mikeszekely

Hey, I decided to post this in the computer and electronics thread, since it was kind of a technical post. But I wanted to invite you guys to swing by there and check out the emulation box I built with an NES, some PC parts, an OS called Lakka, some ROMS, and an 8bitdo NES30 Pro controller.

Well, I did it. First, I took an old NES and I removed everything inside except for the power and reset switches, the LED, and the associated circuit board and wiring. I also left the plastic parts in the controller ports, but I removed all the wiring. I also Dremeled all of the raised screw holes except five of the ones that hold the top case on (the middle rear had to go, it was in the way). While I was Dremeling, I made my first mistake and marked off where I thought the IO plate would go without taking into account the standoffs. Oops. Speaking of standoffs, I felt the need to use them. Now, viewed from the bottom the NES has perpendicular channels that, from the inside, look like a raised cross. My first thought was to run the standoffs through it, but a mini-ITX motherboard only has four screw holes, and none of them lined up with the raised area. My solution was to screw a piece of balsa wood to the raised areas, from the back of the NES to up to the power/reset/LED circuit board. Except the mobo was still longer than that, so I ripped out the reset switch, glued a little strip of balsa wood to the top of the circuit board, and stuck a piece of a dowel rod in the front corner. With all that done, I could screw the standoffs into the wood, being careful not to go all the way through the wood I glued to the circuit board. Speaking of glue, I tossed the mechanical parts of the reset switch but glued the button back into the case for aesthetics. Standoffs in place, I could then install the hardware. I used an MSI B150i mini-ITX motherboard, and I picked it because it's a relatively affordable Intel mini-ITX motherboard with integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, which comes in handy when you get to the software part. The CPU is a Core i3-6100T, which is almost certainly more powerful than I needed but draws just 35w, which is just over half of any cheaper Intel CPU with that socket, and rather than the stock cooler I used a Silverstone NT07-115X low-profile cooler. I finished it off with 4GB Crucial Ballistix DDR4 RAM and a spare Kingston 128GB SSD. I'd wanted to use a larger M.2 drive, but the drive is M.2 SATA and the M.2 slot on the mobo is PCIe only. I also bought a cable that fits the mobo's USB 3.0 header on one end and splits into a pair of female USB 3.0 ports. I have those tucked behind the NES's cartridge door so they're hidden most of the time but easily accessible if I need them. The system is powered with a picoPSU0150-XT, which is really just a little circuit board that plugs into the mobo's main ATX connection and has wiring coming off of it for your CPU, one SATA device, and one IDE device. I drilled a hole in the back of the NES and set it up so the picoPSU plugs into a 150w AC adapter, like a laptop. Initially I had an ATX power switch I used to turn it on for testing, but I really wanted to use the NES's power switch. That wasn't too hard; first I did a little reading and figured out that the Power switch used the red and brown wires, and (important for later) the LED used one wire and shared the brown with the power switch. I cut off the harness that connected the 5 wires coming from the power/reset/LED circuit board off, then removed all the wires except the red and brown (I also made a small cut into the circuit board that was necessary to sever a circuit; not clear on why it was necessary, but that's what my reading told me). To keep things easy, I got a Dupont crimper, crimped the red and brown wires, and jammed them into a housing so I could plug them right onto the motherboard. I also had to remove a tiny strip of metal and a little staple from behind the power switch; that's what made is so the power switch stayed clicked in. Getting the LED to work was slightly more involved. I took two of the wires, an orange and white, that I'd removed originally, and decided that the orange was positive and the white negative, then crimped and housed them like I did with the power switch. I cut the 5th wire in half, stripped both ends of each piece, and taped one end of each to one side of a button cell battery. I used the other ends to figure out which lead was positive and which lead was negative on the LED, then soldered the orange and white wires accordingly. Long story short, pushing the NES's original power button turns the box on, and when it's on the NES's original power LED comes on. Oh, and my mistake? I had too much cut out of the back of the NES. It looks messy as heck, but I just patched it up with Sugru. No one's going to be looking at the back anyway. To keep things simple, I used Lakka for an OS. Lakka is a fork of OpenELEC, a version of Linux stripped down to just enough of an OS to run Kodi. Lakka is similarly stripped down, but instead of running Kodi it runs RetroArch. Once it's set up, Lakka is a great OS for a console-like device. In fact, it's very similar to the PSP/PS3's XMB, with horizontal entries for each "playlist" (that is, a list of ROMs for a given console, like the NES), and vertical entries for the playlist entries (the ROMs themselves), and entirely navigable with a controller. However, setting Lakka up can be pretty involved. To put ROMS on the Lakka box, you have to move them over your home network. Once they're in the right folder, you can have Lakka scan the folder and generate the playlists. However, if Lakka isn't sure what a given ROM is, it'll simply not include it on the playlist, so I had to go through and figure out which ROMs weren't included for each playlist, find the playlist file, and manually write the entries (six lines per ROM) in a text editor that's cool with the Linux format (I used Notepad++). Now, remember when I said that bluetooth would be useful? Lakka supports a number of bluetooth controllers, including the PS3 and the PS4's. However, I couldn't get the PS4's working. For that matter, I wasn't getting any sound. Lakka's simple settings options in the OS weren't cutting it, so I had to use Putty to create a remote terminal session with the Lakka box, edit some config files, mess with the bluetoothctl command and... well, I set the clock to my time zone and fixed the audio. I got the PS4 controller to pair, but I couldn't get it to stay paired between reboots. Well, a PS3 or PS4 controller, even one with NES-ish decals, didn't really feel appropriate enough. I decided to get something more suiting but still with enough buttons for all my emulated systems, and I settled on 8bitdo's NES30 Pro controller. It still required me to set it up via remote terminal, but unlike the PS4 controller it stays paired. (For the record, a PS3 controller paired exactly the same way as it does on a PS3 console; plug it in with a USB cable, hit the button, and it's paired... if even that's too much trouble it'll also work with a bunch of other controllers over a wired connection). So now my box is up and running, with playlists for TurboGrafx-16, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, NES, SNES, N64, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Sega Game Gear, PlayStation, and PSP, and I'll ballpark it at 500+ games (including all 30 on the NES Classic). I've tested each core, and everything seems to be running at full speed, at fullscreen (with black bands to maintain the correct aspect ratios). I played through Super Mario Bros 3 entirely (without warp whistles!), and everything felt just as I remembered. Video is over HDMI to a 42" 1080p HDTV, so not everything looks so hot, but the various emulator cores support things like graphics filters as well as cheats and save states. The playlists I made are just from the ROMs that I served to it, but Lakka/RetroArch has cores for many more including various arcade hardware, the Nintendo DS (although I'm not sure how well that'd work without a touchscreen or at least a mouse), and the Dreamcast. "Now Mike," you're probably saying, "couldn't you have done this WAY cheaper if you'd gone with Raspberry Pi with Lakka or Retropie? And the answer to that is a resounding yes, probably like a quarter of what I spent, and I'd probably been able to make fewer, smaller cuts to the NES's case. So why'd I do it with PC hardware? Three reasons; first, I'd been saying for probably 10 years that I was going to build a PC in an NES... it just took the release of the NES classic to actually motivate me to do it. Second, somewhat related to the first, is that I've been building PCs a long time and I'm comfortable working with PC hardware. While I'm sure that Raspberry Pi is probably easy enough to work with, I felt like going with what I already know. And the third, most important reason, is power. From what I've read, Raspberry Pi has some trouble with Saturn, Dreamcast, and PSP emulation, and while I could live without Saturn and Dreamcast I want to be able to play stuff like Gundam Battle Universe and Macross Triangle Frontier. Also, while the RetroArch team has hit some roadblocks, there's hope they'll eventually get a Dolphin core for Gamecube emulation, which seems unlikely to run on any current Raspberry Pi hardware.

