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mikeszekely

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  1. mikeszekely
    That's unfortunate. It looks great, and I might have been willing to overlook a part or two that needed to be popped back on or possibly even the missing thumb (it wouldn't be the first time I had to get a replacement part). But the tolerances on those hips are inexcusable at that price.
  2. mikeszekely
    I don't really know what's up with the Cybervese Delxues. I was pretty interested when the first four came out around Christmas; while the toys that seemed to crowd the shelves were probably fine for the show's younger target audience the Warrior-class stuff was lacking in articulation and show-accuracy. And, aside from lacking in some painted details, the first four Deluxes mostly delivered. Then I thought the next four would be a second wave, and at some point they'd announce characters for a third wave (hopefully with more Decepticons, since Megatron and Shockwave are the only two in the first eight), but instead it looks like just two more have trickled out with the last two coming in the late summer or fall. Well, I want to finish my build-a-figure, so I ordered the two available. This is Cyberverse Deluxe Hot Rod. I said that the other Cyberverse Deluxes could use a bit more painted detail, but Hot Rod is taking the lack thereof to an extreme. Most of him is unpainted red plastic, and a lot of the details on his body are lost in all that red. The lights and vents on his chest aren't painted, his lats and his pelvis details aren't painted, and his knees aren't painted. His shoulders are painted, but just black with none of the blue or what. The chevrons on his legs are all painted orange, but they should be different colors ranging from a dark red for the first ones to yellow for the bottom ones, plus they should be on silver stripe. His feet are a grayish-silver plastic when they need to be darker, like his neck. And while they did paint his legs orange they did a poor job of it, stopping before the edges and with noticeable scratches on my copy. It really baffles me why they just didn't use orange plastic. Then, worst of all, his wings are unpainted red plastic. They should be yellow, of course, and as with his thighs I don't understand why they didn't just make them out of yellow plastic. If you overlook the cheap, lazy deco he does otherwise have better proportions and greater show accuracy than previous Cyberverse Hot Rods, as long as you ignore the backpack. Hot Rod comes with Maccadam's other leg (just two upper arms, one forearm, and a head to go!), and a pair of flame effect parts. He doesn't get a weapon. Hot Rod's head is on a ball joint, with a swivel and adequate sideways tilt but minimal up and no downward tilt. His shoulders are on ball joints that allow for rotation but only a bit over 45 degrees of lateral movement. He has a ball joint for an elbow, and that joint doubles as a bicep swivel. His elbow can bend 90 degrees at the ball, but another hinge allows him to curl his elbow 180 degrees. His wrists and waist can swivel. His hips are ball joints that bend 90 degrees forward, 45 degrees backward, and 90 degrees laterally. Despite having his hip on a ball he also has a cut thigh swivel. His knees bend 90 degrees. His feet can tilt down 90 degrees, up a little bit, and his ankles can pivot 45 degrees. His flames have a pair of tabs on the sides. These tabs fit around the end of the middle pipe on either arm and into slots nestled between them. They do also have round ports for plugging onto the tips of other guns from Cyberverse and Siege, or the little blisters on Siege figures. Hot Rod's engineering is extremely similar to the G1 toy. The legs collapse, the arms pinch in, and the toes fold up. The difference is that much of the hood and front end isn't his chest, it's unfolded from his backpack. And only part of his backpack spins around to make the tail. Hot Rod's alt mode has the same problem that he has in robot mode- right shape, missing colored detail. His headlights and vents are painted, but he's missing the flames and Autobot insignia on his hood. The spoiler on his front bumper and his side mirrors should be yellow, and his missing some silver in the middle of his rear wing (which, as near as I can tell, actually should be mostly red). The chevrons on his doors have the same problem as his legs; missing color variation, missing the silver behind them. And it's a shame they couldn't have tucked his feet in a bit better. He rolls, and the flames can still connect to the same spots while he's in alt mode to give the appearance of flames shooting out his exhausts. Warrior-class figures might have been lacking in many ways, but I could excuse that. I mean, they're cheaper, and I could say that I just wasn't the target audience. But if you're going to call something a Deluxe and charge the same price as a Siege Deluxe then I'm going to expect a certain level of quality, and Hasbro can't hand wave that lack of quality by sahying I'm not the target audience. Kids shouldn't have to put up with getting ripped off and Hasbro shouldn't be taking advantage of parents. If I just limit my comparison to the other Cyberverse Deluxes Hot Rod has fewer accessories, simpler engineering, and the laziest deco, making him the worst of the five I've looked at. But if I expand my comparison to include what Hasbro is doing at this price for Siege and Earthrise Deluxes the lack of really basic stuff like the flames on the hood of the car or the yellow on his wings becomes inexcusable. If you're a Hot Rod fan and handy with the paints or you're committed to the whole line because you want to build Maccadam I wouldn't go so far as to say that Hot Rod is bad. But he fails to justify his price tag, so if you're picking and choosing with this line then you should probably pass on this one.
