Southpaw Samurai

Personally, for a long time I've been warning 'collectors' (those who are really more of 'speculators' since they're keeping things mint in hopes of one day selling them off for big bucks, that is) that it's a very risky game and the big boom of the late 80's, early 90's will fade, if not crash on many of the items people are going crazy over. If you're speculating on items that appealed to you as a kid (particularly the new stuff meant to sell with those who have feelings of nostalgia), unless the nostalgia-induced resurgence causes another wave of kids to get hooked, you're probably going to face flat or even dropping prices after the initial hype dies down. Look at electric trains. Big with kids of the late 40's and 50's, they had a nice boom period in the 60's-70's where people could sell their old trains for outrageous prices. Then the kids who became grownups started getting families and ran out of room and couldn't keep their stuff. And their kids weren't interested in trains, so the market went downhill. Today the industry is a much small niche industry, so prices have risen a bit, but in many cases people are only interested in your old trains if there's something particularly unique about them. Look at Mego figures. Big with kids of the 70's, they saw a BIG resurgence in the 90's. Even superfigures with holes in their cloth uniforms would sell for more than they were worth new in the day. However, soon people grew out of that and kids these days really don't want your pretty crappy looking Megos when they can have Marvel Legends and DC Direct figures. Macross/Transformers/G.I.Joe/Star Wars... they're all 80's toys. Most likely the same will happen. And for the next ten to fifteen years you'll watch your closet full of precious, boxed, never played with or loved toys stabilize in prices and/or decline. If you're lucky, 2020 will see such a nostalgia for our time period that it'll include the re-resurgence of some of the things people found nostalgic about the 80's-90's. Probably not. In the end, your toys will see some increase as the items become rarer, but eventually so will those people who would want said collectibles. In the end, you'll be looking at a market of historians or people fascinated by some aspect of late 20th/early 21st century culture as your only customers. What makes matters worse is that EVERYONE is collecting and saving things as close to MIMB as possible. The reason a Mego or Star Wars figure sold for crazy prices? Because it was maybe one out of twenty that was not played with and kept nice. Now it's one out of twenty that gets taken out of the box. In the short run, hype or pure scalping will turn profits, but down the road if no one plays with their stuff, MIMB becomes the near common grade, instead of the unique. And now we have companies that specifically grade and seal comics and toys away... If you're 'collecting' stuff in order to sell them down the road for 200% or more of their value, you'd probably have better luck guessing what items of TODAY's generation of kids are probably going to want to go back and buy out of nostalgia once they start having disposable income. You want the things that people today are opening and using and otherwise ruining the condition of. Then you'll be one of the few with a nice, shiny one come twenty years from now. Before any of you get angry at me, I'll throw in that I do my part to benefit the rest of you by opening and playing with any toys I do decide to pick up. Anyway, all my opinion, of course.

There goes my 'Final Countdown' remake screenplay.... I think anyone taking extreme offense at this movie may need to sit down and consider WHY they are...perhaps it hits too close to the truth. On the other hand, if the W.Bros added very current-era specific stuff, then that's a big shame and a disappointment. While the original was done as a sort of a protest to the Thatcher-era British government, it was somewhat vague enough that it becomes more timeless and more of a story about how far a government (in the particular case, a right-wing one...although history has shown any political ideology can run amok) could go. It really should never be specific.

The nice thing about the PS2 design was that it didn't scream 'HI! I'M A GAME CONSOLE!' so it fit in everywhere. It made looking inconspiculous part of its own look. Every other console, whether by necessary internal design or desire to be bold and unique looking, has had a very 'look at me!' appearance, which does detract from even the most aesthetically pleasing of designs. Semi-off topic (since it's not an XBox360 game), take a look at the 31:00 minute mark or so of the latest Gamespot 'On the Spot' video. It's a Korean game called 'Come on Baby!' and it's some kind of zany infant olympics. If you've played any amount of Asian arcade/video games before, you've probably come across similar goofiness, but it still makes me wish someone would just license a bunch of these and sell them over here. There's gotta be a market for crazy Asian games and it would enable that market not to have to mod their consoles or buy a native-country version to play. Heck, aside from stuff necessary to understand something, most of these games can even get by with the half-Engrish they use...and might even add to the appeal.