Pass. If all I cared about were the games I'd emulate them on one of the numerous devices I already have than can play NES ROMs. The NES Classic is all about hardware nostalgia, and a Famicom just isn't enough I grew up with.

Since the board's going to be down from this weekend until after Christmas, I'll just give you a preview of what I'll be writing about when the board comes back up. To be honest, I hadn't planned on picking them up yet, since replacing Quantron with the Warbotron Computron and finishing Poseidon and TFM's Menasor are my top collection priorities, but long story short I won an ebay auction and wound up paying about $150 shipped for the whole set. Even better, I'd just assumed with a price that low that it was a used set and was just hoping that it wasn't missing any pieces or turn out to be the OS KO version, but when they arrived I saw that they're brand new in sealed boxes.

Her curves and heels are a little exaggerated, but aside from that it's a fairly accurate bot mode. As for the exaggerations, just like with their Devastator and their Optimus they're going with Studio OX. Personally, I'm ok with the bot mode but the rear is so half-arsed that there's no way I'd consider it (even if it weren't too tall for my collection).

Hate to interrupt all the Downbeat discussion, but I've got one more review for you guys. Here's TFC's Ironshell, their version of Snaptrap/Turtler. I'm going to open by saying that it's kind of ironic that TFC used gray for Overbite and Skalor's hands, but then lavender for the one guy who's supposed to have black hands... but if we're being totally honest, I kind of like the lavender hands. On the subject of lavender, I think the lavender parts are fine and (aside from his shoulders) were they should be, but like Overbite his pink and "blue" parts are darker and more reddish and greenish than they should be. The elephant in the room is his head, which apes the 2010 reissue's use of the blue/green plastic for the head instead of black. If it bugs you, it looks like it should be fairly easy to split the green plastic from the translucent plastic and remove his head to spray paint it black, and doing so would likely make his head stand out better against the shell on his back, but I find myself wondering if the green really doesn't fit the overall aesthetic better. His cannons, after some fear that they'd be a translucent color, are black. There's plenty of G1 Snaptrap in his overall form, too. He's still got the cannons on his back, and the turtle head running through the middle of his torso. He's still got turtle legs hanging out on the backs of his legs, although now they're sort of squished up into heel spurs. He's got two circles at the base of each shin as a call back to his G1 feet, but TFC gave him actually feet with translucent blue claws. Speaking of translucent parts, TFC added some translucent blue shin armor that can be hinged up into knee pads (not pictured because I didn't realize they moved until after I'd taken my pictures). And, like the other two, Ironshell trades a lot of the G1 '80s blocky robot appearance for vaguely organic, vaguely aquatic angles. While fans looking for the kind of G1 accuracy that companies like FansToys are known for might be disappointed, overall I think TFC's updated take is pretty sharp. He's a pretty big dude. Poseidon's limb-bots come up just under his chest, and little MP Bumblebee can't even make it to Ironshell's hips. He's about even in height with Combiner Wars Leader Megatron, maybe a hair shorter, and just half a head shorter than MP-10. I'd need to take apart all my other combiners to be sure (and I'm not doing that right now), but he may very well be the largest torso-bot in my collection. He comes with his gun, two blade thingies, and two rods of some sort. Other people have been playing with the gun and trying to combine it with Overbite's and Skalor's, and there does seem to be something to that. For my reviews, though, we'll wait until all six members are in hand and we review combined mode to get into that. The blade thingies, likewise, will combine with the other swords to form Poseidon's sword, and we'll cover that later too. The rods are odd. The instructions don't indicate any use for Ironshell himself, and logically they look like they'll be part of the sword (swords?). Each rod is actually made up of two silver bits, two pink bits, and a gray rod running through the inside, and depending on how the parts are arranged it looks like they can be one long handle or two shorter ones. But again, we'll examine them more when we look at the combined Poseidon. The blade thingies can sort of pass for tonfas, I guess. He can hold the gun fine, too, but getting it into his hand is kind of a pain. The handle actually splits in half, and the lower part hinges away. You have to work the top part in, clip the bottom half back onto a little peg that I'd be worried about wearing down or breaking in the long run, then wrapping his hand around it. The bottom half of the shell does not come off, and he cannot use it as a shield. For articulation, his head is on a ball joint for rotation and upward tilt. He doesn't really have any downward tilt, because the point of his chin rest on the hinge for the turtle head. He does have a good amount of lateral tilt, tough, if you like your Transformers to look confused. His shoulders are on ratcheted posts for rotation, with a ratcheted hinge that'll get you a little under 90 degrees. Due to the size of his shoulders you may have to unplug the shell on his back for clearance. He's got bicep swivels, and double-jointed elbows that are ratcheted at the upper joint. Despite being double-jointed, he can still only get about 90 degrees of elbow bend due to the shape of his forearms. His wrists can swivel. His thumb is fixed, and his fingers are all hinged at the base knuckle for opening and closing. His index finger can move independently of the other three, though, and there's a second hinge so he can point. His waist can swivel (and surprisingly is just a friction joint). His hips are ratcheted universal joints that can kick 90 degrees forward, 90 degrees backward (if his shell would let his butt flap move out of the way), and over 90 degrees laterally. He's got ratcheted swivels above the knee, which is good enough, and ratcheted knees that can bend a little over 90 degrees. His feet are on ball joints, but that ball joint is at the end of an armature that's hinged on the outside of his shin. Between the two joints, his foot can tilt up a little, 90 degrees down, rotate at the ankle, and give you all the ankle tilt you could ever want. His toe claws are hinged and can point in or out. Ironshell's turns into a Blastoise (ok, technically G1 Snaptrap did the dual-cannon turtle thing first, but c'mom). I feel like I can be a little harder on this mode, because it's actually been animated while robot mode I'm just going off of the G1 toy and the old Marvel comics. His head looks more like a snapping turtle than either the G1 toy, Marvel comics, or Masterforce Turtler, and I'm not totally sold on it (or TFC's insistence that the whole head be one color instead of letting the lower jaw be a different color). He's missing (likely for the sake of Poseidon's articulation) the extension off of the back of the shell that looked like a tail. He's got a bunch of extra magenta splashed on the shell that I'm not on board with (although the silver details are fine). But most egregiously, he's missing the lavender shoulders/hips. That effects him visually, both by all but eliminating a color from this mode and by having the legs come straight down from the body instead of out the sides like an actual turtle, but also limits his articulation. His jaws can open and close, and he can look up and down. If you unpeg the base of the neck, you can fudge in some left-right movement and some rotation as well. All four turtle legs can bend at the knees and have ball-jointed feet for up/down and a little bit of in/out tilt, plus he can rotate at the ankles and his claws are hinged to move independently. There's a little bit of play in the front legs for some extremely limited thigh/knee swivel. He's got silver butt-wings that can either be folded in for a more turtley look, folded out all the way for a G1 look, or folded halfway for a flying turtle look. His guns lack the "pom-pom" gimmick of the G1 toy, but again they do extend so you can simulate the look, plus they have a hinge and a rotation joint so you can aim them as you please. And that's about it. With no hips/shoulders, you can maybe adjust how high the turtle is, or stagger the legs like he's walking, but you can't use his front legs like arms and stand him on his hind legs, limiting his ability to pull off some of Turtler's poses. Or Blastoise's. Gripes with the turtle mode aside, he's a decent figure. He's got that same "I can't believe this is TFC" quality that their Skalor has. Everything feels solid and there's plenty of ratchets. I love his robot mode. If you were in it just for a Turtler you might want to pass, because I do think his turtle mode could have used a little more work, but if you dig his robot mode like I do I don't think his turtle mode is bad enough for me to tell you not to get him. Besides, I doubt many of us are going to buy a toy just to have Turtler and not King Poseidon/Piranacon, and so far so good there... although you'll have to wait for my full Poseidon review to be sure.

I dig an ab-crunching G1 Jazz, but I hope that's not the final paint/plastic. Too matte, looks like cheap KO plastic to me. They don't have to give him the pearlescent paint that J4ZZ has, but a nice gloss white would do wonders.

I don't really collect MPs, but it seems like some MPs are about the right size for what I do collect. ToyWorld's Bii has been my Bumblebee for awhile, but some concerns over how well he'll hold up in the long run (the mirrors are already coming off) and a Cyber Monday sale prompted me to pick up MP-21G G2 Bumblebee. Let me get this out of the way first... I get that MP Bumblebee is more cartoon-accurate, but I think Bii looks better anyway. MP Bumblebee is crappy Sunbow, Bii is Guido Guidi comic book. Bii's got a better headsculpt, no gaps in his wrists, ditches the yellow undies, and is wider at the chest so he looks more heroic. Bii is a cool Bumblebee, MP-21 is the crappy Autobot that was always driving Spike around. Both toys have similar articulation and can strike similar poses. Bii arguably cleans up better from behind, too. Then there's the alt mode... It's obvious that they're going for two different aesthetics. Bii has the chibi penny racer proportions of the G1 toy and the cartoon, while MP-21 presents itself as a realistic Volkswagen Beetle. Which you prefer is perhaps even more subjective than the robot mode. MP-21 does look like a real Beetle, but as Bumblebee he looks oddly thin and stretched to me. So again I find myself preferring Bii, and Bii is staying in my display. But MP-21 is going on my desk. See, while I think Bii looks better, MP-21 plays better. Bii is a pain to transform; I don't think I've ever transformed him without something popping off, usually one of the windows or part of the rear. The windows come off because they're just not as snug as they need to be and there's no pin holding them in place. The rear pops off because the clearance just isn't there and it gets caught up when you're rotating it. MP-21, though, has probably the best transformation of any of the MPs I've handled (both Optimuses, Megatron, Soundwave, the first Hot Rod, Grimlock, Sideswipe, Wheeljack, and Prowl are the other ones). It's simple, it's intuitive, and it's clever. The flip panel on the roof to hide the Autobot symbol is clever, too. I highly recommend him if you don't have him.

If it helps, that's a "Takasa Tony" Wheeljack, not a real MP Wheeljack. But yeah, I do often use official toys for size comparisons on the notion that more people are familiar with them. Honestly, that's why I bought a few KO MP cars- didn't really want the MP cars, but everyone else seems to have at least one so I figured I'd get them for size comparisons. That's an actual Takara Tomy G2 Bumblebee, though.

