JB0

That's the second pack, I thought. The first was JUST a jetpack.

I don't think "nice" can be applied to an HD file that's smaller than most SD files. It's certainly high-resolution, but it's not high-definition. Not in the literal sense anyways.

You DARE to question the official story that Tatsunoko losing a major legal battle over ownership of those the whatever-the-heck-HG-licensed could in any way have repercussions for HG? YOU SHALL BE DESTROYED! ... Wait, HG hasn't updated the copyright on the bottom of the RT website in 2 years?

'S been done for a few console/handheld games. Usually much older ones. Giving RType Command/Tactics a complete conversion would involve a LOT of work. Text and resprite shouldn't be absurdly difficult. Not more than any other hack. The cutscenes are rendered in real-time, which ... probably makes the convert+fire-back animation impossible without a large-scale rewrite of that portion of the code. The hard part of just swapping models would be making the models. But the game doesn't have any sort of advanced animation for the cut-in sequences that I've seen(I admit to not getting really far into it). I doubt transformation is possible in the cut-ins with the current code. It's not IMPOSSIBLE, but... writing a new game from the ground up would almost certainly be easier. Which is why it won't happen. Besides, the Macross and ROMhacking communities don't seem to have a large degree of overlap. Otherwise we'd have english PCEngine games, right?

I actually thought about that. I suspect Hmmm... Actually, I was pretty sure they weren't planning to end it from the way the season played out(I mean, they go out of their way to preserve Soundwave for future chaos). Shame that it got canned. Cartoon Network sucks. Actually, I thought it looked like the G1 Jetfire/Skyfire backpack...

There IS an ending. TWO endings, even! A. The final battle of Space War 1. Hikaru and Minmay go their separate ways, Hikaru and Misa finally get together. B. The battle of Macross City. Hikaru rebuffs Minmay and goes off with Misa again. Minmay gets invited along on the Megaroad. What would they do for a sequel? Have Hikaru break it off with Misa to chase Minmay AGAIN, only to realize AGAIN that he wants Misa?

It'd be a very Haruhi thing to advertise a season of reruns(their official stance until now WAS that it was just reruns) and then shift into an entirely new season(I'm assuming the previous episodes carried the original ending sequence). Especially given the plot of Disappearance, and the new ending(with the big H from the first ending "digitizing" out). I need to rebuy the series anyways, though. Albeit in a different media. Hey, Bandai, can we get a BluRay release?

I believe the appropriate response to this is "Quoted for truth." ? RETURN OF MEGANEKKO NAGATO!

*BUMP!* The heavily-advertised Haruhi reruns began this week. With the NEW episode Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody. And a new ending theme, that seems to imply the new season will have The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi as it's primary arc. Yuki fans rejoice!

I haven't seen Dynamite 7. Or Eternal Love Song. ... What? You watch video games. Sort of.

I thought Hopes and Dreams were Grace's. I liked how they held off on the title splash until darn close to the end of the show. Sure, MOST shows inject their opening theme into the show at some point, but Basquash did it with STYLE. The show doesn't REALLY start until Dan gets in his car. No matter how late in the timeslot it is.

Had the OVA been a totally reworked script, I'd like it more. It wouldn't have gaping holes you can drive a zentradi flagship through, it wouldn't have serious pacing issues, and it wouldn't have me banging my head against the wall. Instead of actually taking advantage of the opportunity to show a different side of things, they kink the plot, break logic with the ammo-hack, slash out Guld's final battle(likely to ensure the movie still had it's big climactic moment, what with the OVA serving as a giant pile of spoiler before it ever hit theaters), and toss in some new scenes to stretch things out and provide episode breaks(some good scenes, some bad scenes, bust mostly just filler). Granted, the OVA requirement may've come too late for them to actually DO it as a separate-but-equal story. Or marketing just wanted them to include movie footage so the OVA worked as a preview of coming attractions. If they were required to recycle movie footage for whatever reason, that limited what they could do right off the bat. I can easily see WHY it happened, but it's disappointing. I've honestly never cared for the OVA. Even before I knew about the movie, it felt disjointed. Once I saw the movie, I wondered why the OVA was how it was. Read about it's history, and everything made sense. But yeah, the "DYRL Plus" approach appeals to me too.

