JB0

He got there with Snatcher. Way back in the 80s. Metal Gear was something different. It was an attempt to make a "realistic" spec ops commando game. It's only since Kojima's become inextricably bound to Metal Gear that the whole interactive movie thing's taken it over. And... from what I hear, MGS4 isn't very interactive. MGS isn't anything like an FPS. I'm confused here. Snatcher did it better. So did Dragon's Lair, for that matter. Heh. Anyone else remember when full-motion video was the future of games? Hell, I'd go far enough as to say Ninja Gaiden did it better. NES or XBox, your choice, though they're very different KINDS of movie. Yeah, I haven't bothered with a Metal Gear after MGS for any real length of time. I don't mind ridiculously over-the-top action(Snake kicking missiles out of the air is ridiculous, but Vulcan Raven carrying a gun bigger than him that he ripped out of an A-10 isn't?), but if I'm spending more time watching the story than I am playing the game, I have to wonder why I'm not watching a movie instead. Metal Gear was fun, and at the time it was something that simply hadn't been done before. Metal Gear 2 struck a nice balance between complexity and playability, and the plot comes in enough to be an ongoing THING and not a reason to kill us some terrorists, but not enough to really get in the way. MGS struck a balance between plot and play. There's enough interlude to tell a complex story while not actually hindering enjoyment of the game. It's like the NES Ninja Gaiden games. The plot happens in bursts between "stages." And it never takes itself too seriously. It knows it exists to entertain, and if that means that people occasionally tell you a turbo-fire controller is cheating, use their psychic powers on your memory card, or recoil in horror when they realize you have a monaural television... well, it's all in the name of entertainment. MGS2 was an active attempt by Kojima to kill the franchise before it gained enough momenteum to be some unstoppable lumbering beast like Final Fantasy that will continue in perpetuity no matter how bad it gets. It only served to prove that Metal Gear was ALREADY a lumbering unstoppable beast like Final Fantasy that will continue in perpetuity no matter how bad it gets. MGS3 I just don't care about. Prequels almost always raise red flags at me, and moving from near-future sci-fi to near-past "real world" isn't even remotely an improvement in my book. So that's really as much as I know of it, other than there's a hilarious radio conversation about the infamous cardboard box. As for MGS4 and it's cutscene craziness... I think Kojima wanted to do another Snatcher game and then realized people demand gunplay. So there's bursts of Metal Gear in between the cutscenes. I'll ignore Ghost Babel and Metal Gear Acid, just like everyone else did. Though Ghost Babel was fun to play. Very MG2-style of game. And now Kojima's chained down by a franchise he never wanted, since he can't bring himself to stand back and let people pump complete garbage out with the Metal Gear name on it while he makes something he WANTS to do instead of something he HAS to do. I gather he TRIED to leave Peace Walker alone, but he had to come back because Konami was screwing it up fast and hard. And it's all because you jerks had to make MGS2 a best-seller! I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY!

The combination seems to be pretty much the same as the original, from the heavily-filtered photos available. Use Prime's knee joint to fold the legs behind the truck cab, then drop the cab-cube in the hole. It's simple, but really makes you question whether it counts as a combination at all. So you could probably kludge a lot of other cubes of similar size in there. Even cubes with oddly-shaped fronts, since the front third of the cab hangs out into space. MP-10 seems to be blatantly too large to me, given the photos of it with the original and PM cabs inserted in the hole.

In theory, it celebrates the pilgrims surviving their first year in America after a particularly rough time getting started.In practice, it's typically an excuse to eat way the hell too much food, then camp out in front of retailers so you can risk life and limb for insane sales the next day(or possibly later that night). In short, a celebration of greed, gluttony, and consumption in all it's forms. In my personal case, it's mostly just an excuse to get the family together... and eat way the hell too much food.

"This trailer add on kit can link up with your Generation 1 Optimus Prime as well as Powermaster Optimus prime according to the pictures. The intent is to give a fully articulated "masterpiece" Powermaster Optimus Prime." I want one. I want one now. I have wanted one for twenty years. But I probably don't want to pay the price they're going to ask for one. In the interests of full disclosure, Powermaster Optimus was my first Prime, and I'm a little biased towards him as a result.

Happy Thanksgiving! Be thankful for your friends, your family, and your indoor plumbing.

Then my work here is done.

Take a look! It's in a book! A reading rainbooooow!

