mikeszekely

Final Fantasy IV sequel out now! (In NA; I think our EU friends have to wait until Friday.) I'll definitely be blowing the dust off my Wii for this one. Final Fantasy IV is my all-time favorite in the series, and 800 Wii Points (or US $8.00) is a pretty good price, even if it is a port of a mobile phone game, and even if it is the first of episodic content.

From what I've read, yeah. You either buy PSP games via the PS3 or PC PlayStation store. You know, sort of like you can already do. The PSP Go will have 16GB of internal flash storage. That's the real question, isn't it? I don't have a huge library of UMD games, but I don't want to have to buy them all over again. Sony hasn't said one way or another how that's supposed to go, although I'd like to see a program similar to Warner Bros. recent HD-DVD/Blu-ray upgrade. Maybe send Sony the UPC's from the UMDs, and have them send you back codes to download the same games. I wonder how easy it'll be to get imports on the PSP Go? Not too hard to create a Japanese PSN account, but how many accounts can the PSP Go be synced to? And if you're buying stuff, not just downloading demos, could a Japanese PSN account be banned for having a US billing address?

That's pretty good news. Hopefully US MP Skywarp's wings will hold up a little better than Screamer's, though. And here's hoping they give us Thundercracker to complete the set, but he seems to be getting shafted in the States. I mean, a Skywarp, two Starscreams, and some guy who was an unnamed throwaway in the cartoon, but no Universe Thundercracker. As for Grimmy, I'm willing to wait. He'll probably cost half what it'd cost to import him.

I'm a little surprised that no one here is talking about the PSP Go. Linky. Another link. Still more linkage. Yeah, it might look like a Mylo, but I'm okay with the design for a gaming device. I also don't mind 16GB of flash storage, or downloading my games in the future for instant gratification. I just want to know what I'm supposed to do with the small collection of games I already own on UMD. What, am I supposed to buy them again? Maybe Sony will have some sort of program where you can send in the UPC's from the games you have on UMD to get codes for the digital version.

I didn't think so, but let me check. Amazingly enough, it seems that there are some. Alas, I don't think we're going to get that lucky. Although Zombie Archie is a comic book I'd consider reading...

I definitely want to help out, what with your son and all. I'm going to wait for the hard copy, I think. Out of curiosity, it seems that with stuff like the Kindle and Amazon's CreateSpace that it's becoming easier to self-publish. How's your experience been? I've been out of work for awhile, and I've been thinking about writing to kill time and maybe even bring in a little spending money.

Maybe I'll give Home another go, then.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, the first one was definitely Skyfire/Jetfire.

Really? It's funny that you say that, because I'm rather enamored with with Samsung's LCDs. I recently replaced my old computer monitor with a Samsung SyncMaster T220 ToC, and that's when I realized that flat panel LCDs have come a long way since I bought my DLP TV. I'll give you the price and size, though. We already established that a 62" Mitsubishi DLP can be had for around $1000. Meanwhile, I'm not sure if Samsung makes an LCD bigger than 52", and the good ones are over $2000. The size part doesn't bother me much, since 52" is ideal for my living room/viewing distance, and as for the money, well, you get what you pay for, sometimes. I'd rather not have to replace bulbs anymore, and my DLP only has one HDMI anyway.

Sorry, Uxi. I didn't mean to come across as antagonistic or anything. It was just the way I read your post (and I'm probably reading more into it than was intended) was that you meant that he shouldn't take the freebie because there are bigger and better TVs under a grand that he could buy right now. Like, "since you can't afford a [good] HDTV for a year or two, buy a cheaper one instead of a crappy freebie." I think it was your recommendation of a DLP TV... I think DLPs were the absolute best choice three or four years ago, and they do still have a price/size advantage, but unless you really want a picture that big (and I recall that you do) you're probably better off with a DLP projector (which I think I remember you saying you are getting or are planning to get). I'm not sure how the lamps are for projectors (or newer DLP TVs), but I know that the lamp for my TV only gets about 3000 hours and costs enough that I'm thinking about selling the TV instead of replacing the lamp next time it goes. If you ask me (not that anybody is/does), if you want a 60" or larger screen, go with a projector and go for whatever screen size you care to project. Smaller than that, go with a flat-panel LCD. You'll spend the difference in price on replacement lamps and extra electricity if you go DLP. Not that any of that has anything to do with the the freebie TV. Sorry. It's been a long weekend.

Has Home really improved at all since beta? Or am I just not "getting" it? I use my PS3 for a lot of things day in and day out, but I imagine I could go to my grave without touching Home again.

