JB0

http://macross.anime.net/characters/index.html "Akiko Houjoh"

Which in SOS-dan fashion will be season 3, with season 2 to follow later.

If I recall, it was flagged Phoenix, then unflagged shortly thereafter. I don't think it has an official name right now.

"OUR slaughter!"

UN Spacy seems to use a hybrid rank system that doesn't totally match any real-world equivalent. Which is a nice way of saying that the writers were probably pulling ranks out of their asses.

Kakizaki and Max are presented as equals, essentially. Kakizaki has slightly more flight time, but it's not a significant amount. The 2 are really an entire sub-story of their own. Complete with moral! They're supposed to be pretty much identical skill levels. But Kakizaki gets overconfident and rushes into situations unprepared, while Max stays humble and assumes there's someone better than him. Kakizaki gets shot down. A lot. Max kicks some serious mecha butt. Ironically, Kakizaki seemed to be shaping into a decent pilot when he died, through no fault of his own.

I would assume that just proves that the numbers are irrelevant. Hikaru was the official leader of Vermilion team. He was a "seasoned" veteran(well, lightly spiced, anyways). And he HAD A MEDAL!111 Max and Kakizaki were quite clearly his subordinates, as well as raw recruits with absolutely no combat experience. OR MEDALS!111

It's got nothing to do with tradition, personally. A lot of the Cybertron stuff bears very little similarity to the original designs. Chicken-feet instead of blocks, for example. Don't hear me griping about them, though. I LIKE the Cybertron line. The problem here is that I just don't like skeletal robots. The toys are a lot less skeletal, and they actually appeal to me. I think the entire tradition argument is a silly red herring anyways. You're covering fans of realistic vehicles with chunky robots, robot animals with chunky... umm... robots, futuristic vehicles with chunky robots, futuristic vehicles with sleek robots, and whatever other inane variant I missed, all with the same "tradition" label. And completely ignoring the new cartoon lines, Beast Wars, and arguably even parts of the Alternators/Binaltech line. There's a fairly wide range of fans that deem the movie designs crap, and they aren't ALL just obsessed with bright primary colors and robot bricks. It's ever so slightly possible that the movie designs are just ugly.

Too bad they also said "Screw aesthetics!" while they were at it. Not like the original cartoon designs had a lot to do with the toys in many cases. Heck, Ratchet and Ironhide didn't even have heads in the toys.

And a hell of a lot better. Not GREAT, but a lot better. I could actually REALLY LIKE the Bumblebee toy. Hell, I'm starting to see hints of Bumblebee IN the design at this level. His limbs are a bit spindly, but aren't really a deal-breaker here. I can't see enough detail in his face to be sure, but it looks like the weak point(actually, the heads look kinda weak on all 3 toys to me). *looks over at Classic 'Bee* Okay... Hasbro, paint him red and sell him as Cliffjumper. I'll buy it. Barricade DESPERATELY needs real arms. Having the entire side of the car mounted to his shoulder is lame. Other than that, I like his toy. And I don't think the arms are set up right anyways. While I may think the movie is a disaster, I STILL love the script they put on the side of his alt-mode. While they're the same size, the fact that they're solid black makes his legs look far more substantial than Bumblebee's. Overall, he's a far better design. Assuming he has real arms. Sidenote: Where's Frenzy? All I see is a Soaron bootleg. Brawl... I'm less fond of. Let's leave it at that.

But all of those make it fairly obvious what they transform into. Optimus Primal is still pretty ape-like in his robot form and everyone can tell Cybertron Prime is a firetruck with wings. And the younger kids it will probably be scared off by Scorponok slaughtering GI Joe so they don't count. I'll probably see it once it hits the dollar movies. I figure for a buck I can see how bad it came out. I won't pay full price for this train-wreck, though.

Well, at least they're CONSISTENT with the "naked Eva" look... ... Does "Ratchet" have a lion on his head, or is that just my years of Voltron coloring my perception?

Ah. I REALLY need to pick that game up(and a mod chip or swap disk).

That 2012 added nothing. The love triangle was cleanly finished at the end of the series. ... Actually, had Hikaru not suddenly regressed past the majority of his character development, it would've been finished at the showdown with the Bodol Fleet.

Ya know, I checked the Macross Design Works book last night, and again just now. The wings DO NOT descend down to the nose tip on the line art, which is the official design and what the animation is supposed to match. The wings should end where the legs connect to the nosecone. They go all the way to the tip when they scissor down and don't change size. So it's a more realistic design, but not a more ACCURATE design.

Definitely.

It might not've been possible without major changes to the engine. Could've hit time constraints that prevented it. It could've just looked ugly when they tried it. I think just slapping them down as shamelessly lazy is a bit harsh. The PS2 Macross came out a full year later, Bandai'd done other polygon-based Macross games before, AND had the benefit of Kawamori's input. So they had someone on-hand to warn them in advance "Yeah, those wings have to change size during the transformation, or the legs will go through them." Knowing issues like this are coming in advance makes it a lot easier to fix(though I can't verify that the issue IS fixed). *fires emulator up* VF-X2 does the transformation, then after it reaches battroid mode the wings suddenly change size to ALMOST not there(I had to change to a hardware graphics plugin and up the resolution to be sure they were still there because they were shredded by jaggies). It's a garishly visible artifact. Not even sure that solves the walking animation problem Vicious Cycle had, since I don't have a save file on a ground level or a real urge to shoot until I see land. But UNIT didn't even TRY to hide the size problem. They just swapped a pair of polys out on the battroid model and shipped. At least in Battlecry there's not a "POP" at the end where the wings vanish while you're staring right at them. I'd cut them some slack if this wasn't VF-X2. They knew well in advance there was going to be a serious animation issue, and they just ignored it. ... Okay, I just went back and studied Battlecry's transformation animation. The wings actually shrink as they scissor down, which is why there's no "pop" at the end. They ALMOST had it, they just shrank them too far. I'm actually really surprised. I thought that would've been a very visible artifact, but the transformation sequence is so fast you don't have a lot of time to notice it. Implication is that either they ran out of time to keep trying wing sizes, or they couldn't find a wing short enough to let the legs move freely.

