JB0

Diligent observer is closest. I'm a horrible game nerd(I own more systems than most people even know exist), and I've done a LOT of reading about the history of the industry. And I tell ya, finding some of the bits and pieces is work. Straightening out the Williams/Bally/Midway mess is a headache all on it's own. (Short version. Bally bought Midway. Their arcade division became Bally/Midway. Then Williams bought Bally/Midway from Bally. Then they bought Time-Warner Interactive, including Atari Games. Then Williams spun Midway off into it's own company, with all the video game stuff. Williams still exists, and still makes gambling machines. ) (Long version: No. Just... no. ) Because Road Rash is EA, not Midway. And Road Blasters had cars with guns, not motorcycles with chain whips. I <3 Road Blasters. Just to be totally up-front here. Sadly, Spy Hunter is the more-recognized name, and with both games being owned by the same company and covering largely the same subject(drive car fast, blow poo up), Road Blasters is never gonna see a revival.

First stop: Road Blasters, as a cheap Death Race knockoff. Midway hasn't had the rights to Pac-Man or Space Invaders for years, though. Just as an observation. They had a falling-out with Namco over Ms. Pac-Man. They appeased Namco by giving them the rights to Ms. Pac-Man. And then they made Pac-Man Jr., and Namco severed ties with them(Pac-Man Jr. now exists in limbo, as Midway has no rights to the Pac-Man name, but Namco has no rights to the specific game in question) I believe they had a similar, albeit less spectacular, falling-out with Taito over Space Invaders. I know the rights have long since reverted back to Taito. Further correction: "... they did not purchase the company's two development studios which would indicate they've little interest in continuing on the company's game franchises" is in error. Midway had FOUR development studios. Warner did not buy Midway Studios - San Diego or Midway Studios - Newcastle. But they DID purchase Midway Studios -Chicago as well as Surreal Studios. So they DID buy development studios, and ARE continuing game development. Interestingly, this is probably VERY closely related to why Warner's doing an Asteroids movie. To make a long story short... in buying Midway's assets, they've ALSO bought (back{again}) the rights to all the Atari arcade games. To make a short story long, and go off on a TOTAL game nerd babblefest... Rights to Asteroids(and many other Atari games) were split when Atari was divided into two separate entities. There was a home company(Atari Corp.) that was sold off to the Tramiels(founders of Commdore) and an arcade company(Atari Games), which remained under the control of Warner for some time afterwards. Both companies retained rights to all the arcade games created pre-split(if the rights to home games split in a similiar fashion, there's never been any evidence of it). Midway eventually bought Atari Games(after Warner sold it to Namco, who sold it to the employees, who sold it to Time-Warner{hooray mergers}). Midway later renamed it Midway Games West to avoid confusion after Hasbro bought Atari Corp. and resurrected THAT Atari brand. (It was actually big news in the classic gaming community when Midway Games West was closed down back in '03, as it was one of the very few developers that still had any connection to the original era, and still had several employees from the beginnings of Atari, and thus the birth of the game industry. By beginnings, I mean from before Bushnell sold to Warner, before the VCS/2600... from almost the VERY beginning) Midway, Atari(a subdivision of Hasbro Interactive), and Atari(a subdivision of Infogrames) have all exploited the license in the home market, so both companies from the initial split seem to have gotten full rights, and not rights limited to portions of the market(though Atari Games WAS banned from releasing home games under the Atari brand, hence the creation of Tengen back in the NES days). Activision got in on the act as well, but they bought their licenses from the home division of Atari. Who knew just saying Atari could get so complicated? You can mean one of a half-dozen companies with one word. ... Or so circular. Warner has just bought the rights to Atari's arcade library for the THIRD time. Games originally developed UNDER THEIR BANNER.

Aww, c'mon... all the good twin-stick shooters are western games.

