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JB0

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Everything posted by JB0

  1. JB0
    I wanted a Combat Mode Sari toy. No joke.
  2. JB0
    YES! We get a likable and interesting squishie character, so they can the show just as her story arc kicks into high gear.
  3. JB0
    And it's all very funny when you consider initial reception was "omg ugly also why are they fighting crime and not decepticreeps worst show ever"
  4. JB0
    " They add that this is not just another traditional Chinese knock-off. It's actually the only officially licensed Star Trek building on this planet." What.
  5. JB0
    You're not alone on the Animated love.
  6. JB0
    It wouldn't be Fate if everyone didn't talk too much. Nasu desperately needs an editor.
  7. JB0
    I can't understand why. Spielberg is a smart man most of the time.
  8. JB0
    Basically, the tech is so advanced that anything you can think to do IRL is probably done on a Valk?
  9. JB0
    Well, the VFs have to carry enough consumable thruster fuel for a good engagement, because they operate in space where the thrusters aren't augmenting flaps. And by appearances, they fuel them space-ready even for ground-based airshows.
  10. JB0
    I understand all the words, but together they make no sense.
  11. JB0
    Makes sense. The thruster nozzles are probably made of a shape-memory alloy, so they can fold flat when not in use.
  12. JB0
    As I recall, Babylon 5 has a Gunstar-inspired fighter, too. Reason enough to watch it right there. Incidentally, I just rewatched Last Starfighter because why not. Every scene around the asteroid segment seems to be rendered in low-detail(perhaps for scheduling, perhaps to free more processing time up to draw the asteroid itself), but the biggest problem shot is later. The closeup of the Death Blossom panels opening is a very low-detail shot, and that's one that NEEDS to be badass. There's some trouble with their lighting in some shots(as the command ship crosses the frontier, shadows "skip" from poly to poly instead of gliding smoothly), but the fact that much of it is in space helps prevent that being a large issue. And again, I think that's due to the detail level. The dramatic shots of the Gunstar in the hanger have none of those issues. (It even self-shadows as it launches!) And on a less effects-oriented note, the scene with the arcade machine "unmasking" the assassin scared the hell out of me as a kid. I thought it was killing the dude and turning him INTO an alien. Also, the remaster has very aggressive despeckling. To the degree that the stars on the side of the arcade cabinet flicker in some shots, and completely disappear in others. Sadly, Universal's never gonna give this movie the A-list treatment, and the remaster is still WAY better than the old DVD release was(film damage EVERYWHERE).
  13. JB0
    I think the old CG still works for the most part, albeit not necessarily in the original intent. I think it feels kind of right that a movie about a kid who became a hero by being good at arcade games has effects that look like they were lifted from a video game(insanely-high resolution aside, it was rendered at 3000x5000 in 36-bit color. You can't do that on your TV, even if it's a UHD display. And BluRay can't deliver it if you could.) The bigger problem to me is the lower-detail shots really stick out. Of particular note is a few clips where a laser bolt is traveling mostly perpendicular to the screen. Once you can see it mostly end-on, the * shape of the actual model used for the bolt becomes visible and it ceases to look like a cylindrical beam. If it was possible to get the old data and re-render everything at max detail, I'd love to see that. It'd be a nice balance of faithful and upgraded. But then, I doubt the data files are still available. And even if they are, you'd need a renderer that actually understands them.
  14. JB0
    "[set Contents] ... -Annoyingly confident face" I find this description hilarious.
  15. JB0
    I said awesome, not practical. It's implied there's more attitude thrusters than are usually drawn. The ones used for VTO showed up in DYRL, under the cockpit of all places.
  16. JB0
    You sure? I was unde the impression that release was just a remaster, not an edit. And owning the previous DVD, I know it was a desperately NEEDED remaster, but it still IS the original.
  17. JB0
    Or you could just land in GERWALK mode all the time. That'd be awesome.
  18. JB0
    Ah, but the borg had that originally, without need of an avatar. The voice of the borg was always presented as coming from everywhere in their ship at once, but it WAS a cohesive voice. When the made Locutus, it was was because they needed an emissary(a task he was remarkably poor at). The Queen was no emissary, despite being far more personable than Locutus. Basically, the Borg Queen is the midichlorians of Next Generation. It's an idea that craps on all the existing lore for the sake of answering a question no one ever asked. And with that sentence Star Trek and Star Wars are united in harmony, and we've reached peak nerd.
  19. JB0
    The better CG shots hold up fairly well, I think, but a lot of them were rendered at lower detail levels for time constraints. It's kind of amazing that a TOY can render better graphics faster than a supercomputer could in the day. (AND hold an entire frame in RAM. The machines they were using actually had to print directly to film as they rendered because they couldn't hold an entire frame for display.) Though... we cheat nowadays. Texture mapping and bump mapping and all that jazz. There's a lot of ways to draw detail that isn't actually on your models. The Last Starfighter renderer was of the "build the detail into the models, and pour all your power into pushing more polygons" school of render design.
  20. JB0
    And that was actually a problem they had in production. When the test screening feedback showed audiences were just viewing it as Star Wars with computer-drawn X-Wings, they actually went back and filmed several more scenes with Beta Unit to try and give the movie it's own unique personality, so it wouldn't just be remembered as "Star Wars Lite" Certainly, they're both similar, but I think I'd be hard-pressed to dub Last Starfighter a Star Wars ripoff, except in the sense that it was a science-fiction movie released after 1979. Most of what it "borrows from Star Wars" are cliches at least as old as human civilization. ... And the Gunstar is just SO much cooler than an X-Wing.
  21. JB0
    I like that when they introduce the main characters, and show their "stats", they're using actual world record scores. Especially in Pac-Man, where the long-accepted record score is actually better than you can earn in a perfect game. They score bonus points(ummm... no pun intended) for getting that one right.
  22. JB0
    I'd argue that with it being thirty years, an origin story is bypassable. Any attempts at doing more with the setting could be presented as a standalone story. Only "Last Starfighter, The" fans would need to know it WAS a sequel. Like Tron: Legacy, only less stupid. Or Jurassic World, for that matter. Not that they WOULD do that, but... they COULD do that.
  23. JB0
    Luke didn't have a robot body double making out with his girlfriend while he was saving the galaxy.
  24. JB0
    Hey, if the end result is as hilarious as Robotech x Voltron, I have NO problem with that.
  25. JB0
    Darth Vader is Hikaru's father!
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