50" isn't THAT big for who? He's upgrading from a 19", and when he's saying that money is tight, I'm getting the impression (though I could be wrong) that he's saying that he's got no money for a TV for awhile, not that he can settle for a $1000 DLP instead of $3500 for a 60" Kuro. I think the question at hand isn't whether 50" is big enough, the question is whether a potentially problematic 50" SD CRT is at least an upgrade from a 19" TV. And I gotta agree with az and >EXO<, it might be more trouble than it's worth. Save what you can, buy the TV you really want when you can afford it.

I was thinking Galaxy Force Prime's Super Mode wings.

Double news flash: T3 was the first movie I'd seen in a theater that was so bad I tried to get my money back. Aside from chucking the "no fate but what we make" message from the first movie and replacing it with a message that was basically "fate is set it stone, and you're just putting off the inevitable," it depicted the future leader of humanity as a p*ssy that was tougher when he was a little kid. The new movie was predictable and brainless, but 100 times better than T3.

Wow, there's seems to be a lot of loathing in this thread towards this movie. Honestly, I don't know what everyone was expecting out of it, especially given how terrible T3 was. The cerebral Terminator material was on Fox, people, and apparently not enough of us watched it. I saw the film last night. It was light on plot, and what was there was predictable. It in no way, shape, or form lives up to T2. NEWSFLASH: They could make a hundred more Terminator movies, and none of them ever will. What we do have is some chases, some human vs. Terminator throwdowns, and explosions galore. It's a popcorn movie. And taken for what it is, instead of what T2 was, it's actually not that bad. I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed Wolverine, and it was lightyears better than T3. At the very least, it ended with the same message as T2 ("No fate but what we make"), which I appreciated after T3's notion that they were just postponing the inevitable.

At 30 years of age, I hardly consider myself to be young anymore, and the only Archie comics I read were hand-me-downs from my dad. This poll needs a "Does anyone even care anymore?" choice.

See also the Luke Wilson film "Idiocracy."

2009 will be a big year for the PSP... because it's getting some niche games that will probably never make it out of Japan, and ports of niche games we already have?

I would say 2001: A Space Odyssey, as the book really impressed me accurate notions of using Jupiter's gravity for a speed boost, artificial satellites, the adjustments to daily life necessary for life in microgravity, and the use of centripetal force to simulate gravity for exercise, all before the first astronauts landed on the moon. Then I realize that, as much as I loved the books, I hated the movie. Long boring shots of Bowman and Poole doing mundane crap wasn't a substitute for Clarke's narrative descriptions, and the movie's acid-trip ending from the light show when Bowman enters the Monolith right up to his rebirth as the Star Child was vastly changed from the books seemingly for no other purpose than to be make as little sense as possible.

Hey! Stay outta my garage!

It's entertaining for me...

That pic looks off, even if you allow that the shuttle is out-of-scale. While yes, the Sovereign has fewer decks and (I think) less internal volume, that pic has the Sovereign as being shorter than the Galaxy. Ex Astris Scientia and Memory Alpha both list 642m for the Galaxy, and 685 for the Sovereign

I'm calling bullshit on the size of the new Enterprise (again). When you compare details like the windows and the bridge dome, you can see everything's the same scale as the refit Enterprise. It's pretty obvious that they built the CGI model to look close to the old Enterprise, and then they started tossing around random numbers after the fact.

Nearby, and yes, that was the idea.

I'm not sure what Hot Wheels is doing. From the box, the NCC-1701 looks like it should be the Enterprise from the Abrams movie... but why the red Busard collectors? They were blue in the movie? And yeah, it looks like the meant for the refit Contititution to be the NCC-1701-A. The box even explains how the A was commissioned after Kirk blew up the old one. But the NCC-1701 registry lacks the A on every one in every store I've seen them at. Another thing, the box seems to indicate that they made five ships... the NCC-1701, the NCC-1701-A, the Enterprise-D, the Reliant, and a Klingon Bird of Prey. But in three different stores I've been too, I've seen plenty of A, the D, and the Reliant, but none of the Bird of Prey or the other Enterprise. $12 is a lot for them, since they're actually mostly plastic with a tiny ammount of diecast. They also have no moving parts, aside from positioning the ship on the stand (although the D's saucer section DOES separate from the engineering section). $12 doesn't seem too bad compared to the $20 Wal-Mart is asking for them. Always Low Prices my foot. Anyway, since I've managed to miss every other Star Trek ship toy since the Playmates Enterprise-D back in the day, I bought the A and the D. If I'm bored and I see it on sale, I might pick up the Reliant, but I can definitely live without it. Can't comment on the other two because they don't seem to actually exist. If I am going to start collecting them, I'd really like it if they made a few more. Say, Excelsior, Sovereign, and Ambassador, at the least, and maybe a NX and TOS TV Enterprise, so that at minimum I can have all the Enterprises. EDIT: Corrected some info. Just gotta pull harder...