Wrong Transformers thread?

Whether you're going for Terraegis or Speedbump, be thankful that 3P has come a long way since the early days. Because tonight, I bring you a reminder of how bad things could be: KFC's Mugan Scope, their take on Perceptor. Aesthetically, I honestly kind of dig him in robot mode. KFC was clearly going for IDW's emotionally-scarred scientist-turned-sniper (as seen in "All Hail Megatron"), and while there are some differences they mostly nail it. He's not very big, though, standing a little taller than MP Bumblebee and about the same size as a modern Deluxe-class Hasbro figure. If you're into MP toys and weren't already turned off by the non-cartoon look, or if you're into other modern 3P figures, you'll likely find Mugan Scope too small for your collection, although an argument could be made for fitting him in with Fansproject's Function-X Headmasters. Since this is IDW Percy, Mugan Scope comes with his sniper rifle, a pair of pistols, and an extra head. It might not be clear from my photos what the difference is, because they're nearly identical. For the record, the installed head has a scope down over his right eye, the extra head doesn't. Articulation on this guy is pretty good, at least on paper. His head is on a ball joint so he can turn his head left and right and get a little lateral tilt, basically no downward tilt, but enough upward tilt that he can almost look straight up. His shoulders are connected to balls inside his torso, and the balls are actually what gives him a lot of his movement. He can rotate 360 degrees at the balls, shrug or slump his shoulders a bit, and he's even got a little forward/backward butterfly motion. The other end, inside his shoulder, is a hinge that will get you a little over 90 degrees of lateral movement. He's got bicep swivels, and a double-jointed elbow that gets you nearly 180 degrees. His wrists are also ball joints, so in addition to providing rotation he's got some in/out and up/down movement. His waist and thighs have swivels. His hips are on ball joints that can kick all the way forward or backward and spread just shy of a full split. His knees are double jointed and get about 180 degrees of bend. His ankles are ball joints so he's got some up/down tilt, and inward tilt, and rotation that's a little hindered by the shape of the armor around the foot. Additionally, there's a hinge a little past the midway point of his foot so his toes can bend upward or downward. Finally, the scope is connected to an armature on a ball joint, then the armature has a hinge and a mushroom-peg for rotation on it before it finally connects to Mugan Scope's back on another ball joint. This gives you a little freedom positioning the scope, and you can even flip it to his other shoulder cartoon-style. Both the sniper rifle and the pistols have handles that are angled. They slot down into Mugan Scope's hands just find, as the channels in his hands are also angled. Despite fitting in 5mm hand holes most other toys won't be able to use Mugan Scope's weapons without them looking really odd in their hands. Mugan Scope's legs have built-in holsters for his pistols. With the pistols in their holsters the lateral movement of his hip is impeded, but he can still get a wide A-stance going. If there's a way to store the sniper rifle I couldn't find it; the directions are very small pictures printed on a single piece of paper that's maybe 5x8" in size, so they weren't the most helpful of instructions to begin with. Like you'd expect from a Perceptor toy, Mugan Scope turns into a microscope. Kind of. Again, not very big. No storage for any of his guns; the instructions actually tell you that if the pistols are in the holsters to take them out. And a pretty crappy-looking microscope at that. His transformation is kind of similar to the G1 toys, but manages to be much worse. His legs are especially bad, as the backs of his legs do tab onto his thighs but they don't lock together or lock in place, making for a floppy sort of microscope. If you'd rather, you can make a tank of out him instead. I think he does look a little better in tank mode, if I'm being honest, but not by much. He doesn't have any sort of wheels so he doesn't roll. And still no storage for his weapons. Now, just so I'm clear, his alt modes suck. He's too small for a lot of modern collections. But these are far from the only things wrong with this toy. No, the biggest problem with this toy is that it's very poorly made. Most egregiously, the ball joints for his shoulders in his chest are not actually connected to the pegs that the rest of the arm is on. I'd heard this guy was fragile and I was being very gentle, and still his right arm came off right out of the box. From the residue on the post, I'd say they're probably glued into the balls, and I glued it back in and it seems ok, but it's either an awful design or awful execution, take your pick. But generally speaking, the tolerances on this guy are all over the place. His waist joint is so tight I'm afraid of breaking it. The tiny ball joint that connects the scope armature to his back pops off constantly, and turn it at the swivel will often pop the mushroom peg out. The ball joint at the other end is loose, as is his right wrist. His hips pop off their ball joints. Either the flap that his head is on is too wide or the clearance in his back is too narrow; either way I had to file them down to transform him. Likewise, his knee caps grind between his thigh and shins as you force his legs into their alt mode positions. Long story short, no, I don't recommend this guy. At all. I got him on sale/clearance for $20, and I still feel like I paid $15 too much. I truly pity anyone who bought him at full price back in the day. While KFC does seem to be improving with their newer releases it's probably figures like Mugan Scope that gave KFC a reputation for putting out garbage. Bottom line, there are simply better options if you want a Perceptor in your collection, like FansToys' Tesla if you're hankering for a G1-style MP Percy or Planet-X's Asclepius if you're looking for a more Voyager-sized Percy.

Finally! I can't remember the last time a good Ace Combat game came out. Maybe the PSP ones? 6 was pretty meh, and Assault Horizon was crap (although Assault Horizon Legacy on the 3DS is actually a remake of Ace Combat 2, so I guess that was the last good one). While we're mentioning it, it's a bummer that all kinds of PS2 series got HD remasters for the PS3/PS4 but no one thought to put Ace Combat 4, 5, and Zero into a collection.

