1/1 LowViz Lurker

Bought Galvatron. This is really what Megatron should have been imo instead of a stupid gun. The detailing on this thing is as good as the movie line. The tank looks different on either side of it. The figure looks bulky and large in proportion to the head to indicate he is large and tough physically and above average in strength. (compare this to something like brawl who has skinny arms, or jetfire who looks wrong with the big helmet on) Articulation is good with many joints but being all armored up there is problems with piece bumping into each other if you try to get the limbs into wide angles. Colour choice is bad especially with the safety orange they used. I would have preferred they used that blue paint from the movie line that landmine got over this. Apart from that I dig the grey. Face sculpt looks mean mean mean. Eyes are deep-set to give a dramatic look to him when you see the light piping project the light coming out of his eyes from under his helmet. It just seems almost demonic like a possessed robot which is fury unleashed. Something to be scared of when meeting him. (and he is kinda insane in the toon so it totally fits his character: maybe he is super pissed at starscream at this moment and can't seem to get rid of him!) Transformation complexity, seems pretty confusing at first because of all the little parts rotating around but once you do it slowly and carefully to see which side should be facing which way it isn't a big hassle. Now I've seen the complaints about this but none of those QC issues are on mine so I'm glad I bought this. (lots keep saying their limbs pop-off easily) What about the third mode? There is more than three from what I've seen: 1. tank 1.5 tanks with legs 2. robot 3. siege tank (two halfs spread outward) 4. cannon I think this guy is under-rated. Good robot mode. Very detailed tank mode. Complex transformation compared to other toys. Only problem I had on mine were the backpack pieces which don't lock as tightly as I'd like into the pegs. I like this toy for the same reason I like classic grimlock. Good amount of detail, good overall look in BOTH modes. Both have interesting transformations too. Both have good articulation. (grimlocks tail and dino legs! Galvatron's double jointed arms and swivel joints on legs, outward movement thighs, bendy knees, and rotating ankles to keep them flat when doing spread stances) Both have decent enough likenesses to their G1 forms and colour. Would have been good if they used gold paint on the parts that are right orange. This use of bright neon colours is why people make fun of TF toys with too much fluro! Use shiny paint instead tightasses. Grimlock would have benefitted from that really shiny metallic look. Perhaps Galvatron would have benefited with a bit of weathering like they did on some parts of grimlock.

It's my fave anime. Yamato should make the k12 thing the police use.

For me it's going to be Bernard and Houquett. So did someone here at this forum, say they could get a better deal than the HG/toynami deal on this website a while ago? Now that we know it's $200 for modded-head US edition, I think it might be a good idea to start posting about the best deals that are out there. Now that there is no difference in price, there's no point going local and getting RT versions of the character.

It's just the start of the new age of Genetically modified people. (after people's fears of Gentically modified food dies down) Just like in that Arnie movie 6th Day. http://www.yanman.com/HomeTheater/Reviews/...thDayReview.htm Soon we will all have the chance to choose the colour of our hair, eyes, etc and make us have zentradi style abilities like moving our hair by itself like in macross. SK has a real life version of the cloning chamber. (but with modding features) GM people is going to be big business. You too can have pink hair like mylene or other assorted aliens from your fave sci fi show.

I just wish the toy was cheaper. I'm not confident I could ever afford to get the whole set of characters although I want to. And about the inaccurate face, that just gave me an idea: they could release a non-canon cannon fodder ride armor. Just have a generic soldier's face to milk us for more money. So which characters are you guys going to be getting? (assuming they do them all)

Oh if it was just ignore the post. Haven't read through this whole thread. I have neglected to read through movies and tv series forum lately.

Sell it now, save your money for the upcoming 1/60. Or buy the FP version off a seller who is trying to save for the upcoming 1/60 version and wants to 'upgrade'. I'm sure as money is tight people will sell stuff cheap to buy new better stuff which requires giving up older stuff to pay for it.

