JB0

I almost always had terrain issues, even though that's at the front of the load cycle. Random rocks off in the corner would've been nice, but when EVERY rock was a blurry mess... The most blatant map issues would be when the ship took off. It would be a mess of untextured or barely-textured polygons until literally one second before the takeoff cutscene ended. It would've been hilarious if it wasn't a regular occurrence in a high-end game from a major developer. Though certainly, putting "minor NPCs" ahead of party members was a poor call.

People keep saying that, and it keeps making no sense. If the 360 can't flush it's memory, there's no room to load anything. Period. End of story. Either someone's dumbed something down ENTIRELY too far, or this is random speculation that's become accepted fact. (Like PS1/2/XBox/Dreamcast/Gamecube/Whatever spinning disks backwards as a form of copy protection. Thank god THAT particular piece of fantruth doesn't get dragged out anymore). Especially given no other games have this issue, and Mass Effect had PLENTY of opportunity to load textures during the load screens. It's what load screens are FOR, and Mass Effect has some of the longest I've seen in a good while. Given the size and complexity of many of the maps, or lack thereof... I'm unsure what they're actually DOING during the load screen. I demand sources. Original, unabridged, programmer statements. Not some gaming blog's highly-misinterpreted summary of someone ELSE'S more-or-less-accurate summary of a THIRD person's speculation about what sort of problems Bioware MIGHT have had. Right now, all signs point to Bioware screwing up.

Cheeto might actually work better as a flame. But Sludge's alt-mode doesn't exist. The brontosaurus was an apatosaurus with the skull of a camarasaurus. You wouldn't want Hasbro to teach children bad science, would you? We're still recovering from the original series and IT'S regular abuses of reality. Fun fact: My browser's spell-check has brontosaurus in it, but not apatosaurus, which it would like to correct to tyrannosaurus, stegosaurus, or brontosaurus. I believe this was done to spite me.

Wow. Just... Wow.

I found an Animated Slag Snarl. Remember that flame-sword-breath thing no one could explain on Grimlock's box? I think it was on the wrong package. Admittedly, it's a little fidgety(okay, it's a LOT fidgety) but... the results speak for themselves. A guide tab would do wonders, and if I get up the courage, I may make some holes in the club for the beak to notch into. The blue coloring isn't on the toy, and is entirely the fault of me using a crappy camera and aggravated by me photographing with a flash. (Yes, I went outside and took the photo in the middle of the night. I hope you appreciate the mosquito bites I acquired.).

Makes me think of the NES game. Which is absurdly fun, even if I do wind up just sitting in GERWALK mode(fighter wasn't maneuverable enough for my tastes, and battroid's hitbox was too tall). And yes, Bangaioh makes me think Macross.