I guess that would depend on where you're seeing gaps and hollowness? The trailer, sure. The illusion of it being a solid trailer is largely because his wings cover the sides, but take all the armor off of it and it looks like a sprue from a Gundam model kit. The core robot? I don't think he's worse than most other 3P toys. The insides of his lower legs are hollow, sure... just like most 3P toys whose lower legs open up and fold over the thigh for transformation, and MMC even built a fold-out panel into to help hide the inside. There are little holes below his knee pads, because that's where they peg in for alt mode. If they bother you it looks fine to leave the knee pads folded down onto his shins (that's how they come and I didn't realize they went up at first; if you look at the pics in my review the first three have them down, the rest have them up). His forearms are perhaps more solid than most toys because his hands don't fold into them. His biceps, hips, and thighs are likewise as solid as any given 3P figure (and obviously much more so than a Hasbro toy). The only gaps are slots or pegs for transformation. Now his torso, yeah, it's kind of hollow. It's an artifact of his transformation; the chest swings up and away from the hips, and his arms rotate into the hollow space. From most angles, though, you don't really see it because his backpack covers it. You really have to look up at him from below his waist or straight down from directly above his head to see into the gaps. With the armor on? The shoulder, bicep, thigh, feet, and waist parts are all pretty snug on him. The helmet could fit him better, though. The wing and chest piece sits tight to his backpack and the core robot's chest, but it does have these swing arms on the back that grab the front. The boots wrap around his lower legs and clip shut, no real gappage there. His gloves, maybe? They just slide over his forearms; they don't wrap and close like the boots. You can actually see the core robots hands inside, so while it's not in the instructions I do recommend you turn the core robots hands backward before putting the gloves on. TL;DR - I've pretty much already said not to buy Seraphicus without a substantial discount, and I've got no problems criticizing him where I think it's due, but I don't think hollowness or gaps are a problem with him.

I don't think that I mind that it's Gundam-ish, I think I mind that it's Gundam-ish instead of Don's original design, which I really liked. Not sure that I have a favorite. People speak highly of MMC, and yeah, the stuff I've bought from them have been solid. Maketoys... yeah, I really like Gundog (the only Re:Master figure I have) and Striker Manus (Cross Dimension), but their combiners just aren't up to snuff for me anymore. Honestly, while they've definitely got issues that almost always boil down to "why didn't they put a tab or something to lock that down?", I've really enjoyed Generation Toys/TransForm Mission's stuff. I'm not sure when MMC started work on Seraphicus, but I've got some older figures, mostly iGear. I've got Feral Rex, which I think was designed first. Some of the design choices on Seraphicus could be age-related, but some of the choices were just poor choices. Like I said in my review, there's no reason the core robot couldn't have had guns instead of cheap Hexatron swords. Maketoys released Hypernovae forever ago, and didn't his whole trailer become armor? MMC didn't need to leave a skeleton. But I can be fairly forgiving, and my biggest disappointment with Seraphicus isn't really with his engineering, it's with his price. The core robot and the armor kit are not worth $240. They should never have been sold separately. They should have, from day one, all been in one $150 box (although I think even $150's pushing it). And MMC has a habit of revealing toys well ahead of their release date? Maybe, but no one does that better than Fans Toys, whom I'm pretty sure have announced more toys than they've actually released.

