1/1 LowViz Lurker

Some might actually buy it grudgingly but would prefer to buy a better toy if one were available. Me? I am a review waiter-er. I still didn't buy the toynami alphas and I never preorder stuff because I want to leave my options open for the time when there are fixes or little modifications made to the first releases. For example with the toynami 1/100 they made the stands a bit tougher, the skull didn't stick up from the heat shield, and possibly later,.......they may one day release fast packs. So some people just wait for reviews hoping the companies don't rush the product but take their time instead. If you can get the stuff cheap though, you are more likely to buy something on first release though. But for me, I tend to wait ages, (especially for yamato stuff because of big boxes and shipping costs related to those big boxes) and reap the benefits of the later release. One exception to this rule is the sv-51. I'm not sure I can wait for the reissue sv-51 ivanov so I caved in for nora paintscheme. The CMs ride armors, I hope will get fixed, And if CMs is smart and listens to us fans, they will try to make the future ride armors' windshields a little stronger for those who see breakages for an expensive toy as unacceptable. If toynami and yamato can do it, so can they. These are supposed to be collector items so expect collectors to have far more strict and anal reviewers than the typical buyers. (the rule is that being a toys nerd means you are more pedantic than a casual fan)

Yeah it seems to want to say that macross champions "consumerism" as the real winner of space war I when really a more accurate statement would be that it was "culture" (art, history, science, education, language, sex etc) and any "activity that humans engage in which is non-destructive", that saved the zentradi. The zentradi would be akin to the robots in blade runner that discovered there was life other than the tasks that they were assigned to live for. Once the replicants discovered all these beautiful things they couldn't have but that humans could have, they turned against their masters who programmed them to only be slaves "for the man". I see this theme as a very common one in all science fiction (both japanese and american): people may benefit from the technology they create, and make these great convenient machines, but what about love, emotion, your sense of self/individualism/identity, your memories etc?... don't all these thing have value in society too? Should humans just be seen as robots programmed to perform a task and not have any say in it? Can a person who is lousy at singing not still want to sing? or a artist who isn't respected still enjoy painting regardless of not making money? There are things we do that are not useful to society or valued in monetary terms that people just enjoy doing. And these are tings we shouldn't take away. The imperfection are what makes us all human. The souless robots/zentradi to are sadly represented as the 'perfection' (which is the "utopian ideal" that society desires to be) that is stuck in its role and can't live a life outside what it was designed for. True, being the best at one given task may allow that person to work efficiently but these are people too! Misa may come from a strict military family but that doesn't mean she can't love and doesn't have feelings too. Living your whole life dedicated to killing is just sad. One theme of macross zero is how the science can have a dark side: that all this technology and "culture" can blow up in your face as new weapons use to go and destroy rather than benefit society. The culture of one society's achievements can be used to hurt another culture and destroy that culture who relies on the land to live and can't survive in its state in modern times. (the natives will have to buy their food once they assimilate rather than hunt) Macross isn't as one-sided as the writer wants to make it seem. True the pop idol is what symbolically saves the day, but in DYRL the song itself was an ancient song the zentradi used to listen to so they are really just remembering something that they used to have back a long time ago and you can't say that it was the pop idol alone or consumerism that saves the alien, since the aliens already had their own form of it. It's more accurate to say that what saved them was feelings/emotions/love that they were programmed to not have since it got in the way of doing their assigned job efficiently. At the beginning of DYRL Misa is an efficient machine doing her duty for the military and nothing else. Happy to not have a man and telling claudia "that's ok if I die as an old lady alone by myself for the job I've been given from my family." Of course we know better and it's just her "tough side" speaking. Her real self is lying dormant in her just like the zentradi's memories of the past. In the end she remember to love again which is her natural human side, giving up her robotic attitude to life, and similarly the aliens themselves give up being loyal to the warrior-only profession and get to be whatever they want. (not just living for war) So it's not really the aliens alone that were saved by us, through consumerism, since misa is human too. It's the love, that lies dormant in each person. Minmay's music helped, and the consumer culture helped to make it profitable to keep doing it, but it's not the sole thing. Zentradi were awakened to themselves. Their true selves as individuals, sort of like the Replicants who didn't just want to do what they were programmed to do by "the man". Actually I think this is one of the reasons people don't like stick in mospeada since he is so devoted to "the man" that he even lets it get in the way of his judgement and can't see the very human failings within his own system. For example the Jonathan Wolf character that betrays him to the aliens because of a selfish need to buy time for himself so he can feel good fighting again once he builds up his own team using the energy he is given by the inbit in exchange for soldiers. Yeah Stick's war hero might be a good skilled solider, but his motivation to fighting comes from his need to 'feel good' for himself at others' expense. But Stick (being biased towards military men and thinking they can do no wrong) is not able to see that, because of the assumption that everyone thinks the same way. To him it's just black and white. Whereas any normal person knows that there are shades of grey in war, and that there are corrupt and selfish people working within the military too, which the more grounded earth-born humans like Rey, who've survived on instincts, can recognise. If the captured humans on earth had the technology to defeat the aliens maybe they would be just as gung ho as Stick, but when you are that close to the enemy and you have family to think about, you have to survive first. And that might mean you can't take a direct approach. (but a person up in space without much life experience might not understand this: that there CAN be 'bad' humans too getting away with bad things, and that the 'bad' doesn't just originate from aliens just because humans are currently at war with them, which is how stick wants to twist the truth to suit his own view of everything) For character's like stick it is very easy for them to forget that humans fought wars long before the inbit arrived so the source of evil can't all be blamed on "aliens". (similar to how some racist people in the real world try to blame a race for the cause of problems)

