Chronocidal

See... that is beautiful weathering. Glad to see people paying attention to that kind of detail. Real aircraft actually do get shiny over time, since the paint wears smooth and the flat finish disappears. Anything on leading edge of anything will get worn smooth by friction with the air. Aircraft with completely dull paint do exist, but they don't stay that way long. I know a few pilots, and I got to walk around a fresh-from-the-factory superhornet once. It was the only time I've ever seen one that was completely flat-coated. In fact, it didn't even look quite real, specifically because of the lack of dirt and grime on it. The crew said they were having fun with it though, doing basic maneuver training flights and such. The plane itself was entirely clean, no mission equipment, external pylons, etc, so it was a real hotrod compared with the rest of the planes in the squadron.

Actually, they do make a point of explaining this, and expounding on the whole "humans only" deal throughout those books. There's been more books, and a few short stories that go into explaining more of his backstory as well, and just why he wound up in the Empire to begin with. The funny thing to think about though is that Thrawn and Pallaeon were both used as characters in the Tie Fighter game, and possibly other places, so they have appeared in semi-official content (unless LucasArts games are considered part of the EU as well). I don't remember how much of a role Thrawn had during the campaign, but I believe he may have been leading the fleet you were part of during some of the expansion packs. Pallaeon isn't specifically named, but Thrawn's right-hand man in the opening cutscene is definitely a guy with a big bushy mustache, which Pallaeon was written as having.

They did a lot of that nonsense with molding in the wrong color the first time too. The rear landing gear doors on the 25G were molded blue, and painted to match. It's still done with a surprising number of parts too, the tails are always molded in the base color of the valk and painted black. Not sure, but the ventral fins probably are too. I guess I halfway can't blame Bandai for it though.. outside of Alto's, all the VF-25 schemes are a royal pain in the backside to paint. So many panels in varying colors and shades, it's really a mess. Ozma's is almost something like you might see on a real aircraft, but the color on the underside is still varied across a bunch of panels with different shades of gray.

Yeah, a good portion of the EU is really a mess, and it keeps causing certain authors to write fixes into their books to help mitigate the nonsense (the whole Callista mess in particular). I've never even bothered with anything after the publisher switch, since Vision of the Future seemed like a pretty perfect way to close out things. I have to give major credit to Zahn for one aspect of his Hand of Thrawn duology though.. he pretty much slapped the entire rest of the EU upside the head for making certain characters so force-overpowered. There was just so much nonsense going on in some books... oy. I know Zahn and Stackpole collaborate to keep their characters and stories consistent, and while I'm not sure if Allston is so connected, his X-Wing novels are some of the best (and funniest) books I've read. I can understand people's gripes about them, but I just enjoy reading about the characters they've written. They're not great literature or anything, but they're entertaining. Plus, you know.. I was looking through some old computer games and realized where I'd seen Allston's name before. He wrote the original "magazine" manual for Wing Commander I.

Ok, so for anyone who follows Battletech/Mechwarrior stuff.. I've been fiddling around in Mechwarrior Online with some friends. I was initially really really skeptical about them doing anything worthwhile with a free to play online Mechwarrior title.. color me decently surprised and optimistic about it. Mechwarrior Online just went into open beta, and while it's very clearly still a beta (some would say more an alpha really), I was surprised at how in-depth it is. I was expecting some arcadey mech battle game, with simplified mechanics, top-down view, etc... No.. they actually made it a simulator. It's cockpit-view only, and you've got all the bells and whistles for controlling weapons groupings, sensors, IR/night vision, etc. I actually was able to set the game up and run it with a stick, throttle, and rudder pedals, but a mouse/throttle/rudder control is probably the best way to go. According to my Battletech junkie friend, they're staying pretty close to the actual tabletop mechanics too. It's definitely still lacking in game modes and features, so it's an in-progress title, but what I've played with it so far has been fun, and not too heavy on the "pay to win" side of things. That may change, but so far there's nothing you can get with real money that you can't get with in-game money, and weapons and equips can't be bought with cash credits anyway, just actual mechs to customize. You start out with default trial mechs that you can't customize, but aren't bad for learning in since you pay nothing to repair/re-arm them. Buying your own costs anywhere from 2-20 million in game credits, depending on how fancy/tricked out it is. While that seems like a lot, you can pretty much count on around 100k credits per match (you get paid whether you win or lose, you just get more for winning), so it doesn't take too long to build up funding for a mech and weapons. Warning though.. starting out is a pain. There's no tutorial, no practice range, and no way to test your control/graphics/weapons configs without just joining a game. Only available game mode currently is an 8 vs 8 base capture, and the matches are pretty short, since there's no respawning. Really steep learning curve for people who haven't played a MW title before though. Word is they plan to add tutorial missions or practice areas in the future, but it does seem really stupid to not do those before open beta launch. Hopefully they'll be there before it's out of beta.