Well, after buying some computer parts I told myself I wasn't going to buy any toys over the holiday weekend last week, but then I went and ordered Seraphicus Prominon, MMC's version of Nova Prime. Seraphicus Prominon is a toy that I had originally preordered; I love IDW's Transformers lore, I love Don Figueroa's design for Nova Prime, and I've wanted a toy pretty much since his first appearance (but somehow didn't buy Maketoys Hypernovae, go figure). I ultimately canceled my preorder, largely because a Nova Prime didn't seem as necessary as getting more combiners for my burgeoning combiner collection, but also because Seraphicus takes a lot of liberties with Don's design- more on that in a bit. Seraphicus is actually sold in two parts; the core robot, and an armor kit. Accurate or not, the core robot looks fairly cool with a lean silhouette and nicely contrasting dark blue and white plastic picked out with some translucent blue and mostly silver, gray and yellow paint. He stands noticeably taller than an MP car, and slightly taller than one of MMC's Feralcon limb bots (although Tigris here is noticeably heavier). The core robot comes with just these accessories: two translucent blue swords, and a silver and blue Matrix-like trinket. I've got no issues with the Matrix, but the swords seem like an odd fit (an issue that will be exacerbated when we talk about what comes in the armor box); cheaply made and totally unpainted copies of Hexatron's swords that almost seem tossed in after the fact. A panel opens on Seraphicus' chest and the Matrix sits inside, as is usually the case with Primes. The swords can actually store on his back by sliding them in little notches on his backpack, and that's the only reason I'd believe that the swords weren't tossed in after production was completed. When the swords are on his back the tips of the blades may collide with his legs, depending on your pose. Speaking of poses, the articulation on this guy is kind of mediocre. His head is on a ball joint that ends on a second ball joint where the neck connects to the torso, so he can rotate his head and get some extreme tilt, both up/down and laterally. Although his shoulder armor is on hinges it still limits his lateral movement to about 60-70 degrees, with a full 360 degrees of rotation. He's got a little bit of a butterfly joint in his shoulders, too, but with his backpack getting in the way it feels less like an intentional joint and more an artifact of a transformation joint not locking in place in robot mode. He has a bicep swivel above the elbow and a second swivel for transformation below the elbow. His elbows are double-jointed, but due to the shape of his arms doesn't get much more than 90 degrees of bend. His wrists are on ball joints for rotation, and the way they're cut he can actually bend his wrist inward. His thumb is on a ball joint and his fingers are molded in a slight curl with a hinge pin at the base. Unlike the MP cars, though, each finger can be moved independently. His waist can swivel. His hips have ratchets for forward and backward movement but they don't have a ton of range; almost 90 degrees back, but but only maybe 50 degrees or so forward. The lateral motion on his hips is similarly ratcheted and he can get beyond a full split. However, there aren't enough teeth on the ratchets, and he goes from stock straight to moderate A-stance in one click and to a ridiculously wide stance in three. He has thigh swivels just above his knees. His knees are ratcheted and could (and do for transformation) go beyond 90 degrees, except that the panels on the backs of his lower legs stop you shy of 90 degrees. His feet are on a pivoting hinge so they can tilt upward or downward a bit, and he's got some ankle tilt but not a lot. To make matters worse, what tilt he has is actually foiled by the fact that the armor on his lower legs comes down so low that it's below his foot if you use more than half the available tilt. Between his ankles and his hips, you're really limited to just stock straight and one A-stance position. Seraphicus' hands, despite being more articulated than the Feralcons, has the same odd channels in the palms and rectangular-ish weapon handles that pretty much force you to slide them in sideways and turn them to lock them in straight. According to Don Figueroa's art in Spotlight: Optimus Prime, Nova Prime should turn into a truck that's fairly similar to Maketoys' Hypernovae (that is, a more angular version of Laser Optimus Prime). Seraphicus turns into a shoe. I mean, yeah, it's got wheels, a grill, and what one might identify as a windshield, and no, we don't have to expect that a Cybertonian truck should look like an Earth truck. But the white color, broken with dark lines, combined with the overall silhouette definitely look more like a shoe than a truck with a casual glance. The shoe-truck is roughly the same size as an MP car. The shoe truck rolls very well, and everything tabs together very solidly. The transformation is fairly simple, even a tad obvious, but it's a little bit of a pain to get everything in just the right place so that everything tabs up. The shoulders remind me a lot of Universe Sunstreaker/Sideswipe, and not in a good way. The chest panel can still open up to reveal the Matrix in this mode, evoking the idea of a Matrix-powered motor, which is kind of cool. There doesn't seem to be any way to store those swords, though. Now that's it for the core robot. To get the full experience, most people also bought the armor kit. The armor kit comes as a trailer, one nearly as long (but not nearly as tall or heavy) as MP-10's trailer. One the outside are two more weapons, a revolver pistol and a larger sword. Unlike the translucent Hexatron swords, this sword has a brilliant translucent blue blade and lots of silver and orange paint on the Matrix-hilt that's very clearly meant to be Prima's Star Saber. Still not sign of storage for the Hexatron swords. A peg on the underside of the overhanging front of the trailer fits into a peghole on top of Seraphicus' shoe. Again, the result is far from Don's original sketches but still makes for a pretty convincing space truck. The cab looks less like a shoe pulling the trailer, and the bits inside make the trailer look more solid than it really is. By flipping up the overhang and folding a the underside of it back, unclipping and opening up the sides, then wrapping the top back around to the underside and standing the whole thing up, the trailer turns into a sort of armor stand. Although the instructions have you remove the gun, sword, and the feet parts you can actually put them all back once the trailer is