JB0

Yes. DVD didn't make a lot of use of it beyond multi-lingual disks, either. Actually, that was only PART of it. All NES releases outside of Japan had a regional lockout chip(initially. The NES2 has no lockout chips, because Nintendo no longer cared). Japanese carts, lacking chips, worked in no one else's decks. The form factor was also diffrent, both to avoid the look of a game console(remember, retailers thought video games were a dead fad, so Nintendo had to go to a lot of effort to even get the NES into stores) as well as to add pins for the lockout chip. Beyond that.... there were TWO DIFFRENT lockout chips. One was used in the Americas, another in Europe. While the form factor for both regions was the same, carts were NOT interchangable. The SNES continued the use of 2 seperate regional lockout chips, and added form factor variances so they could use the US chip on japanese consoles without carts being swappable between regions(I suspect the SNES actually uses leftover NES stock, especiallg given much of it's design was done with an eye towards backwards-compatibility). I'm not entirely sure how the N64 lockout is set up, but I guarantee it isn't form-factor-only. Right. No portable has been, because there's a good chance that, for example, someone in the US armed forces might be stationed in Australia or something. If you actually go through the list, a lot of those games ARE locked.

Not necessarily. There are still analog cable services and analog satellite services. Those are NOT carrying digital signals. Totally irrelevant to the discussion. Depends on reception, among other things. I'm aware of the diffrence. I COULD have listed every step along the way, but chose to go for the extremes only and specify that there was a range in between. Personally, I don't think a set should legally be allowed to call itself a DTV set if it's a standard-definition display. The mass market has no comprehension of the diffrence between DTV(any ATSC source), HDTV(only the higher ATSC resolutions), and non-ATSC digital sources. And while things are better than the early days(when I gather TVs would only display those portions of the ATSC spec that were < or = their native res), I still think an HD resolution should be required after all the hype about superior image quality. I've seen some odd uses of SAP before. Got one station that plays the weather radio robot on SAP. If I recall, another keeps a semi-constant newscast running on it. Interactive TV's been done before too, actually. The early days of cable did it. I'm not expecting a much better showing on either feature this time around. Agreed. The movie industry likes region codes, sadly. And any new video standard initiative has to recieve the movie industry's support. Far as games go... Sony's abandoning region coding for games on the PS3, but the system is a joke. 360 sticks with the "publisher's choice" policy from the XBox 1. And publishers choose lockouts. I don't recall any statement from Nintendo about the Wii, but given the NES STARTED regional lockouts in games, I don't have a lot of hope. Ignoring the political angle...So HDTV reveals to the world what the more intelligent people already knew? Sounds like a plus to me.

*sighs* Can we move on from Masterpiece Starscream and where everyone thinks the design compromises should land? Behold Pretender Starscream! They found a way to NOT throw tailfins away while still getting a semi-cartoon-accurate design! And the solution sucks!

Cutoff for analog in the US is scheduled for 2009, last I heard. It's been floating, but they think DTV adoption is picking up enough that they won't roll this one back. 412643[/snapback] anyone getting satelite or cable already is getting dtv. A. There's analog services still. B. DTV within the context of this discussion SHOULD be understood to mean ATSC spec, not any video which is transmitted in digital format and viewed on a TV. Digital cable and satellite typically have WORSE image quality than a good NTSC reception, because they're overcompressed to squeeze more bandwidth out. Which is getting you something diffrent than digital cable. And the level of benefit you'll get will vary greatly with actual hardware setup. An upgrade box on a standard NTSC set gets the worst, and a native HD set with integrated ATSC tuner gets the best. Multiple audio channels and subtitles are already supported on NTSC via SAP and closed captioning. Of course, SAP has seen very limited support and closed captioning sucks if for no other reason than it's VERY sensitive to noise.

Ya know, I'm getting a sudden urge to go hunt down a vintage Shockwave. This thread is becoming bad for my wallet.

Only works on your first run on a file, and only on levels after you've actually unlocked FAST packs.

They needed some levels on the lunar surface then! 'Sides, last I checked the GU-11 didn't have a Megabuster sniper mode either.

I thought it was odd that the bridge crew died in Robotech when you can clearly see that the bridge is completely intact after Kamjin/Kyron rammed them ... of course after finding out what Robotech really was I saw why they killed them off. 412882[/snapback] I thought they avoided showing the final shot of the damaged but undestroyed Macross in Robotech for that reason. It's been ages though, and the last time I saw it was on Cartoon "Let's edit a pre-edited show because we'd like more commercials" Network. I was more bothered by the lack of SDF-2 either way. 412883[/snapback] They made a very clear shot. Kamjin's ship hits the right shoulder of the SDF-1 and you can still see what is left of both cannons and the bridge sitting right inbetween them. All Kamjin did was destroy the right arm and shoulder along with the outer right edge of the SDF-1's torso. I watched the sequence just a few minutes ago to be sure. Kyron should have said "Damn it!" before he died because he failed. 412887[/snapback] M'kay, so it was a half-assed Cartoon Network edit. That gives me a dimmer view of Rawbooteck.

