JB0

Mmm... I've never heard that. It WOULD have been better as a home unit. Especially since it is anyways, essentially. Gotta have a table to set it on, a chair to sit in, and I've only ever used mine off AC(I gather it sucks batteries like mad, though). I know they couldn't get the resolution they wanted in LCDs of the time. And the blue LED wasn't ready yet, though they could've gotten a more limited color range with red, green, and yellow. If I were designing one NOW, I'd likely use a cool lightsource(like white LEDs) and twin 854*480 DLPs. Add color wheels for RGB. Of course, I'd need a major power upgrade to drive the higher-res displays. May as well take it polygon while I'm at it. They're better suited to 3D graphics. Wouldn't need as much power as the next-gen systems, since I wouldn't push for every tiny bit of eye-candy, and I'm not going for HD resolutions. A current-gen system driving my display would do nicely. Of course, the controller is getting dated. Run with a Saturn Analog Pad knockoff, pr'ly. ... Maybe theef Sony's original Dual Analog joystick. I'm not going for a portable, so I don't need a gamepad. Okay, coming back from Dreamland now... Blurry? Mine's always been crystal-clear, and there's nothing in the tech to cause blurriness, unless you don't adjust it right. ... Or take glasses off. Thing's designed to be played with glasses if you need them. Heh, ROB. His sole purpose was ACTUALLY convincing retailers that the NES wasn't another game machine like the ones that'd burned them so badly just 2 years ago. I'd like to have one, just for kicks. Already determined that it'd be a VERY cumbersome way to play Gyromite, and I don't even OWN StackUp(much less the ROB parts the game came with). From experience, there's a few possible headache causes. With workarounds. I only ever got slight headaches, though. The biggest is the display is 50Hz refresh, with no pixel persistence. Turning the brightness down helps a LOT on this one. At full brightness you can actually SEE the flicker. At... I think about half... it completely ceases being relevant. IMO they should've capped the display brightness somewhere below max. Preferably gone with a faster screen, or a persistent one(like LCDs, and damn the headset size). The second is depth of the image. That's where the auto-pause forced break feature was supposed to come in. There's also a depth control in several games that's adjustable. Reducing(not eliminating) the depth of the image helps this one. I can't really describe it well, but there's an odd feeling my eyes get when it's too deep that I use to guide the adjustment. I actually know what causes this one from some recent research into 3D displays in general. It's a problem common to all attempts at 3D that don't involve actually projecting a 3D image. The brain gets upset because it's not having to move the eyes to aim at diffrent objects. If you look at a close object in reality, your eyes point closer together than if you look at a distant object. With a simulation using twin 2D displays, both eyes are staring at the same place regardless of distance, and the brain doesn't like it one bit. Mis-adjusted IPD could also do it. I can't say I've had ANY experience with this one though. Even the store demos I went through the boot-up adjustment sequence on. It'd also exacerbate the second cause. This one was a major problem I saw with the VB at the time. It had a relatively involved setup, and people didn't take the time to go through it. Most people tend to not even read manuals, much less take the time to configure their games. A modern VB would be almost guaranteed to have auto-adjusting IPD to avoid this, though it wasn't feasable when the system was created.

Where is the best place to buy this flip top? When you say flip top, are you talking about just buying the slim PS2 that has a top that flips up rather than the slider that comes out then using one of those CDs that somehow trick the PS2 into thinking it is a japanese version? 339830[/snapback] No. The fliptop is a case replacement for the front-loading PS2 that adds a door on top, so you can change the disk without the console realizing it's happened(since there's no open switch on the door). It has nothing to do with the slimline.