transformed. It makes for an interesting display piece. Before we get him armored up, the core robot is perfectly capable of using the gun and sword that come with the armor. The sword seems a tad too big for the core robot, but the gun looks pretty much perfect for him. Unlike the swords that come with him, the gun can even kind of be pegged into his alt mode by sticking it in the hole for the trailer. In other words, the gun feels like it should have come with the core robot. Armored up should be the money shot, right? I mean, it doesn't matter how off the core robot is, or that it turns into a shoe, as long as he looks like Nova Prime when he's all armored up. And... he kind of does. He's mostly white and dark blue/black where he needs to be; I'd only argue that his biceps, shoulders, and feet could have had more white, and his silver-painted mouth plate should have been painted to patch the horns on the helmet. He's even got orange flanking his ab-grill on on the parts of his wing armor that connect to his backpack, a callback to the orange light panels on Nova. The overall shape of his head is right, and although it's a rounder and puffier his torso has the right idea. Even if they're gunmetal instead of white his shoulders are on the right track, and even his arms are OK as long as you accept the silver armory stuff in place of tires. He starts to lose it after that, though, with missile pods on his thighs and huge shin armor that reminds me more of the Gundam GP02 than Nova's clearly-made-of-truck-cab legs. His wings, instead of being a cloak of thin panels, are massive wings that furl and unfurl like Destiny Gundam's. All of his armor doesn't really add to his height. Anything gained from the feet armor is quickly negated by the fact that his shin armor forces him into an A-stance. As you can see, he's still barely taller than Tigris. What it does do is take the lean figure of the core robot and bulk it up like Bruce Banner going Hulk. And for the most part, it fits very securely. The only real exception is his bicep armor, which is just waiting for an excuse to pop off. One odd observation... the core robot's forearms are molded in such a way that the translucent blue looks like it would naturally point out away from his body when his arms are set so his elbows would bend inward. The gauntlet armor slides over the forearms so that the new translucent blue bits are on the same side, but the way the gauntlets are shaped causes the wrist to point inward slightly. Although he can bend his elbow the same way, his hands look kind of awkward. It almost makes me want to rotate the forearm below the elbow so the translucent blue parts are pointing backward. His hand looks more natural that way, but the downside is that you can see the core robot's arm nestled inside. The armored robot can still wield and store the Hexatron swords. He can also hold his gun, but it looks rather small for him now. This reinforces my believe that MMC could have done away with the Hextatron swords entirely and shipped the core robot with the gun. Armored up, Seraphicus looks best with the Star Saber-esque sword that came with the armor kit. You can even kind of store it on his back if you want by sliding it into the gap in his backpack. It doesn't look great there, though, because it's not intended to go there; the blade is simply too wide where the silver starts to fit all the way through. As far as articulation goes he's using basically the same shoulders, hips, neck, waist, thighs, knees, ankles, biceps, and elbows that he was before. The armor doesn't impede it much; he loses a little lateral movement on the hips and thighs, and if you try to use the bicep swivel above the elbow his bicep armor will come off. The swivel below his elbow, as well as his neck, waist, elbows, knees, and thighs are all the same. The panels on his new hip skirts can fold out of the way, so his forward/backward range isn't any worse, and his shoulders can still rotate 360 degrees. His wrist and hands are new, with the core robot's hands all tucked inside. The hand has the same articulation as the core hand, but the wrist is a simple swivel instead of a ball peg and loses the inward bend. His wings are a whole thing, though. First, they can pivot up or down where they connect to his backpack, and that joint is molded to look like a turbine. Then there's an arm with a hinge that can fold the wings back or forward. The arm ends in another up/down pivot at the base of the wing. A little way from that is another molded turbine with another pivot that furls or unfurls the wing. When the wing is unfurled, there are five translucent orange "feathers" that you can spread. A big problem with Seraphicus is that the majority of the people who bought both the armor and the core robot are going to display him in his armored robot form... which leaves you with quite the leftovers, and the dilemma of what to do with them. You could leave them as a very empty armor rack. You could close it back up into the skeletal remnant of a trailer. Neither is particularly appealing. From Don's sketches, it looks like he intended Nova's trailer to turn into a gun emplacement for the inner robot and for the entire trailer to be used as part of his armored form. Using the whole trailer is how Maketoys handled it, and it's an approach that I wish MMC would have taken because honestly what you're really doing is paying for a ton of extra plastic that most people are going to leave in the box. At the end of the day, it's probably the biggest reason for why the armor actually cost more than the core robot: $140 for the trailer, $85 for the core robot, going by TFSource's current pricing. And that's probably Seraphicus' biggest downfall. Is the core robot worth $85? If MMC had tossed in the pistol, I'd say so. But the armor isn't worth $140, and the full experience isn't nearly worth $225. I mean, that's more than MMC's Overlord. That's more than their Tarn and their Kaon combined. As it stands I cannot recommend this guy at full price to anyone, even the biggest IDW fan hard up for a Nova Prime. Maybe just the core robot, but only if you're cool with the core robot and you promise you'll never spend the extra $140 for the armor. I'm very glad I canceled my preorder back in the day. Honestly, I saw a couple of stores selling the core robot and the armor together during the holiday sales for $160, and even that's pushing it. I managed to snag the core robot and armor for $120, and I think that's probably about the point where I can start to say to myself "there are better toys for $120 but clearly there's a lot of plastic here so I guess it's fair".