GRAW's pretty downright fun so far. It's still got the tense feeling of not being able to take too many hits, but in many cases it's not a 'one-hit and you're down' level, except with headshots and/or the harder difficulty. You're still moving from cover to cover, though, which is the important and fun thing (I like running'n'gunning from time to time, but I generally prefer this style). In some ways, it feel like a Full Spectrum Warrior, but with only one squad and you directly controlling one of the guys. Just wish your buddy's AI was a little smarter or conservative. When set on assault, they behave like your typical brash online person...sometimes running single-handedly at enemies. Enemy AI is mixed. Sometimes they'll come running out straight over a buddy's body like a Battlefield 2 medic, making an easy target, but I've also seen them do some nice distraction fire while a guy or two tries to flank (and I've seen this in random places in instant action mode too, so I know it's not just scripted for particular moments). GRAW's single player mode is very, VERY pretty. Has all the right kinds of filters and camera movements to make it feel like you're watching some kind of combat footage. Haven't progressed very far yet, so can't comment on anything from Mexico City's appearance, which looks pretty dead on. In fact, if you stop and think about it, something just feels wrong and if you spend anymore time on it you suddenly realize what it is...the whole city is a ghost town. No civillians, no animals. It's like they evacuated the whole town just so Ghost Recon and the baddies can play. I'm not entirely sure if that's a negative or a postive on just how much the place otherwise looks real. Mulitplayer mode is a little toned down graphically from single player. Less filters make it look more typical-PC shooter (sorta like Battlefield 2). Still pretty. My biggest disappointment with multiplayer is that you can't use the really cool 'stick to cover' feature that's in multiplayer...would've added a lot to the gameplay elements and would've made suppressing fire a bit more useful since you could more easily pin someone down in a not so mobile position (and, alternatively, they could potentially get lucky shot in between your reloads). Oh well. Burnout Revenge is also cool. I'd recommend it to anyone who loves wreckless crashing in racing games and either hasn't played a Burnout in a while or who really would love to see a full blown online version. If you've played Burnout Revenge for any serious length of time, though, you won't really get much new here, as expected. It's definitely prettier and really nice in HD, but gameplay-wise, it's the same. I fortunately never got to play much of Burnout Revenge on the XBox, so it works for me. Online is really cool, though. Like how it marks off a couple of target players at the beginning of each race based on how experienced they are, their ranking, their points in the current series, or what kind of takedown history you two have. Sometimes this WILL cause teammates to deliberately betray and take each other down for personal satisfaction...not sure if I really like that nuance or if it bothers me...sorta swining wide on both sides on that one. I was psyched about Full Auto, but the demo available online sorta left a 'bleh' taste in my mouth and the subsequent reviews that basically made it seem like the game didn't get much better or deeper than the demo turned me off completely. Have it upcoming as a rental, but if you want vehicular mayhem, I'd go with Burnout. I think what I'm REALLY looking for in a car-fighting game is a good and pure modern day new version of Carmageddon (mostly like the first one with maybe some touches of the first sequel). No guns....at best a few simple trick power-ups like oil slicks maybe (or the big punching fist for those who played it), but otherwise pure crashing and races where you could either come in first place, win by wiping out your opponents, or even win by running over the most pedestrians. Ooops...rambling...

Oh, I concur. I voiced a similar opinion in the Song of Fire and Ice topic about how you can tell a story without having to have gratuitous sex and violence every chapter. I have no problem with the stuff when it works for the tale, but many times it goes overboard. The Ultimates, in my opinion, do use about 75% of its crude stuff for actual purpose (the whole Hulk thing can seem overboard, but I actually like how Hulk is actually a rampaging version of everything Banner has subdued about his personality...). But, yes, you can chop pieces out and not really lose anything. But, to continue with the Song of Fire and Ice comparison, why even bother adapting it to a kiddie version? Could you imagine how weird George R.R. Martin's work would appear if you made it so the worse anyone ever does to someone is slap them once or twice for violence or that kissing was the most sexual stuff you'd see (granted, the sibling love between two characters would still be creepy enough at that )? If you wanted to childproof an Avengers cartoon, why not just go with the normal Avengers? You can easily tell a revised origin and stick with that. Using the Ultimates as a template forces people to assume you're going to get a bit more. Finally got around to watching it with the bunch of friends I intended to and was surprised that it was well received. They thought it was more adult than they had feared it would be and my friend's wife (who hadn't read the Ultimates yet) actually got caught up in the characters, despite the limited nature of the cartoon.

