JB0

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.

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.