JB0

I knew what it was before I'd ever played a single CV game. I think that was the single most-hyped import game of the entire era. It shows up in EVERY "best Castlevania" discussion. It's widely regarded as the best entry in a very well-known series. If it hadn't been Castlevania, I'm pretty sure it would have a much smaller following. But it was, and it got a LOT of attention for it(albeit most of that attention was udner the mislabel "Castlevania: Dracula X"). I'm pretty sure Terranigma's nowhere near as popular.

If they have any intelligence at all, they'll pay Konami for Rondo of Blood. And do the dub themselves if they have to. An english Rondo of Blood could move the system all on it's own. We already know they're getting 3rd-party software for the download network. (Thank goodness. I like Nintendo, but really, the NES and SNES succeeded because of 3rd-party support, not Nintendo's titles alone.)

If I recall, most sentient life in the galaxy was wiped out at the end, with the protodevlin war. And there might still be some protoculture left. The chronology's last mention of them says "near annihilation of Protoculture". Once their interstellar network and central government collapsed, it would be a lot harder to track down all the outlying colonies. So there could be a few protoculture worlds off in the far side of the Milky Way. Thank God we did. No wait, that doesn't make sence... 384182[/snapback] *laughs*

My take(keep in mind I haven't watched the show since episode 5 first came out)... Sara left to get the AFOS away from Earth, I'm pretty sure. Shin left to follow Sara. The birdmen are the protoculture.

I'd roll Max Jenius and pwn everyone.

Pilot Shin gained a leve! Class up! Shin is now Birdman!

Mind filling us in an th I-joke? 384032[/snapback] Heard of 4chan? Well, when they got whiff of this title, well, sky's the limit. 384111[/snapback] It hit a lot more than 4chan.

*nods*And that's an area where Zero got a lot of points. It attempted to show off the technological side. They explain why a VF is so much more durable than it should be, how pilots can pull off stunts like shooting down missiles, and... ummm... had a Monster?

I think he's asking if we prefer the japanese or english version. He's just asking it in an unusual way, as we usually associate dub with "english-language dialouge."

That's kind of the point. It's dumb enough to have potential humor value.

Was a popular theme in sci-fi for a while. The "missing link" between apes and cavemen wasn't found for a long time, and it was a fun way to explain it. It still shows up every now and then, but a lot less regularly than it used to(we've filled out a lot more of the homo genus since On the Origin of Species was first published). As Shin drags Sara's near lifeless corpse to the escape pod, Sara asks Shin to take off her helmet... 384092[/snapback] Haw.

Note that the PS2 version has it disable-able. That means that it's not a fault of the hardware, but rather a feature coded into the game for amusement, nostalgia, or wusses. Possibly a fault of the hardware on the arcade version, though I'd be rather surprised given it's a NAOMI game and the screenshots I'm seeing are a lot less crowded than Mars Matrix. (I need to pick up a copy of Shikigami still, on a related node. Saw one cheap recently...) In Mars Matrix's case it IS a fault of overloaded hardware. Slowdown on a sprite-based game on a current-gen system IS notable. This isn't the NES era anymore. We aren't running on a 2MHz 6502. Or an 8MHz 68000. Or even a 33MHz R3000. We're taliking about processors with clockspeeds in the hundreds of MHz and cache RAM to help speed things up further. Getting enough sprite action on the screen to cause slowdown is pretty impressive. ... Getting it onscreen without making me mad at the game is even more impressive.

Bah.

SPOLERS! THERE'S SNAKES ON A PLANE!

Targetting interface. The helmet has eye-tracking sensors that identify the selected targets based on eye motion(I don't see what he used to lock them in, though. Would've been neat if each lock was immediatly preceded by an eye blink to signal it was the next target in line.). It's an attempt to rationalize some excessively fancy moves seen in the prior entries(like shooting down missiles, uncoincidentally). Also gives an excuse for that really huge helmet spike. Better yet... it's real-world tech. While the Apache tracks the helmet rather than the eye, Sony released camcorders with eye-tracking controls in the viewfinder a few years ago. It'd make sense to integrate more intuitive interfaces in to military hardware as the technology becomes available, and this COULD be seen as an evolution of the Apache helmet-tracker. What Roy WAS working faster than was the weapory's ability to execute those commands. He was entering new targets into a buffer while the laser turret was tracking to his first selection. It's like Missile Command.

