mikeszekely

Ha ha, I know I'm more of a cat guy myself. For some reason it's sometimes been cheaper to buy DNA kits domestically than from my favorite Chinese stores. And MMC's stuff is usually priced about the same. So I've got MMC's Scrapper and a bunch of DNA kits I'm still waiting to come into stock at The Chosen Prime... last I checked, I have the kit for Vector Prime and the Megatron arm and cannon for SS86 Optimus in stock and ready to ship, with the Bonecrusher/Scrapper, TFOne Prime/Megatron, Prima, and Godzilla Megatron kits still just preordered. Haven't decided on the other kits. I am interested in the waist swivel on Long Haul, I could take or leave moving the wheel, but I actually Devastator's backpack better stock. Aside from more arm articulation, the kit for Scavenger and Mixmaster seems pretty useless, but I'm worried that if I have four out of six horns that I'll cave just for those. Then I have to decide if I want the fourth kit, which has a ton of crap and is kind of expensive, when I really only want the centered knees and articulated hands... Oh, but that reminds me! I should preorder the kit for SS86 Megatron. I went back and forth on whether or not I just wanted the cannon and sword, but I decided the gap fillers are probably worth it for him. EDIT: Almost forgot, not super impressed with the Superion kit. The OX chest and head are an option for people that want it, but I don't. I'll wait and see if they have other stuff in the kit that I want, but for now it's just articulated hands, and I'm not paying for fortune just for that. EDIT 2: Also almost forgot, they're working on some kind of upgrade for Hearts of Steel Optimus. Just a silhouette so far, but it looks like it'll have the "trailer" seen in the Hearts of Steel concept art, so his engine mode isn't so stumpy.

While I sometimes get leaked Intel about what Hasbro is doing Takara is a total mystery. That said... It looks pretty obvious that they're doing MPM Sideswipe. The fact that there's two of them suggests they're doing both the RotF version and the convertible DotM version. MPG Hot Rod is causing quite a stir at the board that shan't be named. The silhouette looks an awful lot like SS86 Hot Rod. I find it amusing. I recall when 86 Hot Rod came out that everyone was saying it was so much better than MP-28 that Takara should just upsize it. Now it looks like they are upsizing it and everyone's mad. As for the "new Legends," I'm not sure what to make of that. The image is Lio Convoy... Are they doing an improved deco for Nemesis Leo? A different Lio Convoy deco? suggesting that the more-accurate T-spark remold of the Legacy toy is the first of a new line of improved Takara decos like Legends used to do all the time?

Oh please let this be the first of all five dinobots.

It might help if I knew a bit more about what kinds of tasks you do besides presentations, and what kinds of games you want to run. On paper, both of those Zenbooks should have similar GPU performance (Arc is slightly more capable, but Radeon is more stable with more mature drivers), both capable of playing most modern games at 1080p low-to-medium. Both also should offer more CPU performance than the Yoga, with the Intel CPU pulling away from the Ryzen by a wider margin. If you do decide to pull the trigger on another laptop shoot me a PM. I'm not sure if she'd actually want it, since she mostly uses her laptop for spreadsheets and web browsing, but that Yoga you already have should still be better than what she's using, so I might be interested in buying it off you if you're not going to use it.

Somehow I forgot that setting Batocera up properly involves literal days of scraping box art... Aside from that, I'm coming along. I've got the following set up with (nearly) complete North American retail sets (with a smattering of Japanese and European games) with box art for: Atari 2600 Atari 5200 Atari 7800 Atari Lynx Atari Jaguar Colecovision Intellivision Magnavox Odyssey 2 NES SNES Gameboy Gameboy Color Gameboy Advance Virtual Boy N64 Turbo Grafx 16 Sega Master System 3DO I should also have (nearly) complete sets, but hit my daily scraping limit so box art, for Sega Genesis Sega CD Sega 32X Sega Sega Saturn Sega Dreamcast Neo Geo AES Then, due to storage constraints, I have more curated collections with art for A variety of arcade ROMS that run in MAME TurboGrafx Turbo CD Bandai Wonderswan Nintendo Gamecube As well as curated sets that still need box art for Sony PlayStation Sony PlayStation 2 Sony PSP I've tested at least one game for every included platform successfully, so I know I at least have the emulator cores and BIOS files set up right. I'll start scraping again tomorrow, then I have to wait for my Sinden gun to come so I can see how it works.