  3. mikeszekely
    Gorgeous. I'll be curious to see your review; from the picture though it looks like this should be a sure thing for the collectors that don't care if it transforms.
  4. mikeszekely
    I don't mind crossovers when they're good. IDW did two TMNT/Ghostbusters crossovers and three TMNT/Batman crossovers, plus they're one issue from finishing a TMNT/Power Rangers crossover, and they've all been pretty good. The Transformers ones they've done so far (Transformers/Star Trek and Transformers/Ghostbusters) were both pretty bad, though. I did read the first issue of the Transformers/Terminator series and it's too early to tell, but let's say I don't have high hopes for the Transformers/My Little Pony crossover.
  5. mikeszekely
    Something about it being greasy, but that seems kind of minor compared to the leg. Yeah, if FT releases a fixed version of Sheridan later I might still pick it up. Hopefully they don't do it soon, because almost everything I had preordered is supposed to come in the next month or so. Iceman? Since I already have the first two Aerialbots I'll still be picking Iceman up, but yeah, my impressions of FT's Aerialbots is that they've been kind of mediocre so far.
  6. mikeszekely
    Wedged into which? Transformers? That happened. Or MLP? Because that's happening (although I don't know about a comic for it yet.
  7. mikeszekely
    Warpath is, I think, the last minibot that I don't have on my MP shelf. I was waiting to see how the reviews for Fans Toys' new one was, and it sounds like they can be summed up as "the leg fell off." Eh, I can live with partsforming, but I prefer it be intentional. So that led me to look at the alternatives, and a fortunate side-effect of a Fans Toys release is that those alternatives are pretty cheap if you don't mind a used one. So I picked up this guy: Badcube's Wardog. Y'know, for a minibot Wardog isn't exactly mini. I could charitably say he's around the size of an MP car, or I could less-charitably say he's actually slightly taller than Bluestreak here. Regardless of where he was meant to fit on the scale chart, though, I think he was depicted as the same size as the carbots enough in the cartoon that he can get away with it here. Aesthetically I think he fits the Hasui-era. I was put off at first by the tank treads dangling from his arms, but I quickly realized that they're cartoon accurate. Indeed, pretty much all the cartoon details are there- treads on his arms, treads on his feet, silver in his torso, silver on his shoulders, otherwise mostly red, the u-shaped indent on his pelvis, but he's also got details like rivets, lights, and paneling that you'd expect on a robot that turns into a tank. Some more fair complaints might be that he's a little chunkier than he was shown to be in the cartoon, and he is sporting a bit of a backpack. The G1 minibots didn't come with accessories, they weren't often shown using weapons in the cartoon, and you'd think a guy with a tank barrel sticking out of his chest really wouldn't need one. That didn't stop Badcube from including some accessories for Wardog, though. You get a kind of strange sci-fi gun, and a large chunk of partsforming with a handle. Wardog's head is on a hinged swivel. He can turn it and look up a good deal, but nothing really down and no sideways tilt. His shoulders are a bit of a problem. They're connected to his torso via ball joints, and on my copy, either through wear or through poor initial tolerances, they're very loose going outward. He can at least hold a forward/backward rotation. There's also a ratcheted hinge inside the shoulder, which allows for better lateral movement when the arm isn't totally perpendicular to the body, but it's really for transformation and it's really only good for a click or two. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 90 degrees. His wrists swivel, and his hands are just like a carbots with a fixed thumb, all the fingers molded together as one piece, and a single hinge at the base of the fingers. His waist has a ratcheted swivel. His hips go forward a little under 90 degrees and backward about 60 degrees on a ratchet, and a softer ratchet allows for a little under 90 degrees of spread. His thighs swivel around the hip joint, and his ratcheted knees bend 90 degrees. His feet have two hinges and a ball joint, and between them he can tilt his feet up and down and his ankle pivots 90 degrees. He can hold both of his accessories using the fairly typical method of sticking a tab on the handle into the slot in his palm. It's a bit of a pain, though, because the shape of the handles don't give you a lot of room to work with; you kind of have to slip the handle around his fingers then close them so they push the handles into his palms. If you don't care for Warpath to be walking around a gun and a riot shield you could leave them in the box, sure, although the shield has a role to play in alt mode. So if you don't want to box them you can fold the shield up, stick the gun on it, and then attach the whole thing to his backpack. However, his backpack is already fairly big, and with the shield on it it's pretty obnoxious. Worse, it's actually enough weight far enough back on his body that he starts to have trouble balancing even with those huge feet. Wardog somehow manages to get bigger as he transforms, coming out much larger than an MP car. If there's one crowd that