JB0

It's actually almost impossible to do a small plasma at a high resolution(And no one's gonna pay for a standard-def plasma panel). They've had a lot of trouble miniaturizing the gas cells further than they already are.

I spent a while confusing Ironhide for Barricade in the final battle. Then remembered Barricade was MIA, so it had to be Ironhide. It helped tha tboth designs featured lots of black, and wheels on the shoulders. Speaking of geocentric arrogance... 2 arms. 2 legs. 2 elbows. 2 knees. 2 hands. 10 fingers. 2 eyes. 1 mouth. And in Ratchet's case, 1 nose(Seriosuly, WTF? A nose?) They're ALREADY slaves to human aesthetics. And hyper-advanced robots that can change their physical form on a moment's notice just by looking at another machine can't ALSO alter physical appearance between vehicle and robot modes? There's no real reason for the large assortment of vehicle parts lovingly studded across various parts of the Transformer anatomy in the movie aside form "Look at us! We're sticking cylinder heads on the thighs BECAUSE WE CAN!". The alternative you present is more aesthetically appealing, though limited in posability(and of course, those designs were never illustrated to match the toys in fiction partially for that reason). Though you've intentionally pulled out the worst of the bunch and presented an imaginary either-or situation. There are 3 different options in this photo. One of which met Mr. Bay's requirements for no mass shifting(a rule he failed to pass to ILM, but.... whatever).

I thought usually the first one was the best and it was downhill from there. Not that I expect that this time.

True. But the PS3 is still no cheaper than it was at launch. And that's part of the problem. It's just too expensive, especially when the competition's as strong as it is right now. Anyways.... My 360 needs food. I haven't picked a new game up for it in a while.

Yeah.... that wasn't quite what I meant. I just meant that the balance was WAY too skewed in one direction, and if it HAS to be skewed all the way to one side, I'd rather it was skewed towards the Transformers than the humans. If nothing else you need humans to remind everyone the Transformers are huge(unless they're a comic relief blender that turns into a bargin-brand boombox...). Giant robots beating each other up in space isn't near as fun.

There were too MANY humans was the main problem(with the secondary problem being that a lot of them were failing to be funny, or just annoying in general). It almost ceased to be a movie about Transformers and became a movie about a teenager blowing up a massive government conspiracy that just happened to have a few robots in it. But then Megatron got loose. As it was, half the Transformers were props. 2 Decepticons never even speak(save 1-line introductions in Cybertronian), a fan favorite has ONE line of dialog(again ignoring the 1-line of intro text), Ratchet does jack squat(unless I missed him in the fight...), and Jazz exists only to die. Can you honestly say the movie benefitted in any way from dedicating 20 minutes to the governemnt-hired hackers trying to ID Frenzy by listening to a recording of him hacking the Pentagon? Aside from the raw idiocy of the "technical" aspects(Seriously, it's not the 80s anymore. Can we at least TRY for vaguely believable computer plots?), it was worthless drivel that went nowhere and did nothing for the movie. That entire subplot could've been scrapped and the movie would be better for it. About half of the Sector Seven stuff could be shaved out without doing anything but speeding the story up. I'm not saying the next movie should be one giant scrapmetal blastfest, but I hope it's a tighter movie. And yes, I hope it has more and better robot violence too. Give the humans relevance, but don't marginalize the title characters to do it.

You have to fidget it just right. *fidgets with Barricade* That's odd.... It USED to line up... <edit> Hey, I finally got it to latch in! It only took.... 10 minutes of fidgeting? I THINK I had the double-knees latched in the wrong ratchet points, but hell if I can say for sure. </edit> Remember when you just folded the car in half and pulled the trunk down? Yeah, those were the days. If this is the price we pay for joints, than QBert articulation. QBert it up the ass.

Of course, Sony never REALLY lowered the price. They discontinued the $500 model. Then came back, lowered the $600 mdoel to 500, and introduced a new 600$ model. Essentially, it's an upgrade to the line, not a real price cut.

