JB0

But it's not explicitly banished like Macross 2 is. I think that's the logic being used here. Which doesn't particularly matter. As I understand things the official timeline is exclusive, which is to say that any items not mentioned in it are automatically non-canon and "never happened" simply by virtue of omission.

Ah, yes... American legislators wouldn't let us shoot half-ounce plastic missiles at each other, but had no problems with us throwing 2-pound metal objects at the same people... I think some of the early Matchbox ones DID have the missile launchers intact. Not sure, though. I know my Green and Yellow didn't. Sadly, that was as far as I ever got on the definitive Voltron. I completed the fugly-but-holds-pilots one through a garage sale or 2. But most of the lions are missing bits. I've got the knife, gun, and leg missiles for the blue and green lions(which are the only 2 I got new). But the important part is the Blazing Sword. No sword = no fun! I had the little one with pullback motors in the lions too. It looked decent(relatively speaking, there WAS a plastic wheel sticking out of the crest on Voltron's chest). But mom made me give that one to my little sister, who immediately lost the sword and broke/lost the lions rapidly thereafter. Only Voltron I ever had a sword for, too...

Just to throw my 2 cents in... "American kids are morons" should read "Kids are morons." There's nothing unique about american children having bad taste. Kids just don't know better, and even when they do they let their imaginations patch over the shortcomings.

Voltron is robot lions and giant monsters and combination sequences and comic-relief space mice and evil kings with pointy ears and FORM BLAZING SWORD! and techno-witches and a healthy dose of bad voice-acting. In short, it's a super-robot anime.

Except for the entire Micromaster, Pretender, and Actionmaster lines(Which I think were pretty much everything after the Head/Target/Powermasters until Gen2 began)? Of course, Micromasters and Actionmasters sucked for other reasons, but the Pretenders were decent enough(the early ones, anyways).

I gather LaserDisk did reasonably well in Japan too? 'S a couple of things I can think of that "video disc" could apply to. None of which were relevant to the States. I think VideoCD is the only one that ever approached genuine success in any region.

Actually, the are right now. DVD and HD releases. And on platform-neutral releases, both HD-DVD and BluRay versions. I doubt they intend to sustain it, though. They're probably just trying to accelerate HD adoption so they can ID the leader faster and declare it winner. Hmm... I prefer HD-DVD's boxes, but I'd REALLY love to point and laugh at the people ranting about "BetaRay"... Now I'm not sure which I want to see win...

Yup. It also happens to be a country the HD-DVD Forum has trademarks registered in, as well as one LG does business in. The article saying the DVD Forum wasn't going to license it said that they refused to license it in it's current, barely functional, form. Not that they were opposed to a multi-mode player. All I've read about it has been the articles linked in this thread. I know LG has a reasonably good reputation, and can't fathom WHY they would engage in a fiasco like this. But that's what it looks like. My best guess is they intended to market it as a BluRay player that also offered basic HD-DVD playback, as opposed to a true dual-format player. But it still doesn't make a lot of sense. True. But if your demo unit is a half-functional proof of concept, you need to ID it as such.

Under US law, you are REQUIRED to sue people for using your trademarks without permission. If they ignore LG's unlicensed use of the HD-DVD name and logo, they WILL lose the trademark. At which point anyone can use the name for anything. Some rather stupid lawsuits come out over this facet of the law. Which exists to prevent people sitting on a trademark, waiting for everyone else to start using it, and THEN suing the bejesus out of everyone(Bayer tried it with Asprin. They failed.). Of course, LG's creation of a barely-functional HD-DVD Player also damages the DVD Forum's reputation. If it makes it to retail as-is... Joe Average buys it, and his BluRay disks have spiffy menus, multiple audio tracks, subtitles, and always work, but his HD-DVDs aren't even as function VHS cassettes(the LG player apparently lacks even fast-forward/rewind) and disks that don't work at all, he's going to draw the conclusion that HD-DVD sucks. Sure it's all because the player doesn't even remotely adhere to standards, but Joe Average doesn't know this. He just knows that his BluRay disks work right and his HD-DVD ones don't. The fact that LG announced that they planned to ship first quarter 2007 indicates that it was far more than a proof of concept. They intended to ship it as-is. So there's no real benefit to the DVD Forum. And that's why they've stated they won't approve the player in it's current form.