Bow-wow-chika-wow! Except the loop resets BEFORE school starts. But Haruhi won't accept mediocrity from her brigade members when she knows they can do better. If the time loop HAD completed in the first episode, Kyon probably would've gotten chewed out by Haruhi for that half-completed slacker mess he turned in. She's forced Kyon to study for his tests before(or is it after? Whatever.), too. Now, whether she intervenes in Kyon's education and not the others is because Kyon's the only slacker in the brigade or because he's Kyon is a question that's never been answered.

Oh, no. Haruhi truly DOES have her homework done like she bragged about. She's the good-at-everything supercharacter, after all.

Better? Pong? Seriously? As far as classic goes... Asteroids, Pac-Man, and Space Invaders is the holy trinity of 1st-era gaming. You'd be hard-pressed to FIND a more classic game. And Pac-Man already HAS his documentary. So does Donkey Kong, so no worried about the Nintendo crowd. Certainly Defender, Robotron, Joust, and Sinistar were all more influential than Asteroids*, but they weren't as popular then, and aren't as well-known now. As far as "making of..." NO game can justify a movie just covering it's development. Except Duke Nukem Forever. There's a trilogy's worth of material there, I'm sure. *Defender was the first scrolling shooter. Enough said. Many people improperly credit Scramble, the first of the Defender knockoffs. Which was by a little company called Konami, that would later whore the ever-living QBert out of the genre with Gradius. Sinistar was built from the ground up to push a massive, awe-inspiring boss character onto the screen and move it around. Impressive bosses have been a staple of video games ever since. Robotron, single-screen though it was, was the first "bullet-hell" shooter. And the original twin-stick shooter. As for Joust... That one's a bit more complex. Miyamoto's publicly stated that Joust was his inspiration for Mario Bros. And if it wasn't for Mario Bros., we wouldn't have Super Mario Bros.

I did that too. It also made a sweet CLANG! when you pulled the frame advance lever and didn't have a disk in it. Perfect for lasers(well, for some warped definition of lasers that made a CLANG! noise)!

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Jetfire_(G1) too! And it's ALL conjecture. There's not one single solid fact. So... what we know is ... The show focused on the Takara toys. It occasionally featured the toys from other companies, but far less regularly(Poor Shockwave... :'( ). Jetfire was featured in a roundabout fashion, in both the cartoon and the comic book. Roadbuster and Whirl were never used. Nor were the (smaller and less expensive/interesting) Deluxe Insecticons. The common thread among the unfeatured toys is Bandai. ... And just to throw a wrench in things... Top Spin and Twin Twist were Takara 'bots, mass-market(as opposed to the mail-in-only toys) and were never used. Moral of the story: Transformers doesn't make sense. Not IRL, and not in-continuity.

But it's AWFUL background! ... Well, okay, it's just BAD background. SPACE INVADERS had awful background. In that it makes the entire thing a game within a game.

I've seen it a few times. I believe the most recent incident was an article about an editorial piece from a game developer about how game technology needed to evolve in more ways than just graphical impressiveness. The article writer took it to be saying how game technology was evolving so amazingly fast because of the graphics. The few commenters that called him on it got flamed religiously. It was embarrassing.

Jetfire was licensed before there was a cartoon, when it was JUST a pile of transforming robot toys. Now, OTHER characters, like Shockwave, were rarely used because they weren't Takara toys, and Takara wanted to sell Transformers in Japan too. But Jetfire was different. They didn't HAVE animation rights to him. Not internationally, anyways. So when the export-this-show-back-to-Japan idea started... hey, this dude wasn't usable! The REAL question is... why did they special-case him and make Skyfire, when they ignored Roadbuster and Whirl totally? ... Actually, that doesn't really makes sense. They never used the Deluxe Insecticons in the cartoon, and they had no animation rights to worry about. Maybe it was just that Bandai owned them, and Takara wasn't gonna have it's business partners advertising products from their arch-nemesis? That seems to be the common thread. All the toys that were TOTALLY ignored were owned by Bandai, the ones that were MARGINALIZED were owned by Not-Bandai-But-Also-Not-Takara. Shockwave's base toy was also released as a competing product in the US, by Radio Shack.

You mean.... they'd be making the VF-17?

