JB0

There's a pad from Joytech called the "Joypad SE" It has a decent-ish d-pad, and moves start and select back to the superior position of the XBox 1's S controller. It might be hard to find. As I understand it, Joytech got bought, and most of their stuff was scrapped. Or you can go hardcore and get the Hori Fighting Stick EX2. This is the path I'm going. I always played NES with an Advantage, or the Wiimote NES mode would be really appealing. Whenever I get a Wii, I'll get a stick for THAT too. But in the meantime...

That could just be for comfort. People can tell when they're in a fold because of the color-shifting effect somehow. Otherwise Misa and company wouldn't have known they were folding, or how long they'd been folding. I imagine the different physics standards make for a disorienting ride. Didn't Deculture also make reference to "fold sickness"?

Yeah. That's been a long-running thing. Mickey's come close to going PD a few times since the original Steamboat Willie. And every time his time starts to run out, it gets extended. There's also a few "annoyances" like needing to renew the copyright and formally declare it removed . The ORIGINAL US law, from 1790, provided for a 14-year copyright, and a single 14-year renewal, IF the original author was still alive. 1909 extended it to 28, with a single 28-year renewal. 1976 extended it to 50 after the author's death, or 75 years for anonymous works and works for hire, as mandated by the Berne Convention. This was the first one that Mickey, created in 1928, benefited from(he would've gone public in 1984). It also removed the necessity of registering and formally declaring your copyright. 1998 extended it to 95 years after publication, 120 years after creation, whichever came first, or 70 years after the author's death. This is the one everyone blames Disney for. Though it was actually proposed by Sonny Bono, Disney DID lobby heavily for it. The stated reason for the bill was to bring US copyright periods in line with european ones, but... It could've been worse. The European laws we were supposed to be keeping up qith that not only extended copyright, but restored copyright to public domain works that wouldn't have lapsed under the new laws.

I've never figured out why, but people tend to get REALLY bent out of shape over Kamen/Mask. Happens with this and Sailor Moon both. I think it's just a gross misapplication of the "leave names alone" guideline, and they're not able to tell.

I may have, at the time. Custer's Revenge is only slightly less tired than "ET KILLED VIDEO GAMES!111" And face it... no one knew the game existed before Seanbaby dropped it on his worst games ever list. Now no one will shut up about it. It's become the most famous game no one played. Citing it in a worst games list is nothing more that total creative bankruptcy.

The mass market is irrelevant! Cater to my whims! *tangental rant about the evils of inertial dampers* Seriously, I wonder if they could get away with the old SDF "swap the head and throw some paint on it" routine if they tried really hard. The 1J and 1S existed to be "hero mechs" but it seems less offensive when it's not maintaining entirely different planes. (Admittedly, SMS has separation of gear from NUNS, so the usual gripes about maintaining two sets of planes don't really apply.)

It was the primary, at least originally. There was a new command center added somewhere in the core of the ship post-war. Of course, it had to be abandoned during the final episode, so they could all get together on the old bridge.

So I headed out... My Toys R Us had an entire aisle full of Transformers... from the movie. Animated-wise, I had my choice of Grimlock and Lugnut. Anything else was MIA.

But time dilation for FTL travel isn't the same as the relativistic effect. Notably, it takes infinite time to do anything at lightspeed, and infinite energy to attain lightspeed. Hence why there's a universal speed limit of 1c. And that brings us to subspace, hyperspace, fold space, etc. Drop yourself into a parallel universe with a different set of rules, one where lightspeed is higher, or the laws don't prohibit passing photons. Of course, universes with different rules can ALSO run at a different speed. Historically, that's been the most plausable explanation for the fold space/real space time discrepancy, fold space just has a slower time. Not relativistic time dilation. And now we get to the modern era of Macross, and the newest wrinkle. I wonder if it's truly 1:1 time correlation with the new prototype, or if it minimizes the effects of faults, but there's still an inherent time flow variance on top of that that was just irrelevant for the fold in question. Misa's statements in the original series implied a direct ratio, which doesn't line up with the fault explanation(remember, she's not OBSERVING the time discrepancy. She has no way of seeing time outside of the fold. She has to have prior knowledge that time isn't 1:1). Of course, fold time could also be continuously variable, and faults are just areas of particularly "slow" time. Frontier's graphic illustrated the ship flying around some faults and straight through others, so it's apparently not a case of COMPLETE impassability, leaving you to wonder what exactly a fault IS. It could just be a question of whether it's "faster" to go around a fault or to plow through it. Of course,(at least according to the subs I watched) the planet-buster bomb generated a fold fault. They don't seem very passable. Maybe they're different if they're actually IN fold space. In conclusion: ???