It really is up to you how important you want to get a set with a dub on it. I think you could live without it, but there are always some people who refuse to watch anime with subtitles because they hate staring at the bottom of the screen. Personally I prefer watching with the japanese audio and subs. (I don't like it when sounds effects are tampered with)

Must have been cancelled! jk but seriously where are the reviews?

It really pisses me off that toynami alphas fall apart. They look so good in pics Just have to get some japanese company that can build sturdy versions of it. Arrrghg..! I can't take it.

Peer 2 peer is for the masses. People will just download privately direct from each other like they always have before the days of napster and the popularity of the p2p programs emerged. Piracy itself will never be outright stopped. Everytime they try to control something with new protections it has been defeated. It's just the less-determined noobs that get discouraged and buckle under the pressure. So long as hackers who take great delight in finding exploits exist, there will always be ways around "teh latest info tech1!1". People don't have to share files through the internet., just distribute through LAN or through another means that involves encrypting the information. The law is as unenforcable as trying to catch every single jaywalker would be, without the need to have cameras pointing everywhere, on every person, at all times. If I want to record a show using a dvd recorder, send it to a friend through the mail full of pirated software or foreign shows from japan, really what's to stop me? Nothing. Just like there would be no way of stopping some guy back in the 80s who tape records songs on the radio to make a compilation of fave songs to play back on his stereo at a party. Honestly all the cracking down on individuals is just a scare tactic. They can't bust every single individual who has ever pirated a mp3 because like the jay walking example it would take enormous time and resources to do something like this. Monitoring how much you download through bittorrent? I don't think so. Remember that you can download LEGIT programs and other things from bittorrent and it's not used soley for pirating. The RIAA might try to pretend they are distributing some software illegally as a distributor, and then say "aha! we saw your ip because you were part of the swarm!", but what's to stop that person just using his friend's computer who could be ignorant of the illegal software being downloaded to his pc? You can't prove who the person was at the computer at the time of the download. Before you can accuse someone of a crime you have to have prove it was the person you are accusing that actually performed the download and not just an IP which just tells you what computer it was downloaded to. (given there could be more than one person using that computer - a dad might not know what his son or daughter downloaded or if he let his or her friends in to use the computer to do the download despite the account being his) They could go after you for "copyright infringement" but what about if you've never actually uploaded anything to anyone who didn't have the legal right to have it? So how can you say that person has damaged the company for millions of dollars when that person didn't sell or distribute the thing? In the old days people had backups of software for personal use. (you were encouraged to backup your software in case the original ever got damaged) What if you upload a copy of the program to some secret place (for your own use in case your original copy gets damaged in a fire) and some guy finds the file and copies it himself? Should you be sued for thousands of dollars because some guy found the file you uploaded which was intended for you only? Of course not. Morally that would be wrong to put that innocent person in jail. So this issue of privacy rights is there: once you pay for a retail copy of something it is licensed to you for personal use. It's not the physical cd but the software that is on it. So having backups of data is very important issue for many people and as long as they