JB0

I've seen pics before. It's very unimpressive. You're flying through a square tunnel with a behind-the-VF camera. And it's a classic 8-bit tunnel, with depth defined by stripes of alternating colors instead of actual textures. They should've done a scroller instead. Cellphones have become fairly capable in that regard.

More physics... Inertia still works in space. If an object is travelling full speed in one direction and then suddently changes direction, there is a certain amount of inertial pressure exerted on the pilot when that change is made. Depending on the amount of that pressue, it could be up to and including several g-forces. 425678[/snapback] Of course, pilots in Macross seem to routinely pull maneuvers that would cause any real-world pilot to black out.

Warning: use of protoculture in large quantities may cause mechanical mutations, including but not limited to Monsters with arms.

Probably the most interesting part too. I'd say fun, but I don't share Mr. Kawamori's fondness for women that could accidentally step on me.

*laughs* Definitely a genius.

But the anime characters don't have to pay for their own.

I'll believe it when I see actual software. There's simply no way to do what they showed with current technology(even on a high-end gaming PC). Too high-detail to not have load times. What you'd do is swap maps out as you approached a planet. Ditch the space map, load a low-detail planet map. As you get closer to the planet, you load a more detailed map of PART of the planet. And step through more detailed maps of smaller parts of the sphere until you reach whatever your minimum map is. But you'll still have load times. If nothing else, there will be "hiccups" as you change maps. Having other celestial bodies show up when you look out is easy. Since you aren't rendering them at any detail whatsoever, you can just designate a (relatively) small bitmap for any objects visible from your current map. Doesn't take a lot of space, and it's all you need untill you get close enough to start loading submaps.

3 or Alpha 3? One's an SNES game, the other's PS2. If you mean the SNES one, I'd recommend emulating it and using Gideon's translation patch. http://agtp.romhack.net/srw3.html I'm actually surprised that Alpha 3 lacks any menu translations at GameFAQs. The Robot Series Guide is still useful for working out what franchises are in the game, though. http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/game/926291.html

I didn't know Big West had a cohesive canon. I thought it was more along the lines of Star Trek, in the sense that they did whatever looked cool and to heck with continuity. It DOES make me more interested in the plot of the older games if they actually tie together cohesively. I didn't say you did. Didn't mean to imply it either. I was just confirming that 2036 wasn't a part of the Studio Nue timeline, which is usually what non-canon means. I wasn't sure about VF-X1, honestly. I gave it the benefit of the doubt.

All the season 1 and 2 TF's were diaclone toys orignally (supposedly). It wasn't until that nifty commerical TF:TM that hasbro start getting original (Hot Rod, Rodimus Prime). 425104[/snapback] well omega, the deluxes, jetfire, were taken from other lines, but yeah, the toys of series 1 and 2 were compleatly of japanese origin. 425106[/snapback] And Shockwave. Weren't the minis(Bumblebee and company) non-diaclone too?

Sheesh... there's people that don't know who the WWN is? GO BATBOY!

Same here... although if Touma and Zengar are in it I might reconsider 424985[/snapback] Yes to Zengar, yes to SRX. I can't place Touma. But between my typically poor name recollection and being only partway through my first playthrough,he isn't guaranteed missing. Could be only on the SRX plot, appear later in the ATX plot, or already appeared and I forgot.

So, in other words, it's considered non-canon. 425141[/snapback] Bingo. Game-wise, everything before VF-X is non-canon. That was where Kawamori was getting involved again. And cleaning up the continuity mess left behind when Big West was trying to exploit the license between DYRL and Plus/7 was part of that involvement. And I think only the console games after VF-X are canon, not portable or PC games. Not sure on this one, though.

Mylene is the main character. She is the outsider who has to have everything introduced to her, therefore the one you can relate to. She is the one who the love triangle centers on (she has two boys to pick from, just like Hikaru had two girls to pick from), she is the one who goes through a harsh learning curve, she is the one directly related to characters from the original Macross, she is the one piloting the VF-1J in the Macross homage... The only reason people don't recognize her as the main character, IMO, is that she is a girl. She's the one who develops as a character. 425052[/snapback] Gamlin goes through a similar, though less pronounced, process. Even gets time in the 1J(and blows it up... stupid Gamlin...). Admittedly, he also gets 50% less romantic interests. But while Mylene is the most interesting character(Sorry, Gamlin fans), Basara is the one the "camera" focuses on. Mylene's presence is sacrificed if it threatens to take too much time from Basara, which places restrictions on how much character development they can do. It really felt like they aborted and abreviated a few plot threads because of it. Basara's the star, regardless of whether or not he's up to the task.

GO HORMONES! I thought forcing people to listen to music was an accepted psych warfare tactic. A HIGHLY eccentric one. And was he established as a medical doctor? Because once the character is established, he rapidly falls into boring. Like I said, it makes him boring. Unfortunately, the refusal to allow the audience to experience the birth of the state of existence that is Basara-ness places him in the same category as a Gundam Wing pilot. He exists not as a character, but as a plot device. They were also incredibly naive and gullible. They had no concept of fiction, and ASSUMED they were watching a historical documentary. It actually reminds me of the movie Galaxy Quest. I've heard that before too. It's definitely interesting, as is the question "how much did it change between original conception and realization." Sort of like Star Wars prequels(but far less craptacular), it seems that what happened wasn't the concept as originally envisioned. *chuckles* LISTEN TO MY PISS!!!!!

Because they were originally released in Japan back in 02, and the DS didn't yet exist. SRWDS hasn't materialized, though Bandai was allegedly working on one.