Ummm... there's an incredibly large body of evidence that suggests gravity does NOT cancel out inertia. You'll need to elaborate.

I didn't say this was the first occurrence. And there was also Diamond Force's VF-17s in Mac7, on the subject of hero mechs. Though at least Gamlin wasn't the ONLY VF-17 pilot.

I HATE inertial damping, precisely BECAUSE it's the easy way out. It's an epidemic excuse that isn't even remotely plausable and removes consideration for the design to do anything other than look good. And inertia damping automatically means you aren't being overly technical. It's the standard Trek solution to a problem: throw technobabble at it. I assume it doesn't exist until it's stated to exist. As of right now, it's not stated to exist in Macross(much to Guld's disappointment, as it would've saved his life). And that people can operate normally in it at all times. If it didn't have artificial gravity, the bridge crew would've drifted away when they defolded into deep space. There's also the catapults on the Prometheus. And combat on the ship's "skin". Destroids could have magnetic feet, but EVERYTHING sticks when it lands. I get the impression that the decks are always parallel to the ground when it lands. Artificial gravity is easy if you're stationary. It gets a lot more complicated if you're moving. You could put gravity generators on the walls in line with the thrust axis, so you could create a counter-pull. But that's complicated. And messy if something malfunctions. Ignoring stress placed on the ship by the thrusters, sure. If the attacker mounting is less sturdy than the cruiser mounting, there could be big problems. ... Or maybe I'm looking at this wrong... Macross City could be built along a different axis than the bridge. If they built it across the thrust axis originally, as would make sense for space travel... then when it's swung around for the transformation, it winds up parallel to the main thrust axis. Makes landing a pain in the rear, though. Same issues I was describing for thrust earlier. Only now instead of your thrust axis plus gravity axis, you're dealing with your gravity axis plus the planet's gravity axis. Antigravs? Certainly, their effectiveness will deminish as you get farther away from Earth, but that also decreases the amount of real thrust you need. Get far enough away that your secondary thrusters can send you flying, and you're good to go.

True... the bunnies WERE all hot and bothered by their captain. The original Macross had a much faster-charging cannon, by all appearances. The Battle 7 also had issues with capital-ship engagements. I accept dreamweaver's justification until such time as I feel compelled to redownload and rewatch Macross 7. Which probably won't be for a long time. Right. Well, sort of. Up and down DO exist once you A. fire up some gravity generators, or B. start accelerating. Once you light the engines, they start pushing everything directly attached to them forward. Everything INSIDE the ship, in a 0G environment, will "fall" towards the engines due to inertia. If you accelerate at 1G, you can walk on the floors just like at home. Or the walls, depending on how you look at it. Stop accelerating, and you start floating again. Slow down, and you fall towards the roof, making really big rooms a Bad Idea. If you add gravity generators, things get more complicated. As I understand things, the SDF-1 is laid out with floors parallel to the thrust axis in both modes(we know for a FACT that the bridge is. And we know that the bulk of Megaroad and modern-era colony ships are laid out in this manner, due to the massive windows domes making everything visible from outside). So the gravity generators are defining down. And when the ship accelerates, it creates a pull due to inertia in a SIDEWAYS direction, relative to the artificial gravity. So apparent gravity becomes a diagonal direction, unless you activate some other system to "correct" for inertia or keep your acceleration low to minimize the effect it has on the passengers. It's really a lousy way to design a spaceship, honestly. But it's the standard layout for TV/movie ships. There's also the possibility of structural stress in attacker mode. The "legs" don't look like they're attached as securely in attacker mode. There may be excessive stress on the "hips" that prevents using the main engines in that configuration.

! My Primus will have something to do other than play with his Micromaster pets!

Didn't one of the ACE games do that?

The problem with the New Macross not being the big guns is... Battle 7 is the ship that stepped up when they needed the big guns. They didn't have a dedicated gunship to blast the super-bulldog, they had to rely on Fire Bomber to immobolize it while the Battle 7 charged up. They DID hint at that, with comments by the zentradi of how travelling in attacker mode limited their speed(acceleration actually, I assume). And it IS shown using secondary thrusters on it's back to accelerate through space instead of it's primary "leg" engines. So they may've gone with it, and just decided that the reduced travel time wasn't worth the constant disruption of civilian life. Especially since it makes sense from both a travel perspective AND a passenger comfort perspective to use the leg engines, so thrust is oriented perpendicular to the floor instead of parallel to it. Keeps down being down instead of off at an angle(unless they used an elaborate set of secondary gravity generators, or *shudder* INERTIAL DAMPERS to counteract the effects of thrust). I'm referring mainly to the absurd amount of time it takes to charge and fire it's main cannon. All the power in the world doesn't mean a thing if you can't hit a target.