I thought the Robotech movie was released under the name Stealth?

NeoGeo. The only thing that can make the Atari 5200 look small. On topic... "Unauthorized feeding of the metroids is strictly prohibited." -random scan in Metroid Prime.

No problem.And for clarification, I really DO think Basara is oblivious enough that he genuinely didn't realize the speakerpods were potentially hazardous projectiles. He's a very... focused... individual. He just thought it was so great that he could share his song with everyone and got caught up enough in it that he never stopped to think about the implications. Hell, he may not even realize they're designed to punch holes in armor. For all we know, he thinks they're tiny little radio buoys. I do admit the series has it's moments. Even Basara-centric moments. While in general I don't like how the series ended, I thought Basara's coma recovery was perfect. It's a very Basara scene. Especially the part where he starts trying to sing WHILE IN A COMA... only Basara... It also serves as a decent showcase for Gamlin and Mylene, and is really the final capstone on a long-running arc showing Gamlin accepting Basara(if not actually LIKING him), but that's actually not what primarily interests me in the scene. Amazingly, it's a scene I think Basara SHOULD steal. I just think a lot of moments that shouldn't have been ABOUT Basara wound up being about Basara. Also, I found the Encore episodes on my hard drive a few days ago. Encore 1 is largely a gossip show trying to dig up back-story on Fire Bomber and Basara. While it's framed in such a way as to make pretty much EVERYTHING in it questionable, almost to the point of being anticanon, it's got some good Basara moments in it. They even play off his passion for music to make a small gesture much larger in-context. (you know, assuming it'd ever actually HAPPENED) And Ray gets some character development!(or would if a single word they said was trustworthy) It's actually pretty fun, and though I see why it wouldn't work in the series proper, I wish something more had been made of the idea. Maybe break it out and do a series of short gossip show segments scattered through the regular episodes. It's a way to add some depth(?) to the main character without really breaking the feel of the show.

Seconded on the Youtube auto-embedding. Worst feature of the current board software. On-topic: "That was frightening. I was frightened." -Legend of Dragoon. Though any PS1-era SCEA translation will offer similar gems.

I thought they had a stock animation clip of the speaker pod protruding into the target's cockpit and gluing itself into place. But my memory could be wrong, and I don't have it on-hand to check right now. Whether or not confusion and disorientation was BASARA'S goal, it was his backers' goal and the design goal of the speakerpod. I stand by that part of my statement regardless. Speakerpod Gamma was a blatant sonic weapon. It was loud enough to actually throw people around the bridge. But I don't think anyone cared, because it was so absurdly over-the-top.

Reiteration of ignored main point: He's not engaging in nonviolent solutions even if the speakerpods ARE demonstrably 100% safe. Nonlethal weaponry is still weaponry. Nonfatal violence is still violence. Defense of ridiculously-deflected subpoint: Pity no one else in UN Spacey was allowed access to this miraculous failure-proof technology. How did Basara know, for a fact, that it was literally impossible for a speakerpod to fail, and likewise impossible for secondary damage to cause unintended consequences? EVEN IF there were no fatalities, that doesn't actually make the very concept any less dangerous. It is a projectile DESIGNED TO VIOLENTLY PENETRATE THE COCKPIT OF AN ARMORED SPACECRAFT. And one that carries an explicitly intended subfunction of rendering the pilot of said craft disoriented and confused in the middle of a live combat zone at that. Even if you ignore the possibility of armor spalling, suppress all the shrapnel generated, you cannot guarantee that your projectile will successfully bypass all important subsystems to ensure life-support and navigation are not compromised in an alien vehicle of unknown design and layout, it's basic mode of operation renders it fundamentally unsafe. I can personally think of several ways to accomplish the same task in a much less blatantly hazardous manner. In keeping with the spirit of the show, I would have the speakerpods adhere to the OUTSIDE of the vehicle and transmit the music into the cockpit through vibration. But I wouldn't call anything other than a non-contact, radio-based version anything remotely resembling safe. And as they exist in the show, the speakerpod is the single most dangerous way you could possibly implement the concept. Basara is completely oblivious to anything but his song if he trusted a high-velocity cockpit-cracking bullet implicitly just because it happened to carry a boombox. REGARDLESS of documented fatalities. Reinforcement of main point after sidetrack: All of which is secondary to the fact that nonlethal violence is still violence. There is nothing nonviolent about Basara.