Most gaming sites will not directly contradict an article they link to while discussing said link. Most of the ones that WILL at least have the decency to not directly contradict a quoted excerpt they include in their own article. But Kotaku? Will happily include a quote, then immediately go on to discuss the quoted portion and not only get it completely wrong, but DIRECTLY CONTRADICT it while explaining how wholeheartedly they agree with it.

It's Kotaku. Their EDITORS are retarded morons. What do you expect of their comments section, which draws the absolute bottom of the barrel out into the light on ANY site? MobyGames has him listed as doing graphic design on 4 games. 2 are Capcom, 1 is Hudson, 1 is SNK/Playmore. I suspect he's freelance. I also suspect that MobyGames is fairly western-oriented and he's done art for more than 4 games in the last decade.

Honestly, I suspect they ONLY wanted the name. "Hey, remember those movies a few years back about a space rock ramming the Earth? Let's do one about TWO space rocks ramming the Earth!" "Sounds good. We can call it ASTEROIDS! Because there's two of them. It's like Aliens." "I think Atari owns that name." "Crap. Can we buy it off them?" Or maybe they're gonna adapt the story from the home port manual... http://www.atariage.com/manual_html_page.h...areLabelID=1007 Linked for your suffering.

Hey, that "& up" is important!

Seriously? Well, Hollywood... at least you can't mess it up too badly, since there's no established story(that anyone cares about) or canon. That's a start.

Especially since in Macross, things are spread wide enough that you can get a decent stereo view of the galaxy. 2 telescopes in the Sol system doesn't give you a lot of depth perception at interestellar distances. But throw them on two separate colonies a few light years apart... or even better, on two separate colony fleets headed in different directions...

Even back then, some toys were better than others Hound had little tiny T-Rex arms. Prime was unable to raise his arms at the shoulder. Shockwave had very human proportions, and "massive" articulation. 2 independent legs with hips AND knees(which was incredibly rare in G1 times), and both arms had elbows and 2-axis shoulders. Sadly, as the line went on, the simpler and less-articulated designs were the ones that became more common. Even to the point of mono-foot designs taking over the whole line. Certainly, this was the same generation that brought us the six-changers, but for the most part it was not a case of engineering moving forward. While I certainly think that the Constructicons are grossly bungled on many levels... it's worth noting that Movie Devastator does something G1 Devastator can't do. It BENDS. And... Legends Devastator has transforming robots that combine... which doesn't exactly hurt your case, since their absolute cheapest and simplest subline can do a transforming combiner but neither the Voyager nor Supreme Constructicons can do both, despite being MUCH more expensive. Actually, it seems appropriate, given retro-nostalgia movies are almost invariably disappointments and shameless cash-ins.

And Basquash 13 is back to awesome! TEAM SPANKY FOREVER!

Awww, nuts... The robot hanging under it isn't hidden at all. And unlike Classic Silverbolt, it doesn't really blend. But it's a QBerting Blackbird... complete with Skunk Works logo on the tail. I want to not want it... but I want it. *squints at picture* I maybe mistaken, but I think that's actually an A-12 nose, not an SR-71. Definitely not a YF-12. Edit: I am mistaken. It's definitely an SR-71 nose.

They're culturing? No wonder zentradi tend to run screaming from pop shows. "E. Coli culture will reach maturity in 10... 9... 8..." "DIBS ON THE RESTROOM!" "OUT OF MY WAY!" "IT'S COMING UP!"

The legal standing of "look and feel" cases, which is what a Valk VS Legioss case would boil down to, varies greatly with era. In the modern US courts, you'd probably get laughed out. I can't imagine that the modern japanese courts would take such a case any more seriously, given look and feel encourages some of the most frivolous copyright lawsuits imaginable.

Paperback or hardcover? I've got book 1 in hardcover. Didn't even consider the alternative.

I don't think that'd help. I think the problem is that BOTH episodes are just titled Endless Eight. I've been pinning the "2" on when referring to the episode instead of the story arc, but... I'd bet he's only seen Endless Eight 1.