I thought it was odd that the bridge crew died in Robotech when you can clearly see that the bridge is completely intact after Kamjin/Kyron rammed them ... of course after finding out what Robotech really was I saw why they killed them off. 412882[/snapback] I thought they avoided showing the final shot of the damaged but undestroyed Macross in Robotech for that reason. It's been ages though, and the last time I saw it was on Cartoon "Let's edit a pre-edited show because we'd like more commercials" Network. I was more bothered by the lack of SDF-2 either way.

I'm sure there is. It's probably something decidedly non-nerdy, like a major sporting event.

In Robotech he dies. Kamjin's final kamikaze run destroys the SDF-1 and kills everyone aboard except Lisa. I think this is where the confusion comes from. In Macross he lives, as does everyone else(except Kamjin and Lap'lamiz). The Macross is heavily damaged by the kamikaze run and is later rebuilt "movie-style," with ARMDs replacing the Daedalus and Prometheus.

I finished Battlecry. Limited mecha options prevents me from caring enough to do it again, though. I REALLY want to use the FAST packs and GBP in actual missions(yes, I know the FAST packs are available in space missions. I like the ground missions more). And the QRau! I have a freaking QRau, and it's useless! I'd also like to get my destroid on. I was really disappointed that there wasn't a single destroid mission.

Hey now... Mecha masturbation is what these shows are all about. 412830[/snapback] I don't mind mecha masturbations, in their own threads... 412834[/snapback] The politics of miltary spending, then?

So yeah... I've seen the trailer now. My inner nerd objects horribly loudly to the fact that they're using Spirit/Opportunity to fill in for the Beagle 2, which wasn't even a rover(it was a robot arm on a platform. The ESA needs to focus more on coolness next time.). The rest of me likes the all-too-brief shot of a giant robot beating the crap out of the rover. But enjoys the transforming logo more, and giggles like a drunken schoolgirl when it folds into the autobot logo at the end, even though the Decepticons had a better emblem.

Assuming I can pry my fingers off the GBA long enough to post? I consider such title treatments generally stupid. While I would understand the logic if this was Sakura Taisen or Katamari Damacy, where they're known more by the japanese name, there's no such reason in this case. The fans ALREADY know it as Wars. Heck, Bandai even uses Wars in their japanese material. It'd be like releasing Macross as Chou Jikuu Yosai Macross instead of Super Dimensional Fortress Macross or Super Space Fortress Macross. It's not really more authentic, it's just less comprehensible. ... Ah well... at least it's not a "totally authentic" Supaa Roboto Taisen. Atlus has their limits. And really, it's just the title. I consider it a retarded move, but it's not going to hurt the content any.

Hey now... Mecha masturbation is what these shows are all about.

Man, I'm gonna have to hunt one down. Mirage was one of those ones I always wanted as a kid, but never had.