He kinda... DOES solve his problems with violence.A speakerpod may be intended as a non-lethal projectile, but just because you're shooting people in the face with paintballs and beanbags doesn't mean you're being non-violent. And I have SERIOUS doubts as to speakerpods being 100% effective in regards to their non-lethality. If we fail to suspend reality far enough, it becomes fairly obvious that there will be some speakerpod-related fatalities. Especially as they're DESIGNED to penetrate the cockpit, thereby breaking atmospheric integrity and ensuring they're headed towards the pilot. And they're massive, in the literal sense, so they carry a LOT of momentum. Even if fully-functional and striking their targets at optimum angles, they could easily be damaged in a live combat zone, rendering their deceleration or cockpit-sealing components non-functional, such that a speakerpod rips the cockpit open and likely severely injures the targeted pilot. Or just rendering a speakerpod leaky, so that a successfully sealed cockpit leaks out THROUGH THE SPEAKERPOD ITSELF. Actually, even fully-functional, I find the lack of shrapnel in the punctured cockpit questionable at best. Basically, what I'm saying is a speakerpod is just about the most dangerous non-lethal projectile you can make, actually MORE dangerous than most intended-lethal projectiles, and Basara is patently oblivious to everything that isn't his song if he can't see the inherent dangers in his preferred weapon.

A Zelda game is getting perfect scores from reviewers? WHAT MADNESS IS THIS?!?!?! Seriously, the only thing that SURPRISES me is that Joystiq braved the hate mail from the fans for dinging it a half-star.

As far as 70s and 80s anime goes, I gather a lot of the licenses were rather broad. Because who cares about the long-term legal ramifications of a distribution license for a stupid cartoon that won't be worth the film it's stored on in 5 years? Spoilers: In about twenty years, EVERYONE will.

Roy, Isamu, and Micheal had some degree of character development and backstory, too. And only Isamu was a lead character.

I call shenanigans on that last one. "Get thee hence, oblivion awaits thee!" -Valkyrie Profile

The answer to that question is yes."Was the game good?" "It better have been, it took ten years to make." -Duke Nukem Forever.

That's... actually a terrible analogy, since it's EXACTLY what happened with the Apple II, for a very good reason. MOST computers are built using components from more than one vendor. I guarantee that MOS Technology did not supply all, or even MOST, of the chips inside the Apple II, any more than they did to other 6502-based machines like the Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit computer family, and all 3 "classic" Atari consoles. MOS made a great processor, but many of the other necessary parts were not offered by MOS, or were in-house designs offering custom capabilities. In the Apple II's case, Steve Wozniak designed much of the support, most notably the incredibly cheap floppy controller, which used some crazy logic to drive the cost well below what it was believed you could DO a floppy system for. But Apple was, and still is, fabless, so they were MANUFACTURED elsewhere. Even a company like Texas Instruments, that DID own fabs and DID both design and manufacture ALL the necessary silicon for their own computer back in the day, STILL contracted out for the keyboard and monitor on the 99/4a. No one manufactured an entire computer or game console "in-house." And this is true to this day, because it still requires different design and manufacturing specialties for different components. As an example... Despite Apple desigining the iPhone 4's core system-on-a-chip(albeit using subsystems licensed from other companies, including a CPU architecture from ARM), most chips in an iPhone 4 are manufactured by Samsung(for the time being), and the devices are assembled by Foxconn, using LCDs from Toshiba and Sharp.

Not EVERYTHING. There's always the MAD CAT! But seriously, I played the crap out of the SNES Mechwarrior back in the day. Not Mechwarrior 3050, the OTHER one, the one that tried to be like the PC Mechwarrior games despite only having 12 buttons. There were some pretty slick-looking vehicles in it, though certainly not very anime-looking vehicles. ... And I am greatly saddened. Wikipedia says most of the SNES mechs were created for, and only used in, SNES Mechwarrior. And that's pretty much my only exposure to the franchise, aside from the above MAD CAT! picture.

And it would be a far more interesting show if the spotlight was on their ride of discovery instead of Basara's aural force of nature.I am still amused by the repeated torture of Gamlin at the hands/vocal cords of Basara, though.

I thought that was the new Cyclone upgrade for Shadow Rising. With chest-mounted protoculture beam cannons.

Basara is a NASCAR driver?

Truly the greatest minds of our time.