should please it's the alt-mode scale crowd, because an M551 Sheridan isn't a big tank, but it's still bigger than a car. Much has been made over the years about Wardog's engineering and how transforming this guy is supposed to be a nightmare. Honestly, I think those stories have been greatly exaggerated; my copy arrived in bot mode without instructions, and since it seems like all the big Youtubers went from tank to bot I wound up just winging it. Now, I'm not going to tell you it's all rainbows and roses. A lot of his parts are on armatures and sliders, and transforming him really involves dislodging and unfolding all his parts into a flayed, floppy mess then moving them around and locking everything back into place, and that always seems to involve a bit of finagling and massaging to get everything lined up right and tabbed in. Despite that I didn't really encounter any tolerance issues, nor was I ever really unsure where something was supposed to go or how it moved. Even the shoulders, which are often cited as one of the more difficult parts, really aren't that difficult once you understand what you're supposed to do, and on the whole I think Wardog is much easier to transform than pretty much figure Fans Toys has released for a movie/Season 3 character. As I mentioned, Wardog turns into an M551 Sheridan tank, and it looks pretty good. I know some reviewers complained that the tank barrel seems small, but it's actually pretty accurate. There's lots of riveted detail. The lights, driver's window, and hooks on the front are pretty accurate. The treads even seem to have the correct number of wheels (five big ones, two small ones). And in a cartoon-accurate fashion he's mostly red but he's got a large silver section behind the turret. I think the tank might look a little better with a machine gun on top of the turret and maybe some smoke launchers on the sides, but then I suppose he'd be less cartoon-accurate. The turret can rotate; it actually uses the ratcheted waist joint to move. The barrel can only move up and down a little, though. There are no wheels under the treads so he doesn't roll. Now about that partsforming. The shield actually forms the bottom of the tank, and the gun can still store on it. It gives him a very clean underside and helps solidify his tank mode, to the point that you can almost miss the fact that it transforms. If you really wanted to leave it and the gun in the box, though, you can. The bottom won't be as clean, but that's not a huge deal. More concerning to me is that it'll leave some minor gaps you can see through under the sides. So Wardog... well, he's an older figure now. And with what Takara is doing today maybe we can overlook his backpack. The alt mode is very good, and the robot mode is a little chunky but better than I first though, at least aesthetically (although I could have used a lot more paint and a lot less bare red and gray plastic). I think I'd be totally satisfied with this figure if not for the shoulders. I mean, with all the sturdier hinges and ratchets used on the rest of the figure it's really baffling that they used such crappy ball joints there. And while I don't think his engineering is as bad as its reputation I do wonder if it's a tad more complicated than it really needed to be. That makes it a bit difficult to really recommend Wardog. There's something about him that just screams, "I'm a placeholder!" If there's one thing that Wardog's really got going for him it's that FT's doesn't look like that slam dunk to replace him that we expected it to be.
  8. mikeszekely
    @anime52k8 Are you the target audience for this? This is apparently a real thing, a comic book miniseries coming this summer.
  9. mikeszekely
    I guess I just expect most of the people that hang out around here to be my age, and basically a kid when the '80s cartoon took off. And let's be honest here, TMNT was a super niche book from a super niche studio and didn't become a huge global brand until the '80s cartoon. So unless people are complaining specifically about Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and it's really that much worse than the '80s cartoon or the Nickelodeon version I don't get the complaints that Turtles aren't the gritty black and white comics that nobody read anymore.
  10. mikeszekely
    Just how old are you guys? I'm 40, and I didn't know about the old Mirage comics until well after the '80s cartoon. I still love that cartoon, and I thought the 4kids one was pretty good, too. Right now I'm watching the Nickelodeon series on Hulu (pretty good) and reading the IDW comics (also pretty good). The first two live action movies were good, as was the animated TMNT film. Truthfully, I had issues with the first Bay film, but I honestly enjoyed the second one. Haven't seen Rise of the TMNT, but it does look pretty bad.
  11. mikeszekely
    I'm not familiar with him beyond his roles as Frank Costanza in Seinfeld and Arthur Spooner King of Queens, but he was hilarious in both of those roles. 92 is a good run, though.
  12. mikeszekely
    At first I was like, "what, they've been out for like a year!" Then I remembered that Walmart's got those exclusive Netflix ones. Been a long time since I went to Walmart. We're supposed to start relaxing restrictions here soon, maybe I'll swing by since the stuff I preordered from Walmart.com the day preorders went up got pushed to June.
