Chronocidal
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Well, I mean, it would be interesting? But I don't expect you can crawl through the entire ship's hull that easily. There's got to be some room for the actual ship components. That being said, one thing at a time. I need to get the set first before I think about if I'd want to make additions to it. Though, I do think it would be fun to build a factory fresh one, in some sort of corporate paint scheme. Though, maybe that's best left to one of the 1/144 Bandai kits.
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See, I'm getting the impression that not a lot of Bandai's design team actually watched the show either.
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Don't pay any attention to the pilots in the TV HMR VF-1s, they're incredibly nonsensically small. The DYRL ones are much closer to looking accurate. For whatever reason, they made the TV ones imitate the bits of SDFM where the pilots were drawn way too small.
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Robotech and REMIX by Titan Comics
Chronocidal replied to Old_Nash's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
I thought the Air Force was retiring that sound effect, and replacing it with "pew-pew-pew"? That VF-1D looks like it should be making a "SPLORT!!" sound though.. it looks like it's armed with a Tang cannon. -
I think Jenius has posted some of the scales in his reviews, and the VF-1s are closer to 1/90, or 1/85 or thereabouts. I can't really say about the others, but I think there's enough variation in scale during the series itself that you can fudge things easily, as long as they look nice.
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That paint scheme was an outright disaster. It had about as much in common with Roy's VF-1S as an orange has in common with a carrot. The white skull and crossbones printed on white plastic was one of those things where you want to stick your head out of the car window while you drive through a palm tree plantation.
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There has been another thread floating around, but it's titled oddly since it was just mentioned as referencing Macross Plus in a poster/trailer, I think. I'm really hopeful that they'll go back to life before the blood and guts oil splatters, and before the online grindfest of the most recent release. As short/cheesy as AC6 was, it still had decent gameplay, and the "cobra-esque" maneuvers were semi-realistic, since they just involved thrusting and braking at the same time. Real life is more complicated, obviously, and a lot of older engines just don't have the power and instantaneous thrust to pull it off.
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See..on the one hand I am glad that it means I'll be able to mount the reaction missiles on any 31, with or without the arm panels. On the other, I'm kinda irritated at how cheap and clunky the implementation looks, because they didn't design the arm shields correctly in the first place. Part of me would love to see the accurate shields instead, with the rotating mount. The shields even have a natural location for an attachment peg, and they just completely ignored it, so now they're giving us the plastic equivalent of strapping the missiles to the wing with duct tape. I'm curious what the release announcement schedule will look like though, and whether I can wait for Mirage's packs to just order spares of those for the missiles. At least the exclusive should be easier to obtain than the regular Hayate, but I wonder if this release will change demand for the original.
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Did a quick review of the last episode, and all the remaining 31s at that point did get the reaction mounts, so assuming we get missiles with Mirage's packs, they should include them with Arad's and Chucks as well, since we clearly aren't getting them packed in with Mirage's valk. The weird bit that I can't figure out is that it looks like the production team forgot the sound projector pods existed. The opening battle scene is a rehash of the asteroid field projector concert from earlier in the series, with images all over the asteroids... but no one's using the projector pods... even though before launch, Arad is shown folding his standard pod up and over the plane as if he was deploying the booster one? Then they all fold them back down again for whatever reason, and launch..
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See, they could do that, but one thing Bandai seems to be very consistent about is never including any kind of optional equipment combination not seen directly in the show. The DYRL super-packed VF-1s only include DYRL missiles, while the TV versions only include the TV missiles. Only the CF-171s received the giant reaction missiles and MDEs, because only they were shown with them. Hayate's original 31J never mounted reaction missiles, so they only get released with the version that did. Can't have people being creative and making custom loadouts now, can we? I believe the only VF-31s shown with reaction missiles on-screen were Hayate's updated 31J, and Mirage, so I'd expect only those two to ever get the missiles (I don't remember if Chuck and Arad got them too for the all of 5 sec of screen time they got, but Mirage and Hayate got full-on center stage action poses with them). No other wing mounted missiles were ever shown in the series, and despite how good they look in the Master File, I would never expect Bandai to ever put out an add-on that's not shown in some format on-screen. If they were going to do the sound booster, the time for that is long past, and should have come with the boosters, since it was only shown in one episode, which also showed all the 31s in their booster packs. Unless there are some significant upgrades and alternate weapons seen in the movie version (which may be pretty likely), I don't expect to see those sound booster pods ever made at all.
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You seem to be under the impression that Bandai's release planning has ever made a lick of sense. You should talk to all the people who bought re-releases of Ozma's VF-25S in the hopes that they had a snowball's chance of getting the armor packs.