I mean, yeah, those aren't gaming specs, but unless you feel you really only want one laptop and better gaming performance is a must I'd definitely keep it, the non-gaming specs are pretty solid. I'd go so far as to suggest if I saw the same laptop under $400 I'd buy it myself, as it's better than what my wife uses.

Honestly, because the G14 is small but powerful with a gorgeous OLED screen it's usually my go-to when I'm not at my desk. That said, I have an Asus Vivobook 15 with a Core i3 I bought for around $300 probably 4 years ago that I replaced Windows with Linux Mint and upgraded the RAM from 8 to 12 GB. For light duty it still holds up pretty well, and when it does slow down I can always switch from the Cinnamon desktop to a lighter one. It's useful to have whenever there's something I need to do that's just easier with Linux, like copying a ton of files to an SSD I set up for Batocera. I also picked up an Asus CX15 Chromebook for something like $120 during the back-to-school season. I was mostly curious because I'd never used ChromeOS before. As an Android phone user I liked that it was super easy to read and reply to my text messages on it, but for something basically just running a browser I found it to be kinda slow. Since I have one big ultra wide monitor for my desktop, the Chromebook mostly gets used when I want to use the Internet at my desk when my desktop is running a game. Finally, because I used to work in IT and I prided myself on being versed in both Windows and MacOS, I have an M1 MacBook Air. It still runs pretty great, but I may sell it to a friend who only uses Macs but is stuck with a very old Intel Mac Mini if I can find a good deal on a M3 or M4 Air. Mind you, a good deal is rarely less than $700, so I wouldn't say that a MacBook is ever a "cheap" secondary device. But for non-gamers that don't need a specific Windows utility the way Apple wrings the performance they do out of a system with just 8GB of RAM, the solid battery life, and the unrivaled stand-by battery makes them a strong choice for a primary device. What specs on that Yoga? Unless you really need more power I'd keep it just for the OLED display.

Not bad, nearly $1000 less than I paid 10 months ago. And with NAND chip prices going bananas I doubt you could build a PC that cheap right now with those parts.

Yeah, it's a lousy time to be into tech. My Batocera box is coming along... now that I finally got around to opening it up, yanking the SSD, and sticking it into a different computer to actually install Batocera. Tried to install Batocera on a USB drive, then using that boot to install Batocera to the SSD, but it failed. Then you have to put it back in back in the original box and boot it so Batocera can do it's initial setup, before shutting it down, pulling the SSD again, and connecting it to a third computer (this time running Linux) because that's still the easiest way to load the games. Of which, it turns out, I have a bit more than 1TB I want to use. Now, the Beelink SER5 I bought has a second m.2 slot, but a quick check online tells me that we're already at the point where even a 512GB drive costs about what a 1TB drive did a few months ago. I was originally hoping to do complete or near-complete North American sets for everything up to Dreamcast, but I'm going to have to whittle the CD-based consoles down to just what I might actually play, especially because I want to get a few PS2 and Gamecube games on there. But, hey, I hear Sinden light guns are pretty much plug-and-play with Batocera now, so I ordered one of those. I'll make sure the Time Crisis, Point Blank, Virtua Cop, etc games make the cut.