And to add to that, that there's lots of things dubbed radiation that aren't even particle radiation. I bring it up up because I recently heard someone confusing EM radiation with particle radiation. Related: I thought gamma radiation was only applicable to the x-ray side of photons. Am I mistaken? Less impressive than it sounds, really. Plasma comes in relatively low-energy forms as well as the high-temperature plasmas we know and love from fusion reactors and sci-fi. Fire is an example of a low-energy plasma. Makes sense, though I don't know of a chemical reaction that can break water apart. But you'd just fill up with H2O, and crack it on the way to the reactor. No mucking about with pressurized fuel tanks or carrying high explosives. ... Hell, could use it in a conventional internal-combustion engine too. Just crack the water, pump the H and O into the cylinder, fire the spark, and when it burns you'll get water back out and send it back into the fuel tank. Sounds like a perpetual motion machine there, but you've got losses going on. Not all the H and O will recombine when you burn it. And you've pr'ly got consumables at the crack stage, but even if you don't, again it's not 100% efficiency. Sorta true. The mass and inertia is all still the same, you just have a hell of a lot less friction eating away at your momenteum once you start moving. On the other hand, you have to spin around and apply opposite thrust to slow or stop. And while you aren't constantly fighting gravity, every up/down motion requires a further expenditure of reaction mass, because there's no lift. In an atmosphere, once you get your speed up going down is free, and any direction but up takes a lot less fuel. Hence why unpowered flight is possible on Earth, but not space. Sure you're always going down(unless you catch a thermal), but you can still maneuver. To add to that that, the "reaction mass" in an atmosphere is air. In space everything has to be carried onboard, because you can't use a vacuum for propulsion. It's not a clean and simple advantage. It's not a "mini-star" except in the loosest sense possible. Exception is made for singularity-driven generators(I think it'd be possible to use a singularity to drive a fusion reaction). Not only is the gravity not enough to hold it together against the energy released by the fusion reaction, it's not enough to CAUSE a fusion reaction. It takes a constant, and typically LARGE, injection of energy to start and sustain the reaction. Which is part of the problem we've had with fusion. Using the tokomak reactor design(this is the only one that makes extensive use of magnetic fields), the plasma's not even in a sphere. And I've never seen a donut-shaped star. Only loosely. Gundam, for example, makes extensive use of a fictional "minovsky particle" emitted by He3-He3 fusion to explain away any problems. Macross hasn't even dealt with the technological issues. It uses thermonuclear reactors based on alien technology, and that's all that's been said. They originally chose that power source because it sounded cool. </nitpicks_part2>

I'm not surprised, look at what that man did to the Virtual Boy? He killed console VR and lost Nintendo one of their best hardware and software developers. I was under the impression that Yamauchi wasn't exactly involved with teh VB either. Way I heard it, the VB was Yokoi's pet project, and he was allowed to do whatver the hell he pleased with it just because he was Gunpei Yokoi. Actually, as I understand it, Yamauchi had very little to do with the nuts and bolts of the operation as a whole, and just ran the corporate side with an unparalleled ruthlessness. Closest he got to the guts was something like playing Super Mario for 5 minutes once. You want to know who killed console VR? Everyone that said "OMG RED GAMEBOY" when the screenshots came out, and refused to even try it. 339740[/snapback] There were plenty enough of us that tried the Virtual Boy and thought it sucked Come to think of it, I've never talked to anyone that actually liked it. 339744[/snapback] Everyone that's played mine has liked it.

Who else could play Captain James T. Freaking Kirk and still manage to get type-cast as something else?

I'm not surprised, look at what that man did to the Virtual Boy? He killed console VR and lost Nintendo one of their best hardware and software developers. I was under the impression that Yamauchi wasn't exactly involved with teh VB either. Way I heard it, the VB was Yokoi's pet project, and he was allowed to do whatver the hell he pleased with it just because he was Gunpei Yokoi. Actually, as I understand it, Yamauchi had very little to do with the nuts and bolts of the operation as a whole, and just ran the corporate side with an unparalleled ruthlessness. Closest he got to the guts was something like playing Super Mario for 5 minutes once. You want to know who killed console VR? Everyone that said "OMG RED GAMEBOY" when the screenshots came out, and refused to even try it.

Gods... the depths these people will sink to to protect "their" show... I've heard the classic "3 seasons of Macross" referring, of course, to the Macross, Southern Cross, and MOSPEADA portions of Robotech, that Robotech was the original and Macross was the adaptation, and even that the Robotech events, while not original, have been backported into the Macross chronology.

Not yet. The MalWart I checked didn't have it. Got another couple to stab at.

You should keep it for the sexy box.

Nintendo did a GBColor remake, then lost the rights. I'm sure someone's done a GBA version since then. But... honestly, I don't really see paying 20$ for a new copy of a game I already own 2 versions of(Nintendo NES + GBO). There's only so much you can add to the concept without making it into something else, and I quite like the original "pure" form.

I'd believe it. If I recall, the XBox 360 is slated for 350$ in Japan(no craptastic crippleware model AND they get a discount). Sony has the Playstation name, whereas Microsoft was a complete non-issue in Japan this generation, but they can't afford to price too high above the competition. 400 is about the max they can go for without risking sticker-shock defections.

Exactly. It also won't play any original GameBoy and GameBoy Color games you find in GameStop and EB. What this means to me is that I have to drag a GameBoy Color around for portable Qix, Tetris, Metroid 2, and Link's Awakening with my next upgrade. Sadly, I never got any GBC games worth owning.

