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JB0

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Everything posted by JB0

  1. JB0
    I own it on DVD AND BR! That gets me autopromoted to moderator, right? ... Actually, I own two DVDs of it. One's the pre-remaster release(and stands as proof that the film needed the work), the other came with the remastered BR. ... And I'd buy it again if it was released in a collectible Gunstar-shaped box.
  2. JB0
    Pretty much. Tron is, or was at the time, interesting for it's premise of being inside a computer. But it's got terrible pacing and pretty awful writing. And in the modern era, the idea of being "inside the machine" and interacting with programs face-to-pixellated-face is kind of silly. Tron Legacy has less serious pacing issues, but it also has a much more limited vision and even worse writing. Meanwhile, The Last Starfighter is over there being all smugly superior about how it's the movie about video games that didn't suck.
  3. JB0
    System, singular. Remember, mainframe computing, pre-internet. Most of the work was on terminals, not personal computers. Also, the biggest problem with Tron Legacy, narrative-wise is that the best solution would've been to let Clu win. He wants to get out of the system and into the Real World™ so he can conquer it and rule like he does in the digital realm(a task he never completed anyways)? LET HIM. Because once he gets out, he's nothing. Stripped of his digital powers, he's just another impotent megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur. I'd give him twenty minutes before the cops arrest him for whatever he crime he thought he could commit with impunity. And then he's charged with resisting arrest and assault of an officer. PROBLEM. SOLVED. But that doesn't exactly make for much of a movie.
  4. JB0
    Maybe I've gone crazy again. Been a while since I watched +. I remember the whole scheme straining the hell out of credibility, though.
  5. JB0
    I think the OVA has problems. I'm still trying to figure out how Guld intended to frame Isamu for attempted murder by loading live ammo into the YF-21's gun and then shooting Isamu with it. The fight is awesome, but makes no narrative sense.
  6. JB0
    I still don't understand why she's wearing armor on her arms and legs, and a cloth bikini on her torso. It's HOT, but I don't understand it.
  7. JB0
    Screw Babylon Five, I wish they did it for Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. I grant there is no way they would've made their money back on the effort, but I still wish they did it.
  8. JB0
    Oh, here's one! Sega's arcade tour de farce(sic) Astro Flash, AKA Transformer*. Where you fly a jet that turns into a robot when you press a button. Perhaps more importantly, note their later Genesis cartridge Arrow Flash, which is a much better version of the same thing. In that my recollection of Astro Flash is mostly "this kinda sucks", but I found Arrow Flash to be pretty fun. *Please note the LEGALLY DISTINCT singular form. Trademark law at it's finest.** **But not legally distinct enough, apparently. The home version's title "transformed" into TransBot.
  9. JB0
    Ah. Well, never mind, then. Assuming active stealth is less than 100% perfect, passive stealth provides additional gains. Perhaps not worthwhile gains, but... the VF-171 may well be the hardest Valk to find in the entire galaxy! <3 I love it!
  10. JB0
    Most of the original visual effects for Next Gen were done directly in video, so they had to redo them to make a BluRay release. There simply wasn't a way to get a high-res copy with effects. Unlike the original Trek reworking, the Next Gen effects look very similar to the originals, just higher-resolution. Fun trivia: For a long time, they were saying they wouldn't do Next Gen BluRays because of that. They thought the cost of redoing all the effects was going to be too steep.
  11. JB0
    How wide-ranging are you going? Is anything at all fair game? Because really, Robot Alchemic Drive on the PS2 is where it's at. Full-on Tetsujin RC power. Or Steel Battalion on XBox, if you want REALISM. The Armored Core series deserves some attention as well. And swinging back to the other end of the spectrum... the NES has a game called Metal Storm. In fairness, I think you may control powered armor instead of a giant robot. But that's a moot point. The most important thing is the game is awesome and lets you control gravity. You can walk on the ceiling, and you can do so AT WILL. Also, Capcom's Armored Warriors brawler and Cyberbots vs fighter. Both arcade games, both pretty cool. The Saturn version of Cyberbots even has a giant robot version of Street Fighter's Akuma. Tell me that isn't awesome.
  12. JB0
    Most importantly, the movie has Guld dogfighting the Ghost. Which is as big a loss to the OVA as Isamu's introduction is to the movie.
  13. JB0
    It SHOULDN'T have lost it's passive stealth nature. I won't swear that it didn't, but it shouldn't have. Most passive stealth technologies are tied closely to the shape of the vehicle and materials used, at least in the real world.
  14. JB0
    Legend. One would assume the chip was destroyed. I won't guarantee this, though I'll be surprised if canon says otherwise.
  15. JB0
    Pity, really. I vastly prefer the movie(it flows better and has fewer random leaps of logic), but the opening scenes of the OVA are just AWESOME.
  16. JB0
    One less character sheet for the animators. And Kaifun had no real role in the pachinko game, why draw him for one scene?
  17. JB0
    And that would be a great narrative conceit if you wanted to turn Macross into Gundam. I suspect the franchise would more likely swing the other way and claim PPBs are better at blocking high-mass, low-velocity attacks, thereby making them excel against melee combat and further marginalizing it. ... Of course, the real problem is that Macross very rarely has VF VS VF combat. Aliens don't care what we built our fighters to take.
  18. JB0
    Why... why did no one tell me about this?!?!
  19. JB0
    You could tech it up a bit. Instead of a metal spear, have a plasma spear. The weapon is lightweight, because it's basically just a giant blowtorch.