I have NBA 2K6 and it looks and plays awesome. Bunch of options, good controls, good character models and camera angles (I once walked by a tv at Best Buy and assumed what was on the screen was an actual real game and not a video game until I turned around and they did a closeup). Haven't tried NBA Live yet (planning on renting it at some point), but from most of the reviews and comments I've seen, it looks to be on par with the rest of EA Sports' initial 360 games: Looks a little prettier than its current-gen versions, but has been stripped down a bit. Given how limited Madden and Tiger are (FiFa I can live with), I'd probably stick to 2K6. If you're a really big basketball video game fan, though, you might be better off renting or borrowing both just to be sure....might be some quirk you prefer in one over the other.

Of course, the movie flirts with that by having Paul say, "This is PART of the weirding way". Of course, the whole 'Sneezing/Shouting=shooting' part is pretty much the only part they show in the movie. AAAaaaaaaaaaaaaa-CHU! Having watched the recent DVD 'the length of which even GOD hasn't seen!' version, all I can really say is 'Why?'. Maybe it's from seeing the movie enough times and reading the book sometime in the middle of all those viewings, but I never really had much a problem following the story and what little I couldn't immediately get, I chalked up the whole religious and/or drug experience the movie was about. I sort of miss Irulan's narration, actually. She gets shafted here altogether...strange how a character seems completely unimportant until she gets stripped out. But pretty much this version goes like this: We also get Stilgar basically explaining every action Paul is going to do when he learns to ride the worm. Yes, Stilgar would've told him how to do it, but we can get it implied and since we show the exact steps moments later, it's pointless unless you think the audience can't figure out what Paul's doing. I have to agree with the others, though. The movie, while flawed, actually feels closer to the feel of the book than the mini-series that stuck closer to the details.

So Jason Todd is OFFICIALLY back now (no impersonations or anything)? He should've stayed dead and be playing 'Go Fish' with Bucky up in sidekick heaven.... oh, wait a minute..... Marvel and DC need to do a crossover where the two kill each other....

I am very sad. Show me a picture of five relatively attractive women in various states of undress holding katana and the first thing I notice is that Devon Aoki is the only one holding the sword correctly as opposed to the choked-up baseball bat grip of the others (actually, Natassia Malthe has an acceptable grip too). I suppose it makes sense, as Ayane and Kasumi SHOULD be the only two out of that batch who probably had any experience with the sword. Freaking Tina SHOULD be using a baseball for a weapon...more her style. I keep trying to forget this movie exists... I think everyone should do the same. I have to agree that I'd almost rather watch a 90 minute DOAXVB movie...at least the fan service without plot would be more appropriate.

To be fair, would have they've been able to successfully market an Ultimates cartoon if it was closer to the debatable source (I say debatable because it's almost only the Ultimates in costume design)? Maybe they could've worked it so it showed up in the anime section (then again, most of the mainstream anime sections are all kiddie-fied too), but otherwise, it still would've been hard trying to push a cartoon in the states that was as multilayered, complex, and brutal as the Ultimates (and really not so much visually brutal as much as how it deals with its issues). Adults would've avoided buying it for themselves or started writing lawsuits because they showed it to their kids. While the notion that cartoons are purely for kids has weakened over the past decade, the notion that superheroes are for kids really hasn't. A cartoon about superheroes, therefore, has two strikes against it, unless it's covert about its handling of material like Batman:TAS was. Ultimate Avengers is ultimately an advertisement to coax people to read the comics and in many ways I think it's more geared towards getting people into the New Avengers than the Ultimates (unless the post-Millar Ultimates will be closer to the way they're portrayed here...which would mean me not having to go to a comic book shop again ). You're not going to effectively sell your comic to the average young audience if you have (COMIC SPOILERS)the Hulk talking about how Thor beating him up makes him horny and how he's gonna turn Giantman's skull into a toilet, Pym slugging his wife, then spraying her with bug spray, Captain America showing off the good, bad, and ugly sides of being overly patriotic and jingoistic, Wasp flashing her enemies, and Giantman's 10 yards wide naked buttocks. Okay, you might REALLY be able to sell your comics to the adolescents if you do most of that, but some self-righteous person will get in a tiff about it. As usual, fans just got overly excited about the possibilities and potential and forgot that it's really all about the business end....