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Actually... it looks like they went the super el-cheapo route and just made a giant mount that clamps around the arm shields, and contains the rotation point that the shield is supposed to have. Looks like the clamp uses a standard hardpoint for the actual pylon, so the missiles can go on either the shield, or the bare wing points, albeit with a huge clunky looking dual mount, instead of the individual pylons they used in the show. Welp, guess I'll need to get this one and sell off one of my other J-models. I suppose we can expect those missiles to be included in Mirage's super packs too then? If not, I need to figure out the physics of sending a physical boxing glove through a computer screen via email. If they do that though, I might skip this release and just get a couple extra sets of Mirage's packs for the missiles. Seriously.. when are they going to learn to plan ahead for this sort of stuff? Makes me think they had the designs finalized before the last few episodes of Delta even aired, and then didn't bother to go back and fix them.
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All Things Videogame Related: EXTREME VS!!
Chronocidal replied to Keith's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
So, I have one thought about that, and how it pertains to the larger story. Do they make any mention of the X-Parasites from Fusion? Reason I ask is because the later games paint this picture that the metroids were actually the thing keeping SR-388's ecosystem in balance. It sounds like the whole game may be a sort of thematic ret-con to establish that as the canon, making it more clear that the metroids were never a threat to their own environment, just the rest of the galaxy, which only makes the whole extermination order that much worse. I'm personally still upset about the entire X-Parasite story though, and how it started out sounding like it was going to wind itself into the core of the Prime series, only to have the plot thread fall into a black hole. -
I'm curious what she'd be replacing her in in this case, unless this is a hint that we're going to see more of her in future series/games/whatnot, possibly sounding older. While I want to say they probably don't have a minor part in mind, she did voice Mina Roshan in Frontier.
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Your most recent Macross or toy purchase! General thread.
Chronocidal replied to Gakken85's topic in Hall Of The Super Topics
Personally, I'd glue them together and make them into ironic shuriken to throw at Bandai's design team. -
Arcadia Premium Finish Max and Miria 1/60 Super VF-1J
Chronocidal replied to davidwhangchoi's topic in Toys
I'm gonna be that guy and complain that they're not necessary. The only thing screw covers ever accomplished for me was making absolutely sure I had to permanently damage a product before I could take it apart to adjust the tightness of a joint, or clean a jagged seam, or something. -
I don't think I've ever seen any paint scheme as gaudy as the 30th VF-1J, military, civilian, commercial, or otherwise. I could be wrong, and there are some very colorful air racers, but that scheme is so chaotic that I almost think it would be dangerous to fly it. It's like some kind of visual overload camo, designed to confuse you into having no idea which way the plane is pointing. Frankly though, unless they are contractually obligated to make one of these, Arcadia would be shooting themselves in the foot to try and sell it. The 30th VF-1J was an unsellable turd of a release, and while this one is marginally better for leaving off the stock car sticker treatment, it's still ridiculous to think the market will support it, when it's so obviously weighted toward favorite characters in the series. I just honestly don't know who they're trying to sell these to. The fans of the series want their favorite characters, and aircraft enthusiasts want schemes that are callbacks to real-world aircraft. The only market they're left with is some fraction of those groups who also happen to be die-hard collectors, and will buy any Macross release, no matter how ugly it is. In Hasegawa's case, I don't really blame them, they're a huge company who's probably been cranking out those 1/72 VF-1J kits nonstop for over a decade now. It's an easy matter to just print up some new decals, painting guides, and box art, and call it a day. Arcadia doesn't have that kind of luxury, and trying to sell something like this is not going to do them any favors.
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See.. I think that was Bandai throwing a miniature hissy fit over the fact that Arcadia got to keep the YF-19 license. I'm actually wondering if they had already designed the YF-19 mold before Yamato folded, and shoved it into the second Frontier movie just so they had an excuse to produce it. I've actually got the same suspicion about the VF-22 cameo in Delta, and I'm really hoping we see a Bandai take on that design in the next couple of years.
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Don't think they were worried about getting sued by Big West, but it sure made marketing for Robotech toys hell. I went and cancelled the Messer VF-1 I had at HLJ, though I probably should have cancelled the two I got at NY instead. I was thinking of using them for customization, but I pretty much realized I'm probably just never going to get around to it.