For some reason I'm not as excited about the big transforming ships as valks, but it's good for those who want them. Now if Bandai released news on the destroid that would be more my thing. I know there are not as many fans of it, but it makes for a better display when you have a valk and destroid together. Wow this thread has so much fighting! Haven't we established that bandai made the choice to aim for the masses not us. The more 'hardcore' fans sometimes get ignored in preference to the average joe. If Bandai was smart they would reap the profits from the masses first, then once they got all that money, invest it into making a PG transformable VF-25 model for us guys who want a really accurate but expensive display. (just like the early yamato 1/60 v1 came out and then later we got the larger 1/48 after that. (which really imo they didn't plan for it to go so well that they'd end up trying to do every single variant leading to no planning for the 2-seater) For the older crowd, most of us forget that we were once kids too and played with our toys and whooshed them around and abused them a little bit. Now that we are old we think we are the only people who would be interested. I say start with the younger audience first, then the hardcore later. Yamato I think can afford to take their time, because they are aiming at the 'hardcore' guys who will wait. But what about the average joe who is eager to get thier hands on something right now? I think the need to rush is more urgent while the show is still fresh in their memory. That's why I think all this compromise. Look how long it took yamato to give us the yf-19. We all waited patiently. But with the bandai toy, I bet there are lots of people more forgiving over those tiny details the rest of us notice and just want to spend some money now. Because of that they went the 'safe route' and sorta chickened out. ("chunky-up" the robot mode to make it safe to play with)

That's why I loved th animated movie. You could believe in their styles of fighting. Cammy especially has some brutal killing moves that look painful rather than flashy. So long as it is 'in the spirit' of their fighting style.

Good advice. And it's not like all those good memories of Ootis will just disappear with a new dog. I bet Ootis would just want his master to be happy now that he's in a better place than here.

Yeah but we are not as wise as them technoligcally because we didn't come up with the ideas ourselves but just stole the stuff from them. Also there could be more powerful versions of the bugs in other areas. Sort of like how in yamato you had those blue skinned guys who look humanoid but were just more technologically superior. Maybe they have their own gods, and those gods are like superheroic and stuff. (think Dragonball Z type levels of destruction caused by just thinking about it. Or maybe more closely like that guy in Akira where he is too powerful to live in this world and might accidentally kill everyone with his power.) Let's say for example the bug were created by this supreme being who just thought them into existence? That would make the bugs seem insignificant. The supreme being could represent a "highly-evolved" PC being, while the bugs were angels, and the normal PC were the "fallen" inferior PC that kept warring with each other and were not 100% perfect in how they lived thier lives. We could just be the cousins of these lower fallen versions of the PC. Sort of like how man can be thought of as "fallen" after being kicked out of the garden of eden kinda thing. (that's why we keep fighting and killing stuff because we would only mess things up if granted the 'gifts' we once had) PC made the mistake of splitting up the man from the woman causing the war between the female and male zentradi. This means they didn't learn to love and preferred killing and fighting. So it trickled down to us. And now you see humans spreading themselves across space and possibly bringing more of their destructive powers to other planets. Now for those who play "Civilisation" on pc, what if there were other races that the PC genetically altered to evolve quickly on these planets who lived there and fought humans for control of the planet's resources? You had an excuse for more fighting and killing which means more shows. Problem with macross is there really is only 2-3 races. Human, Zents, elves. What if we find other more hostile races as we explore more of space? Like how in mospeada the inbit travelled to earth and fought the humans because they were interested in the planet. Humans in the future would be like the invading inbit were in Mospeada. Those aliens might want to fight us and steal our technology for control. Just as the zentradi needed to get control of the SDF-1 in space war I, which is the only thing holding them back from destroying the ship. (they don't want to damage it, because they need to study it) At any point in time the technology could backfire on you too, and one of the hostile alien races uses the weapons against you and steals all the humans' ideas. Just as we stole our ideas off the protoculture instead of making it ourselves..