Brawl shipped with the other Voyager in this wave, Amalgamous Prime. Which means, for those keeping score, we got the first two Deluxes over two weeks ago, then the Leader and both Voyagers right before Christmas, so we're just waiting for the other two Deluxes. Compared to some of the other Primes, Amalgamous has little source material to pull from. Some Primes, like Alpha Trion and Prima, were sort of established ancient Transformers before the concept of the Thirteen and were kind of naturally slotted in. Others, like Micronus and Quintus, were created to fill out the Thirteen's ranks after the concept was established, and were used to explain or tie together bits of Transformers lore, like "why Minicons?" and "why Quintessons?" But thing thing with Micronus and Quintus is that, for one, they had fairly clear designs in The Covenant of Primus, and two, they both eventually appeared in Transformers media, with Micronus being a sort of mentor to Optimus in Robots in Disguise and Quintus' Emberstone kicking off the creation of Terran Transformers in Earthspark. But then we come to Amalgamous. He's an important part of the lore, now... his artifact, the T-Cog, is the template for every Cybertronian's T-Cog and the reason why Transformers can transform. But on the other hand, he really hasn't appeared in anything outside of The Covenant, where he's described as constantly shifting forms. And the one picture of him is an almost Bayformer-esque collection of mechanical parts and crackling energies arranged in a multi-limbed monstrousity with something that might be a head at one head. I'd say that this toy owes less to The Covenant and more to Transformers One. I think they all have four arms and digitigrade legs, but the TFOne version seems to be where we get the color scheme, and AOTP Amalgamous' head seems to be based on details from TFOne's stomach. Maher and Yuki coaxed the design into a something a bit chunkier and a bit more greebly, to better match the aesthetics of the other ten Primes released so far, and with his mono-eye you can bet that they were thinking of characters like Shockwave and Whirl when they were deciding how different characters are descended from different Primes. Even still, the deviation from a more typical "humanoid" design makes him stand out a bit from the others. Amalgamous' weapon his a scythe. In The Covenant of Primus it says that his weapon was constantly shifting, but at one point was indeed a scythe, and he's depicted with a scythe in Transformers One concept art as well as in a hologram in a scene in the actual film. The blade can fold over, and the rear can be removed to reveal a little pistol, which I guess fists with the shifting nature of Amalgamous and his weapons. A translucent orange bit comes off the end as well. It's designed to look like the T-Cogs seen in Transformers Prime. But is that bit the real Transformation Cog, THE artifact of Amalgamous Prime? See, if you open up his head, you can pop out his mono eye, which turns out is just the 5mm port on the end of what appears to be a more traditional T-Cog, like the ones seen in Transformers One, in various IDW comics, and most originally of all, like the one Starscream's ghost had to steal from Trypticon to give to Unicron in the G1 cartoon. Anyway, Amalgamous's articulation isn't the best, likely due to his non-traditional design. His head's on a pair of hinges, as much for transformation as actual articulation, that lets him look down as his crotch but no real upward or sideways tilt. His head can swivel, but only insomuch as it's actually pegged in. The back of his head collides with his "neck," limiting him to about 30 degrees or so to the left or right. His shoulders swivel, but he's only got one shoulder for both arms on either side, so moving one automatically moves the other. They can at least move laterally independantly, and around 180 degrees at that. His biceps have swivels both at the shoulder and just above the elbows, which may be useful given that his biceps have a weird bend to them. Speaking of elbows, they bend 90 degrees. His wrists swivel, and they can bend inward. His waist swivels. His hips can about 90 degrees forward, backward, and laterally. His actual anatomical knees have swivels, but no bending; they're permanently set at a 90 degree bend. There is a joint below the yellow knees that bends from not-quite-straight to over 90 degrees forward, and a joint below that that goes from slightly forward to about 60 degrees backward. Foot tilt, I guess? His ankles pivot 90 degrees. Amalgamous can hold his scythe, his pistol, or the T-Cog in his face in any of his four hands. You'll also find 5mm ports and pegs in a variety of places all over his body. There's a gimmick we'll get to in a minute. As Transformations go, you can take the entire robot and turn him into this sort of walking tank without partsforming anything but his weapon. Open the front of his back and stuff the back of his back inside. Swivel his waist 180, and fold his upper body up. Swing his legs back and scrunch them into the space you emptied out of his back, and tuck his head into the space between his upper and lower body. Then just spread his arms out and balance him on his fingers. To complete the tank look, peg his scythe into his back so that the pistol on it is pointing forward. I mean... it's a thing. I'm not going to judge an alien robot with an infinity of transformations too harshly on "this is what they designers could come up with on a Voyager budget." The little boosters on his back are even a nice touch. I think my biggest complaint is his obviously tank-tread feet chilling on the top rear while he walks on his fingers. But as I mentioned, Amalgamous is supposed to have infinite alt modes, a sort of constantly-shifting form. How do you get that out of a Voyager-class toy? Well, I don't know if it's the only or even the best way, but the team decided that their way was going to be the Weaponizer route. Yes, you can transform Amalgamous without partsforming... but you can also break him down into these constituent parts and re-arrange him however you please. Though the instructions do include a number of suggestions. For starters, the front arms have wheels and the back arms have winglets. Bend the elbows up and you can connect them together into a sort of truck. Fold out the wings on the arms, stick them together, and you've got a little jet. You can also stick one of the shoulder-eye-thingies between them and make bits that look like drones. Get his legs and weapons involved, and you can build a little tank that kind of reminds me of a Zeon Magella Attack tank from Mobile Suit Gundam. The thing with all those "official" configurations, though, is that they just use Amalgamous' limbs. I messed around with him for a bit to try to work the body in, too, and wound up with something that looked a bit like a Magitek Armor from Final Fantasy VI, but I'm feeling like his best moves are probably to either stick with his standard non-partsforming alt mode or to not transform at all. Ultimately, my biggest problem with Amalgamous isn't really how weird he looks with the more humanoid Primes, his nowhere near infinite alt modes, or the fact that the handful of alt modes he does have aren't very good. My biggest gripe is how poorly his limbs and head are pegged in. Even when you push them in all the way, on my copy at least, simply trying to get him in a decent pose is likely to cause one or both of his legs to pop off, and I can all but promise you his head is going to come off, likely multiple times, when you don't want it too. His fighting with Quintus for me for the worst of the Thirteen so far; I feel like you can do more with Amalgamous so he's less outright boring than Quintus, but Quintus is just a boring Deluxe while Amalgamous is kind of a frustrating Voyager. If you're in for all thirteen of the Thirteen, well, I don't think there's anything here that's so egregious as to outright dissuade you from your mission. But if you're not committed to ALL of the Thirteen, Amalgamous is one you can probably pass on.