It was the protoculture. http://macross.anime.net/story/chronology/...0000/index.html " PC 2870 A Protoculture survey ship stops temporarily on "Earth." By genetically reconstructing the native life, it plots the emergence of a sub-Protoculture adapted to the planetary enivronment, "Humankind," to prepare for future colonization. During its return to its home planet, the survey ship is destroyed by military ships opposed to the Stellar Republic. Records of Earth and Humankind are eventually lost. [PC 2900] " It was established before Zero that we were the results of genetic tinkering. It actually comes up in the original series that humans are almost genetically identical to the zentradi, and bear the marks of genetic engineering in their DNA. That implies a similar origin. Remember, the protoculture had conquered most of the galaxy. There were the protoculture, and there were everyone the protoculture conquered. Then there were races engineered by protoculture survey ships so there'd be someone to conquer once they made it out here en masse. But the evaluation of the homicidal alien birdmech thingie is pretty much spot-on. That's probably also why it requires Sara as an operator. It leaves a "cancel button" in the system by putting a human in control(albeit one jacked into a mech with homicidal tendancies that's screwing with her head). If Sara changes her mind about us needing to be blasted back to the stone age for another try, she can stop it(and does).

Yeah. It actually came up in an interview once. "Beaks: One of those films that you’re working on right now is... well, it’s called Pacific Air 121— Jackson: Snakes on a Plane, man! Beaks: Exactly. Jackson: We’re totally changing that back. That’s the only reason I took the job: I read the title. Beaks: Snakes on a Plane! That’s everything! Jackson: You either want to see that, or you don’t. " And apparently one of the conditions he gave Lucas for playing Mace Windu in the prequel trilogy was he had to have a purple lightsaber. He sounds like an... interesting guy to work with. Actually, the joke is based on the movie. They announced it, people made fun of it, they tried to change the title, Jackson verbally abused them into changing it back, and now the movie is scheduled for an August launch. ... But what're they gonna do for the sequel? Snakes on a Train? Ferrets on a Bus? Guinea Pigs on a Boat? Gila Monsters on a Blimp? Endless possibilities!

This is the best "Valkyrie" game behind the Macross title on the PS2. The VF-X series could only dream of being half as good as BattleCry... 383698[/snapback] *nods* It was a great game the first time through, but I tried replaying it and all the faults show through. It's just not really that fun anymore, with the possible exception of VS mode(I don't know anyone that wants to play with me, so that goes unused). I loved Battlecry, from start to finish. It might have a few problems technically with it (low ceiling heights, no air-to-ground stages, etc.) but it got the style and feel of the show spot-on. I too was wary of the cell-shading, until I saw the first few trailers. After that cautious optimisim came the desire to own the game. Picking it up from my reservation as soon as I could, I came home, plugged it in to my machine... and forgot all about playing the game as I sat there, bopping along to the remixed starting theme for the next ten minutes. I haven't played it since I sold my PS2, but I keep an eye out on my Xbox and occasionally think winsomly of getting it again. The special features for the game (cast and crew interviews) were a real treat to me, and the medal system was an alright gimmick for replay value. I used to play versus mode with my brother all the time, and our battles usually went a little something like this: Start game. Launch all missles! Run like a coward when the other guy doesn't die! Repeat as needed, then start again 383960[/snapback] I've got the 'Cube version. And if I could use the GBP-1 in single player mode, I'd be ripping through it again just for kicks. It took up more or less permanent residence in my 'Cube until I beat it. It's just hard to go back to, IMO. ... Flying the Millia 1J is great though. As is dropping a stadium on Robotech Minmay's head. I generally like cel-shading. I was one of the few praising "Celda" when the trailers came out. Too bad it was forced out unfinished, and the director was triying to emulate Miyamoto without understanding his logic.

That part was only in Robotech.

I felt sorry for her. While it was definitely one of the prime examples of the diffrences between on- and off-duty Misa, she got screwed royally in that episode. I tend to prefer the Shao Pai Lon premiere and the escape from the zentradi for that reason. ... The puppy was cute, though.

It's not so much what they said, but the whole Shin-flying-off-into-space thing that had me thinking: hey wait just a dang a minute! didn't Sara just ask you to watch out for Mao? Where do you think you're going? Hot chick > hot chick's underage sister. She COULD have been... The VF-1 rollout was SUPPOSED to happen earlier, but they didn't have the engines ready. Development started well before '09, and the VF-0 was a fork of VF-1 development. Remember, it wasn't a mass-production aircraft, just a testbed. Transformation capacity adds signifigant look-cool factor, thereby increasing performance. Similar concept to real-world "stickercharging." More likely, they had a spy that got information on the VF project. They didn't know why, but dammit, of the UN needed it, then so did they. Said spy probably also stole a lot of data, saving them much R&D. I hated that part. No attempt at justification whatsoever. Frigging water-burning jet engines...

Dear Nintendo: Macross 2036 translation plzkthx. Eternal Love Song would be nice too.

I pulled a reet warez disk image down and tried it on my Dreamcast.

Yup. I can tell you that it sucks.

That's about it. Your ship has boosters, the boss is some oversized Gundam with a cannon that can fill the entire screen, and there's liberal quantities of weapon-carriers to ensure you're ready for the fight.