mikeszekely

At least you have F&S to look at 'em in. I've got Target, TRU, and Walmart. That's it, unless I wanna road trip.

Did anyone else notice that if you do an atmospheric state with a VF-11 (B or C) and equip Super Packs, you get the the ones from Macross 7 with the air scoops instead of the regular ones?

I'm a little confused, even after reading through this thread. Are we talking about a mini-game that's included with the Blu-ray release of the Macross F movie, or are we talking about a full game that has/has not been released, a demo of which was included with the Blu-ray?

Ugh. After hearing about people finding Scourge and G2 Prime, I figured I'd go out Transformers hunting again. And of course, everyone has the same empty peghooks and hooks of Skullgrin, Jolt, and Ravage. The only perk at all was finding Voyager Seaspray on clearance at TRU for $13 (and even then I bought him more to remind people that the Transformers need restocked than anything else. Speaking of Seapsray, he's an ok homage to G1 Seaspray. In vehicle mode, he looks good if a little empty in the back, but in bot mode everything that's black should really be yellow. I think it's also kind of funny how some of the bigger toys released in the last few years, like this Seaspray, Animated Leader Megatron, Inferno, etc have been much simpler to transform than some of the more recent Deluxes.

I hate earbuds. You'd think that, with all the iCrap out there, someone would have designed earphones that are as portable as earbuds but comfortable enough to wear for longer than two or three songs.

I'm a Marvel fan, so I'm planning on seeing both Thor and Captain America. Both the trailers looked fine to me. But I kinda see your point. The idea of Thor being both the Norse god and the superhero identity of Donald Blake was kind of cheesy (and I think they did away with it, at least for awhile). I preferred him in the Ultimates, where his powers seemed to be technological and people thought he was loony for claiming to be the God of Thunder and the son of Odin... until it turned out at the end of Ultimates 2 that he really was.

I quit on the movie toys after picking up just a few RotF figures, so the Dark of the Moon figs could be the greatest toys ever and I still wouldn't care. But like DA said, having them look like red and blue turds makes it easier not to care. As for the TF Prime figures, I've never cared for the "Bayformers Animated" look of the series. Megatron doesn't look too bad, so I might pick him up. And if Bulkhead turns out ok, I could see myself grabbing one and hoping it works in my Classics shelf, but otherwise I'm not interested in Prime, either. It's alright, though. I think I could use a break from the stress of looking for the same figures for two months while people two states over are three waves ahead of me.

Who the heck is in charge of distribution? There are no new Transformers in my area. At all. Walmart and TRU, if they move their stock around, have probably 4-8' of empty peg hooks. Target is pretty well stocked, as long as what you're looking for is War for Cybertron Cliffjumper, Terradive, Sea Attack Ravage, Skullgrin, or Electrostatic Jolt. I haven't seen Blurr, or a single Reveal the Shield figure. It's frustrating to hear people finding wave... what, 3? 4? Whatever wave Scourge and G2 Prime are in, and I haven't even seen the first wave.

Well, you don't use all of them... I use maybe 10, plus four on the mouse. I think it's comfy enough, and certainly easier to aim.

The Gundam games have always progressed incrementally. I'd love to see one incorporate all of Gundam, but really I'll settle for them adding a few more AU suits to Extra and giving us a campaign for Victory. As for MTF, I'll be ordering my copy this week, but I couldn't wait to play it, so I grabbed an ISO. As far as the interface goes, I'm not noticing a ton of difference between this and Ultimate. The only real difference I'm noticing is that they've added campaigns for Macross II and the Macross F movie. Since it's new I decided to start with Macross II, and the only unit I've acquired that wasn't in MUF is the Metal Siren. I haven't seen any indication that the Icarus is in the game. Bummer.

They do. In essence, you're not really shifting gears, you're telling a computer that it's time for it do it. Purists may decry it, the computer can shift faster than a human can, and I think there's less of a chance of accidentally screwing up your transmission.

Triangle Frontier? I'd been checking to see if there'd been or if there's going to be a sequel Gundam Assault Survive (more Unicorn and Victory, please), and you're telling me I somehow missed a new Macross Frontier game?!