Well really.. if you think about the scopes of those novels, you're not talking a movie a piece.. more like a trilogy a piece. You could easily break up many of the novels into multiple movies, just because so much stuff happens in them. Trying to cut them down to two and a half hours would probably butcher them. So yeah, the novels won't translate to movie format well. I'm ok with that. It will be sad not having the 20th Century Fox fanfare starting them out anymore (or should it be 21st century? ). But you know. I half expect Disney to pull some kind of intro shenanigans like they did with the castle in Tron Legacy. Probably couldn't get the rights to use the actual fanfare, but .. ooh. idea. Ok, you start with the first 19 seconds of this: This btw still claims my personal top spot for most beautiful/epic/triumphant music of all time. I also have a plot in mind to completely troll my younger sister on my eventual wedding day by slapping that same 19 seconds on to the beginning of the traditional wedding exit fanfare. IT JUST FREAKING FITS. Heck, I'd be tempted to use the entire piece as a wedding march... curse you, John Williams, for associating such beautiful music with such a holy grail of all things nerdy. Anyway, you crop that fanfare, and end it with a suitable fade. Then you take the CGI Disney castle from recent pixar movies, light it up with lightsaber-ish floodlights, and pan over it like the more recent Fox intro. Throw in a few ships flying over the castle, shooting off fireworks ala ROTJ and you're golden. Classy, functional, and epic. I've actually got a small 3d animation I did once for a powerpoint, so I might be able to toss that together very quickly for a visual example. You know though.. the one crossover I always wanted to see? I wanted Aaron Allston to throw in an encounter with a Star Tours transport during one of his X-Wing novels.

You know one thing I did notice about the gun stabilizers... they're not molded in clear plastic anymore. I don't know why, but they used to be in clear plastic, painted to match.

Only problem with that is that the EU has already written out the next 50-something years (and even beyond in some cases) after ROTJ. No matter what they do, they're not going to satisfy a large portion of the SW fanbase (though, those fans do tend to get stupidly picky.. not as bad as trekkies, since most of what goes into the SW EU has to at least get some passing approval by Lucas, but still). I guess there's three options. 1. They canonize some of the existing EU 2. They throw the existing EU under the bus and call it an alternate continuity 3. They go somewhere completely untouched by any of the existing material, and tell an original story (similar to what KOTOR did) Honestly, I wouldn't mind seeing a movie set in the distant past, but they've got to get better about making the technology look older. Given how TOR is doing, it wouldn't hurt to have a movie to tie into for publicity and content ideas. Still though.. any way they go, I STILL want a current gen update of the X-Wing/Tie Fighter games. Preferably using the plotlines from the X-Wing book series, because they're freaking awesome, and did a wonderful job of fleshing out the details of everything set up from the movies and original games.

Not sure whether to cheer that he's not going to be involved in the next movie, or cry because they're likely going to be relegating the entire Zahn/Stackpole/Allston (and those other guys) EU to alternate continuity status. Here's an idea. Just hire Zahn, and make his books the official episodes 7, 8, and 9. I think someone already composed a soundtrack for them.