I've seen it now. LOT better than it has any right to be, really. But most of the first third of the movie could be completely removed and it would improve the film greatly, as well as leaving more room for gunfights. Starscream needed more than 1 line(2 if we count his cybertronic language line) and a dogfight, even if it WAS the best action sequence in the film, IMO. The designs still look like traffic accidents and the squishies have far more attention than they need. I still want Grimlock to step on Micheal Bay, but thats mainly on principle. The movie is damn fun once it gets moving. Here's hoping the next movie stays away from the humans and leaves the focus on giant robots kicking the crap out of each other.

This happens every time there's an upgrade on a message board... If I recall, what works for me is to clear my cache(but not cookies), THEN visit the forum and log in. May need to delete the MW cookies, but just those should do it. I really need to sort it out again, as I'm getting booted between sessions.

SHOCKWAVE! SHOCKWAVE! SHOCKWAVE! ... And a f'ing mass-market Thrust...

I see I lucked out. I never did pay for an extended warranty. Which WAS stupid. But now it's just a gamble that paid off.

I dunno.... given the way GM's been pimping their license...

'S not theory. At least, not the first 2 points. It's electrical fact. Smaller transistors with shorter connections between them reduce part resistance, which results in less waste heat generated. 65nm parts WILL run cooler than their 90nm versions. And other things being equal, cooler parts reduce overheating issues. The only way the new parts WON'T reduce overheating is if MS redesigns the cooling to be less efficient or less reliable since they "no longer need" a heatsink quite that big or fans that move quite that much air. And the cooler staying the same is just assumption at this point.

Bumblebee "suffers" from Starscream Syndrome?

Ooohhh, nice! Fixes his mobster victim look too. The official transformation leaves him looking like he just had a cyberball bat taken to his knees. Barricade's the only non-Real-Gear I've bought so far. And yeah, the punch mechanism sucks. Almost as much as his lack of hands(yes, I know there's fingers molded into the quarter panel insides. They don't count and you know it. ). Edit: Huh. I hadn't even noticed he HAD toe spikes...

Not until I get a MASK movie!

Or they were watching stunt planes with smoke generators. But heck, the lack of pilots kills the disguise anyways. May as well go all out.

No. The disks don't have enough space, and the end result won't adhere to any reasonable standard.

Mine have the feet... They also have instructions to pull down on the feet to extend the legs. Which results in detached feet, but what the heck, let's do it anyways! As far as the shoulders go... I think Hasbro is just unwilling to acknowledge that joint exists. They insist on leaving them up for the boxart and everything too. On NotLazerbeak, they missed the hinge to angle the wings up. And forward. Those 2 steps make him a LOT nicer looking.

That's easy. Cut a hole in the side of the box, run wire there, glue the battery pack in it. I've been kicking around stick ideas for a while. More PC-oriented, due to MAME. Modular so I could match arcade panels(and play around with layouts, like classic Atari-style right-handed directionals). But being me, I had plans for something extremely modular. Scavenge a few controllers and wire the boards up to a standard connection, mount them in a box, and I could easily swap the "brains" of the stick out with a cartridge for any system I owned, 2600 to 360. I need to dig some notes out and actually make one.

It had a theatrical release. But fun thing... they still use 4:3 film for movie releases. They actually matte it down for the movies. In the case of animation, the entire 4:3 frame is almost invariably drawn. So you actually GAIN image area. As far as the "HD master"... Either Bandai's planning an HD-DVD/BluRay release, and this is made using a cleaned-up remaster made for that, or Bandai is full of poo. DVD-Video disks CANNOT carry HD video, as the resolution is explicitly 720*480. And if you're distributing it on DVD-ROM (which... isn't really that useful. People tend to not watch movies on their computers.), you're limited to something like a half-hour per dual-layer disk(which clearly isn't enough for this).

Yeah... Which would've useful if I remembered anything besides "Energon Arcee, only in blue" Though the price classes they use amuse me. Mainly because "Deluxe" is so close to bottom-end.

Ummmm... Good question. I didn't realize there were two. Shows how much attention I paid. Repaint of Energon Arcee, whichever class she fell into. ... How can I know that, and not whether it was 6 or 10 bucks? I'm really a special kind of special here. *rummages at Hasbro's site* Scout.

Good to know. Now I can be a cheap bastard and use my 1 free month of Live Gold to download Mechassault updates! ... And, you know, play a game or two. Maybe. ... As soon as I run some copper across the house for my 'Boxes.