Hope everyone had a nice holiday. My wife and I don't exchange gifts, since we're fortunate enough to be able to buy most of what we want/need throughout the year whenever we decide we want/need it. So you could say that Santa didn't leave anything for me this year... but Kenneth the FedEx driver did, from Hasbro Pulse. So I got to spend some time on Christmas Eve unwrapping Age of the Primes Voyager-class Brawl. Brawl adheres to Hasbro's current penchant for making toys that skew a bit more toward the animation than they did the past. Right away, that leads to some noticeable improvements over the Combiner Wars version, like silver forearms, improved hip skirts, and a flatter chest with slots that I'll bet are actually for combined mode but do look like the cartoon's greebles, not to mention a gray head with orange eyes and a red mouth. Brawl also adheres to Hasbro's other current penchant for not quite committing fully to the cartoon. There's extra greebles on his crotch, and the vents on his shins are painted. Another slot that I assume is for combined mode breaks up the hexagon on Brawl's abdomen, and he's missing entirely the smoke grenade launchers on his chest... a detail that the Combiner Wars toy did have, even if they weren't painted. Still, I was honestly worried that Brawl could be worse. Menasor's leg bots had those kibble capes, and Superion's had those big ol' feet that sit under the jets. Breakdown and Wildrider shared entirely too many parts between them, and while I think Hasbro was a bit better about remolding the Aerialbots the actual engineering between both arm bots and both leg bots was the same. Hasbro clearly being tight with the budgets. And from this very own set, Vortex was kind of meh. I mean, he looks ok, but the arm kibble drives be a little nuts (more so because, despite not messing with him much, the flap with the stabs is super loose). However, Brawl has an edge here in that he's been bumped up to Voyager (and of the various class sizes, it seems Voyager has had the biggest percent price increase). Hasbro hasn't actually given me a lot to complain about here, short of nitpicking the fact that he's not as faithful to Sunbow as Magic Square in a manner that's 100% in-line with the rest of the post-Siege Generations soft reboot. Brawl comes with a few accessories. First, he's got his 85% cartoon-accurate gun. He's also got a pair of cannons. Brawl's head is on a ball joint- swivel, very slight downward and sideways tilt, slightly better upward tilt. His shoulders swivel and move laterally 90 degrees, plus due to his transformation he's got a bit of forward butterfly, too. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. No wrist swivel, sadly, but his waist does swivel. His hips can go about 90 degrees laterally and backward, though you may have to adjust the turret on his back, and a bit more than 90 degrees forward. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. No downward tilt on his feet, but they can tilt up a little, and his ankles pivot nearly 90 degrees. Brawl can, of course, hold his gun in either hand. The cannons don't have 5mm pegs, though, so he can't hold those in his hands. What you can do is rotate the turret on his back 90 degrees and plug them into the turret, giving him a pair of over-the-shoulder guns. Want more options? There's a 5mm ports on his forearms you can plug his gun into (or other compatible 5mm accessories). And there's slots on the sides of his legs that his cannons can plug into. If you prefer less aggressive storage, Brawl weirdly has both a 5mm port on his back you can plug the gun into as well as a small slot that fits a small tab on the gun. As for the cannons, you can turn them and use different tabs to plug them into the same slots on the bottom of the turret, or you can plug them into the sides of the turret because options. If you weren't convinced that Brawl was benefitting from the extra Voyager budget yet, you will be after transforming him. His arms extend laterally, the little bits of treads on his shoulders open, and flaps on the insides of his forearms open to blend with the backs of his hands, then his shoulders rotate forward 90 degrees. The front of his chest opens so his head can fold down inside, then the entire chest (with the head inside) and shoulders disconnect from his abs and swing up. His waist swivels 180 degrees, and his feet and shins swing up. The bulk of what's left of his lower legs stretch out, sort of like Studio Series Megatron, to form much of his treads. Tab his legs together, then swing just the treads (not the knee joints) around to line up with tabs on Brawl's torso. Use Brawl's butterfly hinges to shift his arms into place, tucking them into his sides just above the treads. Speaking of, close the little treads on his shoulders and they'll tab into the ones that were in his legs. Finally, you can fold his shins over his thighs, collapsing his feet onto the backs of the shins as you do so. The turret is on a double hinge you can use to make sure you have enough clearance. Brawl's alt mode is clearly a baby-poop yellow/green/brown tank; that's probably enough for most people. Of course, I get to point out the visible gap where you can see the back of his head on the front, the gap behind the turret where his shins/feet don't quite cover his butt/hips, the gaps between his shoulder and biceps, and the gaps on the top near the sides where his arms don't totally reach his torso. I also have to point out the missing spotlight and smoke grenade launchers on the turret. Nitpicking a bit, I suppose. After all, the turret does swivel, and the cannon barrel can raise and lower. He rolls on little wheels in his treads. His gun can plug into his turret, and, in a first for an official Brawl since the G1 toy, he's got the cartoon-accurate cannons plugged into the rear of the tank, which can also be raised to nearly 90 degrees. So, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that Brawl is perfect... even on a Voyager budget I don't really expect Hasbro to pull off something like Magic Square did. Despite a number of minor quibbles, though, I feel pretty comfortable saying that Brawl is the best combiner component Hasbro's done in modern times that isn't a Commander-class toy. He's closer to the cartoon with better build quality than Combiner Wars Braw, and he's got better engineering than any of the Stunticons/Aerialbots/Constructicons/Vortex. G1 fans won't want to miss this one.