I think that it's possible to buy some handsets outright for the GSM carriers (T-Mobile, AT&T). Technically, you can even buy a CDMA phone without a contract, as long as it's either a pay-as-you-go phone (ala Cricket or Metro PCS) or it's a phone that the carrier would normally sell with a contract. But like I've said, the market here is moving toward smartphones, since mandatory data packages mean more ways for carriers to bilk their customers. The iPhone or the latest Android phone seems reasonable at $200 on contract. Heck, my Droid Incredible was free. But if I wanted to buy the phone without a contract, it's closer to $600, which is a good $200 more than I spent on my wife's new laptop. Now, do I think that the current carrier-subsidy model has likely inflated the price of these phones (an iPod touch has almost the exact same hardware as an iPhone... so a GSM radio really costs $400?), but that model is unlikely to change unless consumer behavior changes, and that's unlikely to happen as long as they take $200 or less on contract over $600 without. The market in the has evolved to a point where, if the phone can surf the internet, it's sold as a smartphone with a mandatory data plan. I think at one time you could buy simpler phones that are probably closer to the phoens you're talking about in Japan, but these phones would still be considered smartphones in the US. When these phones wind up costing the same per month, they (like Microsoft's ill-fated Kin series of phones) wind up ignored in favor of the iPhone or Android (although Windows Phone, Palm, and Blackberry are still hanging on).

I can't speak for Canada or Mexico, but for the most part yes for America. I mean, sure, Apple only releases one new iPhone a year. But that's likely to be made up for by Motorola, who will release at least three new Android handsets for Verizon alone this year, or HTC, who not only has one or two Android handsets coming out this year for all the major carriers, but also has a number of Windows Phone 7 handsets on offer as well. With Android, we have almost a problematic variety. New Android versions seem to hit every six months or so, and new phones seem to come out even faster. Considering that most Americans wind up locked into two-year contracts, pretty much whatever you buy runs the real risk of being obsolete long before your contract ends. Some are borderline obsolete before they're even released. The HTC Thunderbolt, while certainly a capable phone, has taken some criticism for offering a single-core 1GHz Snapdragon that's only a modest boost over then 10 month old Incredible, while competing phones will be offering faster, dual-core, or faster dual-core processors. I don't recall any Asian countries having a wealth of providers. Again, I can only speak for the US, but we've got four major companies and several smaller ones. As for infrastructure, I talked briefly in my previous post about how I wish that carriers would invest more in infrastructure instead of charging obscene rates for throttled 3G data. And while mileage may vary from carrier to carrier and depending on location in the US, but nowhere from Pittsburgh to Cleveland have I not had 3G available on my Verizon phones, nor have I had a dropped call with them. I don't think infrastructure is a problem here. Because the final point was specifically about service, and customer service in Japan is well-known for being uncommonly good. Specifically, my final point was that although I agree with you that customer service here could use a lot of improving, piss-poor customer service here isn't enough motivation to pick up and move to a country like Japan just to get better service. Can't speak for everyone here, but I've been using USA in place of North America because that's where I live, and that's where I can speak from experience. For all I know, your original statement is more applicable to Canada or Mexico, because for all I know you can't buy any phones except decade-old Nokias in those countries. And as for assuming that you mean Japan, it's natural to assume that you are also speaking from experience; that is, that your critique of the North American market is based on improvements that you personally experienced after moving to Japan. I don't think that's what we're comparing at all. I think we're addressing your original assertion that the North American market is lacking in hardware options by pointing out that, at least in the United States, we have tons of options. My only mention of smartphone is to include the caveat that our wide variety is mostly smartphones, and a concession that if you're shopping for a dumbphone you may find that you don't have as many choices here.

I disagree. Sure, we don't have that many "dumbphones," but the market is trending away from them. On the smartphone front we've got two iPhones, a handful of Palms, a few Windows Phone 7 handsets, probably one or two Windows Mobile 6 devices, a couple of Symbians, a plethora of Blackberries, and more Android handsets than you can shake a stick at. Among those smartphones, you've got touchscreen only phones, phones with the keyboard under the screen in portrait, phones with slideout keyboards in portrait, phones with slideout landscape keyboards, phones with d-pads, phones with trackballs, phones with styluses, phones aimed at business users, phones with great cameras, phones with processors more powerful than the laptop you had five years ago, phones with 4G, etc. Trust me, we've got plenty of options for hardware. Can you elaborate? Are you referring to the limited number of carriers? CDMA vs GSM? 3G vs 4G? Or are we going to get into the differences between HSPA and EVDO? Frankly, I've thought of connection as a major factor when selecting a phone. Could my dumbphone make calls and send texts? That was enough back then. Could my smartphones check my email and get on the internet? For a time, it was enough that it did. Verizon's starting to sell LTE 4G phones, just about the time that I'm getting sick of their slowish 3G speeds, so my next phone will almost certainly be 4G. And in the mean time, if there's some kind of connection that we don't have, I can't say I'm missing whatever it might be. This is the only point I'm prepared to agree with. Customer service ranges from lousy to adequate here. No one's going about and beyond the call of duty, here. Prices are outrageous, with carriers more inclined to throttle data usage and set limits for minutes, texts, and data than to build up their infrastructure. And when real improvements are made, the carriers see that as an excuse to add even more fees. After rent and my car payment, my cellphone bill is the largest. Be that as it may, this situation is unlikely to change anytime soon. We're down to four big carriers and a handful of smaller ones, and the four biggies feel comfortable gouging customers as long as they're all doing it. And while I have looked at my cellphone bill in disgust, I can't say that at any point have I thought to myself, "Screw this, I'm moving to Japan where I can get cheaper, better cellphone service."

