JB0

Hot. Pity we'll never see another Blaster Master game. Of course, given what the Genesis and PlayStation ones were like, that could be a good thing. The monochrome GameBoy one can be ignored, because it wasn't even in the series until it came to America. That was a Bomberman spinoff and I'm pretty sure it broke more hearts than BM2 and Blasting Again put together.

As I understand it, later Binaltechs had very low die-caset, but the same high price point. Seems Takara's solution to low sales was to reduce costs and keep prices static, thereby increasing profits... assuming no one shifted allegiances to the Alternators. I read that most of japanese fans were importing Alternators to start with. Once the metal content went down, more of them started, and the rest of the world quit importing Binaltechs.

Guld would also be able to fly once the g-forces exceeded what his own muscles could counter. Isamu would get less precise with his controls before losing control entirely as the limits of his physical strength were reached(blacking out seems to not be a concern in Macross, for whatever reason). Guld's controls don't depend on muscle. And you forget that Guld would be able to see vastly more than Isamu even BEFORE his eyeballs imploded. I loved the sections where they cut in the 3D renders of the computer plotting out missile path cones and sonar maps, because they give you an idea of the sheer amount of information Guld had available that can't be delivered intuitively with traditional displays. The YF-21 was beautiful hardware.

Shading may have been a traditional animation term, but "cel shading" never was. It would've been redundant. You've failed to make a compelling argument for why I'm wrong. Just stated your opinion as fact. Which is par for the course. BTW, regardless of what the program calls it, shading is the traditional term in 3D graphics, as evidenced by "flat shading" and "Gouraud shading". And it winds up being drawn by the video card's shader hardware(assuming it is reasonably modern and uses the graphics accelerator). Which TOTALLY changes your argument, whether you realize it or not. In the field of computer graphics, there are many different techniques that can create a given style. I admit the 2 are more closely related in hand-drawing, but they're still far from synonymous.

Yes, I DID read what I wrote. The current cartoons are 3D-rendered(at least the bots are). There is no contradiction. As for them being the same technique... I'm sorry, but hand-coloring a 2D image and coding a program to perform lighting calculations on a polygonal model are VERY far removed. They are, at best, 2 wholely unrelated techniques that generate similar visual effects. As for the name...Shader is a commonly-used term in 3D graphics, and refers to a the portion of the rendered responsible for coloring the image as opposed to deciding what can be seen. There's all sorts of different shaders, all of which create distinctly different visual effects. The name originates because it is a shader that creates the look of cel animation. Hence, cel shader. Which has been turned into cel-shading to describe renders that use cel shaders. The name is not because they've created a software implementation of painting a cel. It's because they have a similar final appearance to cel animation.

Me Grimlock LOVE challenge!

Quite likely things WOULD be different in space. A VF-1 without FAST packs is probably better suited to atmospheric combat than a QRau, despite the QRau being infinitely more awesome(M&M QRAU VERSUS BATTLE! PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE! I KNOW IT WOULDN'T MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL, BUT IT'D BE SO FRICKIN' AWESOME!). They also establish early on that the zentradi cannon fodder are better in space. There's an implication that they don't do a lot of terrestrial combat in general, so it stands to reason that Millia would be fairly inexperienced in an atmosphere(not that she let it slow her down). The wins I recall were 1st SDF: Aerial and urban combat. Aside from the aerial combat experience, Max also had the advantage of knowing the streets of Macross City. Millia had to figure it out or bash through buildings, either of which would slow her down. On the upside, Millia is at her best, mentally speaking, for most of the fight. DYRL: Aerial combat and close-quarters combat in the meltrandi ship. Millia shoulda sniped Max from the horizon instead of Kakizaki. But she didn't. So ooops for her. Also equal footing, mentally. She doesn't get psyched out when Max shows he has some teeth. She DOES back off, but sets a trap for when he follows her in. Also worth noting that Max is making DAMN good use of every feature the VF-1 has. Pity we don't get to see the end(stupid Max shooting out the stupid lights... stupid meltrandi not using stupid bulletproof light panels... stupid animators running out of stupid time...). IMO, this is the definitive M&M battle, even if it's short. 2nd SDF: Arcade sim. We don't really know what sort of physics were in operation. The fact that it's got battroid mode in it implies it was developed on-ship(the VF-1's transformation was classified when the Macross left Earth), and that means it should be weighted towards space combat(since aerial combat means the zentradi are in the ship, which is a Very Bad Thing for the target audience). If it was being used as a recruitment aid, the physics were probably weighted towards the "realistic" side of things. If it wasn't, it was probably like nothing anyone would ever ACTUALLY fly in. 3rd SDF: The knife fight. Has nothing to do with piloting, but it certainly proves Max can adapt fast(he doesn't even slow down when he finds out his homicidal date is an alien with a grudge). And I hate AnimeFriend. Did I miss any? It's not entirely clear who he's talking about. He's been bested by Hikaru recently. But as a commander he should have more overall knowledge than just who he was personally shooting at, and he's casual enough with his crew that he certainly should've heard the ship's gossip. So he ought to know if some micron in a blue jet was laying waste to battlepods by the gigaton and acquiring a reputation as the reaper. And he might not admit it in public, but he knows Millia's FAR better than he is. So fighting Hikaru to a standstill shouldn't make him think the boy can take on Millia. On the OTHER hand.... Kamjin's completely coocoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Ummm.... The current cartoons ARE cel-shaded, at least from the shots I've seen. Cel shading is a technique to make 3D polygonal models look hand-drawn. NOT the term for hand-drawn animation.

