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  2. mikeszekely
    OK, so Earthspark. Hashtag's wave mate is none other than Soundwave, and unlike Prime and Grimlock (who were mostly retooled from their Cyberverse toys), Shockwave and Starscream (who were just repainted from their Cyberverse toys), or Prowl (who would have been more accurate if he was repainted from his Cyberverse toy, because for some dumb reason he was repainted from Hot Rod's instead), Earthspark Soundwave is a brand new mold that has nothing do with his Cyberverse toy. Don't ask me why, but I stuck the new toy on the right instead of the left. So, he's littler than the Cyberverse toy, and I think details that are different on the Earthspark toy like gray hands, blue forearms, blue feet, gray pelvis with no "buttons," blue face mask, etc, pair with a less-blocky design that make him a less obvious homage to the G1 design than most other Soundwave designs. I actually had to double check his Earthspark appearance to make sure that some of those differences weren't just to a lazy or inaccurate paint job, but honestly aside from a missing bit of red on his abdomen this is one of the most accurate decoes on an Earthspark toy. In any case, the head that looks like the Decepticon badge, the predominantly blue colors, and the gold trim around his chest are clearly Soundwave enough. Taking a peak around the sides and back, yes, he has wings. And yes, that's cartoon-accurate. I think it's safe to say that new takes on Soundwave will never be a tape deck again, because kids these days wouldn't even know what one is. The standard seems to have become some kind of kind of truck or SUV where they can work the Soundwave chest into the grill or hood... they did it with the Cybertron games, they did it with Robots In Disguise 2019, they did it in IDW, and they did it in Cyberverse. Heck, even if they're more like hovercars/tanks, it's basically what Bumblebee and Transformers One did, too. But you might be getting the sense that Earthspark went in a different direction... Soundwave's sole accessory is this gun. It's got an interesting sculpt, and it's nicely detailed with red and silver paint, at least. Soundwave's head is on a hinged ball joint. He doesn't have much room to look up or tilt his head sideways, but because of the hinge (for transformation) he can look down quite a bit. His shoulders are a bit complicated. There's transformation hinges inside his body that can move his shoulders laterally, connected to a ball joint for swiveling. The ball joint doesn't get much lateral movement, though, which would absolutely give him Hot Rod shoulders except that there's another hinge between his shoulder and bicep for transformation that gives him a little more lateral movement. Effectively, that comes out to just shy of 90 degrees with his arms down, and about 45 degrees with his arms up. His elbows bend 90 degrees, and they're hinges, not ball joints. His wrists are ball joints, though, which give him a wrist swivel and some downward bend. His waist swivels. His hips are, surprise, NOT ball joints. He can move them a little over 90 degrees forward, a little under 90 degrees backward, and well past 90 degrees laterally. His thighs swivel just above his knees, which bend 90 degrees. His feet are attached to his ankles via ball joints, which gives him swivels, some upward tilt, a lot of downward tilt, and a little pivot. But there's a transformation joint in the ankle that you can engage for more pivot, giving him a respectable 45 degrees overall. All-in-all, not bad for an Earthspark toy. Soundwave's gun, like his Cyberverse counterpart, is the only one he gets, so it has a 5mm port he can hold but also a notch that clips onto a tab on his back to be his shoulder cannon. Soundwave's backpack rotates and shifts, his chest opens so his head can tuck inside, his shoulders come together above his head, his forearms tuck against his sides, his waist spins 180 degrees, then he does the splits and his legs unfold and spread into big wings. It reminds me a little of Titans Return Mindwipe. Although not the first time he's had a winged alt mode (Cybertron/Galaxy Force and Prime, anyone?) it still feels like a super fresh design. Kinda curious to hear what @M'Kyuun is gonna say about this one. From the top and most angles, aside from his feet, I think his jet mode looks pretty dang good. It's thin enough, and it's cartoon accurate. Maybe if they'd molded some exhaust ports into the hollow backs of his thighs it'd be even more convincing. If you flip him over, though, the underside of the jet is still a lot of robot kibble, though. I don't totally hate it; his lower legs are the wings and his upper arms are the nose, after all. His thighs could have purpose if, like I said, they'd made ehxausts of them, maybe tightened them against his arms so you could imagine a path from the intakes on top of the wings through the arms and out the thighs. And though it's obviously his torso, I'll buy his body as the fuselage. I could imagine it opening up to deploy drones like Laserbeak while in the air. It's just a shame they couldn't have done better with his feet, and folded his hands into his arms. There's a 5mm port between the stabilizers on his rear. You can plug his shoulder cannon into it. Since it's just a peg it can swivel, and there's a hinge so it can be aimed upward a bit. I just wish it didn't stick up so far; it's not very aerodynamic. I feel like I'd have liked for it to flatten and mount on the underside... maybe on one wing, with an actual hand weapon on the other? Regardless of the little flaws, overall I love this toy. It's a neat design for Soundwave; I wouldn't mind seeing a Voyager-class version pop up one day when Earthspark is old enough for characters to get a mainline do-over. But even as a Deluxe, even as a more limited and cheaper Earthspark Deluxe, it's a very solid toy with a simple but interesting transformation, adequate articulation, and better-than-average cartoon accuracy. It is, by a wide margin, the best of the 13 (out of 14) Earthspark Deluxes I've looked at. Et's a cool design for a cool character in a relatively cool and relatively inexpensive toy. Even if you're not into the cartoon, I think it's ultimately a figure worth checking out.
