ewilen

If this is the problem I'm thinking of, it's mentioned in one of the online FAQs. Something like you need to kill a bunch of Scouts but there's one level with a lot of them, yet they don't count toward your score. You need to avoid that level and kill the Scouts in other levels.

Lots of discussion here: http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?...;s%20f-14&st=20 I'm sure David will weigh in, but I think you're going to have to go with the Compendium stats and your instincts. It's a fictional F-14 variant unlike anything that really flew in an operational role.

Next-to-last level is okay, but I got really sick of it since it's one of the few that offers lots of sniping opportunities, and you need to snipe a lot to get one of the medals/paint schemes. I think a VF-1D is even better for the level, by the way--even heavier armor than the 1A, and you really don't need speed or lots of missiles, just patience. Don't misunderstand me, I enjoyed much of this game, probably including some of the levels that people bitch about (such as the couple where you have to protect a theater/arena, and the helicopter escort missions). But the first part of the catseye mission, the first mission where you have to stop the protoculture transports, and this one mission where you have to rescue Hiro are all horrible. As well there's at least one mission that you simply can't complete without knowing in advance EXACTLY what you have to do--more like a Pac Man or Super Mario level than an immersive combat game. And while I realize it's not entirely appropriate to compare the game to SDF Macross for PS2, playing the latter really makes you realize that BC did a second-rate job of capturing the sweep and fluidity of VF movement and combat. (One thing I'll give BC, though, is that the gun is useful in fighter mode; in SDF Macross, it's really only useful in battroid.) The main reason why I wouldn't pay more than $10 for it now is that the market is swimming with used copies of the game.

My first reaction to AC2 was that it was awesome. And it is, in many ways. But I am currently very frustrated by two factors: 1) The control scheme, which is exclusively button-based (no use of the analog sticks except as L3/R3 buttons). Mostly this is okay since I'm used to playing first-person shooters on the computer using just a keyboard. But the default scheme uses the L2/R2 (or is it L1/R1?) as look up/down. And even though you can completely reconfigure the controller, I can't seem to find an alternate scheme that works any better. 2) The game lets you buy & sell parts of your mech to try to come up with the best combination on your budget. In principle, this is great. In practice, it's a huge bore because of the interface. They have one subsection where you buy/sell parts, and another subsection where you assemble your mech. So you have to go back and forth between them constantly. Instead, they should just let you buy parts and equip/unequip "on the fly". I could understand why they would do things the way they did if selling parts earned you less money than you originally bought them for, but that's not the case. The good news is that from what I hear, both of these defects have been addressed in later Armored Core games. So if you want to get into the series, it might be a good idea to find out which ones those are and just get them. Another issue about the game which isn't quite as bothersome is that there's an economic system whereby you get money for completing missions, but regardless of whether you complete the mission or not, you have to pay the cost of the ammo you use and the repairs your mech. Makes sense except that (of course) you can always refuse to save the game after a mission that doesn't go very well. I understand what they're going for here but, so far, I don't find this aspect very satisfying. Anyway, AC2 blows Battlecry out of the water. [Edit: I originally wrote AC3]

I forgot that Kinski was in AFDM. He was fine in the movie, but I think the other psycho is scarier. Jeleinen mentioned The Searchers. Definitely recommended if you think Wayne was just a fat lunk. Also, I think The Searchers along with Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress were sources of inspiration for Star Wars.

It has several missions that are either too difficult or which require you to do stuff which isn't at all enjoyable. I agree it's worth somewhere between $2 and $10 but double figures is pushing it considering how old this game is.

Thanks, cobywan. The Model Graphics book isn't official, right?

http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/nimitz/ gives the Nimitz class a length of about 333 m I'd guess that for any modern carrier, you can use the length overall as the flight deck length (or very close to it), so we can also find the lenght of the flight decks of a few Macross-universe carriers: Prometheus: 512 m Daedalus: 488 m Asuka II: 250 m Converting all these to English units and scaling to 1/60 gives the following: Nimitz: 18' 3" Prometheus: 28' Daedalus: 26' 8" (Daedalus flight deck is a little weird, so for your purposes it may be a little shorter than this) Asuka II: 13' 8" I'm having a little difficulty locating data for the height of a carrier's "island" superstructure. If you can find it in meters, then apply this formula to get the height of a 1/60 model in inches: (H * 100) / (152.4) If you find the height in feet, then simply divide by 5 to get the height of a 1/60 model in inches. E.g. if the height is 100 feet, the scale height will be 20 inches.

