JB0

If I ever become a father, I'm doing that. My wife will probably kill me, but I have to. I hope you're happy. You've probably signed my death warrant.

I saw it. As with all things Ultimate Bumblebee, I found it hard to care. I just jab the sound buttosn when I walk by to see what pops out.

The lasers are officially anti-aircraft weapons. And whether something explodes or not is gonna be a function of how rapidly you dump energy into it, and where you're dumping that energy. You can get a good bang out of a fairly low-power shot if you melt a hole in the fusion core. Outside of that, you have to dump a lot of energy into the target in a fairly short period of time. Armor-wise, you want... A. Reflective surfaces. B. Curved surfaces. Or my personal favorite... C. Thermally superconductive armor. A is obvious. With a perfect reflector, you're invincible... Of course, a perfect reflector violates the laws of thermodynamics, and won't stay perfect for long as dust and scuffs accumulate. But even an imperfect one greatly reduces the energy you absorb. Thus, white valks are safer to fly than brownies... and now you know the secret to Hikaru's high survivability. B spreads the laser over a wider impact area increasing the amount of power you need for a given effect. There's also some weird optical properties with curved surfaces that I don't understand. C spreads the heat over the entire armor piece, meaning you have to dump MASSIVELY larger amounts of power into the target to get an effect. But if you can pour enough energy in to vaporize a large piece... it ain't gonna be pretty. Lasers are weird weapons. I think it's safe to say that no sci-fi does them right. By the Compendium's specs, the head lasers ARE pulsed. 6000 pulses per minute. You could attribute variances to pilot usage more easily than variable pulse rates, IMO. They're probably trained to fire short controlled bursts, as the gunpod carries little ammo and the lasers overheat with sustained fire. Or you can take the artistic license angle, as the beam shouldn't be visible AT ALL in space regardless of fire mode. In an atmosphere... I don't know. There's no available wavelength or power ratings. And that's really out of my depth anyways. I don't know what sort of power level you'd need to get a visible beam, though I know it's possible. The animation can't be used as a guideline, as it shows beams, no beams, and gunpowder muzzle flare in both environments. Occasionally with machine-gun noises. It also shows a combined visible beam+muzzle flare that makes it appear as if, rather than an actual laser, the gun uses a mass of energy that accumulates at the tip of the barrel and the beam emits from that mass. Aesthetically pleasing, certainly, but utterly impossible for a laser. Either way, I'd be willing to bet the head lasers are used more than we think. Several scenes have lasers emitting from the FLIR sensor bulges. These likely would have been from the head lasers, had the animation teams responsible understood the Valk's design better. Ironically, these are consistently treated as lasers, despite being COMPLETELY WRONG. I can't think of any scenes that used machine-gun effects for the FLIR sensors. And given the highly variable animation(the gunpod often fires lasers, and the head lasers often fire bullets), there's no way to tell if a given shot came from the gunpod or head turret in fighter mode, unless we actually see which gun is firing.

Begin at the beginning. Watch the original SDF Macross TV series(NOT Robotech). From there, I'd recommend Do You Remember Love and Macross Plus. DYRL assumes TV series knowledge, so while it's REALLY pretty, it's not a great starting point. DYRL isn't available in the US, though. But there always be a solution to that, ARRR. ... Actually, where you start probably depends on what KIND of anime fan you are. SDF Macross is low-budget 80s animation. It is, shall we say, not very pretty most of the time. If you value flash over substance, jump straight to DYRL and Plus. But if you're looking for content, character development, and a story, start with the TV series.

I suspect the problem fell under the work-safe label. Or the "Holy CRAP that GERWALK is scary" issue.

To be fair, Millia could turn a dented tuna can into a deadly space fighter if you gave her a can of red paint.

Seems like it comes WAY too far out for that. Especially the back of Cammy's ponytail. 1 pixel in and there's an entire tile of hit? Hit detection wasn't restricted to whole tiles even back in the Atari era. We've ALWAYS been able to clip it to just the visible part of the sprite. If they're restricted to 64*64 tiles for hit detection, it's not only a HUGE step backwards, but gonna lead to a REALLY ugly-playing fighter. That color is a traditional transparency indicator. I'm betting it's just "this part of this tile is transparent" and hit detection is FAR closer to the actual sprite outlines(actually, I'd bet it IS the sprite outlines in most cases). There's a new Roadblasters coming out? Why didn't anyone tell me?

Also worth noting that UN Military HQ is inside the Macross. Odds are good they don't want it going far.

Ummm.... Guld DID use his mind to pilot the YF-21. And his body, to the extent that he had to remain conscious and NOT jerk into a stray switch during high-G maneuvers. Isamu just slapped a bunch of levers and buttons and the YF-19 did all the work for him.

Not even in the same company. It'd just be nice to see some R-Type fighters get the same treatment the Vic viper is getting. The Gradius link is just an easter egg for the fans. No continuity connection.