  3. Chronocidal
    I wonder if Bandai will do another production run of those antennas if they ever get around to doing the VF-22s. Not holding my breath.. but it seems they have absolutely no interest in actually supporting the people buying their products.
  4. sh9000
  5. sh9000
    Samurai Predator.
  6. sh9000
    SDCC 2025.
  7. Hikuro
    Could be quite the rabbit hole, but so far I've had pretty good control on not going over board lately with retroware....I don't think I've purchased anything since maybe February for the most part. Not even sure what games I would even purchase on either console....I would suppose some of the basics or a similar library to what I already got which isn't a terrible amount. 99% of the games I own are from my original ownership and it wasn't much. Folks didn't wanna pay those kind of prices even back in those days and that's understandable. Sametime, I dunno what's even really out there for games I could play that doesn't involve a lot of reading japanese, verbally hearing it is one thing, reading it, I sucked.
  8. Today
  9. mikeszekely
    Well, despite Walmart cancelling a bunch of preorders mine's got from "placed" to "preparing" and is still set to arrive tomorrow. I'll let you guys know when it gets here. EDIT: I enjoyed my original Switch, but I enjoyed it at less when the framerate was dipping into the 20fps range playing Tears of the Kingdom. I'd already moved from console to PC for most of my gaming years ago, and stuff like the ROG Ally X has largely displaced my Switch for portable gaming. I wouldn't have bothered with the Switch 2- the price put me off, and the first game I'm truly looking forward to on it will be Metroid Prime 4- but I do like Nintendo's first party software, and articles keep popping up about how tariffs are going to make Nintendo raise the price.
  10. mikeszekely
    Shouldn't be too hard to get working cables. It's probably not a bad deal, if the SFC was as solidly-built as the SNES then almost certainly still works no matter how yellow (and if you're comfortable taking it apart, it's possible to undue some of the yellowing), and if the Famicom is in good shape and works it's probably worth around $50 by itself. I think the real question is if you want to start down the rabbit hole of buying Japanese software. The cartridges/slots are a bit different on the Japanese systems. You can get adapters, but it's usually easier to find adapters to use Japanese carts on American hardware than the other way around.
  11. Hikuro
    I forgot it's already June and it being released. I did see some unboxing videos and well, I still dunno. From what I could see, it does look neat, but I've also been happy with my original switch I've had for a decade. I don't see right now where I even need to do this purchase yet and sorta wanna wait now until they fixed bugs. My biggest issue right now would be the magnetic joycons....I can just see people pushing those release buttons and dropping their system a lot.
  12. mikeszekely
    Regarding today's Takara reveals... Hauler is cool. I might pick one up, if he's not too expensive, since I went with MMC for my Inferno and Maketoys for Grapple. Starscream looks cool enough. He's got that pseudo-G1 TFOne look in bot mode, with the Cybertronian alt mode from Bumblebee. Guess I get to look forward to buying at least three of those... Elita is not much of a surprise, as we've seen her before. She was supposed to be out in by May originally but she got shuffled. No real interest in either the Reflector/Thundercracker set or the Missing Link repaints. As far as Reflector goes, I have one of the retail and the toy-colored 3-pack with the camera bits (plus Scrapface) so I feel like I'm good there. As for Thundercracker, well, I've heard we might be getting Leader-class SS86 Seekers next year. The Missing Link repaints just don't get the point, or I don't get the point. I like a retro release to copy the original as closely as possible, and to me the draw of Missing Link is the retro toy but with more modern articulation. If I wanted a Bumblebee with modern articulation and a more cartoon-accurate deco I'd just buy SS86 Bumblebee (and yeah, SS86 Cliffjumper in 2026). Can't help but notice that Megatron's legs are looking a lot less blue in the official Takara images. Could be that they're renders/Photoshopped. Could be that the leakers are using cellphones that overprocess the images they take and the toy in-hand isn't so blue. Mixmaster's looking good, I think it's pretty smart to reduce the engineering and make the front of his cab the backs of his legs instead of his knees. Scavenger, though... waist up, good if hollow, alt mode good. But someone better change his diaper, that's one heck of a load he's got in there. Devastator, much like the Constructicons themselves, looks a bit like they started with the Combiner Wars versions, changed the scale, and made some improvements rather than starting fresh on a real cartoon-accurate Devastator. Which I guess is fine, since they did address my biggest complaints with the Combiner Wars set (Scrapper has elbows, Mixmaster has the right alt mode, Long Haul doesn't have absurd proportions, scales better with other combiners). I'm sure DNA will do some upgrades, too. I dunno, I'm not really feeling Liger Prime. And this is coming from the guy who collects Primes.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Not by choice, though... that's kind of important. Her family sold her into indentured servitude in the brothel, and she's a prisoner there until she works off that debt or someone pays it off for her like Char did in the prime timeline. There's plenty of kinds of love in the world. Not all love is romantic love.