have the right to do as they please with what they own and paid for, in private, you can't accuse them of any wrong-doing. It's because of the ease of downloading through p2p that has made it easy for anyone to download illegally that has gotten the attention in the media, but piracy has always existed and not once been stopped. It's just been underground like any other illegal thing people want to have but that the government says 'no' to in order to make it illegal to 'protect you', yet can't control completely. (ie kids accessing illegal substances like marijuana, underage drinking, asking an adult to buy smokes for them because the clerk won't sell to a minor etc) There is a limit to how much they can try to stop, but I honestly don't think piracy will go away, just be reduced at the mainstream level and out of view of the average joe. So what you'll see in the media is the use of scare tactics to discourage the mainstream hoping the fear is enough to stop them (and it probably works for those who are not determined) but it just angers or makes the determined ones who know they would never pay for the stuff they like to get for free, want to try new things. (eg: some people who just plain refuse to pay the X amount of $ for the given thing that they can't afford, like say a uni student who is forced to buy a piece of software for his course, and has not enough money to buy the full thing, or a workmate who just needs a utility to open up a certain file in a wierd format but doesn't want to own it) By having stories published of people who got busted downloading a file they shouldn't be they are hoping to use that one or two people as a public demonstration like cutting a person's head off or having a public hanging: "This is what can happen to you if you don't stop!". But they know they can't stop the masses of people still doing it who still want to take the risk and who are determined to find work-arounds to copy protection, spyware, region blocking, etc. just because on principle alone they passionately disagree with the idea that someone can tell them what they are allowed to do with the data they have on their own computer or the song they ripped from they cd/dvd/hddvd/brd they don't want to use to listen/watch the content off of. (for technical reasons: too lazy to get a cd out, more convenient to put it on a pc etc) For example: just because it might be illegal to, say, use a rom of a game on an emulator to play an old game that you once owned 20 years ago on a machine that no longer works or no longer has support for it, doesn't mean that *morally* you shouldn't have the right to be allowed to keep playing that same game on the emulator free. (if you already paid for it a long time ago and do not wish to pay the high price to play it again - that act of having the rom might be *technically* illegal but you owned the rights to play that game years ago when you first bought it for personal use.) Now a person who is passionate about rights is not going to just buckle under pressure just because some fat cat company wants to squeeze more money out of him by re-releasing the same thing again and profiting from the old game. At the end of the day: consumers still think of themselves and their rights as owners of the content, first ...and the big companies that profited off them for years, second. There are many that on principle are put off this idea that they can't be allowed to share a song with a friend or a book, just as a public library allows a person to lend out a book to a person, or friend might want you to have a copy of a game he bought for play in multiplayer mode. (knowing that you'd never want to fork out the cash to own the game) People are not going to feel sympathy when told they can't do what they've already been doing for years and despite the new law making it illegal; feel that they are still morally right, and on principle; don't support the companies getting any richer than they already are, ...so choose to continue sharing files as they always have.

That monster shirt looks cool. I wonder if they'll have any with macross frontier mecha? Maybe a vf-25 with armor?

