JB0

Partially because I approach it as a game with Macross in it instead of Macross with a game in it. A lot of the faults are somewhat standard fare for video games. The biggie WAS the flight ceiling. Most of those levels were designed around a specific mode, just because standard video game design doesn't handle mixed-mode player characters well. The only notable exceptions I can think of were some of the boss battles. Graveyard(QRau shoots female sidekick down into a lake) especially was large enough for fighter combat while still being cluttered enough for effective GERWALK and battroid usage, and I usually use all 3 modes during that fight. It might've been handled better overall if they'd recruited Cavia, developers of Drakengard, Drakengard 2, and Bullet Witch(soon to be released in Japan). All 3 are mixed-mode gameplay, and while not directly comparable to Macross, they're a lot closer than anyone else has done. Bulet Witch especially from what I've seen. ... Except I don't think Cavia was even around back then. So never mind. I had fun with a few defensive missions. Just not most of them. The freaking Cat's Eyes can all go to hell. Zero the throttle, exclusively use boost for forward motion. It controls somewhat decently that way, and becomes a fairly fun vehicle. Was actually my favorite mode overall. Someday I might give Invasion a chance. I just haven't felt compelled to get it yet, especially with the bad reviews it landed. The REAL dog of the US games was the GBA title. I can't imagine Invasion being worse than that one, especially not if the same team worked on it as Battlecry.

Reasons Battlecry ruled: The 1J was the best plane. Millia's paint scheme was available, so you could fly a Millia 1J. You could fly a QRau in VS mode! Cel-shading yay! Free control of VF mode. One of the first decently fun 3D "Macross" games, and the only one that's readily available in the US. Reasons Battlecry sucked: Extremely low flight ceiling limited use of fighter mode in many stages. Very limited use of FAST packs outside of VS mode. GBP and QRau in VS mode only! No player-controllable destroids, even in VS mode. Way too many defensive missions. That QBerting "chase the shuttles through the canyons" mission(which would've been much more fun with a higher flight ceiling). Robotech. Things I shouldn't hold against Battlecry, but do: 1-shot kill cheat makes defensive missions VERY hard if you aren't careful(but very easy if you are). 1 stray bullet brings the stadium down on Minmay's head... even if it IS RT Minmay, it still fails the level. Minmay can't be killed unless you drop the stadium on her. Nor can any other "squishie."

Death metal.

You missed my point. I dont want Macross to become an industrial spinoff machine, with not so good stuff every year; I just want us to have more than a few ovas every 5-7 years. 406302[/snapback] So somewhere between the 2. 'Kay.

Lovely. They can't even spell Spike's bloody surname correctly. 406279[/snapback] No one can.

True... Maybe we could keep the relaxed anime attitude but experience the Gundam merchandise whoring? AHEM! *holds up a picture of the YF-21 in combat with the X-1* Isamu never touched the Ghost. This post has been brought to you by General Galaxy Public Relations, a wholely-owned subsidiary of General Galaxy, Inc. All rights reserved. Macross Plus had pretty weak story-telling, actually. The mecha sequences were great, but the story was patchy. How about Macross Plus combat with SDF Macross storytelling? IMO, it's still the best-written entry in the franchise.

And Gundam got whored out more than a... ummm... thing that gets whored a lot. Does the world NEED two dozen diffrent sequels and spinoffs, most of which are remakes anyways? It's an entire industry all by itself. I rather like that Macross hasn't been pimped so hard. And that each new installment is actually new.

I love seeing fools and scum embarassed. If it were up to me, this, the PPPPPowerbook, and the like would get a sticky thread.

Actually, it WAS rendered solely by a more or less standard PS2 graphics chip. Said chip was also hooked to a solid gigabyte of RAM, though. So it's what the PS2 COULD render if it had massively more RAM and no serious bottlenecks in the system design. Which is so diffrent from an actual PS2 that it doesn't really count, but still... Don't forget "This is running on a real PS3!," followed almost immediatly by nVidia's "No it isn't, we haven't even finished designing the PS3 graphics chip, much less manufactured any." I'm sort of curious how much of the idiocy is really Kutaragi's call and how much is hoisted on him by higher-ups. The man can't be TOO bad, he hated the original PS controller(there's like a dozen diffrent prototypes of varying designs, most of which were made because Kutaragi was raising hell about the SNES+random bits controller they wanted to, and ultimately did, ship). He also designed the SNES sound hardware, just so Nintendo wouldn't use another crappy PSG like the FamiCom(Sony was actually somewhat annoyed when they found out he'd started a project without telling them. Especially since it was a project explicitly intended to be sold to another company, and to a company that hadn't even expressed interest on top of everything.). So either he's snapped in recent years, or he's just spewing whatever BS the guys above him pass down. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/con...ign_id=rss_tech Rummaging stuff up, and found this. He hates DRM, so that's one more plus on the guy. He's also got lousy people skills, which explains some of his problems. Also seems Sony's turning a profit outside the games division again, though it's still over a third of their profits.