I'm another B5er, which suits me just fine . It's probably my willingness to work with aliens (based on how well I deal with International folk) that pushed it, it's Star Trek clone, and Farscape over Serenity, which would've been another one I'd be happy with. Apparently keep me off Picard's ship and the Bebop, though... Not the biggest fan of the quiz. Some of the questions were too show-specific and some of the questions (like the aliens ones) were somewhat repetitive.

Short version : If you were a fan of Marvel Saturday morning fare (X-Men, X-Men Evolution, Spider-Man, etc), then you'll probably really like the Ultimate Avengers. But I can easily see how Ladic feels about this. If you're an Ultimates fan (particularly if the Ultimates made you read comic books again), read any of the hype Marvel generated around this, and/or was hoping for something beyond your typical Saturday morning cartoon, you'll probably be disappointed. Objectively, trying to look at this as something to entertain a kid (or the kid in you), I'd say it's worth the hour and twelve minutes of your time to watch. And in the end, that's who Marvel intended this for. ------------------------------------------ I was going to write a longer review, but it would probably bore most of you, so I'll try to sum it up. There might be some small spoilers, but I'll try to avoid anything big, although references to the original source might spoil THAT: The Ultimate Avengers are the Ultimates in name and costumes design only. While starting off as a toned-down adaptation, it rapidly fades into more typical kiddie cartoon trappings. Instead of being complex, most of the characters give off their primary defining character trait early on and then keep playing on it (Hank, for example, is JUST a stupid jerk. You never really get a feel for why and you certainly never see any bright spots). Cap being a man out of his time is briefly addressed in an early scene, but then he's all good and fine. Thor's uncertain validity is questioned once, but from that point on everything seems to indicate he's legit (have to admit liking Hulk's difficulty in picking up the relatively small Mjolnir, though). Characters don't want anything to do wtih the group (in fact, just about every character), but they all make heroic appearances just in the nick of time (and without even Thor's 'blackmailing' of the president to increase charitable Third World contributions). Two things defined the Ultimates and made them so popular were Hitch's motion picture-like imagery and Millar's splendid multi-layered writing where he told character stories, did political commentary, satire, tension, personal moments, and great action sequences. This cartoon cannot touch Hitch's work (nor would I expect it to...it's animation, after all. Hitch's work could only really be efficiently adapted with either live action or an expensive CGI movie), but more importantly, out of the seven traits I mentioned for Millar's writing, this cartoon only manages the last (Thor and Hulk's brawl alone would've been enough for this type of show). It's been simplified, watered down, and loses everything that made the Ultimates what it was. On the bright side, the animation is pretty good for Saturday morning standards. The voice work is good - little stands out, but there's little that's jarring (Black Widow's accent could be a little less thick, but it IS a cartoon). I sort of like how the story is almost a Bruce Banner/Hulk movie...Bruce is probably the closest the show gets to a multi-dimensional character. No one parachutes out of exploding planes and we actually see people disintergrated, burn up, etc....nothing gory or bloody, but it's still jarring for this style of animation. The opening sequence DOES make one wish they'd do a 'Cap in WW2' cartoon (just a one shot DVD) although I wish some of the villains were a bit less overt than how the movie presents them. I thought the movie did effectively mix the big bad-ass battles from issues #6 and #12/13 into one big combo, although it would've been cooler if they had more of the small moments that made them cool (like where the bad guys 'set us up the bomb' that will annihilate all life and Tony basically hands it over to Thor to get rid of it and everyone starts thinking Stark's lost it as much as his pal who thinks he's a god).