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On top of that, we couldn't use those shields if we wanted to (well, not without taking them off and spinning them around). The ones in the show had a rotating mount like the 262's drones, otherwise the missiles would be pointed backwards. Just in general though, Bandai has been perfecting their art of shafting their customers with exclusive releases and add-ons for decades. It's nothing new. Macross fans just got spoiled by Yamato for years, with their practice of including all the options in a single box. I do want to say though, the practice of including separate wings just so you have to purchase the add-on packs to even be able to mount any weapons is a special kind of giant middle finger to the customers that Bandai should be ashamed of. Far as the product itself is concerned, I'd say the 31 is a high point for Bandai Macross products, at least as far as production value and engineering goes. It's not fair to pin things like the stupid landing gear, and lack of accessories or weapons pods on the toy's design team. The cockpit and canopy issues are pretty darn stupid, but at least one generally conceals the other. Aside from that, the molding and paint on the 31s are generally as good as I could hope for (color selection notwithstanding). I would say the marketing on the VF-25s was better thought out, if only because their add-ons and variants were better planned from the start, but that's also probably got a lot to do with the failed v.1 VF-25 line, and all the mistakes they got to fix the second time around. The 31 isn't benefiting from that sort of hindsight. Looking at line art for the speaker pods, I'm honestly not even sure those are physically possible as shown, so I wouldn't be surprised if we never see them at all. What is frustrating though.. because they didn't put the RMS hardpoints on the shields we already have? If we ever do get the missiles to mount on them, we also get to buy five more sets of add ons, because each set of arm shields will be uniquely colored.
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The weapons pod is really only one more layer on the massive pile of missed opportunities involved in Delta though. It's like a 30 dropped thread pileup. I suppose the really dumb thing is that they gave all of the 31As the same pod design, which presumably means they also all have the micro drones in the legs... but for what purpose? I guess I can see them working as countermeasures, but like so many other aspects of Delta, there's just no real explanation for it. Really though, it's probably just to minimize the molds they have to make. I'm just waiting for the inevitable speaker pod and reaction warhead pack release. Or maybe if Bandai grows some sort of customer appreciation gland, they'll throw in some weapons we can use on any of those empty hardpoints they keep providing us with. That's what now, 5, 6 valks released now, that all come with hardpoints that're useless unless you bought an exclusive add-on from 6 years ago?
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This was my reaction too, and I haven't even been in one for years. The new layouts looked like the tunnels ants would dig when given LSD. Nothing had a defined section, and it felt like products just got wedged into tiny little corners of the labyrinth, with no room for any kind of selection to be stocked. My best memories are still of the late 80s and early 90s (I was actually at the grand opening for the one in Colorado Springs, I think), when every individual aisle was an adventure into a new genre of toys. Transformers, G.I. Joes, Nerf, RC toys, I mean sheesh, Nintendo and Sega each had their own entire aisles to themselves on one end of the store, with all of the hardware displayed behind glass cases, and the opposite end was literally a double-walled hallway of nothing but LEGO.
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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, in theaters Dec. 16, 2016
Chronocidal replied to Dobber's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Pretty much exactly that, and that's even directly borne out in the musical cues. Maybe this isn't official, but going through my memory of the original trilogy, I only really remember hearing derivatives of the opening title theme in scenes explicitly involving Luke in particular. Williams did play cut and paste with his cues quite a bit, so I'm probably forgetting some, but he was very careful in where he used specific themes. I don't remember that much about the prequels, so I can't say the same thing was done there, but most of the prequel music was really thematically lacking, and I really only remember one theme from each movie. The classic "Force" theme was sampled a lot, but Anakin had his own theme from TPM that I don't think was ever used again. The end credits of Rogue One did surprise me though, bringing back in the obligatory fanfare intro, but it was entirely fitting given the ending, and lead into ANH. When it comes time to listen to the soundtrack for the Han Solo film, I'll be interested to see who they get to score it, and whether it'll use any of OT themes. I'm really kind of hoping it doesn't actually, since the only real theme Han had was tied to Leia, and she won't be involved. -
Fixed. Just looks gaudy, and the gold is never going to look that good tampo'd. Also, I can't even consider the 25th anniversary version to be a paint scheme. It's literally what I would get if I gave a 5 year old kid a blank black VF-1, and a gold paint marker. I know, because I did that. Seriously though. Pick a Master File scheme. Any Master File scheme. Slap a "35th" logo on the tails, maybe some optional stickers for the wings and nose, and be done with it. Or just ditch the idea entirely. These things are eye-sores that never sell, and they eat up production line space for things people actually want to buy. I still think the YF-25's scheme is the only really successful attempt at a custom scheme, and that one was 90% YF-16 prototype scheme.
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I'm not sure what to expect here in terms of discounting. I purchased several of my other UCS sets on discount, including the original Falcon at 20% off. I think they've gotten wise about not over-producing now though, so that isn't quite so likely. I haven't seen any other high ticket items go on heavy discount for a while now. I honestly wish they'd just let people order them, tell them there's a waiting list, and then deliver them on a first-come first-served basis. I don't care when I get one, just so long as I don't get shut out because their production lines aren't big enough to handle demand.