No. I'm bashing it because any game constructed in such a way that it is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO PROGRESS if you die at the wrong point has fundamental design issues. Don't tell me it can't happen, because it HAS happened to me. Gradius 3, SNES version. There's a stage with a series of fast-scrolling tunnels. Die past the halfway point and you respawn in the tunnels. Which scroll faster than you can move. Meaning that no matter how good you are, or how many lives you have, you will have no choice but to watch as the wall creeps closer and closer, dying over and over, until you meet the continue screen. It is bull-dookie of the highest caliber. I DO admit to being heavily biased against pattern-memorization games. I prefer games that test reflexes and coordination over ones that test your ability to remember where everything's gonna be. I'll take a bullet-hell over a memorization game any day, and Gradius is among the worst of memorization games. (One of my favorite shooters is Mars Matrix, for what it's worth. I admit to never playing any of the Giga Wings, which might color my perceptions some. ) Sure it may only take one death to find out that maxing your speed is a bad idea, but... why do they offer excessive speed power-ups in the first place? Because it's a good way to generate a cheap death. That's the ONLY reason it's there. To punish you for your uninformed choices. And getting back your laser and options after a cheap death in the middle of a stage? Fat. Chance. By comparison, Defender is a bitch and a half of a game. But it's all about skill. There's no map to memorize. No boss pattern to learn. No forced scroll to herd you towards obstacles. No scarcity of powerups to ensure death will leave you ill-equipped for those obstacles. Just you, a laser gun, and an endless sea of targets. And it's infinitely better than Gradius, despite being 5 years younger(and I'm not conbvinced Gradius is any betteer than Konami's first side-sccroller, Scramble, released the year after Defender). Yes, I'm comparing to Gradius 1. 2, 3, 4, and Gaiden brought no real change to the formula. Well, except 3 offered more hostile maps(even Gradius fans concede that one's way over the top). I've acknowledged 5 is a hell of an improvement, though I still hold no great love for it. The fact is that Salamander WAS a Gradius upgrade. They scrapped the power-up bar and raised the base speed of the ship. I WONDER WHY? Then the same kind of obsessive freaks that keep JRPGs from evolving beyond "stand in a line and stab the air" got mad because it WASN'T JUST LIKE GRADIUS. And Konami LISTENED. It's the first example of the shooter market catering solely to the existing fanbase and ignoring new players, the birth of the "incest shooter." And it's that sort of behavior that led to the scrolling shooter being the gimmicky niche market it is today. I quite like shooters, and it's very sad to see them reduced to the pathetic state they're in now. So no, Gradius is NOT a good series. Wait, what?!?! I grew up on Defender. It doesn't GET older-school than that! Not as far as scrolling shooters are concerned. Just because you're blind to the major faults of a specific highly-overrated franchise is no reason to make blanket accusations.

Yes to Salamander, no to Gradius. Gradius sucks. Even Gradius 5, which has recoverable options and a higher minimum speed. The power-up system just needs so much refinement that no one's willing to do because it tampers with the formula. R-Type got speed right(eventually). Instead of making speed a one-way street dependent on how many power-ups you grabbed, make it adjustable on-the-fly. And I'm doing everyone else a dis-service by ignoring them. Rest assured, I'm aware that many other games had controllable speed(or one sane speed) well before R-Type Delta. Parsec(on the TI 99/4a) would be the first controllable speed I know of, though irem did it in Image Fight before most of the J-era developers thought of it. Though... even from the beginning R-Type's speed wasn't the death-trap that Gradius' was. You start survivable, and can't accelerate to uncontrollable. The fact that Konami never fixed this, and it took an outsider to realize something was wrong(Gradius 5 is developed by Treasure), is just sad.

I always thought that line was "I think it's time we blow this scene, get everybody the stuff together" Your's makes more sense.

So I found a good-looking Classic Prowl, and snagged that along with Sunstreaker. ... Shoulda skipped Sunstreaker. I was so worried about making sure I had a good-looking Prowl that I didn't give Sunstreaker a good lookove. Mine's misassembled. And not in a repairable way. I have the same fist on the left and right side. Ditto for the "glass" mounted in the door(driver-side glass is right, passenger-side glass is driver-side glass that was forced into position). Had I given him a proper inspection, I probably would've noticed the window wasn't right. Guess I better find the reciept. I hope quality control goes up in the near future.

I used to love Fangry. Then he broke. Then I quit loving him. He's the only Headmaster I ever owned, though, and I was admittedly a kid with questionable taste(Let's be honest here. If we took the original cartoon SERIOUSLY, something was wrong with our judgement. ). I probably wouldn't like him half as much now. He's probably the weakest of the Headmaster designs. But I think you're confusing the distaste for incoherent alt-modes with a distaste for unrealistic ones. Example: Metroplex vs Metroplex. Both transform into unrealistic vehicles. One, however, turns into a coherent vehicle(and "city"), while the other turns into a robot leaning over and sticking it's butt in the air(and a taller robot). A quick audit of the '87 Headmasters later... From my point of view, Hardhead isn't any more "realistic" than Chromedome, Brainstorm, or Highbrow. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that he's more grounded than the rest(if I had to single one out for realism, it would be Chromedome, actually. Not that it says much). Highbrow's the only one I really mind, and that's mainly due to the weak 'bot mode. He needs legs! The Decepticon mechanimals aren't that bad, really. Well, Apeface and Snapdragon are pretty weak, but... they're triple-changers. They at least have an excuse.