  20. JB0
    I just hope the new Macross retcons Basquash! into the Macross continuity.
  21. JB0
    Poor Arcadia... it's not the WORST system(that honor goes to the RCA Studio II), but it's still more than a bit of a lame dog. By the time it came out, it was hopelessly dated, and it would've had an uphill fight even if Atari DIDN'T have name recognition, a superior distribution network, and possibly shady anti-competitive practices(there are anecdotes of them saying they'd stop doing business with anyone that carried the Vectrex, which led to many distributors being unwilling to carry the Vectrex). That Atari ALSO had superior hardware was just one more nail in the coffin. And truly damning given that Emerson launched the Arcadia in 1982 and the VCS was VERY dated at that time. The chipset the Atari 5200 used when it launched in that same year was ALSO somewhat dated. The Arcadia could've... SHOULD'VE been very similar to the ColecoVision it launched alongside*. Emerson tried to get away with making cheaper hardware, and they got what they paid for. The Arcadia and ColecoVision both launched at two hundred bucks, so it wasn't even a case of offering a cheaper alternative. It was sheer greed, and it came back to bite them HARD. Anyways, I've emulated the Arcadia Macross game. It is... uninspiring. *The TI sound and graphics chips that Coleco used were at a price/performance sweet spot that made them VERY popular, and they wound up in a LOT of machines. The most notable of these are the MSX1 computer standard and the Sega SG-1000, AKA Sega's first game console. The latter wound up leaving TI's fingerprints on every ROM-based system Sega every made, with the Sega Master System being SG1k-compatible and the Genesis and Game Gear both being SMS-compatible. There's also evidence that the graphics chip in the NES was "heavily inspired by" the TMS9918. It operates in a very TI manner.
  22. JB0
    I thought Tron Legacy looked really cool, the music was great, I enjoyed Kevin Flynn's superpowered moments(it's good to be the sysadmin), and OBVIOUSLY Olivia Wilde, BUT... the writing was flat and full of missed opportunities. I was wondering going in how they would handle the fact that the original was steeped in 80s gamer culture and a dated model of computing, and how they could make it relevant to the modern era while still tying it in to the original film. They decided to pretend the original Tron existed in a vacuum and nothing was based on the real world in any way. And, well, given how much computing has changed in the intervening decades, I would've loved to see an updated look "into" the computer that embraced modern technology. Instead of processes running on a mainframe, show me a virtual world on a distributed network. Just as an example: Think how awesome a fight would be if they were "inside" a cellphone on a train, rapidly switching cell towers. The windows and door to the room changing their vista every few seconds as the phone reconnects to a different part of the network. Kick someone through the door right before changing towers and the fight is over because it will take FOREVER for them to catch up traversing the 'net on foot. Tell me that wouldn't look cool. Heck, that'd be cool just as background detail in a narrative scene. But nope, we're in a mainframe that was lifted out of a corporate office twenty years ago and hid in the basement so Kevin could play with it arbitrarily. And the implication is that the world of Tron is unique to that one specific machine, when the original movie implied this was just what it was LIKE inside a computer. In that regard, Tron: Legacy completely failed to live up to it's name. But it's an audiovisual treat, and I throw it in from time to time just for the eye candy(and I don't mean Olivia Wilde... well, not exclusively). It's just plain fun to watch, and if Tron 3 can get THAT right then it will be worth seeing.
  23. JB0
    I can't imagine them letting him wear them in flight if they were for the LCF. And, well, the helmets have a built-in sunshade that reduces light AND has a higher LCF. Hikaru uses it in the opening, and the episode where Kakizaki dies(spoilers). Not that I recall. For all I can tell, he sleeps in them, which is a terrible idea for wire frames. Though I grant that they may be made with an overtech shape-memory alloy that is more flexible while still returning to form when not stressed... and now I want overtech glasses of my very own.
  24. JB0
    That was the most relieving part about Macross being completely fictional: Disco never came back.
  25. JB0
    And well... the Macross was in pretty dire straits anyways. From the start they had a LOT of hardware sitting idle with no pilots due to the decompression of the Prometheus and Daedalus, and were under regular attack while effectively behind enemy lines with pilots still adapting to space. I doubt they much CARED if someone was underage, as long as they could fly a jet or drive a mech. Heck, they put Max in a fighter and he apparently had to wear corrective lenses to fly. In that regard, Hikaru was at the head of the line. He ALREADY knew how to fly well enough to make a living as a stunt pilot. He'd even already figured out space flight to a degree, since he wasn't dead and vacuum-frozen with Minmei. As long as they could teach him to shoot, who cared if he was a bit young and mouthed off to his superiors with distressing regularity? (Of course, when your immediate superior is Roy Focker, mouthing off might be considered part of the assignment.) They even call out in the series, I believe when Hikaru is first assigned Max and Kakizaki, that they're putting people in cockpits and putting them in command of others at an unusually rapid pace. It stands to reason that the same justifications would apply to throwing underage folks into the fray(they're short of hands and it's implied they're suffering heavy attrition among the hands they DO have). It's somewhat amazing they didn't have a draft in place, actually. But I suppose they were in a strong position for recruitment, which would mitigate the need for a draft and engender good will among the civilians. After all, the folks in town weren't exactly isolated from the battle. They suffered every time a missile made it through the hull or the ship had to be transformed. Everyone knew someone on the front lines, everyone had lost someone to the zentradi attacks, likely before they even left Earth. That would make the civilian populace far more prone to volunteer service(case in point: Hikaru, the pacifist war hero).
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