June of 2017? Or 2018? Will the Switch even be out by June 2017?

I was in high school when Power Rangers started, so I watched it but I was never super into it. After suffering through what Bay did to my beloved Transformers, is kind of weird to see Hollywood raping someone else's childhood.

RG Build Strike. *sigh* I committed to building all the RG kits, and I will, but there are probably a hundred or more MS I'd have preferred before this. Anyway... it's been a LONG time since I properly reviewed a kit, and honestly I don't see myself getting back into it. But I'll briefly share my thoughts on a couple of kits I've built recently. RG Gundam Astray Red Frame - SEED is traditionally one of my least favorite series, and while I do like a few of the MS the *insert color here* frames don't make that list. Frankly, the idea of a mobile suit carrying around an MS-sized katana is a little too ridiculous for a "real" robot anime. That said, it's not a bad kit. RG Wing Gundam - No joke, I built the legs and torso and just quit. After several months, I forced myself to finish it. I really wish it'd be a P-Bandai so I could have skipped it, but Bandai seemed determined to reuse Wing Zero's frame without giving us any of the other Operation Meteor mobile suits (just like how we've got all three of Setsuna's MS in the RG line but none of the other Meisters'). Worse, it's not even Okawara version from the TV series, as Bandai seems determined to erase it from existence, but the Katoki version that was never in any anime but we're supposed to pretend was how Wing really looked all along. Unless you're a masochist who's determined to build all the RGs (like me) or you really like design, feel free to skip this one. Seriously, I've built RG RX-78 three times now (-2, -3, and Casval) and I had more fun building the third of those. HGUC Quebely (Revive Version) - Super easy kit, due in large part to having basically no accessories. It looks really nice once it's done, but it didn't wow me the way the Revive Guncannon did. HGUC Hyaku Shiki (Revive Version) - Another easy kit. Has that level of action-figurey articulation that I've come to expect. I dig that he can carry his clay bazooka on his back. The colors are a little weird, like someone muted them. It's made from a gold-ish plastic, but not the shiny vac-chromed kind that the original HGUC Hyaku Shiki and HGUC Delta Gundam used, nor the mustardy gold of the HGUC Hyaku Shiki + Mega Bazooka Launcher (although I'd say it's closer to that), and the red parts are a very dark maroon.

That's the best one!

That was my assumption, but I honestly haven't been following FFXV that closely since I hated XII, XIII, and the various XIII spin-offs. I was banking on XV being crap, and I'm pleasantly surprised to hear things like "best since the PlayStation days".

After watching TCP's review I'm impressed with Tamara's engineering but still prefer Backdraft in robot mode (Hellfire is took chunky, but those same proportions would make MT's my go-to Grapple). As for alt mode, I like Backdraft the best with Hellfire a close second and Inferno a distant "I can't believe this passes for MP" third. 80% of the truck looks like robot arms lying on robot legs... which they are, but at least MMC and MT pretend the robot arms and legs are made of fire truck.

There are reports that Japanese gamers finished it already. Even if they were really hardcore and played without breaks that'd still be 20-ish hours. Maybe you've got time after all?

Stopped at Walgreens to get Orajel for my teething toddler, wound up finding their exclusive Titans Return Deluxe-class Brainstorm. Better yet, 40% off! So, the pros... In robot mode, he's a pretty good Brainstorm. Colors are good, the head sculpt works good, and he's got a lot of the details you'd expect like the canopy in his torso, the little wings over his shoulders with the larger wings hanging off them, etc. Darker thighs, like Fansproject's Smart Robin or the earlier Generations Voyager, would have been more toy accurate, but they don't look bad and they're still accurate enough to The Headmasters cartoon. Arguably, he's the most G1 Brainstormy of the three figures I have, due to Smart Robin hiding his jet bits better and Generations Brainstorm being based more on the IDW version of Brainstorm. It's a shame weapons aren't G1, especially the big gun-shield. Like my other Brainstorms, he can store his weapons on his back, but they look less like part of the character design and more like he's got a huge chunk of kibble on his back. From behind, you can also see the flaps the cover his hands in alt mode, but on the whole not a lot of the hollow bits we've come to expect on Hasbro Deluxes. A quick look at the heads. Don't know why the TR version has a green head. TR Brainstorm is actually a remold of Titans Return Blurr, which was also a pretty good figure (by Hasbro Deluxe standards). The only articulation they're really lacking are ankles. At a glance, the different colors do a good job of making them look different, but closer inspection will show that aside from their heads, upper arms, hand covers, nosecone shields, and one other alt mode bit they're the same toy. Their similarities are much more evident in alt mode, where Brainstorm looks less like Brainstorm and more like Blurr with wings and a different nose. It's a very un-jet-like silhouette. The two figures are similar enough that, if you want, you can swap noses between them. Oddly, Brainstorm looks more like an aircraft with Blurr's nose. When you look at all three Brainstorm's in alt mode, it's clear that TR Brainstorm is the worst of the bunch (although to be fair, I don't have ToyWorld's). On the whole, if I could only have one Brainstorm I'd have to go with Fansproject's Smart Robin; it's a toy that looks good in both modes and switches between them in a very interesting way that almost totally hides his jet parts (even if that actually makes him less accurate). However, I think the good outweighs the bad on TR Brainstorm. He's a solid robot that will fit better with the other Season 4/The Headmasters characters than the earlier Generations version. It's just a shame that his alt mode is so off*. *Why didn't they just wait and remold TR Triggerhappy is beyond me.