2026 is slowly trickling in, I guess. I'm sitting on one Studio Series figure, since he's a repaint/slight retool, to cover in a Repaint Roundup. While we wait, we can talk about Age of the Primes Leader-class Big Convoy. Big Convoy (who, oddly, is named Big Convoy on the Hasbro packaging despite Lio Convoy being renamed Leo Prime), is a figure I've wanted in my collection for awhile. I think that's partly because I love it when you take an "Optimus" style head and slap it on a design that's mostly red and white (or light gray) and reduces the blue to an accent color... like Lio Prime before him, G2 Optimus and G2 Hero Optimus before them, and Fire Convoy/RiD Optimus after them. Of course, there's also the fact that Magmatron was a 2024 Commander release. I confess, though, to mostly being familiar with Big Convoy through clips of the Beast Wars Neo anime, which was drawn to make him look as heroic as possible (though I'd never really noticed how asymmetrical his arms are)... ...and I kind of forgot about the fact that a lot of the Transformers from this era were kibbly shellformers. Big Convoy is no exception; his own head is almost crowded out by "shoulder pads" made from large chunks of his alt mode head. The bits of mammoth on his forearms and calves are unmistakable, but I'll let slide for being fairly unobtrusive. His hip skirts, though, are mammoth legs that just stick straight out behind him. Like, how's this dude supposed to lay down on his recharge slab at night? He comes with a good number of accessories. He's got a little pistol that I don't believe the original toy did, and I have no idea if he ever used in the show. He's got two red hooks called "Mammoth Hakens" that the original toy did have, a Matrix that the original toy had, and a big ol' piece of mammoth kibble that the original had. So... Big Convoy's head is a ball joint with a limited up/down/sideways tilt. His shoulders swivel and move laterally 90 degrees, and dedicated hinges that give him butterfly joints. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. His wrists swivel, as does his waist. If you can work around the kibble, his hips can get just about 90 degrees forward, backward, and laterally. His thighs swivel, and there's an additional swivel just below the knee, though it's primarily for transformation. His knees bend 90 degrees, and though he lacks up/down tilt on his feet he does have nearly 90 degrees of ankle pivot. OK, lots of gimmicks to get through. So, he can of course hold his gun or the Mammoth Hakens in his hands. There are also 5mm ports on his forearms and shoulders where you can attach accessories like the Mammoth Hakens. Not pictured, just because I forgot at the time, the mammoth legs on his hip skirts can swivel around so they're pointing forward. There's molded details on the bottom, as well as 5mm ports for blast effects, because they're supposed to be hip-mounted cannons. When he's not carrying them, the pistol can plug into a 5mm port on his back. As for the Mammoth Hakens, if you open the kibble on the sides of his legs you'll find 5mm ports on the white parts where they can plug in. This is basically where they went on the original toy, except instead of merely being pegged it they were spring loaded and could be fired out of his legs like missiles. Speaking of, the armature holding the mammoth kibble on his back can rock back, and the kibble itself is hinged. You can move it just to get it away from his head, but you can also swivel it to reveal painted, non-firing missiles underneath. The tusks on the back kibble are removable (indeed, they're not installed in the box). They just plug onto pegs on the kibble. There are also pegs on the mammoth kibble under his forearms, allowing you to plug the tusks in there like melee weapons. Not that he needs them... the kibble can open to reveal "Mammoth Tonfas" you can flip out. Then there's the big chunk of mammoth kibble that was an accessory. Well, there's a 5mm peg on it. You could plug it into his arm like a shield... Or, using a 5mm port near the peg, you can plug it sideways onto a 5mm peg on his pack. The peg itself is on an armature that moves out a bit to help you get the clearance to get it around the other mammoth kibble on his back and hips. I think it makes him look busy and back heavy, but I suppose it's cartoon-accurate. Also, like the toy and cartoon, the kibble can half-heartedly