Haven't read the comic, but if they bring back the KOTOR1 character, I'd once again pick yellow sabers for him, as I had initially decided he was an ancestor and namesake of a fan fic golden 'bladed'-lightsaber Jedi I had created a decade ago (yes, big time SW geek back then ). KOTOR 3 would've made me buy a 360 early if it had been a launch title, despite the annoyances with KOTOR 2 being so hacked up for timing purposes. Not really a big Trekkie, but looking forward to Star Trek Legacy too. While the military aspect goes against how Roddenberry wanted to emphasize about the franchise, the ships duking it out has probably been my favorite thing about ST...even back in the days of sub-like, few external shots duels between the Enterprise and the cloaked Romulan Bird of Prey in the original series. Still think Oblivion will be a PC game for me...can't beat all the mods available for the PC version of Morrowind. Will have to wait and see how much mod toolkit availability there will be with the final version of Oblivion...if there's next to none, I might pick the 360 version...lower resolution, but bigger display.

Pretty cool...especially the lighting. The command center's a little wonky on postioning/scale (Veers seemed closer to the drivers in the movie and the whole area seemed less spacious), but I'm not going to complain at all. Sorta dig the Snow-Scouttrooper. It's sort of shame that there hasn't really been any great, well articulated Snowtroopers. Nearly every version looks like they either have to find a bathroom or are getting ready to line up on the defense. Have a similar issue with my Vader/Emperor shuttle landing shelf...officers and regular stormtroopers are mostly nicely at some form of attention and the Snow and Scout troopers look like they all just wandered out of the bar... complete lack of discipline!

Well, given that it's from behind, it may still be present...assuming we get a Hulk rampage in the first place. I think the hardest part about that whole scene is trying to say that the Hulk is lustful...getting that concept across in a kid-friendly show is more difficult than a quick 'she showed her boobies' joke. I still like Fury's (I think it was his) comment about 'multiple PhDs and THAT'S all you could think of?'. Although I dug the look, I can live with Thor not having his beard....perhaps it's to make him look a bit more like his 'regular universe' self. Aint-It-Cool-News has a clip of him on Greenpeace-like ships stopping a whaling vessel...a little violently (although, in G.I.Joe-esque fashion, walls can be punctured, but never people). Hopefully we'll get the whole 'maybe he's psycho, maybe he IS a god...whatever the situation is, he's not really fully on our side' aspect that I loved in the book.

My biggest disappointment is that they didn't pursue Samuel L. Jackson for Fury. In the Ultimates comic, Nick Fury IS Samuel L. Jackson (okay, not exactly...Sam Jackson also exists in their universe - Fury says he should play him if they make a movie based on the Ultimates...). He's even got the facial same mannerisms. The other guys were also drawn from movie star photo references, but at least they're not as obvious and exact. I know it would might've raised the cost of this straight-to-DVD film (unless you could coax Sam to do it at a discount out of his love for comics), but it would've been worth it. [MINOR COMIC/POTENTIALLY CARTOON SPOILER] I still like when Fury introduces himself to the recently recovered Cap in the comic and Cap decides he's definitely in some kind of elaborate trap set up by the Nazis because no black man could be a general [END SPOILER] Does anyone know if Thor gets a Scandinavian accent or is American in the cartoon version? I'm hoping they do a follow-up DVD that has a bit of the second volume 'is Thor really a god or just crazy?' storyline....assuming the cartoon even leaves that up for interpretation....

Just from personal experience in the Twin Cities, the launch was sort of messy. Back late last year when the 360's were mainly being pinched by scalpers and store clerks hoping to make easy money, stores had whole display areas and Best Buys had dedicated over an aisle to XBox 360 stuff. Of course, with only two legitimate first hand purchases, none of it sold. The stuff literally started gathering dust. Now that they're more easy to come by, the stores are caught flat footed again with low supplies of wireless controllers, batteries, rechargers, etc. One Best Buy near me cut their 360 aisle down to a half-one side and that pitiful small section is decimated with some skins and third party wired controllers being just about the only thing available. I wonder just how well this worked out for local retailers if they misidentified both the high and low points so far.