As an example of stupid debates: watch the various games forums when GTA 4 finally comes out, and pay special attention to "comparison" threads. You will start to see lots of arguments between xbox 360 fanboys and ps3 fanboys over whose version of the game is better. Those kinds of threads go on for pages and pages and all kinds of anal-retentives who get pissed at the slightest little thing will start highlighting all the tiny little details that nobody else (who is just going to enjoy the game) notices. Part of the debates are ego/d!ck measuring contest for sure. Part of it is genuine criticism/concern that "it could have been better if only..." The former is usually the bad type where it gets personal. (people should ignore these types, it could just be troll bait) The latter highlights genuine weaknesses that might actually be of interest to people who are complaining about something important that they just wish wasn't there. (no personal insults, these are just people who see technical flaws that could be addressed and aren't out to bash people) I'm ok with the latter but the former is more the stuff that worries me. (those who get angry if someone insults your fave company brand or whatever need to chill - try not to take it personally, don't feed the troll! It's just a trap. They may just be joking to get your attention or gain entertainment from your reaction. That's when threads start getting locked up and people getting hurt because the troll loves to create chaos.)

That sounds about right. But to be honest it's not like the only forum in the world that does this. Go to any game forum where there are regular console war debates which end up turning into insults on intelligence, age, education level, sexual preference, tastes etc I promise you, if you don't have a thick skin to survive this tame place, you won't survive in other much worse places than here where mods freely allow people to go about personally insulting each other and it forms part of the entertainment factor of coming back to see what new stuff has been posted. The mods here do a good job of keeping it civil at least. Most of the people that do complain, I would say have genuine beefs and not just whining for the sake of it. They just have a passion for the mecha they want done in toy form. (eg with the small hands comment for all the yamato macross toys, or cracked arms for the vf-0) The good thing about the complaints though is these beefs are being answered somewhat: there is now more choice in what you can buy than years ago when there was less. I think the complaints are good since they serve as an early warning for people who may base their buying decision on things like breakages or loose limb, or inaccurate sculpt. Maybe people are spoilt, but if those things are important, then better to mention them now before people put down money than to have that disappointed person complain after they have bought the thing and whine all day about how they could have bought something much better with the money. I want to hear about the complaints as it keeps me informed about stuff that I find will be the basis for whether I make the decision to purchase something. I'm looking forward to reviews of this toy, especially in the area durability. I probably won't ever try linking them though. I think it looks fake when they try to haha. Hopefully other companies do try to one up CMs and give us the durability we all need from a transforming toy, combined with the accuracy to lineart that fans of the mecha keep pushing for.

What if the megahouse is brittle too though? Wouldn't it be best to not preorder it but instead wait for reviews? Toynami might be the best out of all of them.

I thought they only ever made a few of those yf/vf 21/22 though? You don't see anyone but max milia and gamlin using the vf22. These are like the "ferrari of mecha" in the show rather than mass produced. (almost as rare as the clown valks) General Galaxy still loses out for not having won the contract to have their design be the mass produced mecha for those special missions requiring the fold booster. I actually thought the girl in macross plus was the annoying one. Asking people to not fight when they are paid to kill stuff in giant robots and test dangerous machines that are experimental. What does she expect? You can't learn new things if you don't push yourself beyond your old limits. That nature of survival is being better than what the other guy is so you can win. (else there would be no need to advance and un spacy can just get by on vf-11 valks) Her need to fake how successful she is in the OVA by flaunting that she has moved up in the world reminds me of why everyone is going to hate Sheryl in macross frontier! In anime I've always liked characters that were grounded in reality (Hikaru, Dyson, Rey from mospeada) more than ones who put on a fake attitude. (Myung, Misa, Houqette from mospeada, Sheryle) It's the pioneers who take all the dangerous risks that future generations who enjoy those advances (that came about from the experiments), take for granted - innovative ideas and improvements to existing things can't come about by strict obedience to rules and taking the 'safe' path. It seems to be the message behind that show. (human innovation vs programmed behaviour, man vs machine, people vs the system)

