F-ZeroOne

I'm gonna have to agree and I'll need to add this comment... I dig quite a few british comedies and dramas but I can't stand british sci-fi. They all tend to be so campy or just plain ass gay. Someone is not going to like the new Dr. Who, then... Of course, Quatermass: gay. Ultraviolet: gay. Edge of Darkness: gay. The Nightmare Man: gay. (in other words, I think that the "all" was a teensy bit harsh... )

Very, very nice!

There was a TV programme I saw once where the presenter took the top off an AK-47. I swear there was nothing in there but a couple of bits of what looked like string...! On the other hand, the same presenter stood a few feet away from a car and opened up on full auto. The car was untouched - I think I'd prefer something slightly more accurate if I ever find myself caught in Dino Crisis for real...

Flamethrowers scare the hell out of people but as I understand it, their main use was to suck the oxygen out of fortified positions, suffocating the occupants rather than trying to fy them. Of course, if you're up against dinosaurs, theres always the Holy Laser Beams: http://www.livejournal.com/users/theferrett/519211.html

Sorry, I was thinking of the paperback edition. In the US, each book was cut in half and released as two seperate paperbacks. Boy, you do some weird things to books in the US... (the cover blurb for Terry Pratchetts "Lords & Ladies" which somehow substituted an American football team for a Morris Dancing troupe is perhaps my favourite, though!)

My God. I want one. Badly.

Activate... REVERSE THRUSTA!

Er, being pedantic here: unless theres a difference between the US and UK editions, the "Nights Dawn" trilogy is - well, a trilogy, three volumes. There was a companion "World of... " book and a collection of short stories set in the same Universe, but that still comes up one short...

This aired on the UK channel Channel 4 a few months back. Its a pretty good series; although the "make people today the battle-hardened pilots of yesterday" is probably the least interesting aspect - that goes to the interviews with the real thing, the Last of the Few... It also features comments from Stephen Bungay, who wrote the superb "The Most Dangerous Enemy", and the series appears to be quite heavily based on that work. And, of course, lots of footage of Spitfires doing what Spitfires do best - being the loveliest warbird there ever was...

We British also used conformal fuel tanks. They were never very popular, mainly because - unlike later drop tanks - they affected the aircrafts performance and were vunerable in combat. The Germans once tried using them on Bf-110s during a raid in the Battle of Britain and they got slaughtered. The F-15 was, I think, the first fighter to use FAST packs in their modern sense, but I think a number of jets had experimented with similar concepts before then.

Asides from reading "idiot", "Baka" was also the Allied forces codename for the aforementioned "Ohka" piloted suicide bomb...

Gundam Wing is very probably not the best Gundam series, though other people might beg to differ. In fact, its a bit like Macross 7 in a number of ways; a series some people love to hate but which does have at least some merit. Speaking personally, highlights of Gundam include Gundam 0080, Chars Counterattack, Gundam Zeta (though its more or less mandatory to list this; Graham disagrees... ), and Gundam Seed Destiny (though I like this more than I did the original Gundam Seed). Gundam has a number of seperate timelines and Gundam Wing is set in one of these; it was an attempt, probably successful, to do something different with a long-running franchise. And, no, I wouldn't recommend watching Macross 7 for the mecha scenes - watch Macross Plus for that! And like I always say: the best anime is the one you like the best. Listen to others opinions, but remember Isamu in Macross Plus: you won't know until you try.

Not sure if its feminine or not, but "Ohka" is sometimes translated as "cherry blossom". However, I strongly suggest you read up on where its been used in other contexts, as you might not want to people to note the following association...!: http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/air_power/ap22.htm Personally, I've always enjoyed "Hikari" ("Light"), which often turns up for female anime characters, and is also used for a shinkansen service as well.