Meh. I took an instant and intense dislike to him when he launched into his speech to Haruhi about how only special people could change the world and that everyone should just kick back and enjoy what was set before them insetad of trying to change things(I can't help but wonder if the SOS Brigade was as much to slap Kyon in the face for that pathetic waste of verbosity as actually INSPIRED by it). He may be normal, but he's a painfully dull normal. They actually touch upon it a bit more in the book. At least their initial conversations. Kyon's success in engaging her in conversation seems to have a lot to do with that he doesn't wander into the same generic smalltalk everyone else does. He attempts to engage her on her terms, which is more than the rest of her classmates are apparently willing to do. It's okay if you don't think about work. It's best to assume the narrator of a story is sane and giving a more or less accurate account of events unless the story gives evidence to the contrary. So far, Kyon's narration meshes with what the rest of the characters say and do. So I assume he's sane. Given Koizumi's life got a LOT more complicated 3 years ago, it probably matters more to him than most. Most of the people in the world just went about like nothing had happened(indeed, they were totally unaware anything happened), but Koizumi and a handful of other people wound up with psychic powers and a host of other issues. Random book excerpt... "I don't know what really happened three years ago. All I do know is, I suddenly realized I possessed paranormal powers one day three years ago. I was really scared, I didn't know what to do. Luckily for me, it wasn't long before the 'Organization' took me in, or I would've killed myself thinking something is wrong with my brain." They had more time to examine things like this, since they weren't limited by the half-hour weekly format. They touch on it in Koizumi's introduction in the book and just barely at the very end of Melancholy. Koizumi is his usual good-natured self about it. He's apparently of the opinion that if he can't tell, it doesn't matter. It's an interesting angle to explore, but not feasable with the tone they're going for. The only way they know it's happened before is by the effects it had. Mikuru's group can't go back to before the Haruhi Bang, and Koizumi & company developed magic powers. Yuki's group just "saw it happen." Taking the assumptions at face value(though it conflicts with Koizumi's statements that a large closed space would become the "real" world)... What happens if Haruhi is killed is unknown, and likely to remain that way. It's even possible she CAN'T be killed. Since she affects reality on a subconcious level, it affects her luck greatly. It could prove very difficult to successfully harm her to any signifigant degree. ... That could actually factor into why Ryoko went after Kyon instead of Haruhi(Koizumi's group is the only one that views her as anything akin to a god, so there's no nagging issues about what happens when you kill the creator of your world for Ryoko). Ryoko's goal was to get Haruhi to do something. Haruhi should react far stronger to a threat on her own life than the death of a friend. But it could turn out that Ryoko "accidentally brought" the rubber knife instead of the real one. Haruhi laughs, Ryoko laughs while trying to figure out WTF just happened, and everyone goes on with business as usual. And she didn't rush the SOS Brigade/Literary Club room. She intentionally brought Kyon to her through a roundabout method to ensure no outside involvement. Partially to avoid Yuki trouble I'm sure, but it's also possible she wanted to keep Haruhi uninvolved until after the deed was done. But who knows what Haruhi's next "good idea" would be? The next world could suck for those mere mortals unlucky enough to be caught in Haruhi's path. Imagine if the closed space golems were running around rampaging in real space. Relatively speaking, the current world isn't all that bad(if you live in the right nation, which Koizumi does and the various members of his shadowy "agency" all seem to). And the current world IS reality. Just because one person can alter reality doesn't mean it isn't still real. Arguably he's the most pivotal character after Haruhi by the end of Melancholy. To say more would spoil it, so... And I don't think he's boring like any normal person. I think he's actually another supernatural character, his defining trait is just his awe-inspiring powers of boredom capable of bringing even the strongest of warriors to their knees. Koizumi's crippled esper powers suck by comparison. Though Yuki still rocks. It wasn't originally intended to go beyond the Melancholy arc, so you can guess the writer's intent from that one book. Kyon's being "nameless" is just because it wasn't really important. The important thing is that everyone calls him Kyon. And since everyone calls him Kyon, his real name isn't likely to come up. He has no need to refer to himself by name. Also, Crono DOES speak. The lack of text and lack of voice are diffrent issues entirely. He's "mute" because the player is meant to edit in his dialogue, thereby making him their avatar in the game world. Though this is hampered by the fact that the player is forced to do what Crono would do instead of Crono being forced to do what the player would do. The mute protagonist is a lost art, sadly. Alex in Lunar: The Silver Star and Crono in Chrono Trigger were the last high-profile mute RPG protagonists(Zelda is action-adventure, kthx), and they were VERY out of place for the era.

Cutoff for analog in the US is scheduled for 2009, last I heard. It's been floating, but they think DTV adoption is picking up enough that they won't roll this one back.

HDTVs are falling in price, and are expected to become the standard in the next few years. HDMI isn't strictly necessary unless a disk has enabled HDCP. The sound system is only required if you want the better audio as well as the better video.

