JB0

Stampede, please! I honestly don't know why I like the Stampede Valk so much. It's like the bastard child of a Gundam and the VF-1.

And we've made Insert Credit. http://www.insertcredit.com/archives/002414.html "This amount of content pretty much dwarfs SEGA's last effort and even From Software's monolithic Another Century's Episode games and it's only on a handheld!" That kind of statement gives me warm fuzzies(even if I'm pretty sure a lot of the mechs are VF-1 repaints).

That certainly helped, but I think you're selling the Lynns short. They were also *the first restaurant to open on the Macross(making them an early social hub by default), *instrumental in getting the city rebuilt(the Lynns were among the first people to stop acting like refugees and start rebuilding their lives, and they were the ones that initially proposed reallocating supplies to create a semblance of normalcy inside the ship), *one of the few dining establishments to survive Space War 1(if I seem a bit focused on Macross City, well, it's because Macross City WAS the civilized world immediately after the war), *... and their menu was killer(ask Kakizaki). They were uniquely well-equipped to begin forging a chinese restaurant empire the likes of which the world has never seen, and it wasn't ALL thanks to Minmay living there.

And the Super FamiCom. And the PCEngine(TurboGrafX 16) SuperCD expansion. And the Dreamcast. And the Wonderswan. And the Saturn. And the Arcadia. The ARCADIA, for Pete's sake! Really, it's hard to NOT get a Macross game if your system has any sort of marketshare at all in Japan. The 'Cube and Sega 8-bits seem to be the only exceptions to the rule. (Genesis/Megadrive was never a success in Japan, and the NeoGeo Pocket didn't last long enough. And how the ARCADIA got a game and not the SG-1000/Mark III/Master System, I'll never know... unless it's because Bandai made the Arcadia in Japan. That might explain it.)

'S more Saitek's or Thrustmaster's field, really. Logitech isn't known for their flight sim controllers. Thrustmaster's been teh historical standard, and Saitek's been trying to open some room for themselves. http://www.saitekusa.com/usa/prod/x52pro.htm would look at home in a Valk, IMO. Not a flip-throttle(YET!), but... Edit: I didn't realize Thrustmaster no longer had the Top Gun license. It's the end of an era.

Indeed. As with all portable game systems to date, there's no region encoding on any PSP games. Now, PSP MOVIES are a different story. But no one cares about them anyways.

You forgot the Facade SWAG-piercing nosecone.

Buildings cut into the sky, turning it into cages for the land-dwellers. Ask Alto.

It's interesting how many discussions start in the newbie thread. Guess it just shows how many seemingly basic questions have rather complex answers.

I demand Roller! Voyager class at the minimum! Okay, seriously... I want another Shockwave. And Dinobots(which we're actually getting). I ALMOST got Prowl the other day, and I'm very glad I didn't now that I know there's a revision coming. Anything else is gonna be highly dependent on how it looks on the shelf.

"And by the way... the part where I peed my pants is off the record. You publish it and you will NEVER eat at my chain again!" But consider that the song is from before the resolution of the triangle. For most of the series, Minmay was the one with access to Hikaru. Misa was the "old lady" on the bridge, and he rarely socialized with her. He's not entirely indifferent to Misa either. Starting all the way back at Bye-Bye Mars, shortly after he enlists, he has a long list of rescues, often at great risk to his own health. He charges into an exploding base on Mars, launches the untested FAST pack prototype, flies into a collapsing Grand Cannon, charges into an alien spaceship and engages in 1-on-1 combat with the enemy commander after her recon mission goes wrong... and most dramatically(IMO) during their escape from captivity, when he gets a rack of zentradi rifles dumped on him, then crawls out from under the pile and fires one to save her from recapture. They even make reference to this proud history when he picks up her radio broadcast from the Grand Cannon. His protection of Minmay is, by comparison, usually far less personal. Excepting the post-war rescue from Kamjin and a handful of pre-enlistment accidents, she's just a face in the crowd, while he defends the entire population. He nearly gets her killed a few times too, which he NEVER does with Misa. And for most of the series, Misa is the one on the outside. He's protecting her, while seeing Minmay(in the public eye anyways, no doubt helped along by "My Boyfriend's a Pilot"). I can more easily see it from Misa's angle. It could be a mish-mash of both of them, though. Or the fictional drama it's allegedly written for might be so out in left field that we can't make any meaningful comparison. It could be Kakizaki singing. Think about THAT for a minute.

Or abbreviating it further, depending on context. I've seen it abbreviated all the way down to J in some emulation forums. Usually when discussing game regions.