They shoulda got Micheal Bay to direct. He'd make sure there was a suitably badass Gort.

Of course, the Quarter's presumed lack of power(an assumption I share) is somewhat offset by the (rather absurd) degree of agility it exhibits. I think it could fly rings around ships the original Macross would plow right into(probably while someone shouted "Daedalus ATTACK!", but still...) The Battle 7 doesn't really have an excuse. It's slow, underarmed, and underpowered. Which is a lousy combination. That was my biggest disappointment with Macross 7. The New Macross class was a massive letdown.

Well, right now the only other SA ship they've found was the one in the factory satellite episode. And they wisely chose not to stop and investigate it since the Supervision Army is well-known for booby-trapping ships. You know, like the Macross was. It could be rather dangerous to run around reclaiming SA vessels. That and... honestly, the Macross seemed a lot more useful than the Battle 7. HOW long did it take to charge the Battle 7's "rifle"? The lag after you decide to fire is a serious tactical hindrance. The original Macross can fire it's cannon almost on a moment's notice.

I don't know that there's ever been a clearly-defined Q-Rau cockpit. Much to my dismay.

Actually, I think he said it looked too much like A hero mech, not that it looked too much like the VF-25. Meanwhile, back in the old days, when we had to walk uphill both ways to watch anime... everyone flew the same QBerting plane, just with a different head and paint job. Hero mech is a silly Gundam ideal, and I'm sad to see it invading Macross.

That's not a very Optimus thing to say. Wait, wrong Matrix.

If I recall, the interviews on ye olde Animeigo DVDs said the original Macross had episodes finish shooting pretty much right before they were scheduled to air. And of course, we know they scrapped a season, rewrote the entire show to abbreviate the main plot arc, then added a season and had to write the post-war arc and some "filler" episodes to pad the episode count back out. Granted the industry runs a bit differently now, but... I suspect it's not THAT different. They just finish rendering instead of shooting cels.

They may start embracing the downloadable game model. It offers them a lower target than the disk games, which've become a bit over-the-top in terms of development requirements. For now... PSP, DS, PS2, Wii. The lower hardware specs set the demands lower, meaning the games can be developed relatively cheaply.

Why would they put fold drives in a ship explicitly assigned to defend EARTH? When they were building massive colony fleets where any fold drives produced would be more useful? There were pretty clear reasons to refit the poor thing. Like the fact that there was a big chunk ripped out of it. And how is multiple Macrosses convoluted? Humanity had an effective, war-tested warship. They needed warships to escort their colony ships. It's VERY simple logic. Yes, I know... there's no documentation that more than 1 was built. But there's no documentation that the original fold drives were ever replaced either. And there IS documentation that the Macross is STILL ON EARTH. The best argument against there being other Macrosses is actually the fact that the design is a lot bigger than anyone but full-scale zentradi needed. Not that there's no documented builds. If they built a series to spec with the original post-refit, it's got a LOT of empty space that they aren't using, and excess mass. It's a bigger target and harder to move, but there's no gain. And they learned in Space War 1 that a dual-purpose combat/civilian ship sucks for the civilians(according tot he Compendium, they lost 18,000 civilians out of 58,000 during SW1). No prior documentation is a weak argument. I seem to recall it being used to prove that the VF-1 had to appear in Macross Zero, since it was going to be a prequel and there weren't any other variable fighters in that time frame. I think we all know how THAT turned out. Right now, the existing canon states that Alto and Ranka did not see what they saw. There's no evidence to support ANY other stance on the issue. The one that best fits what we know(alien intervention, Alto and Ranka see Macross, the only Macross is on Earth), is that they're both experiencing an alien-induced hallucination. Which, if it happens that way, most likely means history lesson time. If it's the Macross, they need a hell of a story to get it there. If it's a real ship, but not the Macross... it takes a smaller story. You forgot the Atari VS Intellivision. And SNES VS Genesis, Apple 2 VS IBM PC, Commodore 64 VS Atari 800, VHS VS Betamax, etc. People will argue over anything, no matter what. The internet's just made it easier to be an apeface about it, since no one's gonna punch you in the face. YES!