It will just go more underground. Remember back in the good old days when people taped songs off the radio or recorded episodes of a show when they weren't home to watch it? That is technically copying something for personal usage. The internet is similar: people will just find new ways of copying things and if need be: mail bootleg or illegal copies of stuff to their friends if they have to. It's just that dl the content is more convenient and seems "more mainstream" and too "easy" for the average joe. So the government has got to at least look like they are doing something to ease parents fears. Even if that something won't stop people from wanting to share files with friends any more than people recording episodes of their fave tv show for later viewing or recording a bunch of songs on the radio to listen to them whenever they want. In the future you will eventually just download all the shows to their game console in the same way people can buy old games from a virtual console. So perhaps the plan is to make money distributing the stuff in a legal legit way for profit like how people are making money selling ancient games through an online shop? (perhaps that's the REAL purpose of the effort by the government: maybe they are pressured by companies who may want to profit distributing the stuff online themselves as they see it as an alternative to selling through retailers? Protecting you is just one positive sounding way they can dress it up as beneficial to you and society, but the real thing is blocking content which could affect their future plans to profit from free distribution of the material they want to sell?) As an example: Look at how Electronic Arts was able to bully Epic into not allowing free online content for xboxlive because it competed with their overpriced content that wasn't free. They were afraid the free stuff drove the market value down of their stuff when people could get better stuff from another company free. (just like with pc game online content that comes for free which pc gamers have been enjoying for years) I think the same thing will happen with all content: if something is free (even if the people creating it want it to be freely offered, it means the competition will be pushed out of the market and make their paid stuff look bad. (this is why you don't see encouragement for user generated content on xbox live despite it being encouraged on PC platforms through the free editors and tools that come with many games that allows a community to extend the life of the game well beyond what it was expected to be.) Time spent playing some fan made user generated mod or level, is time not spent buying one from online shop and playing that instead. The user generated content competes with the official stuff and drives the average price of that paid content down as people who don't mind paying money for it start to complain: "hey if I paid X amount of $ for this stupid armor upgrade for my horse in an RPG, and this other game offerrs whole maps and missions free, then why should I be accepting such poor value for money from this other company which is ripping me off?" Sharing files, sharing content is seen as an obstacle competing for attention by those greedy companies that have established themselves and see a worthy reason to shut these people down. (both legit forms of free distribution like user generated content or people offerring their homebrew music/games/files free, and the usual illegal pirates) That's one thing that always pissed me off about the psp: the homebrew stuff is always being blocked by psp updates and stuff. From the big evil corporation's perspective: If they can't profit from it, why *should* they let do what you want? Why *shouldn't* they stop you doing it, so that you have to go to them for ALL content? It just seems to make sense: ie to trap you from accessing content from other sources by blocking those sources altogether from a business point of view. Another thing that pisses me off: is how you can't share your games with other people: for example if you bought a game from nintendo's VC, it is locked to the machine. What that means is a friend who you could normally lend the game to for free, would have to buy the game from nintendo to play the game. More profit for nintendo but less rights for you as an "owner" of the game for personal use. A physical retail copy of a game still has advantages for the consumer in terms of who he can allow to see and play it. It means less profit for the companies selling it (since they could say they lost a potential sale from you having lent the game to a friend) so that is why they go to all the trouble of shutting down emulator sites offerring the roms for free (even though the games are so old you can't buy them anymore) because in the future they intend to profit from it. (so the government then gets involved in supporting the watching of all the sharing of files to scare people) That's the only reason I can logically see why they would "go to all the trouble" and "spending of tax payers money" to stop people from "freely accessing information". (first take away as many rights the consumer has in sharing what they bought, by not allowing him to lend it to others, then try to offer a service where each individual who wants to play/listen to/view the content must pay for it individually "per head" to boost sales. (as opposed to how traditionally you could buy a game and lend it to another person to see, or copy it so a tightass friend could leech off you if he had no intention of buying it at full price or whatever - it will allow "overpriced content" that isn't worth the money you pay for it at full price, to stay at 'normal' market value and force the content creators who offer better value or offer free content out of the way - so the big guys maintain control while the little guy can't compete.) It's all about (1) "control" so the competition can't push them out of the market by offering cheaper, better quality(in terms of user generated content or mods in games) and better-value content that threatens to push the established power out of business. If you don't like the overpriced paid content, too bad. (2) "profit" so you can't share your games/music/book/movie to friends and instead must pay individually per head/household for the license to see something, in order to sell the same thing more times. (3) "prices". You might see a really crappy movie and think that is not worth paying ANY money for, but so long as thousands of others do pay ridiculous sums of money, they (the seller) will always assume that you pirating a bad quality song, movie, book, show etc is a "lost sale" even though you had no intention of ever paying money for it and in extreme situations (when the cost is set so high) would never be able to afford to own it. Example: a rare porno that is selling for $30000 or some ridiculous price on ebay - just some junk that someone else would for no sane reason at all might actually pay that price for - having to mean that you now should owe $30000 in a lost sale for having seen it free, which to most people is just ridiculous since there is no sane way you would buy something like it and expect to pay such a ridiculous sum in the first place. Many people refuse to pay anything unless they are convinced the quality matches the price asked for so it you can't legitimately claim a "lost sale" or damage if the person had no intention of owning garbage in the first place just because the price asked for the item was huge and someone else may have wanted to pay the ridiculous sum. Morally that is wrong. I could charge $10000 for a picture of my poo, but that doesn't mean a friend who copies the file illegally should now pay me in damages for stealing it. There is a moral limit to what a person can say they've "lost money" from piracy of something they intend to sell for a huge price. (but who obviously not expect anyone to pay the ridiculous sum for)