You're one of those people that think Chrono Trigger's Frog should've been left untranslated as Kaeru, aren't you? Because since it can mean both transformation AND frog, and there's no way to fully convey the original intent in english, NONE of the intent should be conveyed, right? If a line is intended to be funny, but does not make sense once translated, it should be replaced with something that DOES. Star Ocean 2 has a great example of unfunny. There's a PA scene early on where Rena names Ashton's dragons. It's horrible, because the dragon names are apparently supposed to be childish and based on their physical appearance. "This one has weepy eyes, so it should be called Gyoro! *some similar justification for Ururu's name that I no longer remember*" "Isn't that a bit simplistic?" If you believe that's a great translation, you have serious problems. It is stupid. It is illogical. It is nonsensical. It is pure garbage. Before you go misconstruing this, I'm not saying ALL names should be adapted. But when the meaning is actually relevant, yes, they should be. Yes, Frog should be called Frog. Because... the name is, at least partially, a physical description. HE IS A FROG, SO HE IS CALLED FROG. SHOCK! They get damned annoying damned fast in ANY language. It's notable that you are now advocating NOT TRANSLATING AT ALL. You're intentionally missing the point, as near as I can tell. Any idiot can turn a J-E dictionary loose on a script. Any idiot with half a brain can edit that into something that's grammatically correct and makes logical sense. To make the writing stop feeling like it was crapped out of a J-E dictionary takes actual WORK. Maybe if SCEA had spent a little effort polishing their script, I might've cared when Aeris died. Or maybe FF7 is just poorly-written garbage and I'm about to get my posterior flamed to a crisp for that sentence fragment. We'll never know, because SCEA gave FF7 such a pathetic localization effort. And it's not even their WORST effort. I can point to a stage in FFTactics having three names inside 10 minutes. Had they actually spent a minimal amount of time polishing the script... it might've been more than a cult classic. Working Designs worked very closely with Game Arts on the Lunar projects. Game Arts specifically wanted them to do the Lunar games. In fact, Game Arts believed, based on WD's TurboCD localizations, that they were literally the only people that could do it right(Back in 1993. Certainly the field is wider now.). Let me repeat that. Game Arts, the original creators and publishers of Lunar: The Silver Star and it's sequels and remakes, believed Working Designs did localization right. I wouldn't know. The dubbing made me want to kill someone. It's been years since I've played it, and I have only vague memories of most of it. The fact that it's a PS1-era SCEA translation means I can bookend it with Star Ocean 2 and Legend of Dragoon and make an educated guess. I have little hope for anything more than "The script is mostly made of english words." SCEA translations feature names that change at random, literal sentences, redundant sentences, japanese-style quotation marks, repetitive statements, people speaking about themselves in third-person... shall I go on? "That was frightening. I was frightened." is a direct quote from an SCEA translation, in which a girl is expressing her response to a recent boss fight. That apparently scared her. It is of minor comedic value, but an utterly HORRIBLE english statement. And yet, at the time, it WAS one of the better attempts. As a random example: rather than trying to explain away Roy and Ben's sudden disappearances they left it as "Yeah, dude's dead. He's not getting better." Historical perspective is a wonderful things sometimes.