I like how they're using the Wing Zero Custom for the product picture.

But that makes the cassette robots a guaranteed miss. The size change is pretty much a requirement. regardless. There's no good way to pack a robot AND a car in the same vehicle and still have room for a cabin. It's just less obvious when the robot and car are similar sizes. They probably WILL explain the size change, just to get it out of the way. As I understand it, they have an explanation currently(involving mass displacement into an alternate dimension), it's just never made it into the animation.

Probably not a signifigant diffrence. It'll really kick in in the next year or 2, as HD adoption becomes more common. I hate that everyone is knocking that PoS off. Used to be that no matter WHAT you wanted a controller to do, someone made it. Now all anyone makes is DualShocks and DualShocks with 6 face buttons. LIES! Seriously, it's got a lousy d-pad, and it's just uncomfortable to hold. If the d-pad is irrelevant, they need to get rid of it or at least swap it with the analog stick, since that's where it's most comfortable to put a thumb. If the d-pad IS relevant, they need to fix it. Ergonomics is pretty important in a gamepad. If it's uncomfortable to use, it's a bad design. It probably did succeed to some degree. It looked funny, sure. But once you thought about things, it was suspiciously similar to the GameCube pad, which is a far more comfortable device. No kidding. Large portions of current controller design can be traced directly to the NES. And the NES pad was a half-assed attempt at best. There was NO consideration for ergonomics or usability, just an attempt to make a game controller that looked like a Game&Watch. Select and start weren't even intended to be USED outside of the title screen. In fact, the FamiCom completely lacks those buttons on the 2nd-player controller(which is why only the first player can pause Super Mario Brothers, if you were wondering). The rest... is from the SNES, which while better planned than the NES controller was STILL just an attempt to upgrade a fundamentally flawed device. But Sony's just gluing bits onto the SNES pad. And MS is just emulating Sony this round because people were too busy whining about how the XBox1 pad wasn't a DualShock to play the games. The N64 controller is actually mildly confusing. It's not really obvious when you look at it. 'S another one of those bad design decisions.

The neon green wasn't needed, I'm pretty sure. I think that's just how the current Hasbro thinks Megatron should BE. *looks it up* It seems the current California laws require toy guns to be either ENTIRELY orange or green, or transparent. So I'm not sure if they can sell Megatron in California anyways. I'd have to find the full text of the law and try to work it out from there. It might be that ANY transparency covers things, in which case the green is probably redundant. The lack of a barrel could be due in part to New York law, which requires non-removable orange stripes down the length of a toy gun's barrel. Depending on how they define non-removable, that could mean they'd have to cast orange plastic strips into the barrel. The toy industry, understandably, wants the states to get together and standardize so they don't have to navigate the existing minefield of varying state laws, all of which stack on top of existing federal law.

*shudders*

And Atari and Sega. People generally laugh when I point it out because "Dude, you can't beat the Playstation!", but lately Sony's been doing EXACTLY what those who came before did right before their fall. Amen. They still don't believe it. Find a Resident Evil 4 PS2 review. Listen to them talk about the identical(maybe even improved) graphics. Then find some side-by-side screenshots and shudder at the massively reduced visual quality on the PS. It'll be signifigant. The Wii isn't nearly as beefy as the PS3 and XBox360. Of course, the advantage the PS3 and 360 have at standard definition is limited, and the Wii is SD only. It's once you move to higher resolutions that the Wii is really going to look bad next to the competition. Yah. I guarantee there's a lot of people that do or will have 360s and PS3s hooked to an old TV that only has composite inputs that'll be bragging about how much better they are than Wii owners because they have "HDTV graphics!111"

Support political incorrectness and protect future generations of children from dirty pacifist hippies! Buy toy guns!

Yah. That was why they moved to x86. PowerPC has been pretty crappy lately. IBM's failed to deliver higher speed parts and failed to lower the power consumption on their slower parts. So their desktop machines aren't where they were planning to be because the faster parts aren't out, and the laptops are even worse because the cooler parts aren't showing up. Whereas Intel's Core is faster AND cooler, so they can hae a laptop that stomps their current desktops. The PowerMacIntels are probably waiting for the next revision of the Core. There's supposed to be some major jumps in that one, and it's not very far off. ... Or they could just be waiting for more of the high-end apps to be x86-native. That's been a major gripe I've had with the way Linux is handled, and I AM computer-savvy. There's been way too little effort expended on user-friendliness for it to be the Windows killer it's supporters keep claiming it is/should be/will become.