Melancholy will run for 14 eps so there's just 1 more ep left. I hope they'll continue the anime for the next volumes. I'm guessing this episode takes place right before the baseball game and after the class president disappears. AFK's assembled a timeline that shows what print stories and anime episodes land where, if you'd care to see it. http://www12.brinkster.com/stratoct/haruhitimetable.txt Baseball game does indeed occur right after the end of the Melancholy arc, whereas Ryoko obviously dies during it. Near as I can tell, she was already mopey, she was just hiding it. And she likes Kyon, whether she admits it or not, so she's more willing to open up to him. Anthropic principle. Which he demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of. It basically says that if something must be true for us to exist, the fact that we exist is proof that it is true. So Koizumi's first sentence about it is accurate. It's NOT saying that the universe was shaped by, created by, or created for our existence, though that's a common misunderstanding of it. The original sentiment was more along the lines of we shouldn't be surprised that the laws of physics allow life to exist because if they didn't we wouldn't be around. Everything else is philsophical and religious embellishments on it. That was back in the introduction of the character, actually. Episode 2 of the anime. Only he never wished for their existence. As a kid he was sure they DID exist, so there was no need for him to wish they existed. The wish was that he could go on grand adventures with them. Really, Kyon and Haruhi are very similar. They both want the world to be a lot diffrent than it is, and unless Koizumi is totally nuts* both realize that it "isn't that way" and "can't possibly be that way"(Muwahahahahaha!!!!!). They just reacted to that realization diffrently. Kyon basically gave up on life. He's not running around jumping off bridges or anything, but he has no ambition, no dreams, nothing. He just exists. Very depressing character, actually. Haruhi, on the other hand, refused to admit it. She went the other direction and now she runs around making a spectacle of herself in defiance of what she knows to be reality. That's why she doesn't believe that the SOS Brigade has already fulfilled it's mission, because she's pretty sure it CAN'T fulfill it's mission. *Koizumi's sanity is important because he provides major insights into Haruhi's mental state. If he actually has no connection with Haruhi whatsoever, then he's just a rambling madman. But the fact that he actually HAS supernatural powers lends support to the rest of his story, since the HARDEST part to believe is demonstrably true. Unless Kyon is nuts, in which case the entire story is nothing more than a product of his imagination, and it's no diffrent than any other fictional universe except this one has a fictional author created by the real author. That would be an interesting twist. And would actually fit within Kyon's wishes. He didn't want to BE the star of the story, because they tend to wind up in mortal peril. He wanted to be a sidekick. Which he is. ... Of course, he HAS wound up in mortal peril, so that would be a really big "whoops," and seems to contradict the idea that it was his will instead of Haruhi's(we have plausible explanations for why no one's been outed to Haruhi if it was her will that they exist and come to her). There's other seeds scattered about that imply Haruhi runs the world. Like her ability to sleep through an entire day's worth of classes totally un-noticed. Some things can be waved off as pure coincidence, but others are a bit harder to do. Tangental side note: Would Kyon or Haruhi have left the old world when they created a new one? Could they, even if they wanted to? Anything before 3 years ago is an unknown. No one knows if the old world still exists or if it was annihilated. No one even knows if multiple complete worlds CAN exist. That's part of why Koizumi's group(or at least, the part he's aligned with) wants to keep Haruhi happy. They don't know for sure that they will continue existence if Haruhi snaps again, so it's better for them if she remains unannoyed, if not exactly happy(which she was until Kyon inspired the SOS Brigade. Is it just me, or does Koizumi sound annoyed when he mentions this?). And arguably, if she destroys and remakes the world, they won't continue existence even if they're recreated in the new world. It gets into a bit of a philosophical debate. Are you still you if you're destroyed and recreated, or did the old you die and the new you is a distinctly seperate person? Bah. I hereby declare Eva a plague upon humanity. Kyon isn't actually the main character, IMO. The story's told from his perspective, but he's too dull to carry it. Everything revolves around Haruhi. It's like saying the narrator is the main character. Haruhi's narrator just happens to be a "real person." You could argue that Kyon is left largely undefined(and a normal human) to let the reader/viewer more readily identify with him. That would help engage the audience in the story more readily. But personally, I think he's been defined as much as everyone else. He's just such an inherently uninteresting person that it FEELS like he's been left out. For what it's worth, I gather Kyon DOES wind up taking a trip back to 3 years ago with Mikuru. As for the actual events in that trip... no one's translated it yet, so I dunno.

A. Both HD-DVD and BluRay players are backwards-compatible. So your DVDs will work. B. No one said you had to throw out your existing player. I've still got a big pile of VHS that I never upgraded for whatever reason. C. By the time HD media goes mainstream, the price will have fallen to something more resembling the 100-200$ level.

According to Nintendo.com it's out next month, with OG2 following in September. Mildly dismayed Atlus decided to go the retarded route and use Super Robot Taisen on the box instead of actually translating the title. Especially when Bandai uses the translated title regularly on the japanese media.

At least we can all be happy they didn't take the Pretender Starscream route. He had the tailfins detach and become pistols in robot mode. Clean legs, really lame guns.

GERWALK can't reverse. It's not in the feature set. And you CAN use GERWALK for an instant stop in Battlecry. Hit down on the transformation control. You just don't get the cinematic flailing about. 412236[/snapback] It actually can reverse as they occasionally do it. Most of the time it is for a quick direction change. They'll use it to stop, then roll over and face the other direction which can't be done in Battlecry. Gerwalk mode could provide rearward flight in space by pointing the feet forward although in an atmosphere it may not work and if it did it would be limited. I've seen it stop. Never reverse. It wasn't designed to fly backwards, and wouldn't be effective at all in such usage. Like I said, Battlecry gets the rapid stop down, just not the animation for it. I like the ground parts more than the aerial parts anyways. Battlecry did those nicely.