The should call it the Red Dragon which would symbolise satan. I mean if you think about it in macross zero the valks are supposed to bring destruction to the island (kadun?) so I can see this new valk (what looks to be upgraded evil SV-51 at some angles) to be the equivalent of that. It's hidden, seems to be much faster than the best stuff that the good guy use, and by macross standards it's overpowered the same way the ghost was overpowered for its time. That power is used to do bad things to help powerful get supreme control over others. Even if Brera isn't bad the mech is symbolic of a "bad guy" valk for the good guy to challenge. (just like the Qrau was to the Fast Packed VF-1 Super Valk.)

Said a prayer for him. Poor Ootis.

CMs is very tempting. For me the CMs and Beagle are the best two mospeada Ride Armour toys. Notice how strict people were on bandai for line art accuracy on their macross frontier toys but they go easy on the mospeada toys and figures? (megahouse is so popular here but to me they have bad looking riders) CMs should upscale the CMs though. Make them bigger and more detailed like the MH but without any sacrifices.

*Shrugs shoulders* Desperate hardcore fans who want a head start. (lots of people play fighters competitively like a sport) What capcom really need? The Marvel license back so they can make MVC3.

all the things my friends found boring about having to find out what to do and where to go are things I look for in an open world rpg. In a way it's like the split between the fans of old GTA games (lots of things to do - you make your fun in an open playground to fool around in) versus the new GTA (starting from 4 where the player is 'directed' to do things and presented a more polished experience like an on-rails ride in a theme park but with nothing to do.) I'm a fan of the former. Having played all the old pc rpgs like ultima, bards tale, dungeoun master, wizardry, eye of the beholder. I want my games to be nerdy games with worlds, not story driven tv shows. I see a great split between the guys who work in the games industry who wish they were movie directors (hideo kojima for eg) working in the movie industry, and actual game developers who make games for their fans and understand the game because they make the type of games they would want to play. As I get older I tend to shy away from games that are too heavily directed or where there is limited emergent behaviour for things to just happen as they do due to natural laws vs happening because of trigger events based on your prgress within a story. The former games have the right idea about what a true open world game should be. I'm not saying the central character in an epic doesn't need to be someone you care for, just that as a player who plays a game I detach myself from the characters I play as and would prefer to create my own characters. As an example the character customisation in Saint's Row games allows players to really create something more to their liking if they hate the default character. In oblivion certain races are going to have certain advantage as they should. When you play the game, you are going to have to react a bit different from another character when put in the the same situations. Your character is very much tied to the gameplay itself. Not cosmetic or superficial things. An argonian will swim faster, cat people are supposed to be agile and better climbers, other races have better voices and charisma so command better respect etc This is what I remember RPGs were back in the days when the things you wore, the race you chose, the weapons you used made gameplay difference and weren't merely looking visually different or only about about being stronger and weaker. Some weapons were superior for close range, others were better for doing large chunks of damage in slow and heavy attacks for larger and slower monsters, and based on what you wore it would have different effect on how you would fight: dude without armor could freely run faster get into position earlier to swing his heavy sword to get the first hit but would take more damage if the monster if he didn't kill it faster than the monster could attack, while a guy weighed down in armour took ages to get into position, had less accuracy due to the restriction in movement from armour, but could block attacks much better to defend anyone. When games think about the game more, and allow the player to imagine themselves in the world of the game instead of only let us players take control of a pre-existing guy then I tend to feel more comfortable because it reminds me of the older rpgs where story didn't dictate where you could go or be at any one time and instead allowed you to prepare in advance before each quest based on your unique situation and character choices. Stories are important for making you care, but at the end of the day after hours of play what matters is the game the most. Players can focus on the 'role' in role play and react the way they should based on given natural laws. I would much rather play a game with a crap story but fun system, than one where the story drives you to play the game but when you play it, worlds have nothing interesting to do in them because all the focus is on what part of the story you are up to. That's why I reckon those who are sick of the polished mainstream JRPG (driven by the event triggers which are out of your control) should play games like Etrian Odyssey because these games are like what you remember from the old pc rpg days. They will never get rave reviews or the type of hype promised by bioware (but didn't deliver) in Mass Effect or Fable, which makes reviewers pee their pants. But they are long and slow-paced, story is second to the game, you are essentially thinking about the things you must do more than liking characters. These are all the things that my friends find boring but which I love! As games get more cinematic and more money is spent on acting and stuff, lots of that focus will be spent on those things to make the game stand out from other games in its genre. But ask yourself the question: Does that mean the game is necessarily more fun to 'play'. This is why it's so hard for others to understand that sometimes games that have worse production values can still be a heck of a lot more fun to play than ones that break the mold, deliver better presentation, have superior acting etc in them. If the bulk of your enjoyment comes from treating a game as an experience (like a ride at theme park) then you will like and appreciate those individual things that make the game stand out so much. But if you;re a believer in: "the whole is more than the sum of its parts" and play rpgs more for the "game that is inside the story" then you will go for the purists rpg where the player is the insignificant PC who is just one of many people who has to make a name for himself based on player skills and his actions. Your success is yours coming out of your own player skill and not due to the character in the story. If you were a retarded fat guy with high luck and who avoided dying because he made wise choices, and still manage to win the game and save everyone, then that is because you the player used all your hard work and skill and knowledge to guide him to get that far, not because the character was so important to the grand scheme of things according to the writers of the story. Who cares if you care about the character and if he deserves to be loved?