If I recall, Max himself said Basara was ALMOST as good as he was in his prime. Of course, in his prime Max tended to downplay his abilities. He didn't seem to recognize at the time that he was "special." So his memory of the old days is colored by that perception that he wasn't really all that special. Max and Millia are VERY close, though. Who comes out on top may wind up being conditional. In their first encounter, Millia was playing. She didn't really BELIEVE there was someone as good as her in the galaxy, just someone that might last for a little while before she killed him. Then Max actually HIT her, and that threw her off. She hadn't believed it was possible. And really, either one of them could have taken the shot in that final standoff. In the video arcade, Max beats her. Barely. Millia also lets her LAST fight with Max intrude on her game, and psyches herself out. But then, this is also the only one of their battles that Max isn't taking seriously. In the knife fight of eye-melting, Millia has completely lost all rationality and perspective. She's not even PRETENDING to keep a level head. She's just running around swinging her sharp pointy thing wildly. I think DYRL is the only time they've shown a fight on even footing. And both mechs were apparently disabled in the end.

Seconded in whole. .... Well, except for the iPod Touch part. Mylene also grows and evolves over the course of the series. Between the two of them, we had great leads on both sides of the story.... if Basara would've ever quit hogging the spotlight.

I'm thinking long-term. And hoping emu authors get in gear. We're due a playable PS2 emu any day now, by my count.

Sorry, but no. Doesn't matter if he's wearing a box, a tuxedo, or a mech. Snake just can't trump Mario and Sonic pounding each other into happy fuzzy bloodless pulp in an officially licensed video game. Very few things can. This is the game we've been waiting over a decade for. It's a shame Sega's not half as relevant anymore, though. I am ALSO saddened that his song wasn't Sonic Boom. Never mind that it was only on the US version of SonicCD.

I think the last long-term console was the Jaguar. N64 has serious controller wear issues, and everything else has entirely too many moving parts in the system. Even with just a disk drive it's ugly. Add fans, and things go downhill FAST. The heatsink compound isn't what I'm worried about. I'm more worried about dust accumulation strangling the heatsink, and THAT takes a backseat to simple mechanical failure. Gooooo emulators!

http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin6/070927-3416.asp As it turns out, violent video games are GOOD for you! . From a friend who has the magazine it was published in... "In the first experiment, they just tested people on specific tasks without assigning them games (so they had game players and non-players). In the second, where all people were non-players before the experiment, the experimental group played Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault and the control group played Ballance. The experimental group improved significantly in the non-game tasks they were testing, while the control group didn't." In conclusion: Playing FPSes improves your spatial skills. And if you're female, it makes you the equal of your male counterparts. So go teach your kid sister to deathmatch. It gives Jack Thompson a coronary AND will give her an edge in math class when she gets older.

I'll be honest, I have my doubts about the effects on non-heatsinked systems. But once you start needing heatsinks, and especially once you start needing heatsinks AND fans, it becomes a very good idea to keep some breathing space around everything.

That would be my stance. If I wanted to see the movie again.

Sitting on carpet's been an official Bad Idea since the beginning, though. The original Atari VCS has stickers on the bottom warning you not to set it down on carpet because it blocks the vents. And if it can hurt THAT, then it can hurt ANYTHING. Given the thermal load of modern computing components... even if the 360 WASN'T fundamentally flawed, sitting on a carpet would probably be a death sentence.

Nonsense. They only blew up 3 VF-11s in the entire series. .... They just blew the first 2 up a LOT. Seriously, I think the VF-1 was blown up more. You just didn't see it quite as often. 'Sides, at least the eject button worked right on the 11.

... PLEASE tell me there's a board under that and he DIDN'T lay his 360 directly on a thick carpet.

And the magical mystical power of song!

Monstructor was the only gestalt I ever finished. :'(

Oh. I was thinking Armored Core. Stupid acronym re-use.

I wasn't hating. I fully respect super robot pilots and their endless amounts of courage and guts, as well as their abiltiy to turn impossible odds into absolute certainties with said courage and guts. It just seemed to be the most accurate description of Basara's personality. Yeah. I think Mylene really should have been the focus of the show. Basically switch the Basara/Mylene ratio and it'd be much more entertaining. It DID fluctuate from event to event. And if I recall, Mylene grew consistently more "powerful" as the series went on, while Basara stayed more or less static. She was also good at stepping it up when more was needed. I was thinking along the lines of the biggest gaps, early on. Which admittedly aren't representative of the whole. I still find it hilarious that there's an episode entitled "Basara Dies!" And we gripe when spoilers pop up OUTSIDE the show(though I guess it wasn't really a spoiler since he, you know, didn't).

I believe PS* cards are region-neutral. But I haven't had occasion to test except in emulators, which obviously aren't the same. Any region variances will only be in the data format, though. Fat lot of good it does you when Sony won't give you something as basic as a format command, though. ... Wait.... AC3 and a bum PS1 card? Are you trying to save a PS2 game on a PS1 memory card? That won't work. Nor will saving PS1 games on a PS2 card.

I DON'T have most of the Fire Bomber songs, but agree that more songs would have helped a LOT. By the time they added the second in, I was sick to death of Planet Dance. HEY EVERYBO-*mute* I think the entire fleet counts as backups. The impression I got was that EVERYONE can do it, if they're passionate enough. Even poor tone-deaf Gamlin(who should be legally banned from singing in the presence of others). Basara is just by far the best at it, with Mylene a distant second. He's in a perpetual state of worked-up and doesn't NEED the impending death of himself, his family, his friends, his species, his galaxy, and his universe to push him on. He just really really really REALLY wants people to LISTEN TO HIS SONG! and it'll touch their hearts if he puts everything he has into it. Even the heathens that don't like rock will be moved, if he can only convince them to LISTEN!. In short, he's a super-robot pilot with a guitar.