Japanese PS2s only play japanese games. That's not backing the games up. It's pirating the games.

Here she is. 339648[/snapback] HAHA! I thought they'd pulled that trick back out. Glad to see it's still there.

The fusion reaction alone CAN'T provide thrust. ... Well, it could provide a small amount if you sprayed your waste products out the back, but not a signifigant amount due to the small masses involved. If I recall, the inlets shut and reaction mass is injected into the jet engine for propulsion. Reaction mass just means matter that's thrown off a space ship to create an acceleration, and has nothing to do with nuclear reactions. The large objects Hikaru was throwing around in his "fishing expidetion" early on in the series were reaction masses, albeit cumbersome ones. Term comes from Newton's 3rd law of motion, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Because of this law, the action of throwing matter out of a thruster pushes the thruster back, and the ship with it. Without the 3rd law, space travel would be impossible. First of all, the explanation I provided is a simplistic example in laymans terms which is technicially correct given most cases of fusion/fission. Like I said, I'm no engineer or scientist; I can only discuss the subject from the basic understanding of an amateur. Discussion into what can or can't happen is not answering the question concisely; it creates more complexity than is needed to answer the questio. Fusion/Fission are complex subjects, but the answer to this particular question need not be so. Fair enough. I tend to point things out just because there's so many misconceptions about the technolgy(as the existence of the thread indicates).

I thought both styles had their merit, personally. Robotech(and DYRL) has the extended cohesive song for maximum dramatic effect. Though We Will Win seemd to carried a strong military theme, which would run the risk of negating the culture shock effect on the zentradi, it was still damn catchy, and gave the battle a more cinematic feel. DYRL, of course, went with the same concept, but dodged the military theme. In SDF Macross, however, Minmay just runs through her existing repertoire of songs. BUT the one she's singing always matches the mood of the scene in a way the single super-extended song couldn't have. That was was what REALLY struck me about that episode when I ran through my Animeigo disks, was how well each song complemented the specific sequence it was heard in. Even the songs that I'd found annoying at prior points in the show all slid right in and justified their existence for the episode.

Some innacuracies here. It's possible to get safe elements out of fission. In fact, given enough time, all radioactive elements fission into stable elements. It's just not easy or efficient, because the bigger atoms are far easier to split than the smaller ones. Once your nucleus gets smaller than the effective reach of the storng force, inducing fission becomes nearly impossible, and you have to let natural emission decay take it's course. And fusion does not NECESSARILY emit neutrons. But it can. Of course, they'll all be dumped into the reactor, so there's no fuel or waste products to worry about storing later. This is basically right. There's a few possible nitpicks, but they're minor, and excessively technical for the discussion at hand. Only notable one is that you'd get your fuel and reaction products belched out, but these are not necessarily hydrogen and helium. In fact, pure H reactions have been abandoned in the real world, as I understand the issue. Partially because it's a dirty reaction if you aren't using pure deuterium, and partially because other reactions offer more bang for the buck.

The above is accurate. Everything below starts drifting off into common misconceptions. As others have stated, fusion reactions like overtech generators use make use of non-radioactive materials. And depending on the specific reaction, may or may not create radioactive materials as a side-effect. The He3 reaction is interesting because there's no particle radiation, which means no radioactivity. Yah, since every known nuclear generator design extracts electricity from the heat generated. The Valks have a double-coolant, since the thermonuclear reactor is ALSO used to heat the propellant used to send it flying about in fighter mode, or hovering in GERWALK. A. modern reactors are fission, and fusion is a totally diffrent tech. B. Nope. Coolant isn't the problem(though there are some heat pollution issues from reactors that use river water for coolant). The problem is the leftover radioactive isotopes after the fuel rods are "spent." Fission of uranium doesn't leave you with stable isotopes. It leaves you with some stuff that's radioactive for very LONG periods of time. Tens of thousands of years long. Annoyingly, we have the technology to fix this NOW. It's possible to use the "spent" fuel in a second "breeder" reactor, which reduces the life to a far more managable hundreds of years, as well as leaving you with stuff that's far less nasty before it expires, but anti-nuclear activists have crushed any new reactor construction by tying efforst to build them up in so many lawsuits that it's not economically feasable. No more than Hindenberg was. No. A fission reactor CANNOT explode like an a-bomb. It may "melt down". but it won't blow up and vaporize anything.There's risk of steam pressure breaking something, turning your reactor into a "dirty bomb", but not of a nuclear explosion. Fusion reactors are even safer, as the reaction requires active effort to maintain. Break your reactor and you get a jet of flame out the side, then just leaking hydrogen, helium, or whatever other fuel you use(H is the easiest to work with, He has the potential to be the cleanest). Of course, if you use a volatile fuel like hydrogen, you may get an explosion from your fuel tank catching fire. But again, it's non-nuclear. For one, nuclear warheads use diffrent tech than power plants. 2. The silo isn't a weapon. It houses a missile that has a weapon mounted on it. 3. No. A nuclear explosion requires the nuclear material to be mated JUST right, and there's both electrical and mechanilca safeties in the weapon to prevent accidental firing, for obvious reasons. A modern fission reactor can't be reduced much farther than it has been, due to the nature of the technology and need for extensive supporting equipment. A fusion reactor could, hypothetically, be reduced much farther. As you've said, Macross cheats by using "overtechnology." Gundam cheats too, by using fictional particles to create an enhanced confinement of the reaction. But a basketball-sized fusion reactor is hypothetically possible(though you won't get a lot of power out of it, since the more matter you fuse at once, the more power you get).