Superficial stuff like that doesn't bother me. Althought ME deserves lots of credit for it. (pushing new systems and presenting things like that in a far more interesting way than other games have before) http://www.destructoid.com/destructoid-rev...ect-56046.phtml I used to like their old baldur's gate games. I wish they focused on pc rpgs like those instead of on the console game crowd that likes movies and stuff. (ie final fantasy CG rpgs that play themselves instead of you controlling things, or metal gear solid type interruptions) I liked KOTOR though but not martials arts rpg they did. I also hate that the Baldur's gate games on console were diablo-style action rpg games. Now excuse me while I go and play old school rpgs like Etrian odyssey on nintendoDS where I can live in the past when rpgs all had the least impressive graphics and the story or characters weren't all that important yet we all didn't care because they were still games not soaps.

One thing that disapointed me in that trailer was it looked like a young gen got pwned by akuma. He was my fave character in Alpha. If that's not Gen and just some generic opponent that got his butt kicked then just ignore this post. But judging by the comments on death and how it is the fate of people who fight that sounds like something from one of his character quotes. Personally I found his moves (and the comibnations of both styles used together) a much more interesting fighting technique than akuma who lets be honest is almost a pallette swap of ryu/ken with some unique bits. Hopefully this does well in other places when it comes onto consoles. SFII when it first came out was what really helped the arcades. But nowadays people prefer playing their games in the home. Sorta like how drive-in theatres were on the way out, and then now people go to normal theatres less, and its all home theatres instead. There are going to be people who can't find an arcade that has the game and whose only option is the console version.

