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mikeszekely

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Everything posted by mikeszekely

  1. mikeszekely
    Oh, good to hear. I have it preordered with my parents' house for the shipping address, so it'll be waiting for me when I get back to the States.
  2. mikeszekely
    What is? I'm in China and YouTube is blocked.
  3. mikeszekely
    Basically, this. The ASM movies were supposed to be part of a Spider-Man cinematic universe that was going to be Sony's answer to the MCU. They only cut a deal with Marvel after ASM2 bombed, but Sony's still holding the film rights to Spider-Man and they're still going ahead with a Spider-Man cinematic universe. I'm still curious to see how this shakes out. I've been a fan of Venom since the early '90s and I've collected most of his solo series since Lethal Protector. My one big complaint right now is that they're going with Eddie Brock instead of the far superior Agent Venom (which would bug me less, since Brock is "classic" Venom, if they hadn't killed the then-current Venom comic series just to launch a new one to give symbiote back to Brock).
  4. mikeszekely
    Oh, ok. I was hoping for an in-costume pic or something. Guess it's kinda early for that, though. Not to mention probably just a mo-cap suit.
  5. mikeszekely
    Anyone have a pic not on Twitter? I'm still in China and Twitter is blocked.
  6. mikeszekely
    A single player campaign, but loot boxes in multiplayer. One step forward, two steps back, if you ask me. Loot boxes are a necessary evil that creates revenue for free-to-play games; that sort of shenanigans has no business is a $60 AAA fall release.
  7. mikeszekely
    I know I keep saying that I'm not a fan of the Bayverse designs, but apparently the next movie MP (MPM-05) will be Barricade. And yeah, I kind of do want it. I think I'd be up for an MPM Starscream that isn't the Leader-class repaint, but that's it, that's where I'm drawing the line.
  8. mikeszekely
    Galaxy Meteor is my stack at TFSource. I'm still stuck in China on business, though, so I won't have my review up for another month. I'm expecting GT's Tyrant, their version of Don Figueroa's stealth bomber Megatron, to drop any day now. He'll ship with Galaxy Meteor.
  9. mikeszekely
    I have Mario Odyssey and FE Warriors on order to ship to my parents' house. I won't be able to play either at launch since I'm stuck in Shenzhen, but they'll be waiting for me when I get back.
  10. mikeszekely
    I don't have their monster bots, so no comment there, but I have their RiD Scourge and their Laser Optimus. Not sure what makes you say that they look flimsy; they're solid, chunky pieces. My only real complaints are that the transformation is too simple. I'm not arguing for super complicated transformations with extra clever engineering when you don't really need it, mind you, but a little extra engineering would have adressed my only real aesthetic gripes with that mold. Maketoys would be my first choice for a Fire Convoy, because their style is aces for that Japanese super robot style, but Fans Hobby would be my second choice because they've got a track record of solid, chunky, MP-sized figures of characters outside the G1 cartoon with reasonable articulation.
  11. mikeszekely
    I'm right there with you, Scyla. Fire Convoy is my favorite non-G1 (or G1-inspired, like IDW) Optimus. I'd kill for Maketoys or Fans Hobby to take a crack at an MP-style Fire Convoy.
  12. mikeszekely
    I'm not sure I'm comfortable starting a whole new thread just to index my posts. Unless the mods are cool with it? But maybe I could make a public Google Docs page with links to the posts, then put the link to the doc in my sig. You're giving me ideas. As for the rest... you guys are really encouraging! Kuma, you're right, there's stuff like Wordpress and Blogger, I could always mess around with those. I also have an offer from a fellow board member to host reviews on his site, so that's an option to consider as well. Whatever I end up doing, it's going to be awhile. I'm leaving in the morning, and for the next five weeks I'll be behind the great firewall of China. Meteor's going to be my last review for that period, but I'm sure stuff is going to drop into my TFSource stack while I'm gone, plus I'm hoping to visit Hong Kong and Action Robo while I'm there, so I'll hopefully have some new stuff for you guys when I get back.
  13. mikeszekely
    Thanks for the kind words! Indexing would be a good idea... just not sure how to implement it on the boards. I could maybe move to a blog, but I've not got the photography skills nor the HTML skills to make anything as nice as some of the other blogs out there.
  14. mikeszekely
    Do you have a pic of the kind of nozzles you mean?
  15. mikeszekely
    No need to apologize. I don't think it's your fault that the trailer is basically just some characters running. If it's airing now, I'll probably wait until the whole series is done then check it out.
