ScrambledValkyrie

20 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

Just an FYI..  I reached out to Kitz Concepts awhile back inquiring about any additional releases of the TV Fokker 1S SD valk..    They kept telling me soon..   Well I just got a response saying that they should be putting it out again in Q3 2018..     

Its the only SD Valk I have not been able to snag..  when it pops on ebay it's waaaaaay overpriced.

 

 

Wait, there was a TV version of the SD Fokker 1S? I thought it was just a movie version.

4 hours ago, Convectuoso said:

http://jungle-scs.co.jp/mobile/sale_en.cgi?action=productlist&do=detail&pid=101000010506

These should work just fine. A bit overpriced, though. 

Yeah, it seems like this set keeps climbing in price as more people get into HMR. I'm not counting on Bandai to re-release them, so I've bought a few sets over the past couple of years, and averaged $60 shipped for them, which is still a lot more than they originally went for several years ago.

1 hour ago, jvmacross said:

I have those....good idea but they won't match the rest of the HMR squadron when they eventually get released.... 

Agreed, they're not ideal if you want a DYRL look like the current HMR super/strike VF-1s, but they do work pretty well color-wise if you're going for a TV look, like me. (The arm armors are not technically the right sculpt for TV, but I'm not too concerned there.)

49 minutes ago, TheLoneWolf said:

Oh man, I'd love to see an HMR VF-1SR. But that's doubtful since the VF-1SR is jointly owned by Nippon Computer Systems (NCS), not to mention it's such an obscure design. Our best chance of seeing one is through an option kit from an unlicensed third party.

By the way, who made that model kit? It's definitely not the best looking VF-1SR, but I'm still impressed that someone made one.

Good idea about the add on kit. The Hikaru VF-1J gets you 80% of the way there. Glad I have a spare one of those. 

8 hours ago, DewPoint said:

If you want to mimic the stands that occasionally come with HMR releases, then you would be looking for the Tamashii Trident stands or the Stage Act 5 stands.  The Stage Act 5 stands come in 3 packs.  I do not own any Trident stands but I believe they come as singles.  The are both available in multiple colors.

Yes, the trident stands are sold separately, and work really well with HMR. And I'll confirm that the Stage Act 5 stands are what you want.

@sh9000, I agree that a VF-1SR would be cool. I have the game it's from and keep meaning to play through it. I hope you're right about that Tomahawk.

I mainly want Bandai to finally release that Tomahawk they've been teasing for what, 3 years now?

On 5/23/2018 at 6:53 PM, anime52k8 said:

Skybite was the single best thing about Car Robots IMO.

Well, if we're talking CR, then it'd be Gel Shark, no? But yeah, Skybite's character was definitely one of the highlights of RID. I don't recall him being quite as over the top in the CR original, though it's been a while since I've seen it.

Thankfully, the armor on my Hikaru VF-1A is correct. Sorry to hear that several of you are having issues with this.

Meanwhile, isn't it about time for another HMR announcement from Bandai?

23 hours ago, Convectuoso said:

Is this the same game that was released for the GameBoy Advance? 

 

It appears to be. I wonder how that licensing worked out with TDK and how much HG is involved.

3 hours ago, hachi said:

Lack of display space should not be a deterrent to getting HMR valks. I mean, I have valks but with no display case at all

Agreed. In fact, the reason I have so many HMRs (and only one 1/60) is that they take up so little space, relatively speaking. If you just want to dabble in HMR (as I originally thought I would) it should be easy to find space for 2 or 3. The problem is that it's hard to stop at just 2 or 3...

11 minutes ago, spacemanoeuvres said:

So what episode and valk do we see the atmospheric booster on in the show?

SDFM Ep 30 - Viva Maria

It's on several valks, as I recall: the 1S Hikaru inherits from Roy, plus M&M 1J.

Edit: Looks like @chyll2 posted while I was typing mine out.

19 minutes ago, HardlyNever said:

Eh, they aren't mutually exclusive.  The N-Ger was heavily featured in the last HMR promotion, so I wouldn't give up hope yet.

Agreed. And the fact that the N-Ger is shown so significantly on the VT-1 box (and rightly so given the sequence in the movie) I think makes it more likely that Bandai will do it. They seem to be on a DYRL kick lately.

Its disappointing to hear of several having leg armor issues on the super VF-1A. I'm a little anxious about mine, which should hopefully be arriving in the next several days. (Good old SAL...)

1 hour ago, Corrinald said:

I am not too familiar with how proxy services work. Any suggestions on which ones might be good to use?