  13. mikeszekely
    Although Siege and Earthrise have been big upgrades in quality and articulation over older Generations stuff (especially Prime Wars) it's clear with limited accessories and the hollow gaps that still plague many figures that they're still cutting costs by skimping on plastic. This has led to a surge of small Chinese groups releasing 3D-printed upgrade kits. In fact, I looked at some gap fillers for Siege Ratchet and Ironhide from a group called Ratchet Studio not long ago. And while I don't think I'll invest in gap fillers for every Siege and Earthrise figure to come down the pike I do think they can improve some of the more egregious examples of hollowness, especially if they come with other accessories. And so, since I was pretty pleased with the kits I got for Ratchet and Ironhide, I decided to give Ratchet Studio's kit for Siege Impactor a go. As with the other Ratchet Studio kits I looked at, these are 3D-printed and unpainted parts. All of the parts that will be visible have some molded details and are made of a silvery gray material. The yellowish pieces are filler. What you do with the yellow ones is stuff them into the cavities in Impactor's lower legs, one each for the upper gap and one for the lower gap. I was a bit concerned that the pieces that go into the lower legs don't exactly fit snugly; at first I thought they might rattle around. But they're just to keep the gray parts from sinking too deeply into the leg, and once the gray parts are in everything was snug and secure. The other pieces fit into the hollows on his thighs, biceps, the edge of his forearms, and his back. All of the parts fit snugly. The elephant in the room is that the parts aren't painted. I wish they'd have painted the forearm parts, or at least used purple plastic to make them, but honestly the other parts don't bother me that much. The biceps are so small, and you don't often look at the inner thighs or at his back. And truthfully I think the silvery color actually makes for some nice color breakup on the lower legs, kind of like the red instead of black or gray you find on the inside of some Megatron's legs. And it's not an expensive kit; you could get it for $12.99 shipped before the pandemic. I don't really recommend this one, though. You might remember that I have both this, the regular retail release of Impactor, and the more IDW-ish one that came in that Amazon box set. For that one, I decided to go with a different kit. This kit is from a company called GX Studio. And right away you'll notice that, first off, these parts are all painted. And second, whether it's because they're painted or whether GX Studio has a better printer or better print settings, the lines you get from the layering of 3D printers is much less noticeable on this kit. Many of the parts fill the same gaps that Ratchet Studio's did. You have parts to fill the gaps in the lower legs and thighs, again with some nice molded details. The lower leg fillers have arms on them that top the parts from going in too far, no extra fillers are necessary. The thigh fillers didn't seem to fit as well as Ratchet Studio's; the one I put in his left leg in particular kept popping back out and I had to glue it. GX Studio included another leg part here that Ratchet Studio didn't; small gray parts with some molded tread detail that fit the gap around the rivet behind the big main gap. Moving on to the arms, you again get a bicep filler (although my kit was missing the filler for the other bicep), and the gap in the edge under his fists. In another difference from the Ratchet Studio parts they don't just fill that bit shaped like a chef's knife at the front. It fills the whole gap, wrapping over the edge and filling into the circular part under his arm. GX Studio does it again with their back filler. Rather than two separate parts that fit into the hollows and sit flush with the existing plastic GX's is a single part that goes over the edges in the middle and covers the slot for the mushroom peg in his waist. Not content to stop with those hollows, GX Studio also includes two rounded plugs that fit into the large rivet holes on his back. Then, more to bulk up the tank mode than for any robot-mode reasons, you get these large purple panels that fit onto the outside of his legs by pegging into the 5mm ports on the outside. Note that they new panels don't have other 5mm ports, so if you're into the Siege play pattern of ripping up Weaponizers and jamming guns into every available port you're going to be short those ones. Lastly, GX Studio made a whole new shoulder gun. Although it's painted it's not quite perfect; there should be more purple on the barrel and silver on the sides. However, the sculpt is very good and much closer to what he has in the IDW comics. To swap the shoulder guns you just have to pull the existing one off its hinge and push the new one into its place. As with the extra leg armor, though, the new gun doesn't have the 5mm ports that the original one did. Due to the fact that they're painted (and the color is a fair match) and the fact that the print lines are much less noticeable the GX kit comes across as less noticeable because the parts seem better integrated. And I like how the extra leg parts and new cannon help make the "Decepticon" Impactor a more visually distinct IDW Impactor next to the "Autobot" Marvel version. Impactor's transformation is unaffected by either kit. I was a little concerned that the extra overhanging plastic on the forearm parts an back of the GX kit might make a difference, but nope. All good. That being said, what does make a difference is the new leg panels. You'll notice that they stick up a bit on the sides, effectively blocking the turret from rotating. If I had to guess, though, I think it might be an intentional choice. Impactor uses his waist for the turret swivel, which means it's set at the very back of the tank instead of closer to the middle. Swiveling the turret never really looked right, breaking the sculpt of the tank and exposing his robot thighs. I think GX Studio designed the leg armor to stop you from doing just that. Of course, if you really prefer to have the swivel then popping the leg armor off isn't a big deal since they're just attached via 5mm pegs. On the flip side, GX Studio added some other tank articulation. The new cannon has an additional hinge that allows it to aim upward instead of permanently lying flat on the top of the tank. The GX kit is more expensive, coming it at $17.99. However, for the extra $5 you're getting a higher quality, painted product that does a better job filling the gaps and provides a few other extra upgrades to boot. The only complaint I really have is that using all of the parts means loosing some 5mm ports for extra Siege weapons, but you retain enough to store the accessories that he actually comes with so I think it's a relatively minor complaint. My recommendation is that if you're looking to fill the gaps on Siege Impactor you should pass on Ratchet Studio in favor of GX.