  16. mikeszekely
    The original G1 toy, the G1 Pretender, and the G1 Action Master all have a black face. His face isn't silver in the cartoon, either. That said, I think the glossy dark gray that MT used for Meteor is too dark. A couple of people have repainted him with a metallic gunmetal, and that works really good. I'm not doing anything now since I'm going on a long business trip early next week, but when I get back I'm going to buy an airbrush and, when I feel comfortable with it, repaint at least one of Meteor's faces as well as Despotron's shins.
  17. mikeszekely
    I think I need to see more than a minute of people running to form an opinion.
  18. mikeszekely
    I agree, but I'll say again that Meteor really does look better in person than he photographs. The red paint on his torso is almost metallic, and he does have a fair bit of panel lines on his wings. I'd have preferred more detail, sure, especially in the chest vents and shoulder intakes, but I think Meteor has MUCH better proportions than MP-03/11 and I'm still very happy with Meteor. I've had him on the shelf next to Despotron for awhile, and Meteor really doesn't look out of place. In fact, with Despotron's extra beefy silhouette, together they kind of remind me of the old Revoltech figures. Well, I'm not in the business of telling people that they're right or wrong regarding their own personal collection. If people think Meteor is too plain, and that bothers them more than MP-11's offish proportions, lack of ariculation, and floppy torso then they gotta do what's right for them. My opinion, though, is that Meteor is excellent despite his overly cartoonish appearance. I still recommend him.
  19. mikeszekely
    You guys wanted it, and here it is: my review of Meteor, Maketoys take on a masterpiece G1 Starscream. And yeah, it's just Meteor on the box and instructions... MT must have ditched the Howling part somwhere along the way. How you feel about Meteor, aesthetically, will probably be informed by how you like newer MPs like Megatron and Inferno vs Optimus and the MP cars. Meteor is cartoon accurate to a fault. He's lacking any detail inside his shoulder intakes, save for a pair of molded triangles that match the cartoon's animation model. He's got some black paint in his chest vents, but no rotors. Where the official MPs and even ToyWorld's coneheads have raised sections on the shins, similar to the G1 toys, Meteor just has painted trapezoids. Meteor really looks like he jumped out of the cartoon, but I do prefer my MP toys to look like the robots the simplified animation models could have been based on, not the animation models themselves. This is how Takara is doing things now, though, and I can't deny that it's a very spot-on Starscream. The materials are quite good. I think the plain look and the glossy paint MT used make him look a bit cheap in photos, but in hand the plastic feels great and he's got lots of paint and even some diecast. Size-wise, he's basically the same size as MP-03 (and I think MP-11), and way shorter than ToyWorld's Coneheads. If Starscream were shorter than Skywarp and Thundercracker that'd really bug me, but I guess I don't mind the Coneheads being bigger, as long as the Coneheads are the same size relative to each other. But I digress... I think he even cleans up on the back pretty well. I don't know about the MP-11 mold, but even with some nosecone and a buttflap back there I feel like he's got less nose cone and less kibble than at least MP-03. And yes, the wings aren't quite filled in back there, but I'm finding that it looks worse in photos than it seems in hand. I think that's a running theme with this guy; pictures really don't do him any favors. Really, I'm not even sure how well it's turning up in the photos, but most of Meteor isn't white but a very light gray. Meteor doesn't come with a ton of accessories, but I don't really need him to. You've got his null rays, which are the important thing. You've also got two white bits that I wasn't entirely sure what they were for at first, and the instructions don't mention them. You aslo have two alternate faces and an alternate head with a hand molded onto it. The faces are a shade too dark, and they're tough to photograph. You've basically got an open-mouth yelling/whining face, a neutral face, and a smirking face. Again, photos aren't doing him any favors, as the smirking face looks pretty bad zoomed in like this but it looks perfect on the toy. The extra head with the molded hand is half an accessory for Meteor, and half an accessory for MT's earlier Despotron figure. Basically, you pop Meteor's head off the ball joint. The replacement head pops onto the ball joint, but there's a slot at the wrist of the molded hand that fits onto the mushroom peg you'll reveal if you pop Despotron's left hand off. When it's properly set up on both figures, what you have is Despotron choking Meteor. If there's one thing that's going to set Meteor apart from other versions of the Seekers it's going to be articulation. Meteor has it in spades. His head is on a ball joint. Rotating his head, looking down, and tilting his head is no problem. He can't, however, look up. Well, he's a flyer, not a minibot, so I'm not too fussed. Moving along, his wings are hinged so they can fold back a bit, and another hinge lets them swing outward. His shoulders can rotate and extend 90 degrees out to the sides. He has bicep swivels and double-jointed elbows that don't quite fold all the way around but