Not to mention the game was released in October '02. The Yamato 1/60s had only just come out, and those were the only toys that were useful as a reference at the time. The wings change size between modes on the original VF-1 design. It's a rather ugly issue for transforming models of the mech, be they plastic, resin, metal, or digital. If I had to guess... The dev team probably didn't realize the wings changed until they were doing the animations and trying to figure out why the legs kept hitting the wings. They were on a schedule so they couldn't play with the model and animation until they had everything just right. The wings "fell off" because it was the least disruptive solution. Personally, I'd slide them up towards the shoulders... but that breaks the continuity of the lines down the back. Slide them up and swing them out a bit to maintain the lines? Sure the VF-1 would have coattails, but ...

Perhaps. The Beetle design is distinct enough that VW might could push it on body styling, but they'd have a difficult case given G1 and G2 both used it a few times without lawsuit. That would boost the odds of Bumblebee and Soundwave relative to Hot Rod. A Masterpiece Bumblebee could be repainted as Cliffjumper(He really SHOULDN'T be, since they're supposed to be different cars, but it hasn't stopped anyone before), and Soundwave is Soundblaster. Oooh, if they did Superion AND Devastator... BEST. SHELF BATTLE. EVER.

Grimlock's also got the Classic 'Rex. Which is just now hitting shelves. Of course, Classic/MP overlap didn't stop Starscream. Classic Megatron and Prime don't count since neither was designed to look really close to the cartoon, and Classic Prime was designed well after MP Prime was out of production(though reissue plans were probably being kicked around). But MP and Classic Starscream likely had some overlapping design phase, and if they were really afraid of double-dipping, one would've been killed off. I think the big thing is that they're going for the most iconic characters for the Masterpiece line, and anything else is because it's just a repaint. What are the most-recognized Transformers characters? Prime, Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, and Bumblebee? Maybe Hot Rod? ... Actually, aside from Soundwave, that's the first Classics series(Boo Astrotrain!!!!). They were probably chosen for that reason, with Soundwave being skipped over because his alt mode is less fun. Assuming I read it right, that means Soundwave, Bumblebee, and Hot Rod are candidates for next new-mold MP. Probably Soundwave or Bumblebee, depending on when and how often Starscream gets repainted. I doubt the Decepticons will be allowed numerical superiority, so if Starscream gets a repaint before the new mold, Bumblebee gets the MP treatment to keep the Autobots from falling behind. Unless VW raises hell... Merciful Primus, it may be Hot Rod! Please no!

You're not offering strategy advice that involves turning on god mode, though. Right? I cut the cheating out a long time ago, personally. I realized I was getting a lot worse at games since I'd gotten a Game Genie and games that used to give me no trouble were slaughtering me. I try to just push my own skills as far as they'll go instead of cheating now. Exception is FPS save-whoring. But let's face it, the genre's largely been designed around that paradigm ever since Doom.

If they intend to respect the original, shouldn't it look like Vietnamese anime?

Cheaters have no honor. Besides, Cat Scan was easy. Stay near the Cat's Eye, shoot everything that moves. Trial by Fire was the QBert stage. I'm proud to say I beat all the escort missions honestly. Now, those property defense missions(bridge stage, base evac stage) where I turned 1-hit kills on... I'm less proud of that. In my defense, they were boring as hell. Now for a REAL strategy... the fighters lob missiles. The battlepods and NosGer don't. But the pods and Nos don't care about the Cat's Eye. So ALL the Cat's Eye problems are missile-related. Stay near the Cat's Eye, and drop a flare over the recon plane when you see missiles incoming on radar. If you see a NosGer, cap him. They're the only real threat here. Keep an eye on your radar, you don't want any fighter pods getting too close to your "partner" while you're playing tag with Kamjin's little brother. Make sure you keep your health up, because towards the end of the stage you won't have time for defensive maneuvers. You'll just be riding the recon plane's ass dropping flares one after the other, and you WILL take a beating. Or that you don't understand momentum? Go play Asteroids for a while. Seriously, the delayed deceleration is for animation fluidity. There's no brick walls in space, you don't need to change speed like you hit one. If anything, you change speed too FAST. But realistic momentum simulation doesn't work well for a 3D action game. Battlecry came out before Zero, so it would've proven that time travel was possible! EIGHTY-EIGHT MILES PER HOUR! Ignoring temporal issues, it would've gotten Big West to bring the hammer down on HG. Can't let them run around stealing your designs, right? THAT would've been worth it. That doesn't work as well as it sounds, sadly. It's a lot harder to gauge what you're gonna hit in a first-person view. Hence why I pretty much ignore the option in Star Fox. Every stage it's available has me weaving through space debris, and I take too many hits. Also why the feature disappeared from later 3D shooters.

Speculation and wishing are different things. I WANT to see Shockwave, but I THINK we'll see Starscream repaints.

Nothing quite like a dimensional pocket, is there?