Except there's repeated mention in TSS of the original Magic Emperor(who Ghaleon is emulating) summoning a demigod and less-specific references to Ghaleon's own ongoing transformation(save one fairly direct comment by Nash near the end). And again, why would Althena have a member of the Vile Tribe as one of her 4 heroes? The EB face I took to be representative of the total ass-kicking he recieved at the hands of Alex and company. That kind of abuse leaves some serious scars. ... Could also be from the demonic cockroach ripping it's way out. Well, the WHAT?!? was part of the Dragon Song response. Former Hero of Althena. Fair enough. *Hiro Poe Swords the Blue Star back to life* But the triple-cross was so badass! I believe it's been pointed out before that, for the time, Robotech was actually a pretty good effort. They didn't sanitize it for your protection, even if they DID tie a bunch of unrelated shows together. Much of the Robohatred stems from HG's treatment of the franchise and fans in the years since then. WD's work tended to be more or less faithful, despite their sense of humor. And they worked rather closely with Game Arts on the Lunar projects(Game Arts actually rejected localization offers on Silver STar from a few companies before WD made their offer because they wanted WD to pick it up.) anime and video games are totally different markets. Anime's got a good number of companies producing decent translations, and has for some time now. Video games never really went through the total rework phase that anime went through(there's a few isolated examples), but they've had a lot of trouble getting out of the "I have a Japanese-to-English dictionary!" phase. SCEA seems to have FINALLY gotten the point, though, and they were the last major non-translators I know of. (Related note: I'm STILL impressed at the translation on the original Ninja Gaiden game. For an 89 release, it's incredibly polished.) If the SCD Lunar games had featured the same quality translation as FF2US and Secret of Mana... I don't think they would have been half as well-regarded as they were. The scripts did a very good job making the characters feel like people that mattered. I laugh at anyone that says they cried when Aeris died, but Lucia's return to the Blue Star got a reaction out of me. I actually just spent a few minutes staring at "the end" before moving on. Then reset and started a new game to try and figure out how to fix the ending. ... That silent epilogue save was either a work of sheer genius or the product of a sick and twisted individual. But the point is that I actually cared. I think the only other game from that era to get a real reaction out of me was Chrono Trigger. And that was more because the silent protagonist routine worked well there. I took Crono's death personally, because, well, it WAS personal. Oh, and Link's Awakening got one too. Hooray for genocide! Ireland is on record as believing translations should be written so americans can "enjoy them, not just know what's going on." Perhaps they went overboard, but it was a highly novel approach in the early 90s. And Lunar was a pretty lighthearted game to start with, so when people gripe about jokes injected into it, I just raise an eyebrow and wonder if they can point to specific examples(I've yet to see the objection raised by someone that's actually played the J versions). According to WD(who is, admittedly, a biased source), most of the jokes they inserted are replacing japanese jokes that usually fell into the category of puns that don't work in english. I think the most visible example of this was the N64 Goemon game. There was a laugh track to call out the jokes... which were mostly puns that someone tried to translate directly. So all the humor was gone and you were left with a chaotically mis-cued laugh track in a script that wasn't really very funny. Now, toss out a rant about how they totally broke Silhouette Mirage's gameplay, and I'm right there with you. The ammo mechanic they introduced fundamentally altered the gameplay, and not for the better. I understand their goal, but it was possibly the absolute worst way they could have done it(Even ignoring that it's a Treasure game, and messing with those is a little like daring the fanboys to come disembowel you with a rusty spoon and then rape your mother.) They also seem to have totally missed the point on that particular translation, but for a platform shooter that's a secondary issue. There's also a fart joke in Vay that seems pretty out of place(and that's probably WD's biggest failing as a localization team... too many fart jokes. Which are higher up the comedy ladder than bad puns, but not MUCH higher). ... I need to get back to Vay some day. It just got WAY too level-grind-y for my tastes. Then I had my save erased by a bad SegaCD-Genesis connection. End rambling.

Did you PLAY Silver Star Story? It WAS planned in SSS. Rather than the regular human reincarnations of TSS, she only had ONE, and that was a willful act of suicide. Which also made Alex a freaking booby prize instead of the reason for her retirement. You have no idea how much this disgusts me. Ummm... There's HUGE differences in his goals and motivations. The Silver Star: His mancrush on Dyne is ruined when Dyne gets his clock cleaned by the black dragon. He seeks revenge against the world for taking his friend, and Althena for sending men to do what she could do herself. Along the way he gets posessed by a demigod, eventually losing his humanity entirely. Silver Star Story: He thinks the world needs a diety to rule over it and that humanity can't be trusted to control it's own destiny. So he wants to be a god. WHAT?!?!?! Let me get this straight... one of the four heroes of Althena was a member of the Vile Tribe? The SAME Vile Tribe that was banished to the wastelands of Lunar and forsaken by Althena? WHAT THE ALTHENA-FORSAKEN HELL?!?!?! There was a large ball that was collecting magical energy to be used in the reformation of the Blue Star. In the SegaCD version it was stored in the Blue Spire, and a tiny portion of it's energy was siphoned off to break Ghaleon's curse and unstone Hiro. In the remake, it was placed in the tower under Pentagulia, and Zophar ate it. In both versions it is an unavoidable plot element, and Lucia takes time out to explain what it is, what it's purpose is, and that it is isntrumental to her task of reviving the Blue Star. Did you play The Silver Star? He was NOT a traitor. He PRETENDED to betray you to find out how to get to the Frontier. In SSS he ACTUALLY betrays you, and you have to hunt him down and kick his ass for it. And he fights you in a robotic chicken suit. He was elitist, but NOT an ass in the SegaCD version. And he was a lot less of an elitist than everyone else from Vane, Mia excepted. As far as WD's translation practices... Saying they were archaic then is incredibly bizarre, given the translation quality of video games in the 90s. They're widely considered to be one of the first companies to actually give a damn about quality. Compared to the engrishy cardboard messes that were the standard at the time(and persisted through the PS1's life)...

It also explained her apparently-not-random-after-all posessiveness, and why Isamu never got the message on teh answering machine.