One thing that might get a little overlooked in all the "look at Gigaflops on that!" stuff... The X-Box 360s visualiser - thats the thing that plays pretty images while you play CDs - has been programmed by something of a UK games industry legend: Jeff Minter. I'm not sure how well known he is in the US, but stuff hes worked on before includes Tempest 2000 for the Jaguar and Tempest 3000 for the Nuon (plus a load of classic and off-the-wall 8-bit games). Jeff has always been admired for his stuff, but hes generally had the misfortune of working on hardware that wasn't very successful commercially (at least on the "current" hardware platforms). Jeff has long been experimenting with things called "light-synths" - a fusion of audio and sound experience - and the X-Box 360 visualiser has allowed him and some colleagues to acheive a long-held ambition. http://www.llamasoft.co.uk/ for more information, though the servers are being hit a little hard by Jeffs loyal fanbase and so things might be a touch slow at the moment (the X-Box announcement was largely secret until today). I've seen a little of the smaller preview video from the site and I think the best way I can sum it up is "the stargate sequence from 2001 - on steroids!"

A chess craze went through my school once. Some of the players were really, really, good, and though I played a bit I was nowhere near their level. However, I did manage to beat one of them - twice. The second time, he slipped up and didn't realise it. The first time was much sweeter - he could see what was going to happen but couldn't get out of it.. But normally he would have absolutely killed me on a chess board...

Been a very long while since I played RPGs, but from I can remember... All time favourite: West End Games Star Wars. The system probably wouldn't have worked for anything else, but it fitted the setting absolutely perfectly. Kudos to: Mekton Z/Mekton Z Plus. A nice attempt for a "do anything" mecha creation system. Main drawback is that it could get very bogged down in numbers and fractions of numbers, but the core system was elegant enough. Champions: Q: how many Champions players does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Thats a GM call. Another very points heavy system, and it required more D6s than just about any other system around. But it captured the feel of its subject - superheroes - incredibly well. Call of Cthulhu: Q: How many Call of Cthulhu players does it take to change a light bulb? A: All of them! Never split the party! The system was a little clunky - an outgrowth of Runequest - but has there ever been a more atmospheric RPG setting than Lovecrafts Great Old One-haunted 1920s? Paranoia: possibly the most fun game ever made. You probably wouldn't want to play it for long periods, but seeing as it was almost impossible to even get out the briefing room without someone being shot, back-stabbed, blown up, terminated, run over by a scrub-bot, propelled into another dimension, molecule-spun by some R&D terror device, or indeed, vapourised, that was rarely a problem...

I've seen that one, but unfortunately couldn't get as close as I would have liked as they were refurbishing the USAF section at the time. Would have liked to be there on the day it was bought into the UK, though: Her Majestys Customs Officials: "Anything to declare, sir?"

The original Zeon flag from Gundam is also rather closely modelled on at least one version of a Nazi flag - I think probably the Navy version. And, of course, "Seig Zeon... "

They are sort of part of Birtish cultural heritage... basically, he did a very nostalgic kind of advert about a bread delivery boy pushing his bicycle up a very steep cobbled hill, set to some classical music (can't remember the composer, but whatever it is, basically in Britain it is the soundtrack for bread...!) Didn't Scott also do the famous Apple ad? (the hammer-throwing one?)

Don't forget the "Hovis" ads...!

The little figures that come with the various Valkyries make nice little out-of-scale companions for Macross toy collections, but the mecha suck so hard you won't need to buy a Dyson cleaner...!

I believe Max pulls out a gun that looks remarkably like that out of his cockpit when they abandon his valkyrie during their escape from the Zentraedi. H The RawbaTek RPG lists it as, I think, a RDF laser pistol (or possibly rifle).

I attended a UK convention once shortly after Ebichu was making the fansub rounds, and you could actually tell by peoples expressions whether or not they had seen it...

Another nice touch - Rose isn't scared. At first. Just like some of the younger audience, who really might not know why they should be scared...

Its the other rotary mean machine from the 80s - the one with the mini-gun and a co-pilot named after a best-selling British brand of chocolately orange mini-cakes. Presumably, the BBC needed some footage of an aggressive looking helicopter and felt that the Armys Apaches were a bit over-familiar...