JB0

Better than mine. Last time I looked, the sum total of Transformers merchandise was a Nightbeat-7, a "tattoo kit" and ... one other activity set. I'm not exaggerating. There were EXACTLY 3 items on the shelf. A SIX-MONTH shortage, culminating in a complete and total absence of product for the entire month leading up to Christmas? No sir. Hasbro dropped the ball. They dropped it so hard it punched through the ground, came out in Australia, launched into space, orbited the Earth three times, and landed in the opponent's goal.

I get the impression they just assumed there'd be another, and saved everyone the renaming of "The Space War" to "Space War One" by doing it that way from the start.

I think they're cousins. In the Sailor Moon sense of the word.

A. It's MadCatz. That should be enough to change your mind right there. B. I'm pretty sure it's just taking the component video output and re-encoding it. Meaning that you actually get WORSE image quality than if you used component video.

As I understand things, Japan has a nasty habit of not getting all their business deals in writing. It seems verbal agreements are "good enough" for many companies. You can see where this might cause problems down the line. So while a written contract WOULD make it an open-and-shut case, no contract DOESN'T make it equally clear-cut. Given Tatsunoko and Big West wound up in court over who owned the Macross franchise, I think it's safe to assume there's not a clearly-written document outlining who has what rights.

*blinks* Okay.... WHAT. THE. HELL. IS. THAT? I think it was called Pole Position.

I was leaning towards the DE CULTURE!!!! one.... until I realized exactly how much explanation it would take. And then further realized that even after translation and explanation, it wouldn't make sense.

Ahhh, Visionaries... from when holograms were new and awesome. Hell, holograms are still awesome. More companies need to use them.

And, like everything else from the 80s, is a lot better in my memory than reality.

YES! MASK! DO IT, HOLLYWOOD!

Is it just me, or is "cybertronian jet" a codephrase for "we honestly have NO EFF'ING CLUE what this is" in a lot of cases?

Nono, everything rapes someone's childhood. Only SOME things are lame.

Ummm, who was it that was kicking a downed YF-21 in the "gut" over and over again, after bashing it in the head with a gunpod? Or is the argument just that Isamu was so crazy he'd do that even without the personal rage? Neither one of them was what I'd consider mentally stable.

Ya know, I was just thinking about this.... Isamu's luck REALLY presses the bounds of plausibility. He steals a military prototype(a pair of prototypes if you count the fold booster) with the intent of disrupting a major public celebration and destroying another military prototype, placing civilians, high-level politicians, and high-level military officials at risk in the process... And comes out of it a hero because there just HAPPENED to be an insane computer brainwashing the planet at the time. Luck isn't one of his many skills, it's his primary skill.

Maybe it was one season with the CG changing midway. I dunno, 's been a LONG time. I DO know there were 2 transformations, and I thought the hex grid was lame.

I don't recall the Batmobile turning inside out at any point. Slightly. It was pretty obvious they were a car ad. The point wasn't which came first. It was that the car turned inside out. Well... if I recall, first season it had a bunch of armor panels that slid out and into place over the car. Then they changed to a hex grid and it just turned inside out in a wave across the car.

Arcee has a beret. Consequently, I've only been able to give her stupid poses while going "I am ze french auto-boot!"

Viper mixed both approaches. It was an apparently-stock Viper that TRANSFORMED INTO a future-car through the miracle of badly-planned CG animation.

"Oy, there's a regular black car behind us, no worries! I mean heck, it doesn't even have a driver it couldn't POSSIBLY be a threat!" I happen to agree with you, though.

The later ones pick up. Honestly, I'm not too fond of the Rincewind books. I recommend Feet of Clay. That was one of my favorites. Reaper Man and Soul Music were good too.

If you don't know what you need to learn, then it will probably be very hard. You need to know a programming language, for starters. That actually covers a lot of ground, since you learn logic and math computer-style while learning to program. Most likely you'll learn C or C++, for the same reason everyone had an NES. It's number one. You'd need a sound/graphics API too, like Allegro or DirectX. Hypothetically, those 2 elements should cover it. They are, sadly, a lot more complex than they sound. Programming is not something you can just pick up and do. As far as tweaking the game mechanics and characteristics.... do you even know what those are, specifically? Or are you just planning on approximating it based on look and feel? Not that a best guess is a bad thing, since you aren't trying to make a straight Vasteel port.

Actually.... NEC had no clue what they were doing, hardware-wise. And on the US side, they had no idea what they were doing, period. Not marketing, distribution, or software licensing(though 2 and 3 were hurt by the Nintendo America chokehold of the era) There's about 3792 variants of the PCEngine/TurboGrafX hardware. Almost all of them are J-only. The Duo is are just another variants. With the (rather large) plus of an integrated Super CD-ROM expansion. Meaning it could play any CD game except for the Arcade Card titles(and the Rondo of Blood "mini-game"), and save HuCard and CD games with no additional hardware(a base PCEngine/TG16 couldn't save cartridge games without a peripheral, though the US and both Japanese CD-ROM expansions integrated said peripheral). It was the cleanest way to play (essentially) the entire TG16/PCEngine library. The original CD-ROM adapter required a "System Card" to boot. The initial System Card 1.0 was, to put it bluntly, a disaster. It was buggy and unusable, and nothing really supported it. Hence, System Card 2. Which also added more RAM, if I recall. This was followed by the "Super System Card 3.0" which added more RAM than 2.0. This was also integrated into the redesigned CD expansion and Duo, so you no longer needed a boot card if you had one of those. And then there was the Arcade Card. With, you guessed it, more RAM. There's also a redesigned Duo called the Duo-R. And a rebadged Duo-R called a Duo-RX. Because NEC MUST repackage everything to further market confusion! The only two real "steps up" were the SuperGrafX(J-only(despite the name) marginal upgrade and flop) and PC-FX(J-only completely new platform and flop). Anyways, now that I've nerded out.... I'm sure Vasteel could be modded. Depends how elaborate you want to go, though. A simple sprite swap would be easy, but not very impressive. Creating a genuinely new game would be far harder, and better served by writing a new game from scratch.

It seemed like a 1.5 situation to me. Sara is PARTIALLY separate from the computer. She WAS an independent entity, but she also clearly wasn't herself. They weren't totally merged, but there was a significant overlap. If that makes any sense. Either way, the birdman didn't seem capable of full operation without a human "pilot."

It's not really "siding with" Sara. She's an integral part of the system and it relies on her evaluation of the situation. Of course, she's not totally herself while her brain is mixed with the computer, and she wasn't in the best state of mind to start with. Ultimately, though, Sara is the final fail-safe. The system REQUIRES a human core, and that human can shut it down at any time for any reason. Granted the man-machine fusion makes them less likely to do so, but they still CAN.

Truth in advertising laws.