Now I have seen one of the alpha movies but I just didn't like it as much as the animated movie for some reason. It was the way each character was used close to how I imagine them to be if they were real people: vega(claw guy) is a psycho who assasinates people, Cammy is a manchurian candidate, Balrog (boxing dude) is linked to a lot of criminal activity, chun li isn't primarily just fighting for the sake of it but trying to capture bison and bring him to justice, blanka is a circus freak (mutation hasn't given him much other career choice), Zangief is a prowrestler in illegal fights, feilong is exactly what bruce lee would be if he was alive now , Deejay is definitely street punk who only cares about his music (we don't even see him fight) and ken is bothered by ryu leaving him behind because now that he has relaxed his skill is probably getting worse over time even though his opponents are strong. (him fighting in a controlled environment where fighting is merely a sport for spectators to watch and there are rules in it as opposed to the fights to the death that ryu probably get involved in) I guess what I am saying is it wasn't a kiddy approach to the franchise. Even Bison comes off as purely in it to find strong bodyguards. There is no tournament! It's just some fascist guy kidnapping people against their free will and through mind control using them as puppets to carry out orders. The animated movie story wise is everything the hollywood movie should have been imo. Characters like guile motivated purely by revenge is exactly how you would imagine the main character in many of those american action hero movies would act. (ie you know this is street fighter's version of the punisher, where he is not that different from bison in terms of wanting to murder him for his own reasons instead of focus on the job of taking down shadowloo - but noo.. they had to make it funny instead of serious to appeal to 13 year olds!) That youtube vid seems to be the right idea: fleshing out who ryu is and giving us info about him and akuma (is that his name in the japanese game?) and the guy who akuma beat. Hollywood never allowed for that in its live action movies. And you can't say they won't let asians have the role of the main character: what about all those jackie chan movies? No excuse: Ryu should be an important character because officially that is who you use in the first street fighter. Nothing against the chun li fan, but after this new live action movie geez give ryu some chance to shine whydoncha? He's only the main character of the whole freakin franchise!

Looks excellent. Will this be as long as their other titles like morrowind and oblivion? I was a big fan of daggerfall, the terminator games, and all the later ES games on pc. I hope this thing doesn't suffer from too many bugs.

I like their reviews. I hope they do one on the beagle ride armor when they get the chance.

The animated movie of SF was good. I liked the chun li fight scene in that. I wonder why Ryu the smelly hobo isn't the focus of this movie? And why he wasn't the focus of the first one with van damme in it? Don't they care about the guy who is supposed to be the winner of the tournaments and the one who actually beat the muay thai champion who practices the deadliest martial art? "Where is Ryu? Where is the champion?"

Bandai's model still look better. The valks are meant to be skinny imo. although I will still buy this at some point because I like the sturdy toughness of bandai toys. Actually some people said they'd wait 10 years. I think it would be good if there was a poll made: Would you buy a bandai toy that looked like an upscaled 1/72? If these sell well, maybe they could consider doing version 2 in 5 years time like yamato did with vf-1.

Awesome post. Yeah I read all of it. I found it very interesting. Having said that though: if you had a choice to buy a 1/60 that looked like the current toy, or a 1/60 that looked just like the 1/72 model kit, which would you choose? I just find if I were one of the companies I would want my customers to be honest with me and tell me if my toy sucks and where it does so that I can work towards making them happier which results in them spending more money buying stuff. For me one of the things that turned me off the 1/48 were the skinny hands. It was just out of proportion imo to the rest of the robot. Whenever I complain about chicken hands I really do like to see improvements in those so that they look closer to what bandai can do. Stuff like that can't be that hard to spend a little money on for yamato can it? In the past we complained about all the small things like tampo prints and luckily for us over time they've slowly improved on it. (there was no good reason imo why they couldn't have included printing on the sides of the koenig monster for example) Some stuff yamato doesn't deliver on, other toy companies do with ease, while some stuff other toy companies don't deliver on, yamato does. Argh wouldn't it be nice if we got that one toy company that got it all right? Oh and yeah, despite what some people say: there is no perfect proportion of the valk. Some of the shapes are deformed due to anime magic on some of them. So that when you look at the lineart for each mode it might look out of shape if that one mode had to be made to transform into the other mode using its existing proportions. (VF-1 is a classic example where the nosecone goes all stubby when in robot mode to look tougher)

VF-27 Spirit It can be used unmanned or with the cyborg inside it. Something between a ghost drone (dead) and valk(alive). It's not a ghost, but not the same as normal manned machine. It may be a living person controlling it seperate from ghosts. (since borg isn't completely non-human) So it's a living person's spirit. You could say that it is possessed. Didn't they call the valks evil spirits in macross zero or something? It's a Kadun!! I could be wrong and that is something completely different though.