  14. Chronocidal
    Yeah, removing the pins isn't easy, but I think I got mine out with a fine nail, and a mallet. On the positive side, if you do happen to wreck those joints, replacements for those parts in particular are practically everywhere on the internet, specifically because they were so prone to failure in the original Yamato release. I do not know if they are back up and running with all of the previously available items, but Shapeways is apparently back in business. I need to go review my store, and see if I can't get them to print or cut those replacement YF-19 parts I've made.
  15. Thom
    Oh my, now that is niiiiice!!
  16. Thom
    Your wife is a TREASURE,@pengbuzz! She treats you well, so you must be treating her well, and that is wonderful. And hey, if it's missing parts, you still have the other to pick through. Thom
  17. Yesterday
  18. azrael
    Switch 2 unboxings and (sponsored) gameplay are showing up. There will be no reviews until after the launch tomorrow (June 5, 2025).
  19. Big s
    She was actually
  20. Tking22
    Third party to the rescue! It's a solid looking Devastator, but a nice third party kit will take it to the next level. Kind of a bummer, paid add-ons the price of a whole figure are sometimes hard to swallow, but it is what it is I guess.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    That would present its own problems... not just in terms of how the system translates the inputs and outputs from the living neural tissue into usable machine commands, but in terms of what a massive pain in the arse it is to keep living tissue alive and healthy outside of a body. It'd be a real mess if your car stopped working because its computer got hypothermia, or heat stroke, or just plain died due to lack of maintenance. One of the virtues of inorganic computing is that the hardware can continue to operate for extended periods in environments that would kill a human. (Regular consumer cars are tested in hot and cold cells for extended periods at temperatures that would be fatal if you were in there with it for the duration of the test. I actually used to spend a lot of time in one of those labs... got powerfully ill repeatedly going from the -40 degrees C cold cel to the 50 degrees C hot cell.)
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Hm? Well, I guess that clears her of the allegations since she didn't do either. 🤣 Lalah Sune didn't fall in love at first sight with Char, she developed feelings for him after he rescued her from her frankly horrid living conditions... which vary by story. Her feelings for Amuro are more vague, but they seem to be generally platonic even if Amuro's aren't necessarily platonic. To her, Amuro and Char are probably the only two people in her life she's ever had a profound connection with. She's a powerful Newtype and pretty much THE poster girl for the aspirational idea that Newtypes are meant to be a new breed of humanity who can experience a deeper level of mutual understanding and communication rather than being the super soldiers that Zeon and the Federation believe they are. She was able to communicate and connect with them on a level that normal humans can't comprehend, which is likely why they're both still haunted by her death years later in [i]Zeta Gundam[/i] and [i]Char's Counterattack[/i], and why even Char's echo in Full Frontal is still haunted by her in [i]Unicorn[/i]. Granted, I probably should've expected an anticlimax from this series since it really hadn't delivered much in the way of excitement...
  23. derex3592
    That's a KEEPER right there!!! 💕
  24. jvmacross
    I like the Herbie container....but will probably take a pass
  25. jvmacross
  26. Hikuro
    So quick Q, someones offering me untested Famicon and Super Famicon for 65 bucks. The Famicon looks to be in real good shape hardware wise but missing cables, comes with both controllers. The Super Famicom though, it's been yellowed a fair amount, no cables, 1 controller. Sort of thinking of getting them on friday. Any thoughts?
  27. Valkyrie Hunter D
    Well shoot, it's about time:
  28. sh9000
    It looks like Hook's head is in that space.
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