EB had an FF-style item bag, for pete's sake! The crest system was a trainwreck too. Far as SSS breaking EB... Althena's planned retirement doesn't work for EB. Ghaleon's god complex doesn't work for EB. But then, EB Remake breaks ITSELF by relocating the "magic capacitor" so that Zophar destroys it, rendering the completion of Lucia's mission impossible... then she forgets totally and heads off to do it anyways! Whoo! I could dedicate an entire thread to ranting about Silver Star Story. I mean, they go out of their way to turn Nash into a retarded monkey. They even take his shining moment of badassery away, make him into a traitor, and then just to add insult to injury, they throw him into a robotic chicken suit. How is that POSSIBLY an improvement? And not a fan of WD's translation style? There's a good bit of merit to the complaints, I admit. I tend to cut them some slack anyways, because they generated some of the best scripts I've seen. Yes, they included a lot of 4th-wall jokes, but they ALSO produced quality translations that didn't read like Babelfish or a block of wood. And that's depressingly rare even today. Aww, c'mon. It's nowhere NEAR SO2 levels of bad. WD actually CARED, which is a LOT more than you can say for SCEA. The original was better! ... Okay, maybe not. Man, I remember when that was actually impressive.

Given they initially promised an english dub for the movie DVD release, and that the subsequent Macross Plus box set only had the OVA... They seem to not give a flying grizzly bear about the movie.

Game Arts is the same people responsible for the Silver Star Story remake that missed the point of the original game and fundamentally breaks the sequel, the EB remake that completely wrecked the game's playability and can't even maintain continuity with ITSELF, Grandia Extreme and Grandia 3, both of which I've heard are execrable... Should I continue? ... Actually, I think that's pretty much everything they've done since 1999(Project Sylpheed being licensed out to Seta. As if anyone would notice it was missing from the list, between being sold in America as a Squeenix game and being a very low-profile release). There's a REASON that they've remade/ported Lunar so many times*. They're creatively bankrupt, and their glory days are behind them. At this point, as much as it pains me, I'd rather they let the franchise die. They won't give Silver Star a remake that expands on the original game rather than crapping on it, nor one that actually works with Eternal Blue rather than totally breaking it. Even if they DID plan to do it, I have no faith in them turning out something decent. But Silver Star Story is the only thing making them money these days, so of course they intend to whore it as hard as possible. But hey, at least Gideon Zhi is almost done with Lunar: Strolling School. There's still ONE Studio Alex game yet to get an english release, though it's a rather different kind of beast than the main 2 games. http://agtp.romhack.net/project.php?id=lunar If I sound bitter... well, the Lunar games were my first "modern" RPGs, and Eternal Blue is one of my favorite games of all-time. I take my Lunar seriously, probably far more so than is healthy. But hey, I just finished a Silver Star replay, and I'll be heading into EB soon. *How many times? SSS was originally a Saturn game, then adapted to use the Saturn's MPEG card for better FMVs and rereleased. Then it was ported to PS1. Then ported to Windows 9x. Then remade for the GBA. And now ported to the PSP. That's six right there. Plus the Saturn and PS1 EB remakes, and the Saturn remake of the Game Gear's Lunar: Strolling School.

Pretty sure there wasn't a dub. That was the main reason I didn't buy the DVD. Not that I wanted to listen to the dub, but I couldn't see paying that price for a hard-subbed VHS rip.

I still have trouble telling what the letters are supposed to be even knowing it's english. I just wrote it off initially as a pseudo-language and didn't worry about it.

Ugh, ANOTHER Silver Star Story port. I hate SSS. With a passion. Hate may not be a strong enough word. Why can't they give The Silver Star a good remake(which, don't get me wrong, it DESPERATELY needs) instead of one that changes everything and totally misses the point. And don't EVEN get me started on the hideous trainwreck that is Eternal Blue remake. Even ignoring that they TOTALLY cocked up the gameplay... how in the HELL do you make a 4-disk PS1 game with FEWER AND WORSE FMV sequences than a SegaCD title(they also cut my absolute favorite non-FMV story sequence). I borrowed a friend's copy of Lunar Legends, and it was even WORSE. I managed to resist Dragon Song. Game Arts sucks. They need to rehire the old staff and do this thing RIGHT. *pets his SegaCD* There, there, baby... it's okay... they can't hurt you.

I REALLY hope that Salamander Rebirth is actually Salamander and not mother-sniffing Life Force. *insert rant here about the author's confusion, howLife Force in Japan is NOT the same thing as Life Force in the US, NOR the same thing as Salamander, and how Gradius sucks.*

And I JUST realized that the future-text is a HIGHLY stylized english. I will never be able to watch an episode straight through without pausing to decipher the text again.

Man.... I'm gonna have to find me some season 3 rips... Stupid broadcast-only TV... But... don't you know that if you redesign the Alternators to look like the movie designs they look JUST LIKE the movie designs? How can you POSSIBLY not like the movie designs and still like Alternators?!?!