do get well over the 90 degrees most figures seem to get. His wrists swivel. His thumb is fixed, his index finger is individually pinned at the base with a second pinned mid-knuckle so he can point, while the remaining three fingers are molded together and pinned just at the base. Unlike MP-03/MP-11, Meteor has a waist swivel. Going one better, due to his transformation he has an ab crunch, too. His hip skirts and butt flap are on hinges and can move out of the way so that he can 90 degrees backward and over 90 degrees forward on soft ratchets, and over 90 degrees laterally on a friction joint. His thighs can swivel. His knees are double jointed. The upper joint is a very stiff ratchet that only seems to get maybe two clicks, while the lower joint is a strong friction hinge. Combined, you get maybe 120-130 degrees of bend. Hinges on the inside of his legs give his entire foot about 45 degrees of inward ankle tilt, but aside from that his foot is a little weird. Due to his transformation, the blue part of his feet are on a double-jointed ratchet that allows him to bend his toes down, but also to move that whole part of his foot up and down. In any case, it's not difficult to get Meteor into some very dynamic poses. Of course, Meteor turns into an F-15. I'm not going to judge it against any real F-15s for accuracy; MP-11 probably makes a better "realistic" jet. What I will say is that the jet is pretty cartoon-accurate. He's even got a pair of gray panels to match the cartoon, although they're sitting a bit forward. I do wish they'd have painted the hinges in the middle of his vertical stabs, though, so the red stripes would have been continuous. I'll also say that, while I know we have our aviation enthusiasts here that if what I wanted was a good-looking F-15 I'd buy a nice F-15 model kit. If sacrifices are made to the alt mode to make a good robot mode, I'm ok with that. The transformation is different. It takes a little getting used to, especially the way his nosecone kind of explodes then reforms or the way his torso kind of folds in on itself to make room for his arms, but one you know what you're doing it's a much better experience than MP-03/11, and I think even better than ToyWorld's. Just be advised that the front of the nosecone is connected via something like a c-clip, and it'll probably come off during transformation. That's probably better than breaking off, and it's just during transformation; once you have him in either mode it's not going to come off during regular handling. Size-wise, he again is extremely close to MP-03 (and by extension MP-11). He's also pretty close in size to ToyWorld's Seekers in jet mode (which is another reason why I'm generally ok with their somewhat larger bot modes). So about those white bits that I said I wasn't sure about at first? What I figured out was that you can pull the barrels off of the null rays and peg the white bits in their place. What you're left with is something that's not the missiles you get with other Seekers, but something akin to the G1 toy's swappable missiles. The result is also some very cartoon-style weapons under his wings. It's a nice touch, but without a place to store the smaller tips in bot mode or a place to store the null ray barrels in jet mode I and probably most people will just stick with the null rays and leave the smaller tips in the box with the extra faces. The underside in general is a bit less tidy than some of the other Seeker options, but I find that sort of evocative of the cartoon as well. While Meteor's got enough panel lines molded onto this mode, he's lacking some of the touches found on toys like MP-11. He has landing gear, but it's molded into the shape of wheels and doesn't actually have rolling wheels. He's lacking the air brake and radar inside the nosecone. His engine nozzles do rotate for transformation, but they're not ball-jointed so you can't pretend he's got thrust vectoring. His feet are also pretty noticeable back there. You can open his canopy, but there's no seats or any cockpit details inside. Speaking of the cockpit, MT eschewed the sort of translucent canopy you'd expect and instead put translucent gold plastic over silver paint. It's a less realistic but more cartoony look, which goes back to what I said earlier about making sacrifices in alt mode for a better-looking bot. I do indeed recommend Meteor. He's a tad plain, especially in photos, but he really does look the part. I think he's got better proportions, he's much more solid in robot mode, and he's got much better articulation than pretty much any other option you have. I think a fair number of people are going to be turned off by the too-cartoony aesthetic, the unfinished underside of the wings, or the fact that he can't look up, though. Personally, I think the better articulation, better robot proportions, and better transformation make up for the extreme cartoon look. If you don't have an MP Starscream Meteor is unquestionably the best version of him currently available and as close to a no-brainer as you're going to get. By now, though, a lot of you probably already have MP-03, MP-11, or one of the various KOs of MP-11 floating around. You may be thinking that MP-11 fits better with the older MP aesthetic, and you might be thinking that Meteor has enough little flaws that it's not worth shelling out $120 to replace what you have (let alone replacing ALL of your Seekers with new ones). And to you guys, say you should reconsider. Meteor is that good in hand.