Bumblebee and Megatron here.

Definitely. It was originally an act of desperation, and I was never sure why they kept it up. I can understand the usage on Earth, since they didn't want to accidentally fry some of their fighters or any nearby civilians with the cannon(of course, they screwed it up and DID shoot down at least one fighter), but other than that... Well, most targets aren't large enough for that style of ram. So you're back to a Daedalus attack, just pushing through instead of stopping and shooting. ... Best argument for using the destroids is that they wanted to get clear of the enemy ship before it exploded. If you follow all the way through, you're at ground zero when it goes. If you unload some ammo and pull back, you're... still too close for comfort, but not right inside the explosion. Of course, the zentradi version of ship-to-ship tactics seemed to be "point straight at 'em and charge." So they were already on the right line disturbingly often, and only had to rotate to face them, which the Macross was very capable of. If the missing fold generators and then barrier system hadn't interfered, they could've unloaded a cannon shot through almost every flying pickle they fought.

16-bit? Try 8-bit. They weren't anywhere NEAR as ruthless on the SNES as the NES. Admittedly it was largely because Sega got their footing in the US before the SNES was ready, but still...

Dunno. MAME's state save functionality is so flakey I've never made much real use of it. Didn't MAME32 come with documentation? The help file will probably answer the question faster than we can.

Britai's ship was firing multiple beam cannons from the front of the ship. When you see them in the shot where the camera is looking directly at the front of the ship you can clearly see that it's many beams being fired. When the camera angle switches to show a 3/4 view of Britai's ship firing its weapons, the multiple beams sort of look like one large beam weapon. It's just the viewing angle and the way it's animated that makes it seem like Britai's ship has a large-scale beam weapon. 405717[/snapback] Ah. Thanks. The spies were rewarded with promotions, though. And they were pretty hyped about it. Of course, Kamjin just liked blowing crap up, and Millia was seeking challenges to her skill. So clearly diffrent zentradi have diffrent motivations. I thought they mentioned using it against the supervision army remnants, but I could be wrong again. Bodol did mention that they learned what they could about miclones before exterminating them. ... Or was that in DYRL? That was a special case, though. If he didn't WANT to get hit by a Daedalus Attack, he wouldn't have come in range of one. That episode also implies that Britai's ship can't withstand a Daedalus under "normal" circumstances(is ANY use of the Daedalus Attack really normal circumstances?), since he issues orders to reinforce the bow beforehand AND has the regults and glaugs blast all the destroids before they can unload the main salvo. Of course, it's after the botched DA on Earth, so Britai has a good idea what a Daedalus Attack entails. Before that it would've been a rather bad idea, since there were no survivors or camera recordings, so it would've been a lot of guesswork to figure out how they did it(maybe the PPB disks explode inside the ship. Or Kaifun runs out and uses his magic powers to slay the giants inside!).

But mass-market acceptance of the PS1 and PS2 wasn't hindered by a high price tag. Sony or not, the 600$ suggested retail WILL hurt them. Or do I need to remind everyone of the Saturn? Contrary to popular belief, Sega was near their peak when the Saturn launched, not in an uncontrolled freefall from failed Genesis expansions(though the 32x was certainly an uncomfortably recent bruise, it was no nastier than Nintendo's Virtual Boy, and Nintendo recovered. SegaCD was a LOT better recieved than people give it credit for now). Playstation beat the Saturn by being cheaper to make, cheaper on store shelves, and developer-friendly(it was easy to code for, easy to utilize a good deal of the hardware's capability, and Sony had very generous developer licensing at the time). So Sony had a 300$ system on store shelves with more games than Sega's 400$ system, AND more new games coming. The PS took off, the price wars began, Sega started bleeding red ink on every sale of a Saturn that just wasn't ready for launch, and it was all downhill from there. Fast forward a decade and the PS3 is the most expensive system on the market, Sony has earned a reputation as being very hostile to developers, and the PS3 is a batty and a half to program for from what I've heard. In short, PS3 = Sega Saturn. That's the rumor. If it's true, it'll have to be a hybrid solution(like the PS1 compatibility on the PS2 is). If nothing else, controller and memory card access HAS to be emulated, because the PS3 doesn't have PS2 controller or memory card connectors. (Byebye, GunCon. We'll miss you.).

Quite likely. As we can see when they DO capture some humans, they approach everything from entirely the wrong angle to grasp it. They seemed to think repairs were a magical ability we had(which is admittedly a lot less laughable than it seems, given some of the PC's later projects), or a more advanced version of their self-sealing hulls. But if he HAD figured it out and brought it back... I guess it's better to say I wonder what he expected to happen. There's all sorts of possibilities, partially because we know so little about the zentradi society.

Whoops.