I guess that knife cuts both ways. . The episodic nature of the books back in the day obviously prevented anyone from upsetting the status quo, no matter how much they may have wanted to.
  3. JB0
    Same. I have zero faith in Nintendo turning out a remake that is... appreciative... of Metroid 2's atmosphere and general goals. It is not a guns-blazing power fantasy. It is a creepy, unsettling, occasionally nerve-wracking experience, and really the only Metroid game to deliver on the horror-movie premise(though the NES game tried). Also, you know, the moral questions of our hero character being someone who will literally commit genocide for money(you KNOW Nintendo is gonna downplay the hell out of that). ... I preordered it anyways. Expect me to be cussing up a storm once I get it. Why do I do this to myself? And before someone chimes in to help... no, Another Metroid 2 Remake is not the answer. Right now, Samus Returns has a very slim chance of being a decent remake, whereas AM2R has already been confirmed to completely miss almost every possible point. I respect DoctorM64's work on a technical level, moreso since he had zero programming experience when he started it all those years ago, but artistically his work was an unmitigated disaster. *sigh* Oh well, we'll always have 8-bit. I'm actually about halfway through a replay of the original right now, and it is really amazing how much richness Yokoi and his crew managed to tuck into the world of an early GameBoy game.
  4. JB0
    Seto: I'm taking Star Trek Online for Sela canon. She was out of the system when the romulan sun blew up(#thanksspock), most everyone that opposed her was on Romulus and is now so much space dust, a power vacuum existed to exploit, the new empress of the Romulan Star Empire is a halfbreed with parents in two timelines. It is still fanfiction glorification of a minor character, but it portrays her in a positive light as someone who Gets Things Done and can seize opportunity when it arises instead of making her the galactic whipping girl. ALL HAIL EMPRESS SELA. In seriousness, I liked her occasional appearance as "the romulan officer we already know". Anyone could be there, but she managed to insert a minor additional wrinkle due to that unusual familiarity. Just warped in from time to time to annoy the Enterprise-D on the odd otherwise-minor operation, and stir up that ambiguous-to-the-crew question of "Is she REALLY the child of a parallel-universe time-travelling dimension-hopping Tasha Yar?" once more. One of the older books Data admitted to maintaining a database of all their encounters and accumulated knowledge about her in an attempt to eventually prove or disprove her claims(I believe his emotionless butt said it was due to the effect she had on the rest of the crew), and it was a minor detail I enjoyed. Just the idea that this suspiciously-familiar romulan with a crazy story could dredge up all this baggage just by wandering through from time to time.
  5. JB0
    I see it now. What I thought was just a reskinned upvote button(hearts instead of up-arrows) is now a flyout menu. That's... not very good interface design, really. Not that anyone in charge here made that decision.
  6. JB0
    Hooray!
  7. JB0
    Bahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!! A Trek V sequel... a TRILOGY!?!? Yeah, Trek books these days are a lot diffrent than when I was reading. More like Star Wars books. Seriously, guys. Leave the endless cavalcade of galaxy-spanning crises and heroic lineages to the other franchise. Get back to what makes Trek work. ... And more Sela cameos, plzkthx. Oh. Never mind, the books did that too. And screwed it up.
  8. JB0
    I didn't know we HAD a downvote button.
  9. JB0
    Yeah, I think Shatner's novel is the most prominent actual USE of the Borg/V'ger connection. And, well, it is pretty bad. All Shatner's Trek novels read like bad self-insert fanfics with Kirk as some overpowered author wish-fulfillment avatar... which I guess they are. Really, I've long felt that the secret to a good Trek novel is to try NOT to make it a big deal. Don't write some galaxy-changing event, a multi-book saga, a universe-spanning epic, or a shocking revelation that will change the way you view X forever. Just pretend you're doing a TV episode with no budget restrictions or union contracts or star egos to assuage. All the best Trek books I ever read felt like they were "just another episode". Not every story needs to be Best of Both Worlds or Wrath of Khan. Also, thank goodness no one is willing to tie into Star Trek V. Imagine if someone decided to write a book about the god trapped in the center of the galaxy.
  10. JB0
    I think the worst part of Hun-Grrr is his legs/necks. The necks look ridiculous because they are flared to bulk out his legs, but they look ridiculous as legs too. It is like someone accidentally drew his legs upside-down, and no one caught the error until the molds were created.
  11. JB0
    I never said it was a GOOD idea. Though it apparently originated with Roddenberry himself before getting passed around to virtually everybody.