Probably the two most common are Zen Market and Buyee. I don't have any first hand experience with Zen Market, though I've heard their fees are pretty competitive. I've used Buyee several times. They're owned by Tenso, a package forwarding company that I started using several years ago for Amazon Japan.

The basic idea is that you use their site to browse Yahoo Japan Auctions, and they act as a middle man that handles bidding and payments and then ships to you. The downside is that you pay extra in fees, but the lower prices on YJA can often offset that.

If you can get set up with a proxy service, you can likely grab one from Yahoo Japan Auctions for closer to $150.

As nice as @Saburo's shots are--the colors are really striking, and it makes me want to see blue and green versions as well--I think it exaggerates my frustration with the gray that Bandai decided to go with for their HMR DYRL VF-1s. It takes a lot of light and a fairly warm white balance (like in @sh9000's pic) to get it to look like they did in the actual movie. I'll be curious to see how the Hikaru's blue super parts look with my original Hi Metal VF-1A Hikaru. I put the blue parts from Roy on my HM VF-1S and think it looks great.

On 4/21/2018 at 3:32 PM, JB0 said:

My personal breakover point is "does the console do HD". Though I used to play my 360 on a VGA CRT. The assumption of widescreen ended that.

That makes sense. For me, the clear CRT candidates are the 240p consoles. I think the questionable era is with the 480i/p consoles (6th gen). I played plenty of PS2 and GameCube on a 27" Trinitron. It probably depends on what size CRT you're using. The SNES would be fine on a smaller PVM, but I'd think the GameCube would warrant a much larger screen.

The PS2 is tricky, since it has a couple of games that do 1080i but also supports PS1 games that run in 240p. 

2 hours ago, borgified said:

@sh9000: You managed to get a copy of the HMR VF-1J with the GBP at last!

Apparently one can never have too many armored VF-1s.

4 hours ago, anubis20 said:

I thought the same thing and got most of them but then jumped out. I sold almost everything and only kept the 1S Hikaru/Roy, 1J Hikaru, and I have one 1A CF that I need to sell. Oh yea the 2SS stayed as well, from here on out im only getting the new HMR molds and 1 of each 

I think I bought a couple of HMRs from you last year. I doubt you'll have any trouble finding a buyer for that last CF 1A. Seems the demand for that one continues to grow.

3 hours ago, Slave IV said:

From no HMR, Toynami was good enough to having an HMR collection that puts many to shame in a matter of weeks. Impresive, most impressive. 

That stand was a pack in exclusive that was supposed to come with Roy's 1S. Since it was packed separately, before they figured how to pack together like in M&M, some sellers did not include the stand for whatever reason. 

Not all HMR Roys came with the stand. From what I recall, the stand was included for anyone who preordered Roy's 1S (which was a Tamashii exclusive) by a certain early date. So if you didn't PO by then, you wouldn't get the stand. And I'm pretty sure there was originally a larger shipping box that Bandai created to hold both the valk and the stand. 

On 4/1/2018 at 6:54 PM, JB0 said:

There's an argument to be made there, now that you can run ROM images off a Super NT. Personally, I prefer an original console and a CRT TV. I don't like playing games from that era on LCD.

When started to rebuild my retro game collection a few years ago, I went with a Retron 5, mainly for cost and convenience reasons. Now that I have an original GameCube (w/ GBA player), N64, SNES (1-chip), and NES, I'm giving some thought to going back to a CRT for those. Though I'm not really sure CRT makes sense for GameCube. All my consoles are stock, and I'm currently using DVDO upscalers for these machines into modern LCDs. (Two different rooms with two different setups.)

I haven't seen anyone comment yet on the fact that the FAST pack boosters are shaped differently from normal (and from the original model design reference), especially on the tips where the missile launchers are. Is that perhaps to avoid any copyright complications with Big West?

I wonder if that may also be a reason why they aren't producing this in a color scheme that's similar to the official GBP (which I think would look really good).

Thoughts?

That box art looks great. It's a familiar pose, but I think that was probably expected.

Very cool HMR setup, @db626! It makes me curious what kind of enemy force everyone in the bottom pic is looking at.

I think I'd personally be nervous about using fishing line like that, but it does clean up the display nicely.

4 hours ago, Saburo said:

Awesome shots @tekering.

Agreed. @tekeringclearly has some nice photography skills.

Nice Roy!

Did you make him out of a spare CF pilot? And if so, did you paint the whole thing a darker gray or just go with the light gray and paint the green areas black? (I'm curious, as I'd been thinking of doing the same thing.)

8 minutes ago, Shizuka the Cat said:

16 CF's?!  16?!

I take it you've never seen one of @sh9000's collection pics? It's a sight to behold. He probably has close to 100 pieces of HM-R in total across all models.