  20. mikeszekely
    They announced it as GT-11, but only as a silhouette. I'd expect their bomber Megatron first (soon, really), then either all of their Defensor and Optimus Primal or some of their Defensor, Optimus Primal, then the rest of their Defensor first. That's at least a year, probably more, before Sideswipe. And if I were a betting man, I'd say Primal is released in the middle of Defensor, and Primal's sales will determine if they go forward with the T-Beast designs or cancel it.
  21. mikeszekely
    From what I was told MT tried to cast non-hollow wings and the plastic warped, hence the need to go to the hollow wings. Now they could have made parts to fit on the underside, but yes, they'd have to have new steel molds for them. Those molds are VERY expensive, and it was estimated that they'd add a minimum of $20 per figure, possibly more. While it's easy enough for you or I to say that we'd pay it, the 3P market in general seems to be tighter with their money lately. There was a lot of criticism that Downbeat was too expensive because the earlier official MP cars cost less despite the fact that most 3P toys that size had previously been around Downbeat's $99 price, and I've noticed that some of MT's other recent Re:Master figures have been discounted in MT's own store. Galaxy Meteor dropped $40 everywhere before it was even released. MT had to make a call, and it seems that they bet that most people wouldn't be willing to pay the extra, especially when they're competing against YesModel and BB7's cheaper MP-11 KOs. Plus a lot of people are going to be thinking, "This looks good, but is it good enough to replace the MP-11 I already have?"
  22. mikeszekely
  23. mikeszekely
    Then you'll be glad to know that MT is planning on doing Cybertron Optimus (and yes, I'll probably get him and write about him when it happens. Also that Fans Hobby is doing Powermaster Op. (And that I'm planning on getting that one, too.) I guess that's less than ideal for Galaxy Force/Cybertron fans, but honestly, I hope you're right. Me personally, I'd rather they did RiD Optimus, Armada Optimus, Starscream, and Megatron, and Energon Megatron (and Optimus, if they take enough liberties and make one that isn't fat and crappy) before they did someone like Landmine. Ostensibly, Leonidas is Lio Convoy, a character from the Japanese-only Beast Wars II anime. In the anime, just like the original Beast Wars cartoon (at least before Transmetals), Lio Convoy and the other Beast Wars II characters had mostly normal-looking, organic beast modes. However, in more recent times, a fan created a pair of doujinshi called T-Beast. In it, the artist reimagined some Beast Wars characters as well as some G1 characters with mechanical beast modes. AFAIK, that's basically the version of Lio Convoy that Perfect Effect (and NeoArt) used as the basis for Leonidas. Fun fact, it's also the basis for Generation Toys' upcoming Optimus Primal. Apparently they're going to do a Sideswipe that turns into a bull and a Rodimus that turns into a mountain lion, too. They're pretty cool art books, worth checking out. (As for GT's figures, I'm down for Primal and would probably be cool if they did the main Beast Wars cast, but I'm not really interested in rebuying my G1 characters with funky animal alt modes.)
  24. mikeszekely
    Out of curiosity, how old were you when Cybertron was on, Kuma? I was in my mid twenties already, kind of glad that RiD and the UT were introducing a new generation to Transformers that actually turned into cars and planes but I wasn't really enticed into collecting until Classics. I think MT moving into non-G1 MPs could be pretty smart. That new generation, guys like you (I assume), are old enough now to have the disposable income to go for high-quality collectibles of the stuff you grew up with. While others are fighting it out in a crowded G1 market, a market where more and more people are saying stuff like, "I just need Skids and then I'm done," MT is basically alone catering to UT fans. The only question is whether or not there are enough of you willing to open your wallets. I hope so, but I gotta be honest, I don't see myself going for more than Starscream, Prime, and Megatron.
  25. mikeszekely
    Wasn't a fan of the Unicron Trilogy, so I was going to pass on Galaxy. But between the price drop, the glowing reviews from the people that got early copies, and the fact that I've really liked the other MT figures I've bought changed my mind. It's still listed as a preorder from my retailer, though. Even if it comes in today they ship slow, so it won't get here before I leave. So I'll leave it sit and hope that Unique Toys' Onslaught and GT's bomber Megatron come out while I'm gone so I can ship them all when I get back in mid November.
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