JB0

Man, I haven't seen Danger Mouse in forever.

The thing I dislike about such idiots is that if enough of them say it, it becomes "true." To take an example from my other great passion, video games... ET was so hideously awful that it single-handedly killed Atari, nay, the entire video game industry! And they had to bury most of the print run in a landfill because they couldn't give it away! EVERYONE knows this. But... it's a combination of severe exaggeration and outright fabrication. ET was symptomatic of fundamental problems with management at Atari. The huge numbers of unsold carts had less to do with it being a bad game(it's actually a half-decent adventure game) and the fact that Atari made more copies of the game than there were systems in existence. They expected EVERY existing Atari owner to go buy a copy of ET AND for countless more people to go buy an Atari JUST to play ET. Screw-ups like this were quite common in the later days under Time-Warner's management. One game, Quadrun, had a retail release canceled because it didn't play-test well with ten-year-old girls, and thus had no hope of commercial success. PacMan's VCS port was blatantly phoned in. No one gave a damn because the name would sell it. And gamers were outraged. The VCS was simple hardware, but it was capable of so much more(if there were any doubts, Ms. PacMan and PacMan Jr. proved it.) And on and on and on. ET didn't kill Atari. Atari killed Atari. And the industry at large? A lot of things happened to cause the crash. ET wasn't one of them. As for a large number of copies being buried after retailers returned them to Atari... that's 100% true. BUT... it isn't the ONLY game to suffer this fate, nor indicative of the game's crappiness. The game industry at the time was a lot less hostile to retailers*, and this was a fairly common occurrence. Rather than leaving the retailers stuck with unmovable product that would plug clearance bins for years to come, Atari would buy back excess stock, destroy it, and write it off as a loss on their taxes. *And retailers were a lot less hostile to consumers. You could actually return a game just because it sucked. THIS is why I dislike idiots that won't do their research. They BECOME other people's research.

At this point, reality can't live up to the legend. But if you REALLY want it... the search button is up there. Search for doorknob, sort results in ascending order instead of descending.

Ultra Magnus is like that too. Pretty disappointing. I think they mandated that as the gimmick for the size class, then realized it made no sense whatsoever since Starscream and Sentinel Prime weren't destined for Leader-class.

Trust me... if the Joes had met Agent One, they would've offered radically different advice. Like "install automatic sliding doors on your house so you never have to touch them again.

Only time I've ever been banned was... here, actually. For a few days. I had a gag account. I thought it was all in good fun. Apparently it was offensive, and secondary accounts are suspicious activity. ... Why can't I have any awesome stories?

It's probably too much to ask, but I hope they include some extra bits. I'd like to see a few options on Samus' styling. Never cared for the Varia's shoulders. And the Prime-style arm cannon makes her look really off-balan... wait, does that open up for missiles? That's hot.

Ya know, I've long wondered why they create second verses to theme songs. I suppose they intentionally ask the composer to overshoot and trim to length. Better to have too much music than too little, right? But it gets silly sometimes. I assume he means the cartoon version, which IS a unique, if derivative, work. Now if only he had a vocalless version...

I have a PSP and DON'T have Macross Frontier Ace.

And if by "hottest pilot" you mean "second-hottest pilot after Milia."

No one knows. They've veered away from print at this point, and KyoAni isn't talking, far as I know. 3 episodes of Endless Eight was awesome... 4 was WTF. But five? Kyoto Animation, I applaud you. This is clearly the most epic attempt at trolling a fanbase in recorded history. Especially once the DVDs hit. If 5 doesn't close it out, then there will almost certainly be an entire DVD of Endless Eight that does NOTHING. Think about it. If we assume 4 episodes per disk, and that the DVDs are season 1+2, like the current broadcast... Endless Eight 1 closes out disk 3. 2-5 fill disk 4. And if 5 doesn't close it out... I would pay money to see the reaction to people coming in blind when they hit Endless Eight 3... then 4... then realize they have to buy ANOTHER disk for Endless Eight 5(which we HOPE will be the end) ... Dammit, how are they gonna have time to do Disappearance any justice at this point?

True. Though stripping the lights and sounds and MechAlive/AutoMorph from movie Prime would probably help a lot. Remember, MP Prime uses the inside of the cab to store a lot of extra junk in both modes. And that space isn't available in either movie's leader Prime.

Now, would it be better or WORSE if they'd proceeded to dig Jazz back out of the ocean in the beginning of the second movie. "Yo, 'bot... I'm Sam's dad. My son's driving a nicer car than me. Violates the natural order. You see where I'm going with this, right?" "Yeah, I'm cool. Let's roll. Nice to be not-dead again."

Kyon blurts out that he hasn't done his homework. Koizumi hasn't done half of his either. Yuki and Mikuru are roped in to the great slacker pile, without chance for reply(like anyone would believe Yuki's homework wasn't done). Haruhi arranges a giant study party at Kyon's place. September first rolls around. Yuki takes a day off to recover from summer vacation.

Indeed. His first cartoon appearance has him signing on with the Decepticons... for about ten minutes. Then he pulls an Autobot badge out of his exhaust port and swaps sides. Then he gets buried in ice and they have a moving funeral for him. Then they drove back to the North Pole a month later to dig him up so he could fly them to South America.

*shrugs* They go where the money is. Think of all the franchises that started on the NES or SNES and totally skipped the N64 and GameCube.

Ah! The third shot was the one I noticed it most on, and it apparently bent WAY to the side, which it didn't in the others, so I assumed something was funny. I see now, though. It bends UP, the angle made it look like it bent to the side, and I guessed wrong about why. My apologies. Far as rubber goes... only other shots I've seen, the engine spikes were bent rather horribly. Thanks for the additional photos!

Yeah. Seeing an underside view has chased me back off from buying him. The bent nose in the second and (especially) third shot is an artifact from the camera, I'm pretty sure. The wings are so out of focus it's hard to tell what's up. The lens being used just isn't intended for the sort of photos being asked of it. Though in the photos I've seen of the Blackbird, it looks like it has a wierd droop in real life too. http://sr-71.org/photogallery/blackbird/17...959-2001-11.jpg The wings are SUPPOSED to go down then back up. If that's not what you mean, I dunno. I haven't seen a lot of really good Jetfire photos.

LIES! Wreckage is the best figure of either line! ... What? I love Wreckage.

Speaking of Hasbro's incompetence... (and Takara's, whoo!) Honestly, I never got into worrying about his legs(beyond "why are the gold toes on the backside?). I was more worried about the fact that his torso is a hollow shell that doesn't stay together. And then I was too caught up in making Superion not suck.

But if they did that, we wouldn't have mistransformed test shots to criticize!

Even Kyon wonders what Yuki sees in Ultraman that moves her so very deeply she'll break out of her standard routine to buy the mask. ... But hey, at least she has apartment decorations now!

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.