Someday someone's gonna take the Hasselhof GIF and chain several loops of it in, and the last one'll zoom into the Goatse Guy. I know this ebcause someone is always looking for new ways to link the Goatse Guy.

Fair enough. Can't blame him, really. But hey, if his kid wants to squander a birthday on duplicates, it's his loss. *nods* Like I said, I don't think anything in the GBA family should still be on shelves, much less new revisions. But they didn't upgrade the previous one at the same time they introduced the new one until this gen. And now they're doing it doubles, with an SP++ AND the GBMicro following the DS. The Micro is LESS THAN the SP. No 8-bit compatibility. ... But it's smaller and purdier, with the nifty aluminum shell. </self-undermining> And in my experience, parents can't keep track of things anyways. I was forever having to write down what I was asking for, or repeat it a dozen times.

Sadly, Nintendo's yet to clarify their policy regarding this thing. I'm betting a full library of 1st-party software and some 3rd-party stuff. Castlevania's likely, based on the GBA Classics series. Assuming that is indicative of a good working relationship with Konami, that also means Gradius, Contra, and Metal Gear(even if the NES entries ARE best left forgotten). Tecmo, sadly, isn't very likely. They're decidedly pro-MS right now. So no Ninja Gaidens. Likely a small fee. With luck, sub-dollar levels for Nintendo properties, sub-5 for 3rd party titles. Admittedly, this is a tad pricey for something you can download for free off the 'net, but a lot of people still don't know about emus, and with luck, Nintendo's gonna be using a good emu. All the currently available emus have some issues, particularly with color accuracy. Fair enough. Nintendo tends to be my preferred platform. I like the squirrely stuff that the 'Cube's gotten.

did a search for revolution guess it wa in a non revolution post 339375[/snapback] http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?...ndpost&p=328859 The word Revolution was in it.

*sighs* We know. We've seen it. Repeatedly.

Parents don't know... that is the problem. Nintendo releasing a "new" handheld so soon after the DS made most parents think it was something "different" from the SP. The guy in my office that bought his kid the Micro bought it because he thought it was the new wave in handhelds for kids... his son probably knew better but he was fooled. Mmmm... that can be a problem. I seem to recall some people thought they needed an SP to play new games, back when it first came out. I was a tech kid, too.

Regarding the original topic, I gather SP=special is a common abuse of abbreviations in Japan. I've seen it in enough games, anyways. The hell? They need to put their foot down and just say "No, you already HAVE a GBA." Hell, my parents didn't even buy me an NES until after the SNES had taken over(actually, I got an SNES before the NES, despite 5 years of begging). Well, it works for 'em. I gather it's driven a lot by the japanese market, where they want the tiniest piece of crap they can get their hands on. ... The Micro IS damn sexy, though. IMO, the GBA should be dead now. The GBMicro shouldn't have been made, and they should've focused on the DS their exclusive portable system. Only reason I see to buy anything but a DS at this point is for 8-bit software, which doesn't run on the DS or Micro. And I have a Color for that because the Advance has a crappy d-pad and the SP is too damn small. Also IMO, the SP should've been slapped in a similar case to the original, and not a total redesign. Again, I gather this was largely because the japanese wanted a smaller unit. SP also should've started with a half-decent screen that wasn't plagued with ghosting and wash-out issues, but that's a whole 'nother story.