Well, I got my hands on an old NES, and I ordered a Core i3-6100T, a Silverstone NT07-115X slim profile CPU cooler, 4GB of Crucial Ballistix DDR4, an MSI B150I Gaming Pro AC mini-ITX motherboard, a picoPSU-150-XT and 150w AC Adapter, a spare power switch (just in case), and a cable that's female USB 3.0 headers on one head and a pair of female USB 3.0 ports on the other so I can either put USB ports in the old controller ports or on the side where the composite AV jacks are. I've got a 2.5" Kingston 120GB SSD lying on my desk, plus a 240GB Samsung EVO M.2 SSD in an enclosure, and Lakka on a flash drive ready to install. While waiting for parts to come in I'm going to see if I can whip up a batch of Retr0bright to de-yellow the NES. I might even take that NES to Lowes or Home Depot, see if they can get a Pantone match for the top case, make a paint, and put it in a spray can so I can paint a non-Dualshock Sixaxis I'm giving to this project before I add some NES-style decals I got from DecalGirl.

So, this is more of an addendum to my previous review than a full review, but so it goes. Anyway, iGear originally made two Specialists, the Medical Specialist (Ratchet) and the Weapon Specialist (Ironhide). Weapon Specialist came with all the accessories that Medial Specialist except for the screwdrivers, wrenches, calipers, hammer, and arc welders. Instead, he came with two big gatling cannons inspired by the Bayverse Ironhide, a shoulder weapon inspired by the G1 toy, and the hand attachments that go with the welders, just sans welding tips. Later, presumably either to make a quick buck or perhaps to recoup more expenses on what was a frequently-delayed and ultimately overpriced mold, iGear released two more specialists. One was Defense Specialist. Defense Specialist was billed as an iGear First Aid, and enjoyed a bit of deco differences including white feet, blue-painted windows instead of black, blue-tinted windshield with black-painted wipers, red thighs, and red shoulders with white crosses instead of white shoulders with red crosses. However, with the big windshield chest he still definitely looked more like Ratchet than First Aid, and the market for First Aid figures that don't combine with four other robots to form Defensor is probably very tiny. So while iGear eliminated all of the accessories except for the small rifle that stores in the alt mode, they did include all three Ratchet heads, and while Medical Specialist's deco is arguably closer to Ratchet's than the Patrol Specialist many people went with the Defense Specialist as a cheaper alternative. iGear did something similar with Weapon Specialist. And so, I present to you Patrol Specialist, iGear's version of Tote. So the question, then, is who the heck is Tote? Apparently, Tote was a Micromaster with a very Ironhide-y alt mode. So if we go by alt modes, sure, Tote is a fine pick, and the new head is nice. However, iGear made fewer deco changes from Weapon Specialist to Patrol Specialist than they did from Medical Specialist to Defense Specialist. Aside from the new head, they really just gave the chest windshield a black tint. The Patrol Specialist Figure doesn't even match the picture on the box. If you thought the Specialists were too big next to MP10-V, they happen to look great next to Maketoys' Striker Manus. Like Defense Specialist, Patrol Specialist loses all of Weapon Specialist's accessories except for the little rifle, but he retains Weapon Specialist's heads. We've got ourselves an older Ironhide grinning, an older Ironhide scowling, and an Ironhide with the same face as Ratchet. While I liked the basic face for Ratchet, both of the older Ironhide faces look like they were ripped right out of IDW's Ironhide mini-series, so I'm definitely going with older Ironhide grinning at the thought of busting heads... And there we go, Ironhide! iGear seems to have not noticed that Ironhide was red with two shades of grey and not red and black, but on the whole I don't think he's too far off the mark (the black shoulders are Reprolabels from the previous owner- the shoulders are actually red). I personally find black instead of gray on Ironhide less jarring than black instead of white on Ratchet, but YMMV. Plus, some of the weapons that came with Medical Specialist look much better with Patrol Specialist. Articulation is, naturally, the same as Medical Specialist's. Remember when I said in Medical Specialist's review that he might look better with Classics Prime and Generations Wheeljack than MP10-V and MP Wheeljack? Nope, not so much. He's still too big compared to Prime, and too small compared to Wheeljack. Of course, the same thing I said yesterday applies, and it's about bot scale, not alt mode scale. And for me, my bot mode scale, with Prime a little taller and the carbots about the same size. That van is definitely Ironhide, though. Same treatment as Medical Specialist; Chrome wheels, rubber tires, chrome grill, chrome under clear plastic for the lights, paint on the door handles and gas cap. Nice Ironhide-y yellow stripe down the side. The sunroof is a Reprolabel, but it matches the windows. For that matter, the dark window tint also helps the painted windows match the translucent windshield. Same stupid grill guard, though. But most importantly, a HUGE improvement from either the Universe Ironhide or the Combiner Wars Ironhide figures. So ultimately, the same stuff I said about Medical Specialist applies. He's not a substitute for a Masterpiece figure, but if you want a good Ironhide for a CHUG or other smaller-scale collection Patrol Specialist (or Weapon Specialist) is a good choice as long as you don't overpay.