Oh. Never mind then. Shoulda seen that the first time. Bad day for Skull?

Me Grimlock no bozo. Me Grimlock king! ... What?

Of course it is! Max's girl hunt interest was instrumental in ending Space War 1!

I voted High School Queen. Because I'm a jackass that likes skewing the results.

I was just thinking that if Hikaru is 101, and Max and Kakizaki are 102 and 103... that means either the numbers aren't based on replaced planes, or that EVERYONE in Skull quit dying when Hikaru signed up until Kakizaki started pulling them back down. But yeah, you're right that most Valk pilots are getting raped left and right. They do point that a few times in the show that the promotions are pretty iffy. When Hikaru makes a comment about how green his new wingmen are, Focker's quick to knock him back into line by pointing out that he isn't that much more experienced than they are. And after the whole team gets promoted(if I recall, it's right after the Cat's Eye mission), they comment that they're getting promoted absurdly fast. Sort of "Hey, you aren't dead yet? Here, have another rank." Everyone knows they aren't being promoted on the basis of skill and experience, but because there's empty fighters that need filling. Kakizaki's not without talent(in the simulators he ranked as well as Max did). He's just unpolished, overconfident, and overexcitable. I honestly thought the contrast between Max and Kakizaki was interesting. It's somewhat ironic that when he dies, he's actually starting to shape up into a decent pilot. If you compare his first appearances to his performance in Burst Point, it's almost like he's a different person. Burst Point also features the only non-title-sequence use of the Badass Shades switch on Hikaru's helmet(well, maybe Phantasm, but that's using the title animation anyways), so it's worth watching for that alone. ... What? I can't be the only person that thought that looked insanely awesome.

I'd always just assumed it had to do with the old UN being nuked into obliviion by the zentradi. Hence Global's government is the New UN. It just never came up before somehow.

Wouldn't be the first time. HG registered a DYRL URL a while back. Fueled a bit of rumor for a while. All that ever came out of it was a few busts, if I remember right.

It's also possible that the number has very little to do with rank or squadron position. It may just be based on how many planes the squadron's gone through. ... Which would mean they were getting their butts kicked royally before Hikaru signed up. Never mind.

How would that work? No one knew Sharon was a danger except the guys behind the Ghost and the mad scientist behind Sharon. Neither one was interested in sharing. And once Sharon went crazy, no one was in any shape to tell anyone anything. Except Myung, and she was busy trying to escape from the crazy robot.

Could be. Focker is a seasoned veteran. He was an ace during the Unification Wars. Hikaru and company are raw recruits. They didn't even sign up until after the Macross launched.

Ah, yeah... I have a loose thumb. But it's not really consistent. The snap-out "laser guns" were hard to open the first time(and undocumented!). WAs one of those things.... I was sure the missile launchers would slide forward, but not entirely sure why. Then the guns snapped out, and I was "cool!". Then I realized there was no detail, and they were just dangly plastic prongs, and I was like "this is lame." Then I slid the missile launchers back into place and closed everything up. ... And then the right thumb fell out.

My MalWart only had Ratchet and Blackarachnia. My Toys R Us had piles of stuff. I grabbed Starscream. Yah. He's got a few breakaways that are entirely too loose. The back fins on mine pop off quite readily too(and given the VF-19 cues in the design, I was disappointed to see them fold into back fins instead of popping out to become a shield). On top of that, getting his arms in place for the transformation back to jetplane is a bit fidgety. Which is fairly embarassing, given there's no attempt at concealing the limbs to justify the fidget(he'd look a lot nicer from the jet's side if the shoulder pads faced out instead of in). But it's okay, because he's Starscream. And Starscream shall always reign supreme.

Mostly, I've thought the movie flows far better. The OVA loses me at a few key points. The live-fire "accident" makes no sense. It's entirely too contrived, and there's simply no way it works. The story is better without it, no matter how fun the fight is. Especially as it taints a large portion of the OVA. Isamu backing down when Guld jumps on him for not coming to Myung's rescue is totally out of character. He WAS there, even if he was late. He risked his life to get there. There's simply no way he'd let Guld crap all over him for a bit of bad traffic. But it DOES make sense for him to back down if he was too busy banging Lucy to get out of bed. Guld's comment hurts him because he knows it's true. He's failed Myung when it really counted. Lucy apologizing for not telling him Myung was leaving makes no sense in the OVA, as there's no real indication their relationship WENT anywhere. There's no reason for her to be TAKING his calls. Again, sex makes everything better. The first time I saw the movie, I thought that it was how they should've done things in the first place. Then I found out it was what they'd originally planned, and it all made sense.