  12. JB0
    I thought it was the other way around, the Borg were the origin of V'Ger.
  13. JB0
    I love that book. True story: I think it is the only Trek book I actually OWN as opposed to having just borrowed from the library. The other one that sticks out in my mind, and honestly skews more towards the bad fanfic side of the equation, was The Kobayash Maru. The main plot thread is Kirk, Sulu, Chekov, McCoy, and Scotty everyone but Spock and Uhura are stranded in a damaged shuttle and killing time before Spock rescues them by swapping stories. The topic of the no-win scenario crops up, and next thing you know the three are telling each other how they handled the most famous test in Starfleet Academy.
  14. JB0
    BEST. THRUST. EVER.
  15. JB0
    That's funny, because I was skimming the last couple pages, saw the part about "the books are all about the main characters doing everything and everyone being connected to someone from before" and thinking "Not Corps of Engineers! Aside from Scotty, the cast was all-new!". I guess if you grab a small enough bit part, people won't realize you grabbed anything at all. I still liked Corps of Engineers, though. It was very different from the usual Trek book, and the lack of main characters combined with unusual premise let them mess around in interesting ways.* Darn shame the series didn't sell very well(being sold as eBooks in a pre-Kindle world didn't help). I think I dropped out of Trek books around the time they did a 4-book interseries crossover about... demons banished to the far corners of the galaxy, I think? That sounds completely insane, but I am pretty sure it is a thing they did and not a fever-dream. I mostly just remember it was REALLY bad, even by the standards of the market. Voyager and then Enterprise were giving me all the bad Trek stories I could handle, I didn't need print to fill that void in my life. (The real problem: Janeway Binks darn near killed Trek for me.) I ALMOST came back to the books after Enterprise, when I saw the first post-Enterprise book to come out was dedicated solely to undoing the entire final episode. Because that was a beautiful thing, and I loved how FAST it happened. But no. I read very few Voyager novels(possibly only the one), and no Enterprise novels. Had to move on to unlicensed science-fiction. *Similarly, on the other side of the Trek/Wars fence, I always loved the X-Wing books. No one more important to the franchise than Wedge Antilles on the main cast, and screw jedi power creep. Instead of the Han, Luke, and Leia Power Hour, it was a bunch of franchise-nobodies doing all these things that the regular cast can't get away with. There was also a tension that's absent from most of the stories because they can and do write some of them out. I'd also argue they were more Star Wars-y than the mainline books, but opinions may vary.
  16. JB0
    Welcome to the (space) fold, brother.
  17. JB0
    Kinda what I was thinking. It is sexy, but not SKANKY. WELL NEVER MIND, THEN. I never even considered that possibility. I've clearly watched too much anime, I just assumed the girl had a tail. I mean, she DOES have a tail, but... not one that's ATTACHED to ... you know what I mean.
  18. JB0
    Makes sense to me. A battleship girl without huge freaking guns(and I don't mean that euphemistically) is just WRONG.
  19. JB0
    My heart, it is broken!
  20. JB0
    That is pretty hot. And I like that they've done a new version of the original show's song instead of a new song. Not that the other adaptations haven't had good songs, I just like the nod.
  21. JB0
    Honestly, I can't blame 7 too much for the music=magic thing. It is easy to blame Basara and Doctor Chiba, but it needs to be remembered that DYRL was the entry that elevated music's role from "an aspect of culture that is very easy to share" and on to something with actual special powers. 7 just made it explicit. Really, the way music is handled, and the Minmay hero worship, makes most of the animation since then a sequel to DYRL. The original TV series standing at this point is basically "what if Macross took place in a weird parallel universe where music DOESN'T have supernatural properties and Minmay was just a pop star?". Also, I will never forgive Gamlin for blowing up Millia's VF-1. I'm kind of surprised she did.
  22. JB0
    Oh, I'm not saying it is an implausible outcome. Just that it is not a foregone conclusion, though it really ought to be. (I believe Jim Davis DID get a trademark on Garfield Orange, incidentally. And UPS has a trademark on poop brown. Both limited to within their respective markets, of course. )
  23. JB0
    I remember Memo, vaguely. What possessed him to blame you, other than sheer madness?
  24. JB0
    You'd think so, but in a world where you can trademark ordinary english words like Jazz and Word and Scrolls and Saga, it is not much of a stretch to trademarking made-up words that weren't made up by you.
  25. JB0
    Did someone ask for the Stampede Valkyrie? (No joke, I really do want to see this guy rendered in plastic)
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