transform into a large cannon, the aptly-named Big Cannon. The new AOTP version even has a fold out stand to help him keep it up that the original didn't, but on the other hand it doesn't have the firing missiles the original did. With the new stand, I can't help but think that it reminds me of the Hyaku Shiki's Mega Bazooka Launcher in Z Gundam. Finally, there's his Matrix. The butterfly joints allow him to bring his fists together so it can peg into both of them, like he's holding the Matrix out in front of him. When he's not holding it, you can flip open the front of his chest and plug it inside. It's an interested detail that the space behind the chest hinge is molded to look like Optimus Prime's tummy grill. OK, finally we can transform this guy! To do that, spin his head around and push his "ears" in. Take the back kibble and swivel 180 degrees, so the missiles are pointed straight up, and then fold them toward each other so they tab together. Fold them back, then use the red armature to fold them forward again over his robot head. Rotate his forearms so that the mammoth kibble is facing you, then use the transformation hinges in his shoulders to bring the entire shoulder joint behind his back, with his arms pointed straight back for now. Swing the mammoth legs on his hip skirts around, then fold the skirts up so the mammoth legs plug into the spaces his shoulders just vacated. Fold his heels in, open the kibble on the sides of his legs, then open the white part and fold his feet inside before closing the white part back up. Swivel his legs BELOW the knees, so his shins are facing each other, and tab them together. Bend his knees 90 degrees the wrong way, then use the hinged ball joint to swing the leg kibble around and inward to fill in the side of the mammoth. If you did it right, it'll tab in to two places on his side and one on his leg. Bring the small panel on the kibble around to fill in the top of the rear leg, then bring is arms down so that the peg holes on his forearms lock into pegs on the back of his waist. Bring in the big cannon to fill in his butt, back, and the gap in his head, open his ears, and you're done. In an effort to be more cartoon accurate Big Convoy eschews the two-tone fur of the original toy for a uniform brown, and he's got white eyes with painted pupils instead of green. Aside from the usual hinges, seams, and occasional visible robot kibble, he looks fine. I'll note that, while partsforming the tusks isn't strictly necessary, to have tusks that curve out-to-in in mammoth mode but also curve upward in robot mode you'll likely want to swap the right to the left and vice versa. The tusks and Big Cannon are part of his alt mode, then. The Matrix can just stay in his chest. As for the rest of his accessories, the leg kibble that turns into the mammoth's sides have a pair of 5mm ports each. You can plug one Mammoth Haken into each side, then plug the pistol onto one side so it's partially covering the Mammoth Haken. And... well, that's about it. The Front legs are hinged at the shoulders so they can move forward, but not backward, no swivels, no knees, and no ankles. His trunk has a quartet of hinges to give it some articulation, and his tail is hinged at the base so it can range from pointed straight down to pointed straight out his back. His ears can flap. And that's it for alt mode articulation. His head and rear legs are totally immobile. What's more, because the actually cannon doesn't swivel on the mammoth kibble the way the original toy's Big Cannon did, he can't do Mammoth Tank mode. The barrel of the Big Cannon is always in his butt, and can't come out of the head. Big Convoy is one of those toys that feels hard to judge. In a lot of ways, it's true to the cartoon and original toy... even when that means reproducing the flaws of the original design and delivering a shellformer with too much alt mode kibble. What's more, while Mark Maher and Tomoki Tatsumi clearly put a lot of effort into retaining gimmicks like the Mammoth Hakens and the Mammoth Tonfas, the inability to do Mammoth Tank mode feels like a step backward. I think Prime afficionados and hardcore fans will appreciate having this character in Generations scale with good articulation and many of his accessories will want him despite his flaws, but I think the G1 crowd or more casual US-only Beast Wars fans will find him a tad disappointing.