Atari isn't dead. Their entire history is one of a dysfunctional, but almost always operational, brand. Nolan Bushnell, the founder, sold it to TimeWarner to get the cash needed to release the original Video Computer System(later renamed 2600, commonly known as "The Atari"). TimeWarner mismanaged it, and then panicked when the infamous video game crash happened(market growth slowed and everyone thought the fad had run it's course). They sold the arcade division to Williams. It remained operational as Atari Games until Midway renamed it to ... Midway Games West, I believe. It was shut down shortly after Gauntlet: Dark Legacy was released(was a sad day, as many of the Atari Games employees were the last of the original wave of game developers, and had been working with "Atari" since the pre-VCS days). Everything else went to the Tramiels of Commodore fame, who had just been evicted by Commodore's board of directors and were looking for a quick way to get back in the computer business. They shut down Atari's gaming division, fired most of the existing employees(Tramiel rule of business #1: when you buy a company, fire everyone in it), liquidated most of the stock, and placed the focus on renovating the home computer line(which was all they really wanted in the first place). 3 years later they got back into games with the Atari 7800, which was designed under TimeWarner, but barely missed making it to retail before the Tramiels got the company. It was released to compete with the NES, but between the Tramiels' notorious cheapness and Nintendo's abusive and illegal business practices it failed to do so. This Atari chugged along selling pretty good computers until the Jaguar. They killed their ST, TT, and Falcon lines to focus on the game machine(in a complete 180 of the original decision to sell computers and not games). While not a major success, the Jag DID make money. The Jaguar 2 was in development, and almost ready for release, when the Tramiels sold Atari to JTS. This otherwise irrelevant hard drive company resulted in the end of Atari as a standalone company for some time. The details of the merger required them to maintain Atari as a functional division of JTS, but they immediately shut down all R&D and production and began liquidating assets for a quick cash influx. This didn't last long, because the Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating them for breach of contract, and they sold Atari as a whole to the first bidder... Hasbro, who picked it up for a paltry 5 million. JTS went bankrupt shortly afterwards. This is the only time Atari has ever been out of operation, and the closest they've ever come to bankruptcy. Hasbro went with a software-only approach. They eventually rolled all their software development under the Atari label(but most Atari fans didn't care about Nerf and My Little Pony games). Hasbro operated Atari as merely their software division, so they weren't a "real company" anymore. They also lost a lot of cash on software. Stuff like My Little Pony and Nerf Battle Arena just didn't sell, nor did 3D remakes of Centipede, Missile Command, and Pong. And they sold the entire division to a french game company Infogrames. This sale included all of Atari's IP as well as the name. It also included the exclusive video game rights to Hasbro's toy and board game lines, which led to an amusing situation where Hasbro was negotiating with Infogrames for the rights to their own brands. But that's another story. Infogrames actually rebranded their company Atari, resulting in Atari's return to the business as a company. They're mostly software-only, though they HAVE created a pair of standalone game machines, one of which(Flashback 2) is actually the 2600(the Flashback 1 is an NES clone). But they aren't american anymore. Infogrames is the current owner. They're primarily a software publisher, but they do have some in-house development. They're also having financial troubles right now. It remains to be seen how long before Atari winds up with someone else again.

Mazinger Z made it to the US as Tranzor Z. Historically notable as the first super robot with a cockpit(as opposed to the remote-controlled predecessors). The show also had a female support mech. With breasts. That it could shoot out as missiles. I'm dead serious here.