Without getting caught up in Ghost Train/sketchley's... discussion (of which I'm not sure I even follow anymore), I think the perception here in the States was that a few years ago the phones we had in America weren't as cool/shiny/feature-packed/technologically advanced as the ones in Asia (not just Japan, but Korea and Taiwan as well). Love it or hate it, the iPhone was a paradigm shift in the mobile market. It's not that we didn't have smartphones before the iPhone, it's just that smartphones were largely bulky devices with keyboards and trackballs and styluses (styli?) that business people used. The iPhone was a sleek, attractive device for the masses, and everyone else started scrambling to come up with competing products. By and large, the most successful competitor is Google's Android. I'm not sure about the state of so-called "dumbphones", but (and this is not a commentary nationalistic tendencies by any country, in terms of hardware or software) I don't really feel like the selection of phones in America is really behind anymore. There may be some brands that are only available in Asia, but Android seems like the OS of choice. And really, how different is an HTC Android phone sold in America different than a Sharp Android phone sold in Japan or a Meizu Android phone sold in China? Mind you, this is only a comment on hardware. While I disagree with sketchley's notion that we have a limited selection in North America, I will readily agree that our service is both lousy and overpriced.

The weather in Pittsburgh is WAY too crappy for a convertible to be a serious option.

Back in the 80s, Optimus Prime was a truck with a detachable trailer, and the trailer turned into a robot. MP Prime is like the original, but bigger and with a more complicated transformation that leaves him looking a lot more like he did in the cartoon and with much better articulation. Like Prime, Rodimus had a detachable trailer. And like Prime, his original toy needed a lot of work to be animation-accurate and articulated... and MP Rodimus nails it. So I don't get the complaints about the trailer not being integrated. I'm disappointed to hear that Rodimus' crotch keeps the wheels from rolling on the ground, but I think that space winnebago mode not only looks fine, it looks better than Hot Rod's car mode. So yeah, it's a bummer that the Hasbro version isn't going to come with a trailer, but I get that they want to keep the costs down. And as much as I want the trailer, I'm not willing to spend $200 on the Japanese version. So... I guess I'll wait for Galvatron? I don't know.

All the more reason I'm bummed that the US version isn't getting the trailer. MP Rodimus looked pretty good in space winnebago mode.

I'm actually very ok with that. It would also help when "game of the week" is a multi-platform release that winds up getting discussed in both the general video game thread and the PS3 thread.

Until it has a price I'm willing to pay and a must-have game, the NGP is just another attractive device I'm not buying in favor of other attractive devices I do want to buy.

I just had him check dxdiag to see if the GPU was using any memory. It was, but only 768MB. Still a gig and a quarter unaccounted for.

Yeah, no. I've been looking. Every peg with deluxe-class Transformers gets checked. Heck, I'm even checking behind the Animated figures at TRU. There have been no RTS figures put out at any Target, Walmart, TRU, or Wallgreens (where I heard rumors that you could find RTS figures back at Christmas) within 10 miles of me.

Well, then I've seen all the Generations deluxe figures EXCEPT Blurr.

A friend of mine's got a weird issue. He's got Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit installed on his wife's home-built computer. He's got 4GB of RAM installed. The BIOS shows 4GB. Windows reports that 4GB is installed, but only 2GB is usable. I made him double check, and yes, he's definitely using 64-bit. He also checked the RAM timings, and he said both sticks and the board match. I'm kind of stumped... the only other guess I have is that maybe the GPU is borrowing some system RAM, but 2GB seems excessive. Any other ideas?