I highly doubt it. Given there appear to be mounting points for his coronation armor, I'm pretty sure they planned a G1 paint scheme from the start. Besides, have they EVER passed up a chance to do a repaint and sell the same toy all over again? A sprue issue would mess up Seeker repaints, too. I don't see any possible way AT ALL that they thought there was only going to be one deco job for that mold.

Yeah. I know different materials hold paint different. Seems to me, in my amateur opinion, that those wouldn't hold paint well anyways due to location and function. It'd scrape off pretty fast, if I had to bet. And on top of that, Hasbro tends to use less paint when they can, and they could easily have felt the cost of the paint wasn't justified, especially given the high scrape factor. So if they couldn't mold it in the right color to start with, it'd be very likely to stay the wrong color. Just saying, given the character lends itself REALLY well to redecos and there's circumstantial evidence a G1 paint scheme was planned from day 1, it's not likely to be a gang-molding issue unless someone was terminally stupid(which has happened before, admittedly).

Which would be pretty darn stupid of the mold designers given they'd almost invariably planned for a cartoon color scheme when they made the mold(I seem to recall discussion about it having mounting points for a crown and cloak), and they've ALREADY started doing repaints for the rest of the seekers. Personally, I'd bet Hasbro made the hinge pieces black for some sort of durability reason(I don't recall hearing about them being failure points, but...).

Oddd.... I saw it and thought "BOMBA!!!!!"

http://www.eants.co.jp/valis/ is the official game site. Contains non-safe content. Both in the traditional "naked women" sense and the "WTF did they do to Valis?!?!?!" sense(hint: they lesbian tentacle-raped it).

Seems Telenet Japan finally announced they're closing up a week ago. Not exactly a big name, but they had some recognizable titles back in the 90s. Valis was probably the most prominent. Personally, I liked El Viento and Gaiares. For you new-fangled gamers out there, they also did the early Tales games for Namco. Tales of Phantasia SNES Tales of Destiny PS1 Tales of Phantasia PS1 Tales of Eternia PS1 Tales of Destiny 2 PS2 They were one of those companies that just never managed to make the 3D transition. Kept their heads above water longer than most did, though. Probably thanks solely to the Tales of ... paychecks, which had them tucked neatly out of sight in the end credits. tri-Ace was formed by Telenet's Wolf Team(responsible for El Viento, and the original ToP, which was their last game before they left and formed tri-Ace). I'm sure the loss of that chunk of talent didn't exactly boost them up the success ladder any. Last I heard of them they'd licensed someone to do a Valis porn game(not like the character design didn't lend itself to the concept....), and then some more porn from other licenses they still held. Seems that didn't pay the bills either. News courtesy of Insert Credit. http://www.insertcredit.com/

PS: As soon as my wife quits ranting at ME about your complete and unmitigated incompetence as a pilot, I'm going to come over there and strangle you for fueling that rant.

According to Insert Credit, the feature attraction is an arcade-perfect port that's "not even vaguely based on the Sega Saturn version."

I declare Gamlin honorary cannon fodder for that sin!

Nope. Just his planes.

They also forgot to advertise it, so no one knew it existed until it left theaters. Which is probably for the best. Which was the same problem the traditional animation had. The audiences weren't running from cel animation. They were running from bad cartoons. Lilo and Stitch, for example, did GREAT. Despite being right smack in the middle of the exodus.

It was Millia. She headshot-ed him before anyone saw her. Then went for Max, who was already moving. Dogfight/foreplay ensues.

Kakizaki, hands down. Aside from the fact that he flew a brownie and LIVED(for a while), he was actually improving.By the time of Burst Point, while he certainly wasn't a super pilot, he was holding his own in combat. It was just dumb luck that placed him that extra bit closer to the Macross when all hell broke loose.

Wasn't the LAST Transformers motion picture infamous for it's excessive violence? That's the Hollywood logic. "Well, this bad conventional cartoon bombed, and this pretty kick-ass CG one did pretty good.... obviously it's the medium's fault, since consumers are too stupid to tell a good movie from a bad one." I'm aware there's a tradeoff. I would've preferred more robots done to a lower quality standard. And if it forced them to simplify the designs, well, I guess I'd've just had to live with it...

I'm not mad at the movie. For all it's flaws, it WAS better than I expected. Which admittedly doesn't say much, but... I enjoyed it, when I wasn't groaning at idiocy like the acoustic analysis of computer signals, or just wishing they'd hurry up and DO something. I WAS disappointed at the end, and I really wish someone else was in charge for 2. But it wasn't a complete and total trainwreck. More like a fender-bender in a parking lot. I enjoyed Stealth too, for what it's worth. I seem to recall that one carrying a VERY low average opinion here. But people apologizing for the movie's shortcomings, and explaining how it HAD to be that way to draw a mainstream audience, when the mainstream audience complained about them too... I view that as an insult to my intelligence.