  14. mikeszekely
    I'll be discussing this in the 3P thread... eventually. See, the people that made it decided to follow up with a second upgrade, so I decided to order it as well and I'll talk about both of them at the same time. For now, just know if you need a Roller for Earthrise Prime that this is the ZXB-01A upgrade kit, it is 3D printed in China, and that despite being 3D printed it's extremely well done. I picked it up for $18 at TF Safari.
  15. mikeszekely
    We might still be on lockdown, but that doesn't mean that I can't look at the toy section while I happen to be getting my essentials (unless you live in Michigan or something where they were forcing Walmarts to close off some aisles). Although, I can't say I actually saw much. Lots of Earthrise Micromasters, Siege Shockwaves galore, some recent (but not super recent) Studio Series stuff... and this guy: Earthrise Deluxe-class Ironworks. Here's the thing about Ironworks... the G1 version was a Micromaster that turned into a truck and came packaged with a base. We actually got a Micromaster that turned into a truck named Irontread in that Target 10-pack that was clearly meant to be a modern version of that Micromaster. Meanwhile, Earthrise Ironworks doesn't bear a ton of resemblance to the G1 version. He's got some yellow on his arms, ok, although the original had totally yellow arms. He's got some black on his shins, ok, but the original had black legs the whole way up. He does have a red face, but with a visor and mask, while as near as I can tell G1 Ironworks had an actual molded face. He does have the red patch on just one one side of his chest, but it's on a gunmetal piece on a largely black torso, while the G1 version had a torso more similar in color to this one's thighs. Ultimately Earthrise Ironworks is so different from G1 Ironworks that the similarities feel more like coincidences than callbacks. Ironworks does come with two little guns. Note that the the barrel of one is a 5mm port, and the butt of the other is a 5mm peg, so the two can be combined into one rifle. Ironworks' head is on a ball joint, so he can look up a little, down just a taste, and turn his head (sideways tilt is minimal). His shoulders can rotate and extend 90 degrees laterally. His biceps swivel. His right arm has a single elbow hinge that bends 90 degrees. His left arm is double-jointed and can technically bend a combined 180 degrees. However, engaging the upper joint will cause his bicep to collide with the yellow panel on the outside of his arm, limiting the swivel. If you want the full swivel you really have just 90 degrees at the lower joint. His left wrist (the actual hand) is fixed, but the black hook he has for a right hand does swivel. Due to how he's built he does have a waist swivel, but it's limited to about 20 degrees in either direction. His hips can go forward 90 degrees, backward just a little, and laterally over 90 degrees. His thighs swivel. His knees can bend nearly 180 degrees. His feet do not tilt up or down, but they can pivot up to 90 degrees. Ironworks has a bit fewer 5mm ports than you're probably used to these days. He does have his hand, of course. Additionally there's one on his right shoulder (the pad itself moves around the joint, so it can be positioned either on top or on the outside), one at the end of his right forearm, one on the inside of his left forearm, one on each knee, and one under each foot. Should they be of use to you there's a flip-out 5mm peg in the middle of his chest, and another poking out from under his left fist. When we flip Ironworks to alt mode we see that he's not a truck. Instead, he turns into the base that came with his G1 namesake. The resemblance here, with the official transformation, is a bit better, with the largely raised rectangular base, the ramp leading up to it, and the crane atop a raised "building". Of course the colors are quite different, with much less yellow, much more black, the addition of gunmetal, and no real red. Although I don't have the G1 version to compare it to I suspect that ER Ironworks is smaller than the original, as the base is comparable in size to a Deluxe car. The actual engineering is less transformation and more ripping him apart and sticking the pieces together in a different configuration, and the resulting alt mode doesn't hold together particularly well. As a base it doesn't do much. The ramp can hinge, and you can use the connection points to attach other ramps (like the trailer door/shield from Earthrise Prime). You can also use those connection points to attach him to Siege Omega Supreme, or presumably other bases they'll make like the impending releases of Airwave and Scorponok (although I remind you again that these connectors are NOT compatible with the ones from Titans Return and Power of the Primes, which is beyond dumb). The crane can swivel at the base and hinge up and down. Technically it can swivel and hinge up where the middle yellow part connects to the black, and swivel again where the black hook connects to the yellow part due to those being arm joints, but the hook itself can't hinge or move on any sort of cable. There's room for a Micromaster to sit on the deck. Of course, as I mentioned, Ironworks actually comes apart, so you're not limited to the official alt mode. The instructions suggest building a bridge, but you can find places to stick on the other parts. I'll mention here that