The CMs are overpriced but I like the proportions on the CMs better. I tend to like toys that go for a balanced look in all modes.

I will help but I can only upload at around 25kB a second. Lucky I have it still on my HD so I don't have to go looking for it amongst all the other stuff I burnt. I will also go into GP chatroom to ask others to help seed too. (since I'm in there now) There were about 3 seeds last time I checked.

New clown valks with transformers-style mouths!!! Woohoo!

I'm pretty sure you get both jap audio and eng dub. But people say they think the audio for the japanese sounds better on the Animeigo 'japanese audio only' set due to being higher quality or something? I'd just buy the ADV one: you get to hear mari again as an older minmay stuck inside a teenager's body! And hikaru sounds 12 years old so it's like there are these predatory older women trying to compete for the love of a little kid, which is weird. I'm used to it though after hearing the dub for gundam seed where the singing is redone in the dub in english and it sounds like the singer has an 'older lady' voice when singing and a younger voice when talking..

And make the upper body lock. Yeah that'd be cool. Just like how the nosecone of the 1/48 was fixed to be more tight. But I doubt it would happen. All they would need to do is put a "trashbin door" type mechanism that when pushed in, collapses inwards to allow the male part to hook into. (like GBP armor parts?)

This low visisbility SDF-1 looks a lot better imo. Why didn't they make this the original release?

I liked COD4 but thought the single player campaign needed a bit more meat to it. (kinda short) COD4 is less a squad-based tactical shooter (rainbow 6, hidden and dangerous, delta force, conflict desert storm etc) and more a scripted linear experience where there isn't planning, but more action just like the other ones in the series. This one seems to focus on a story and you get to be involved as characters coming from two different perspectives. The modern weapons you get to use is what makes it a 'fresh' game within the franchise since people are getting sick of the old world war II setting. Even though it's short in campaign mode what's there is excellent. I like that idea of a random map generator. Maybe the idea is doing that though, would cut into profits for selling online content like new maps and stuff? I can see that being more for pc versions of the games. (where map editors and tools are almost standard)