If you look at the Compendium entry which someone kindly linked upthread, it has the games in which the Stampede and Star Crusader appeared.

Where are the head and engine pictures from?

I can't add much to what Viceland and others have said. I enjoyed GBU best. I saw it first, and in a way that spoiled the other two for me, because I think it really outshines the other two. Note that Lee Van Cleef is *not* a bad guy in A Few Dollars More. The bad guy in that movie is a great psycho, though. JsArclight, I appreciate your comment about the moral ambiguity of the characters, but I also think the trilogy is nearly as stylized as previous Westerns, merely in a different direction. Of the various Westerns I've seen, the one that felt the most genuine to me was Wyatt Earp, even though it has one of my least favorite actors in Kevin Costner; then again, it has a great performance by Dennis Quaid as Doc Holliday. High Plains Drifter was okay, not great. Unforgiven is a hair short of great. I remember liking Josie Wales but that's nearly all I remember. Still need to see Pale Rider; I understand it's based on Shane, which to me is horribly dated with the exception of two actors: Jack Palance, who is fantastic, and the actor who plays the bad guy rancher.

Last picture. I assume this is the model used for episode 1, but I can't guarantee it.

Picture 3

Picture 2

Non-canarded version as seen at http://www.macross.co.jp/zero/ Picture 1

Here are a bunch of screen shots of the Mig with canards from MZero 5: http://www.sonic.net/~ewilen/Macross/zero/canard_mig/ Edit: Get them while they're hot. I'll probably take them down after a few days or so.

I posted links to a couple places that have pointers upthread. But if there's sufficient demand, maybe I'll type up my notes, which would include all three control layouts. Briefly, to answer your specific question, you can "dodge roll" in any mode by quickly moving the stick in one direction and then the other. E.g., to roll left, snap the stick right then left. In battroid, you can also roll forward or backward in similar fashion. And it looks pretty cool. If you want to do a real barrel roll in fighter mode, or even a "slow roll" that isn't a dodge move, you need to set the controls to advanced mode, which makes the stick behave more like a real aircraft's stick. If you use the "easy" mode, the stick behaves more like a steering wheel (basically like Battlecry) and it won't let you roll beyond a certain point. If I recall correctly, in Gerwalk, the left stick does pitch and yaw, while the right stick does altitude and roll. So if you want to roll slowly in Gerwalk, use left/right inputs in the right stick. All the above assumes control mode "A".

Flight was delayed; they're going to try again Tuesday. http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3763205

I'll second the recommendations of Kimagure Orange Road and Maison Ikkoku. I remember not being very enamored of Ah! My Goddess, though all I really remember was that it was vaguely like an update of Urusei Yatsura. For very silly semi-romantic stuff, UY and Ranma 1/2 might be options. Another possibility might be "Ocean Waves"/"I can hear the sea"...oops, I don't remember it as especially funny. http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/video/umi/ for DVD releases (only R2 and R3 so far).

Funny, I understand why people like the visor, but the circle is also okay with me. Makes it more Zentradi-y.

In Macross "reaction" does have a special meaning as applied to certain technologies. http://macross.anime.net/story/encyclopedi...tion/index.html http://macross.anime.net/story/encyclopedi...apon/index.html Also reread this thread from the beginning for some elaboration/speculation.

Based on the pics, I think the MZero helmet is the coolest. Am not much of a fan of the DYRL helmet design--the long visor looks impractical and improbable to me. Admittedly, the DYRL uniforms and flight suits have a lot of panache, like the movie as a whole, but I can't really look at the helmet as anything other than a very stylized design created more for the sake of appearance than anything else.

I don't think either the X-1 or the X-15 were meant to be all that useful in and of themselves. Some X-craft may look like they wouldn't need much work to be made into an operational application, but that's really the role of prototypes, if you ask me. I'm not sure, but even though this particular craft is unlikely to have an operational application, I think one of the practical goals of the technology is a hypersonic bomber of some sort. Lets see, checking globalsecurity.org...yup, via FALCON.

Credit where it's due--skippy438 came up with the term.

I agree with whoever picked the "space pope" heads. Not only the VF-9 and VF-14, but the Fz-109a (based on the VF-14) as well. The Az-130 also suffers from the "space pope" syndrome albeit to a lesser degree. (The FBz-99 has it to an even smaller degree.) General Galaxy was thus directly or indirectly responsible for the ugliest mech heads in the universe before they turned things around with the VF-17 and YF-21/VF-22.