Do you need a controller for an actual Xbox, or a PC? If it's the latter, I've find that the Xbox controller, though sort of the standard, isn't all that great. For probably less money, depending on sales, I personally own and recommend the 8bitdo Ultimate 2. TMR sticks, Hall effect triggers, two programmable buttons on the back, two extra programmable bumper buttons, and a charging cradle that can but store the UBC receiver as well as double as a pass through for said receiver.

Could be the lighting; AFAIK the plane is in the front of the display, the bot in the back, and I'm not sure but I think on the second tier. Could also be because they're engineering samples and not the final product.

BTW, thought you guys might enjoy some pics from a Chinese trade show of unannounced AOTP figures. Prime Smokescreen. Someone reminded me that the original Prime Smokescreen got a Barricade repaint, and yeah, fingers crossed for that. I love the idea of a G1-compatible Barricade, but repainting Prowl was always super lazy (sorry, Guido). Animated Ratchet. It's funny, when I first heard leaks about this figure I thought it'd be a retool of Alchemist Prime. Actually, I'd thought that Alchemist would make a better Prime Ratchet, and that the Animated leak must have been mistaken. Well, turns out it's not Prime Ratchet or an Alchemist retool, it's a retool of Earthrise Trailbreaker. G1 Swerve. About what you'd expect. I'd have liked for his thighs to be white and his biceps and hands to be red, but as a retool of Gears it probably has to do with where those parts were on Gears' runners. And, oh yeah, G1-frickin' Powerglide. Bot's looking good, but the plane's looking a little rough. And hey, if he gets a Bad Boy repaint, we'll finally have Generations versions of all six eHobby Gobots.