Muscles = more realistic take on street fighting. I never understood how skinny characters like sakura and karin could survive in a brawl. They are just these little girls. haha To me dhalsim looks just like his alpha character. Chun li doesn't stray too far from Chun Li in III, blanka looks wild and beastly (which is much closer to the the animated movie, mutants should be scary like something from a freak show) rather than furry and cute (alpha - which I hated!) and zangief ....let's just say if you liked the animated movie of him, this model looks to be based off that one. Guile? Looks good. Could you go into more detail as to what is wrong with guile? From the few pics shown he looks like the alpha/marvel vs capcom 2 sprite to me. I think when they get to sagat: please ignore the critics and make him more like the alpha or animated movie sagat, and not the SFII/super turbo 'skinny' sagat. In my world the original 8 street fighters should be like Olympic athletes competing in a world fighting tournament so they should be in top shape, going more towards super hero type bodies. Not just some random average guy like the skinny goth dude in street fighter III. Save those guys for a spin off of street fighter which plays more like rival schools. They may need to give ryu and ken a bit of a mod, but I'm liking what I see of the rest of the characters so far. I can't understand where all the hate is coming from. I'll chuck this into the: "If it was designed to appeal to americans then it must automatically suck" factor.. Cult hit games like Dead Rising were successful in the US but did poorly in japan. (maybe this is like the "macross plus" for capcom ) Fighters like Darkstalkers were obviously done in an american comic book style to appeal to fans of horror movies, with exaggeration and comic humor, but that doesn't suck. Resident Evil and Lost planet may have been influenced by american movies (dawn of the dead, the thing) and they aren't bad. SF4 wants to go for a more gritty appearance like the artwork you see in turbo revival (GBA release of super turbo) and suddenly there is already so much hate just because characters have muscles, critics carefully ignoring how some characters have upgraded their look from the original games. (dhalsim in SFII = skinny vs Dhalsim in alpha = ripped. Please go back and compare the sprites) I'm going to hold off judgement until the game is finished.

Nah I see it as they are both evil for fighting such a war and expanding their powers rather than being happy with what they already have. Similar to how sara and her villagers didn't want to be dragged into the war between the anti un and ung over some stupid rights over treasure which isn't even theirs to claim to begin with. So yeah we'd see the SVA as just another bad guy I reckon. But the power hungry military might see them as an ally if there was some sharing of technology and garauntee or condition we are not attacked. But they would still be ally and not 'good'. Just as the humans on earth in mospeada might think of the inbit as their leaders for not killing them, but still be pissed at having to share earth with them and being powerless to tell them to f*ck off. I think the majority of humans would be anti-war, but can't help but need to see aliens as potential invaders and thieves who might try to steal something. So there would be all kinds of backup plans and secret weapons being made in case there was ever a breakdown in 'friendship'. In short: a enemy of an enemy is not a friend, but a future opponent competing with you. I think the gundam shows are good at showing this: zeons after losing the war against the feddies may officially be friends and make peace, but would you trust them to do anything if one of their kind went solo and decided to keep fighting? No, you would suspect that they secretly are celebrating the fact that there are still patriots out there wanting to show the might of their people even though officially zeon has got to suck up to the winner of the war or else.. Same thing with humans: we might just suck up to the SVA so long as it benefits us to not anger them. (but this would be out of fear of what might happen if we try to act big more than a genuine need to make friends and hold hands ) You can't expect a superior race with better weapons to respect one that is younger and weaker than it. The military would envy what the other guy has and wish they could have it for themselves. This might be the basis for why you'd need to suck up to them, before eventually 'becoming independant' from needing the friendship and (through devloping better weapons) having the strength to back up the tough attitude which allows you to demand more respect and a better deal from them if there is ever a future disaggrement that leads to some war. The only innocent ones would be the good guys from either race trying to prevent the wars and this is why in gundam you always have little kids whining to their dads for being dicks and taking risks by increasing the hate (whose 'bold' actions eventually lead to some global catastrophe that destroys the environment) which causes everyone to suffer. The sole reasons why humans, zentradi and pc are so warlike in macross is because they let the 'bad guys' within their own race, have absolute control over everything. The decisions made at the top, might have irreversible effects that may lead to extinction. (ie no easy solution - just tolerate differences) Not even the PC are perfect so that's why they had to flee to earth. If there is a war in heaven and more advanced races can't solve thing: what makes us think we can escape it coming down to earth? There is an interesting science fiction movie called "equilibrium" and in it they try to stop humans having wars by forcing people to take a prozac-like drug called prozium which calms people down by taking away their "emotion" which is thought to be the cause of all wars in history. This is very similar to the theme in Appleseed where the androids think that humans wouldn't destroy stuff if we just throw away what makes us human. But humans are not willing to do that so we live on and tolerate the wars and fights rather than try to solve it. The answer (to end war once and for all) is: "there is no answer". Stop thinking you can climb to heaven where things are perfect and having your head up your utopian ass. Not all the problems can be solved since people were designed to disagree and our differences are what define us as an individual with unique thoughts and ideas of our own. If you can't give that up, then you have to expect fighting because that's what all things in nature do for survival. What would happen is humans would become the next Super Vision Army, or the next Zentradi, or the next PC, and we'd eventually run into the same problem. (having powers at the top disagree with those on the bottom, getting into a fight with an external threat, leading to weapons getting more powerful and out of control due to the need to be more powerful than the competition to get a better deal, ...leading to catastrophe on both sides)