the G1 base could transform into something like a windmill with a gun and a basket on it, and although I didn't try it you can apparently get something tower-like, with something like a basket, and you can stick the gun on the crane and put it where the original had its gun, and get something approximating the G1 base's other mode, sans windmill. What's more, Ironwork's various pieces have enough 5mm pegs on them that you can use him to armor up other Siege and Earthrise figures like a Weaponizer. Here's how his instructions direct you to armor up ER Wheeljack. Note that the scoop on his left arm, while looking kind of cool, is actually a tad heavy for that arm. Ok, what I'm about to say will seem like a tangent, but I'm going somewhere with it. The citybots were a big deal, even back at the time. Enough so that if you had one you definitely remember it. You remember their appearances in the cartoon and possibly the old Marvel comics. A lot of us bought the new Titan versions. It was cool getting Scamper and Full Tilt with Metroplex and Trypticon, and Cog, Sixgun, and Brunt (and eventually Fasttrack) was cool because it helped complete those new citybots (although I'd actually kill for a newer Deluxe-class Scamper and a transforming Deluxe-class Slammer). I think that desire to have with our Titan citybots what we had with the G1 versions helped us, or at least me, forgive some goofiness like Sixgun's "jet" mode. The Weaponizer play pattern was kind of a bonus, but it was really their ties to the citybots that sold me on them. Ironworks doesn't have that luxury. The play pattern itself is not a strong selling point. Coming as late as they did in G1 and without a ton of fiction behind them (nothing in the cartoon, some Marvel comics appearances) I don't think many of us have the same nostalgia for Micromaster bases as we do a lot of other stuff in the franchise. What's more, two tiny figures with extremely simple engineering and limited articulation, coming it at half the price of a Deluxe for maybe quarter of the plastic, hasn't been what I'd consider to be a good value. I've avoided buying most of the new Siege/Earthrise Micromaster sets, and I don't think I've really recommended any except for Soundwave's tapes. Consequently I don't think that taking a Micromaster base and turning it into a Deluxe-class figure that doesn't resemble or come with actual Micromaster its named for is one of Hasbro's better moves. While not necessarily a bad figure, Ironworks is simply the least-interesting regular Deluxe retail release to come out since the whole War for Cybertron reboot began. You might enjoy this figure if you have some attachment to the G1 base, or if you're planning to get and link more bases together, but I think for the majority this is an easy pass.
  16. mikeszekely
    New addition to my family of mini consoles. I guess they've been getting marked down on Amazon; I got this bundled with a white controller for $50. I... don't actually have a lot of attachment to the Neo Geo brand. I played a little Fatal Fury and Samurai Showdown on the SNES, but on the occasions where I had money to play at the local arcade I was usually playing stuff like Turtles in Time, Street Fighter II, or Mortal Kombat II. And while I was aware of the Neo Geo home console it was simply too expensive to be little more than some obscure thing the rich kid at school bragged about having (although I did nearly buy a Neo Geo Pocket Color when they were being sold for around $50 at the department store I worked at in college). So I'm a tad confused are the games on it arcade roms or the AES versions? Or is there really not much of a difference? I guess it makes sense that SNK would want to bank on nostalgia for the arcade hardware, especially with the Japanese audience where arcades were popular a lot longer than they were here, but if I'm being totally honest I kind of wish that instead of going for the arcade cabinet (and dumping money on the speakers and display) that they made the hardware look like a miniature AES or Neo Geo CD and just bundled it with the controller. As it stands, although it comes with a USB-C cable for power it doesn't come with an AC adapter (not a huge deal) or an HDMI cable (which wouldn't be a huge deal if it used a regular HDMI cable, but you actually need an HDMI mini cable for it, and I'm betting you don't have one of those laying around). I think this thing launched at $109 with no controllers aside from the built-in one, and frankly that seems like a ripoff. Even more so when you factor in the cost of one or two controllers ($26 a piece) and an HDMI mini cable (roughly $8). On the other hand, while prices have crept back up since I bought mine, the built-in joystick is surprisingly usable, so for $30 alone it's worth picking up. And even after bundling it with a controller ($20) and buying at second controller so my kid can play too ($23) I'm still a little under what I paid for my SNES Classic. Now if I could just get my hands on a TG16 mini...
  17. mikeszekely
    I recently went from a GTX 970 to an RTX 2080, so I'll be sitting the new round of GPUs out. As for AMD, I ran the free version of PCMark, and the Ryzen 4900HS in my new laptop beat the i7-9700K. If AMD is bringing that kind of performance to their desktop chips (no reason to think they won't) and Intel doesn't wow with the 11th-gen Core i-whatever, I'll be switching to team red.