It's nice to have connections.

Have you SEEN the Sonic 1 "port" to the GBA? It's an embarrassing half-assed glitchfest. Hell, the speed shoes make Sonic run SLOWER. How about the load times on Sonic 360? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naVshTpD9l0 These are the sorts of releases that Sega should be ashamed of having CONSIDERED for release, and Nintendo and Microsoft should be ashamed of approving. Most people have been saying that Sonic's been downhill since Adventure 2. And in true Sonic fashion, it's been accelerating all the way. Atari at least isn't DEVELOPING the crap games they're releasing. And hasn't had a reputation to defend for ages.

Hey, there's not many mecha designers still catering to Mazinger fans...

Indeed. The full story is NASA was using pencils, and having trouble with broken leads floating around where they could get breathed in or short out equipment. That and they burned real well in the full-oxygen atmospheres of early space missions, which became a serious concern after the Apollo 1 accident. Pen company Fisher developed the space pen on their own initiative and sold the finished products to NASA. And the USSR.

Yeah. I remember laughing at the Sega fanboys' proclamations of doom if they stopped making hardware. Long rants about how their games would suddenly start sucking if they were on someone else's systems... It doesn't seem nearly as funny anymore.

Yeah... my other monitor runs at 1152*864. It can run higher, but it's too small to be useful at higher resolutions in my current setup. But my 800*600 screen is huge! If I were designing a site, I'd place 800*600 support towards the bottom of the list too. I just thought I'd mention it as long as I was there(I didn't even notice it the first few times I looked).

I can confirm the site works nicely at 800*600, for the most part. I've got 2 screens, and the second maxes at that res. It's also the better one for browser usage, resolution aside(I don't use the browser maximized on the other display anyways, so the actual resolution loss is mostly vertical). The only issue is that the header bar breaks in 2 at that res. [attachmentid=39575] Anyone using an 800-pixel-wide browser window is used to horizontal scrolling(of which there isn't much), and the layout is good. I have to agree that a blank line between sections would be nice, but it's hardly killing the site.

There were also several spring-loaded transformations in the G1 product line. Usually with pull-back motors that sent them flying across the floor before they popped up. Again, very simple transformations(even by G1 standards), but...

It probably IS transformable, given the guy says it looks great in robot and car mode. 90 bucks for a Bumblebeevangelion, though? It's an awesome toy of a crap design. Pity this isn't being done in the Classic line.

LISTEN TO MY SONG!

Yah. The "protoculture" identification happened when Exedol was watching some battle footage, and saw some poor squishie get knocked off a building by a Reguld. Earth might've been attacked anyways because it looked like we were allied with the Supervision Army. But only sort of, since the Macross wasn't rebuilt to SA specs. Lacking any other evidence of SA alliance, they probably woulda leveled the island and wandered off, in the interests of resource conservation. Bodol didn't issue the orders to sterilize the planet until AFTER cultural contamination had become widespread in Britai's fleet, and he delayed those even after finding out contamination had occurred AND was affecting morale. Britai had better things to do than start a war with underdeveloped cavemen. But underdeveloped cavemen with nukes, reverse-engineered overtech, AND repair facilities... that's another story.

TECHNICALLY, the humans shot first. Remember, the Zentradi were just looking for the Supervision Army when the Macross' cannon fired on them. Granted it was an automatic attack that they were trying to abort, but the Zentradi didn't know that.

There's an important difference... the VF-11, YF-19, and YF-21 aren't ugly.

Your own link says HD-DVD and BluRay use the same wavelength. Depth has a lot to do with it. BluRay's data is VERY close to the disk surface to allow for tighter laser focus, and thus smaller "pits." It also made it really easy to kill your disk before the scratch-resistant coatings came up. Fortunately, all 3 formats are designed for multi-layer, so none of them NEED to hit the reflector directly. If they were all single-layer formats like CD, it'd send everything straight to hell.