But Chun li looked a bit more manish in street fighter III. Vega is a skinny guy, (a ninja needs to be fast and agile) and chun li evolved over the many games. (there is no one correct version of her any more than there is for a vf-1 in battroid mode ie revoltechs and superposables exaggerate certain features to bend the rules a bit) You are totally ignoring that in street fighter alpha the characters have far bigger muscles and body changes for some. (bison for example) Yet it's ok for alpha to do it, but this game can't? I just don't see why people complain now when they didn't then. (and please go back to world warrior sprites when guile was skinny. His newer super turbo sprite adds muscle but he has the same "frame" - meaning there is no "correct" version, just a version that you accept as the right one based on your taste) I just want to remind people that Ryu in World Warrior, Ryu in Street Fighter Alpha (younger version of himself before he got the red headband from ken's ponytail ribbon) and Ryu in Street Fighter III/Animated Movie are not the same. And chun li even changed her fighting style in street fighter III. People, it's not that I don't agree with you on some of the complaints, but I get the feeling some of the "fans" criticising haven't even been following the series to be aware of those small changes/evolutions from the various games to be allowed to complain "thats not ryu" when you take into consideration previous games have changed and added things. No where does it say that the characters have to be exactly like the ones you saw in super turbo or III or alpha. They seem to be a mixture. So Zangief can be a bit of the animated movie mixed with the street fighter alpha version and not the World Warrior version of zangeif in this game. You know what I mean? There is no correct version since over time capcom changed their look slightly from game to game. Some characters DO look almost the same as they originally were designed, (take Ehonda for example) but look at the difference between World Warrior Sagat (where he is skinny) vs Street Fighter Alpha Sagat. (much more muscle mass) Did anyone complain that Guy in Street Fighter Alpha didn't look like Guy in Final Fight? Of course not! There is no 'correct' version so long as fans get to pick and choose which is the real one based on which they have come to like more. Cody in Final Fight had a medium build. But look how big he got in Street Fighter Alpha! Designs can change.

If you've seen the animated movie: you'll note everyone looks pumped in that. I think this might be a case of them being influenced by that and some of the upgraded looks of the character in SF Alpha. (dhalsim, sagat, and especially bison looks a bit more 'powerful' than the older version sprites in SFII) If the cammy in this game looks like the cammy from the animated movie I'll be happy. Guile looks good! Remember how skinny the old school guile was in World warrior? Glad he is more muscular.

Are these going to be hard to find in the future?

I plan on getting a 19 with FB later so I hope they rerelease it some day.