Sort of funny...new, expensive, HiDef console and right now most of the fun people are having with it are old 80's arcade games and (at best) early 90's depth action/puzzle games like Geometry Wars and Yuma. My friends and I actually put three hours into Gauntlet.... $400 Hi-Tech Game Console $200 Worth of Wireless Controllers $50 XBox Live Subscription $5 Downloaded old arcade game Picking the elf first and therefore having 5x the amount of points as anyone else...Priceless... At this point, I wish we got some of the Japanese-only games, like the one wrestling one and...yes, I'd even play Dynasty Warriors 5 again at this point....

Did the actual WW2 G.I.Joe/Transformer comics ever SHOW those nice designs? The ones I looked at (Issues 1 & 2, I think) had everything so bathed in shadows and black and drawn in what was practically Sharpies to really appreciate anything. Sort of worked for the grittiness of a WW2 story, but every Transformer just looked like robot with WW2 kibble thrown on them. I think I recall there being two versions of the story released at the same time or something...maybe these are from the other.

Full game will be out in a couple of weeks, but for those who are still having fun with an 'expanded' version of the demo... Most recent (2.6) update for Bryant & GreyGhost's EAW Demo Mod

One big difference between Tolkien's The Silmarillion and the Prequel Trilogy is that the former WAS mostly conceived and written down (just not in a finalized, publishable form) before Tolkien worked on the Lord of the Rings. Publishers really didn't want his dry history book and instead wanted a sequel to the Hobbit, so that's why the Lord of the Rings was ultimately published before The Silmarillion . Lucas, on the other hand, was mainly flying by the seat of his pants. He had some general concepts he formed, but the rest of the history was stuff he came up with twenty years later (with a different outlook on life), often while putting together scripts for the latest movie. All the shoddiness, the hamfisted connections back to the OT, and odd choices in time placement all come back to that issue. I think most of the rest of the PT's issues stem from (as someone already said) Lucas' uncertainty as to who to cater to. Jar-Jar, for example, could have been a fascinating character. Instead we get an over-the-top, catering to the juvenile base character in Episode I, followed by a complete suppression in subsequent episodes in reaction to all the criticism and outright hatred the rabid older fanbase had for him.

I don't think it's all about complaining. For all my criticism Optimus and Rumble, I've already admitted my love of Skid's design and think Mirage looks pretty darn cool (while demonstrating another way to transform a car, so it's not that they're running out of ideas on that front). It's all about taste and it's often easier to articulate what you dislike about something than what you love about it. Much like Eriku, a big line for me is large chunks of kibble, particularly when little care is done to compact/hide it. A transformer with a 'backpack' that has a bunch of folded down kibble doesn't bother me much, but when you have whole car sections hanging off arms, it loses me on the creativty side, the engineering side, the aesthetic/artistic side, and the general look of quality to me. If I wanted robots in car shells, I could save money and kitbash car and robot models with simplistic transformations...or I could save some money and buy the more standard Transformer lines.

THAT's what scares me. Artist conceptions often look better than final results because intentionally or not they can cheat with scale or how well everything fits or accidentally throw in some more articulation than the final design allows. Maybe we're lucky and it's just the current favorite design out of two or three potential ones and somebody will pick one of the others.

Between Rumble and Optimus, all I can say is 'Who got let go from the BT/Alt design team between them and the previous models?' At least Prowl, for all my dislike of him, actually has some nice spots. These are starting to look too regular current Transformer-ish...almost Masterpiece Gobot-ish. Disappointing....I like how his body looks like the old guy, but would prefer it didn't happen at the expense of hanging giants pieces of car off his arms. Y'know, had they gone a similar route to my goofy idea of making the two tape dudes overly-street modded Civis, Rumble could've had dual mufflers that could've been his 'pile drivers'....oh well.

No, no, no. Use the Death Star to take out the Rebels' CC7700 so you can retreat if you have to. THEN take out the MonCals 364212[/snapback] Retreat? In your moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances! Sorry...had to.....