  18. mikeszekely
    You could probably sell Rumble/Frenzy for a decent price to someone who just wanted to complete Soundwave's tapes, though.
  19. mikeszekely
    The rumor is that the 3080 could hit in August, then probably later in the fall or winter for the 70/60/50 etc.
  20. mikeszekely
    But short throw due to not bottoming out is what gave mechanicals the speed advantage. The speed advantage is negated because bottoming out a scissor switch is still a shorter throw than just actuating like 95% of the mechanical switches out there. Yes, you could make an argument that not having to bottom out is an advantage, but one related to feel not speed, and feeling is still subjective. Especially if you're a heavy-handed typist like I am who's going to bottom out the switch no matter what. The problem I have with mechanicals, like I just said, is that I'm a heavy-handed typist. Granted, I've only tried a few mechanical keyboards so I'm sure there are switches out there I haven't tried and there's probably still a possibility that I'll find one that this doesn't apply to, but for now I'll say that every keyboard I've ever typed on I've bottomed out. The way I learned to type (which at least taught me to touch type) back in the late '80s had me bottoming out the Macintosh IIs we used in school at the time. I actually do like the crisp feeling of many mechanical keyboards. However, the click of a switch might be the thing that's supposed to tell me to stop pushing, but muscle memory tells me to keep going until I hit the bottom. So I just can't get a short enough throw on anything that isn't a low-profile chiclet. I guess, at the risk of sounding totally insane, I'm looking for scissor switch that has crisp motion like a mechanical that bottoms out solidly and bounces back quickly. I don't want something that feels floaty while I'm pushing and bottoms out into cake.
  21. mikeszekely
    The majority of PC gamers are going to say that it sucks for gaming because it's not a mechanical keyboard. But I've yet to really hear a convincing argument as to why mechanical keyboards are superior*, and the fact remains that I still don't like typing on them. It really seems to come down to a tactile feel, and it's hard to describe what feels right. I want to say that why I like the keyboard built into my laptop is because the scissor switches have a crisp feel, almost like the actuator on a mechanical switch, but with low-profile chiclet keys and a very short throw. And my complaint with the desktop keyboards is that they seem to have the short throw down, but they're mushy as they bottom out and lack the crispness that I'm looking for. Ultimately I think you're right, and I'm just going to have to go to a store. And around here that's pretty much Best Buy (closest Micro Center is a three-hour drive). Whenever they actually reopen (our governor says we can move from red to yellow next week, but I have no idea if that means Best Buy can reopen or not). *OK, did a lot of late-night reading, and it seems a lot of the prejudice against non-mechanical keyboards isn't that they are superior, it's that they were superior. Basically, because mechanical switches didn't need to be pressed down as far as rubber domes something like 20 years ago and they provided a tactile click to let you know when they were actuated vs bottoming them out to be sure you could type faster on them. That advantage seems negated, as a good scissor switch on a chiclet keyboard will have a shorter throw even if you do bottom it out. PS/2 mechanical keyboards could register as many keys as you could mash at once, USB mechanicals at the time could do around six-key rollover, and membrane keyboards were doing two. But again, that's just not true anymore. The Deathstalker I'm using has 10-key rollover. The only true advantage mechanical keyboards seem to have is longevity, as rubber domes last for around 10 million clicks but a good mechanical switch should last for 50 million. But the rest really seems to come down to feel. Now, I'm not going to begrudge anyone for telling me they prefer the feel of a mechanical, but they don't feel right to me. And I'd rather replace my keyboard sooner (10 million clicks should still last for years) than keep one I hate for longer.
  22. mikeszekely
    I'll ask around about them. Really, after reading up on scissor switches, I'm starting to suspect that a lot of the mushiness that's bugging me on a lot of chiclet keyboards is a longer throw and bottoming out on plastic. I'm thinking an aluminum keyboard, or at least a plastic keyboard with a metal base under the domes, is probably a step in the right direction. Oh, and not that it truly matters, but the keyboard's for and Asus ROG Strix GL12CX desktop with Windows 10. It supports Bluetooth 5.0, so no worries there. Come to think of it the laptop does, too. And the MX Keys supports multiple devices. If I did end up going that route I suppose I could use it on my desktop most of the time, but I could occasionally hook my laptop up to my TV and use the MX Keys to play games from the couch. I couldn't use the same mouse for both, but I already have a Razer Basilisk wireless mouse I bought just for the laptop.