Maybe he's selling George Foreman grills?

or maybe it's just because Hasbro/Marvel/Sunbow had the money to pony for an animated series and comics...while Takara could only manage a few blurbs in their toy catalogues about the Diaclone / Waruder war (which I think would have made a much better series). As far as I know, there weren't any really well-established characters in the Diaclone line. Just some names. Either way, my point was that if it was the toy and not the character that was being sold, they wouldn't have wasted the cash to convert the japanese toys over to the Transformers paint scheme and packaging style.

But the characters are what was being sold. That's why Transformers repaints rapidly replaced the original japanese toys.

Most of the pilots on the battlefield weren't even allowed faces, much less voices. Except that one guy screaming into his helmet while they sucked his spiritia out, and he was a metric buttload of pilots' face. I doubt Gamlin was calling in just to be a whiny crybaby. It's safe to assume Basara WAS a nuisance. I never got the impression he actually LIKED Basara's music, though. He just ceased to hate Basara with the burning heat of a thousand suns and acknowledged that Basara DID have talent, even if he didn't care for the music. And that still doesn't change the fact that they used Basara as an instrument of torture. ... Random thought: given that the usual view of rock music is "louder = better", it's highly possible Chiba had things turned up way too loud for Gamlin and was causing him physical pain. I'm just saying that adults typically acknowledge that the world isn't an ideal place, and that idealism often has to be set aside for reality(like Hikaru setting his "war = bad" idealism aside for the defense of the Macross, and ultimately humanity itself). Rampant idealism is typically a sign of a kiddie show. Basara never questions the idea that there's a non-violent solution to everything. What's more, he never questions that the solution is people listening to his song. He either blames everyone around him when his singing fails or assumes he just isn't good enough. But the focus was on Basara, not Gamlin and Mylene's adaption to him. Those story angles were sacrificed several times for the sake of more Basara. Yes, it does. He's a static and unchanging fixture in the show. I'm just saying that Basara's character could've been developed through backstory without altering his character signifigantly. A single flashback of him trying to move a mountain with his song isn't my idea of character development, or even establishment. Fair enough. Personally, I don't think Mac7's version would fit in the setting of SDF Macross. Maybe I'm mistaken. It seemed a more complex show, though.

The graphics are nice for what they are. They're working within the constraints of the GBA, so nothing as flashy as you'd see on the PS2 games. But the sprites are large and adequately animated. Unlike the SNES versions, swords and guns aren't pasted onto a constant, static sprite. There IS animation of the mechs. But it's not exactly the most dynamic ever. Big gripe is that the menus get a tad cramped in some places. The GBA screen isn't high-enough resolution to comfortably fit all the data that needs to be shown sometimes. Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation is out now. Should've landed on shelves wedensday. SRT:OG2 is slated for an October release. Both are GameBoy Advance titles, and compatible with the DS. Personal wishlist is that Atlus follows this with the upcoming Japanese Original Generations, which remakes OG1 and OG2 for the PS2, bringing the AV up to the levels of recent SRW games like Alpha 2 and 3.

Focusing on Mylene and/or Gamlin would be a better way to further the "characters reacting to Basara" angle. Also! What the heck is up with the danged flower girl?!?!

The game shipped tuesday. I got it yesterday. It needed another run of proof-reading. There's some rather glaring errors and badly-placed paragraph breaks. Impressively, it comes with a comprehensive 67-page manual. I haven't seen a manual that was genuinely useful since the SNES days. And it hasn't been COMMON since the NES.

Actually, Phantasy Star did come out on the Mega Drive (Japanese Genesis)! It was a remake of the original Master System Phantasy Star, but the sprites were redone to take advantage of the Mega Drive hardware. Alas, Sega nor Backbone Entertainment can be bothered to translate so many pages of text for so old a game. 424215[/snapback] What I've heard is that it's actually the SMS game, on a SMS->Megadrive adapter board(the Genny was backwards-compatible YEARS before the PS2). Also why there's no ROM image, as the Genesis can't run it in Genesis mode. 424243[/snapback] That doesn't sound unreasonable, but I've actually held the Phantasy Star Mega Drive drive game in my hand. When I flipped through the booklet I was expecting a straight port of the SMS game in all it's 8-bit glory, but all the screenshots were definitely 16-bit. I asked the guy selling it what was up since I had never heard of it and he said that the game was a limited release in Japan. Nearly every cart has been dumped by the ROM scene from obscure games to betas, but it's not impossible that a title or two such as Phantasy Star have slipped through the cracks. 424278[/snapback] Interesting... Makes me wish I had a copy to muck with. I suppose it's possible the game could be 8-bit and still make use of the Genny's "advanced" video features. Write to the proper registers and you should be able to change the video mode. I've heard the game's been dumped before, but the resulting ROM image was unusable on emus as well as copiers/flashcarts . That'd probably be enough to keep it out of mainstream distribution. I do know the emu scene doesn't always get everything. And the obsession with carrying complete "GoodXXXX" sets and nothing else doesn't help. Used to be a bit more diversity in the sites, but now it's all "FULL GOOD-WTF-EVER SET!1111" and very little else. Which is even worse since A. they didn't deal with NES headers until very recently(headers on NES images are required for proper functionality), and B. they're one of the worst purveyors of misinformation around(Last I checked, they were still spreading the myth that Nintendo Power magazine gave away games in Japan). I hate Cowering's tools.

Macross VO is thge big one. And has a dedicated uberthread at the top of the games forum. There were a few other vintage releases, but most of them weren't for the standard IBM PC(MSX had a shooter, PC9801 had several sim games). Win9x had another pair of sim games in addition to VO. http://macross.anime.net/production/software/index.html