JB0

There were still non-UN areas too, as seen in Burst Point.

There's a Speak and Spell chanting "SOS" in the background for part of the first vid!

The slimline PS2 comes with a brick, though I don't know the output. Technically, all game consoles run on DC. AC tends to do bad things to microchips. Modern ones just have an internal power supply instead of the classical brick(in most cases). I think it's because deriving multiple voltages straight from the original AC is easier than deriving them from a single DC voltage. The original PlayStation, for example, has 3 different DC voltages coming off of it's power supply. The oddest ones were the NES and Intellivision 2, which both had external bricks outputting AC(9V on the NES, 11-ish on the INTV2). But in both cases the first stage once the power entered the system was a rectifier to covert it to DC. The system doesn't actually use AC for anything. But using a laptop power supply for a PS2 slim is questionable. They probably don't have matching voltages, and even if they did the plugs aren't likely to match. No. The Ps3 is region-free, but ONLY on PS3 games. PS1 and PS2 games are still region-locked.

Yah. It's also worth noting that, at least in the Animeigo subs, the zentradi weren't under actual orders not to interfere with the miclones. Exedol frames it as the moral of an old legend. It's not clear if the legend in question was left over the original protoculture programming or if it arose later, after an ancient zentradi fleet was exposed to culture and contaminated. Both origins work in the current continuity.

It was a movie about humans kicking giant ass. Meanwhile, out in the "real world"... Giants are launching constant attacks against the humans, hindering their efforts to go home, and killing them left and right.

Because Masterpiece Prime + Trailer is too recent, I suspect. Wouldn't surprise me in the least if they were considering making the iPod dock a MP Prime bundle at one point. But yeah... G1 Prime needs a major overhaul. Something with the original look but retractable fists, and NOT in the hundred+ range.

Preferably with lion heads and giant swords.

How is it that the old G1 Prime mold is STILL usable over 2 decades and umpteen-bajillion reissues later?

"So is that a reactor in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?" To add to the list, they show Hikaru doing infantry practice during his military training.

Yah. I was mistaken. Yeah. I always grant a good bit of leeway for gameplay purposes, and just take the general gist of things. It's pretty clear, just as an example, that a gun's range in a side scroller shouldn't vary with how far forward you are on the screen. But it does, because only the viewable area of the map is active in the game. I find it less easy to ignore is stuff like Komillia being charged for weapons in Macross 2036.. The idea of UN Spacey awarding bounties based on kills and then charging them for their weapons is either comical or appalling, depending on how you approach it.

But they screwed the animated adaptation up first anyways. The first GITS movie was a horrible abuse of the license. I gather the second movie wasn't much better. But if third time's the charm, then Hollywood has it made.

Am I the only person that never felt the VF-0 looked more modern? It always struck me as little more than a "detailed-up" VF-1.

"This show is in a whole 'nother universe. It's got nothing to do with any of these other shows, and the only relation between it and everything else is the name." That's what "parallel universe" means. It IS an explicit banishment. It's just a nice way of putting it. Studio Nue kicked it to the curb, but was nice enough to buy it a bus ticket first. If I recall, Big West's stance is that Mac2 was a sequel to DYRL. We already knew DYRL was an alternate reality, because it's completely irreconcilable with SDF Macross. So Big West placed it in a parallel universe from SDF Macross. Since Studio Nue's works take the TV series history as "real", and neither party's given Mac2 the strange "fiction-within-a-fiction" status of DYRL, it still means Mac 2 isn't part of the main timeline, though it also adds DYRL to the "parallel universe" timeline that Nue filed 2 under. Unless we read Big West's sequel statement to imply it's a sequel both in our world AND in Macross' world, which makes Mac2 a tangential part of the main world in Big West's version of events(supported by the presence of Mac2 songs in Mac7?). Since when has Star Trek been bound by an official chronology? Their continuity changes from episode to episode, you can forget about inter-series. I was under the impression the official stance was that only the explicitly identified items were considered "real." ... But it looks like I'm mistaken. Poking around the Compendium, the chronology section has an entry for "Non-Studio-Nue Stories" with explanatory text stating that "these projects do not necessarily share the same chronology." Since the Compendium is an official resource and it places them in a vague limbo state, that strongly implies they have no defined status, as main-line stories, Mac2-universe stories, or unrelated-to-anything stories. So it seems they aren't banned until stated as such, even if they don't "count" either. Not pretty. I can see a few reasons for trying to stick only to the official timeline. One is that it lets you banish the "bad parts" of the franchise(if you're lucky). Don't like Macross 2's portrayal of photojournalists running around with fighter jets? Good news! It never happened! Another is just that it helps keep things neat. Example: Let's say you're nerding it out and discussing UN Spacey's weapon capabilities. And someone brings up Max's VF-1SOL weapons from the Scrambled Valkyrie game. Now this can go 2 ways... 1. Inclusive timeline. No one's said it doesn't count, so it does. Why aren't barrier chains and homing lasers, which were INCREDIBLY useful technology AND successfully deployed through an entire military campaign pre-Megaroad, equipped on the VFs in Plus and Seven? Clearly there MUST be SOMETHING wrong with them since they AREN'T on later VFs. But they're so useful, why WOULDN'T they be? Couldn't they have fixed the (obviously minor) problems in 3 decades? It just doesn't make sense! And yet, it HAS to. 2. Exclusive timeline. No one's said it counts, so it doesn't. Scrambled Valkyrie, while a fine game, isn't part of the official timeline. It doesn't mean jack squat. There are no barrier chains. Homing lasers never happened. These aren't the guns you're looking for. Move along now. The "limbo state" isn't useful, as the game's events can't both exist and not exist at the same time, Schrodinger and his cat be damned. The second approach goes a long way towards maintaining a sane story-world, especially if you've licensed others to play in your sandbox. They can do whatever they want, but until you say so it's not a part of YOUR sand castle.

A japanese PS2 will work on american power and TVs. Japan uses (basically) the same voltage and frequency on the AC, and the same TV standard and refresh as us(though they broadcast at different frequencies, that's only an issue for RF modulation).

And Classics matches the animation rather loosely, at that. It doesn't show so much in Starscream, but when you get to Prime and Megatron... Basically, Classics is what happens when you free the designers from gimmick requirements and animatability.

Don't confuse the poor guy! There's a serious misconception that needs dealing with! The engines may "run forever" but they won't do anyone a lot of good without reaction mass to expel. The nuclear reactor doesn't supply that. It'd be like a shiny new Corvette with a full tank and no wheels. The reaction mass, while not burnable, is a "fuel."

The G1 comparison isn't entirely fair, given G1 Starscream had large chunks that were completely removed and set aside. Movie Starscream would undoubtedly ALSO look much nicer if Hasbro said "Sure, you could snap his forearms off for plane mode." But the point is still taken. As far as MP3 player Soundwave goes... It makes my old non-transformable Soundwave tape player weep at his obsolescence. And I MUST HAVE IT!

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.