  23. mikeszekely
    MP Arcee just isn't doing it for me. Maybe if it gets KO'ed cheaply I'll pick up a copy just for the alt mode, but otherwise I'm more than happy with MMC's. In other news, I got these guys in the mail today: Generations Selects War For Cybertron Soundwave Spy Patrol. Or, as the box says, "Spy Patrol 3." There's four figures in the box, and they're all repaints/slight remolds of the previous Spy Patrol pack. Which is to say that you get "Frenzy" and Knok, who are repaints of "Rumble." That said, I don't care how much Hasbro doubles down on FIBRIR, nor do I care how Takara did it in Japan, I'm FIRRIB for life. So for the rest of this review Frenzy is the black and red one previously released with Ratbat, and Rumble is the new blue one, ok? Then, you also get Wingthing (orange) and Skar (purple), who are repaints of Ratbat. I've already covered the articulation of these figures when I reviewed Frenzy and Ratbat a couple months ago, so I won't go into that now, and like previous set they don't have any accessories. So this is going to be fairly short, and I guess I'm mostly going to talk about the character and design choices Hasbro did here. So yeah, Rumble is a straight-up repaint of Frenzy, trading the black torso and head for a dark blue one and the other red bits with a lighter blue. Although the feet on Rumble aren't painted, and he's got some new red accents on his knees, his legs and forearms are mostly the same black as Frenzy's, which means he's neither toy nor toon accurate, which is kind of a bummer. That said, even if the color isn't totally right, it feels really good to have Soundwave nearly complete with his Season 1 and 2 minions. We're still missing Buzzsaw, but he's kind of easy to overlook since he only appeared in maybe four episodes of the cartoon plus the battle of Autobot City in the movie. Next up is Wingthing. Now, with the Encore release of Wingthing as an orange repaint of G1 Ratbat and an MP Wingthing that was a TakaraTomy Mall-exclusive repaint of MP Ratbat, it makes some sense for Hasbro to pump out an orange repaint of Siege Ratbat and call it a day. Wingthing wasn't originally some obscure repaint of Ratbat, though; in the G1 toys he was the transforming weapon that came with Action Master Soundwave. Somehow that place in G1 history lends Wingthing a little more legitimacy in my eyes, making it easier for me to forgive the fact that we got him in this pack instead of a Buzzsaw repaint of Siege Laserbeak. With the little fold-out peg on his back you can even attach him to the end of Soundwave's blaster. See, he's a weapon, not a tape! To be honest, I rather like the Ratbat mold and Wingthing's colors are kind of awesome. So he wasn't actually my first pick to ditch for Buzzsaw. Why not ditch Knok, with vaguely Autobot colors, or Skar, because who needs two purple bats? And how many obscure tape repaints do we have to suffer before we get Buzzsaw, Slugfest, and Overkill? Who even is Skar anyway? Is Knok a new name for Enemy? But you'll notice that Knock and Skar aren't straight repaints; they both have new heads. The head on Skar looked super familiar to me, and then it hit me; these guys aren't tapebots at all! Knok and Skar are the Powermasters that came with G1 Doubledealer. I'd forgotten their names. Although I had Doubledealer as a kid he didn't appear in any US G1 fiction and I had no attachment to him. I was a fan of the Marvel comics, though, and Ratbat's stint as the leader of the Decepticons made an impact on me. And since I didn't have G1 Ratbat I very clearly remember pretending that G1 Skar was Ratbat. So, Skar and Knok aren't Soundwave's Spy Patrol, they're Doubledealer's Spy Patrol. And, although I think it's still a few months out and can't confirm this, apparently Earthrise Doubledealer's chest opens up like Soundwave's so you can store one of these guys inside. A quick look, should you need it, at their alt modes. Really nothing we haven't seen already. So, should you buy this? I mean, it's $20, and when you look at some of the better Deluxes that came out at the same price it's hard to say that these guys are worth that much. To be fair, though, that's the same price as two of the previous two-packs that a lot of us already bought so our Soundwaves would have Ravage, Laserbeak, and Frenzy. On that note, this seems to be the only way to get Rumble (or whichever one you think is the blue one), and Knok and Skar have some value as Doubledealer's partners. And Wingthing is fine, so if you have Soundwave and/or are planning to get Doubledealer then yes, I'd say you should think about picking it up. The only real reservation I have is that I'd feel better about recommending this set if Hasbro had replaced Wingthing with Buzzsaw.
  24. mikeszekely
    I'm not married to either; the single most important factor for me right now is the feel of the scissor switches. But my order of preference is wired, wireless but it can be used wired, wireless with a rechargeable battery I can keep using it while it's charging, user-replaceable AAs, any other user replaceable batteries.
  25. mikeszekely
    This has been going on for awhile, I guess, but I just found out about it now. If you don't have a good Omega Supreme yet BBTS is taking preorders for reissue of DX9's Gabriel, plus they've marked it down to a measly $180. That's something like $100 off the original price, less than Fans Toys or Wei Jiang's, and only like $20 more than Hasbro was charging for Siege Omega Supreme.
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