*insert "ROM does not mean pirated software" rant here* I think I got my disk images off one of the iMacross servers. Back when they were FTP servers instead of RapidShare accounts. http://macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=244 Probably where I got Macross 2036(the PCEngine shooter), too. As far as emulation goes... I recommend pSX. http://psxemulator.gazaxian.com/ But then you need a PS1 BIOS ROM image. I don't recall where I got mine. And for PC Engine emulators, I used Magic Engine. It's shareware, and the demo version is time-limited. Ootake is worth trying too. I haven't spent enough time with it to give it a whole-hearted recommendation, though.

I thought everyone knew about that ages ago. Clearly I was wrong. I always forget that I nerd out quite excessively. BOMBA!

But do they enjoy it as mecha porn, or as a good story? /me falls into the "movie requires TV series background" category.

We do? It's news to me. Lower tax burden. Thanks for playing, have a nice day. Blahblah, back and forth all day, eventually the thread gets locked for politics, and no one wins. Anyways, when is Classics getting a Shockwave? Voyager-class minimum, preferably larger. Light and sound are mandatory. The masses, by which I mean me, demand it! But I guess I'll be happy with a lesser toy. Also, I finally gave in and bought an Animated Prowl instead of waiting for the armor version. It seems appropriate that a robo-ninja is one of a half-dozen bots in the history of ever that can cross his arms. And I think the flasher blasters called out on the box are intended as tonfas. 'S what they look like to me. In any case, he's pretty neat.

The space is really more relevant for high-detail models and textures. And the DS' lower capabilities mean there's less to cram into the ROM. Of course, the DS' lower capabilities also means it probably couldn't do the game for other reasons(and the lack of a thumbnub for transformation control makes button count more of a pain).

You want strategy-RPGs and shooters? The PCEngine has both, for the SuperCD expansion. Macross 2036 is the shooter. I've emu'ed it all the way through.

Essentially, DYRL is the "visual canon" and the TV series is the "plot canon." If that makes sense.

http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html...wareLabelID=208 Was a port of a Commodore 64 game. Seems fairly complex, especially for a 2600 title.

Play from the hard drive is kind of annoying... not because it's bad, but because it should've been there from the start. The 360 was actually a good bit of a step backwards from the original XBox in terms of the hard drive. The original had a lot of games that copied data to the hard drive to speed things up. With the 360, that wasn't an option, because they'd inexplicably made the hard drive optional. Now we've come to the point where you can install an entire GAME to the hard drive... to work around slow DVD access times.

ALL PS3s will play PS1 games. With a high degree of compatibility. SOME PS3s will play PS2 games. With a varying degree of compatibility. Remote play is a PS3-PSP interactivity feature. Basically, you can play games on your PS3 through the internet, using your PSP as your controller, screen, and sound. Obviously, this is extremely limited, since you're missing L2, R2, L3, R3, R-stick, motion-tracking, HD resolution, and remotely decent sound. BUT... that's not so big a deal for PS1 games(okay, L2 and R2 may be an obstacle).

I was thinking "T-LINK KNUCKLE!" I'm not sure if that's better or worse.

It's possible she's cyborg enough that they could back up her "brain" and restore it to a cloned/rebuilt body At which point it's a point for the philosophers if she lived or not. My review(just watched, missed umpteen-bajillion pages of discussion, so sue me): Epic battle! The VF-121 is QBerting awesome! Alto is becoming a piloting jenius! Everything gets QBerting nuked! The Quarter transforms without the battle becoming farcical! I give it two thumbs up. Way up. Zentran-sized. Also: New barrier tech! No glowing green aura of defensiveness!

I'd hold off on that. The PS3 is only region-unlocked for PS3 games. Unless I've missed something big, it still only plays same-region PS1/2 games. ... I suppose you COULD import a japanese PS3. But aren't they expensive enough?

And of course, there's Megaman 9 all over the place. PSWii60 turned Wii-exclusive turned PSWii60 all in the space of like a week. Never expected Capcom to go back to the original Megaman series, though. I like it. And the idea of a new old-style game is pretty appealing to me.