Mhm, they're pretty good about working that kind of thing out. I had to make a similar request since I accidentally did the same thing with my VF-171 and it's armor set. They'll just ask for the difference in shipping, which came out to about $10 for me.

Definitely a C, only one with a catapult bar. The B's canopy is really truncated to fit the lift fan. Basically though.. they're really not concerned with visibility so much anymore. Things are fast approaching the point of the way the YF-19's cockpit worked.

You know, it's an absolutely last ditch solution, but you'd be surprised what Windows Movie Maker can actually accomplish with some practice. I've pieced together some small clips to try something on there before, so you might give that a try if you can.

I really wish I could get interested in the releases of this, because it's a pretty fun design... but I just can't find a way to get past how hideous the paint schemes are.

Yeah, Bandai has no freaking excuse for not having hardpoints. They did it on the Hi-Metal VF-1 with no trouble. I just do not understand what kind of mental case thought that the wing design they came up with was anything even nearly satisfactory. Hardpoints or not, the wing design is one of the worst fubar's I've ever seen in toy engineering. It's just pants-on-head stupid. As for requiring extra wings for hardpoints.. yeah, I will never understand that mentality as long as I live. If they're included like on the VF-1? Sure. But charging extra for a feature that was in pretty much every single instance of that aircraft being on screen is just asinine.

You know... rest of the body aside, did they scratch build these using X-Wing kits for the lower fuselage? I love kitbashing kitbashes.

Yeah, bottom line on this one is that the parts are an afterthought. The design wasn't meant to hold them, so we're back to the days of the original production runs of the VF-25 not being able to mount super parts. I seriously doubt anyone would be able to mount these parts on their original issue VF-27. Hopefully they've learned by now not to mount things that strain the entire structure of the plane, but however you slice it, this is going to be a chop job. The semi-good news though is that there was enough demand for movie merchandise to convince them to do this at all. Since they're releasing this one as a bundle, wouldn't it make sense to also release a new YF-29 super pack bundle as a counterpart? And, there I go again.. imagining Bandai's marketing department ever does anything that makes sense.

The EX has that, it's the bottom of the cockpit. You just pull down the underside of the cockpit and it turns into a (slightly ineffective) support for the cockpit. Anywho, NY is going to be getting more of my money with these. I just don't have the time or dedication to sit refreshing HLJ or AmiAmi 24/7.

Awesome. Only sad thing is, I don't really like the RVF without the super packs, so that one's going to get neglected until they release packs for it. Maybe we'll get lucky, and they'll include the ghosts with the packs this time. I do find it funny displaying that one in battroid though, since he never even did that in the show. Well now that that's out of the way, and the CF-171 is coming, maybe we'll get a CF-25?

Yeah, figure's Bandai would do that. Oh well. I'm not expecting much, but it's worth a shot. If all else fails, I'll just repaint Ozma's crotch to match, since I'll probably never remove his armor anyway.

Meh, show some fighter mode already, since that's what it'd stay in anyway. The VF-27 was a huge improvement over the original VF-25 fighter mode (I'd even say I actually prefer it to the model in fighter mode), but the improvements stopped there pretty much. You've still got the lame hip arrangement, and the joints that go limp as soggy cardboard. Not to mention, this was before they improved the mess of joints used in the shoulders like they did with the YF-29 and renewals. All in all, it's much better looking than the old VF-25, but it still suffered from most of the rest of the problems they had (flaky paint, limp joints, lousy crotch lock, etc.). At least it seems they're reissuing it though, so people who missed it the first time can get one.

WIN. No reason to make the armor for this one though, sadly, since the CF never used it. Though, I wonder if they'll ignore that and make a CF-styled armor pack anyway? Really, if Bandai had any decency, they'd just package this one with the hardpoints and missiles from the start, because the CFs were ALWAYS loaded to the gills with extra ordnance. The "NO STEP" markings on the bottom of the wing though.. just one more facepalm on the list of "we don't know jack about aircraft" moments for Bandai.

Or.. you know.. PUT THEM ON THE FREAKING TAILS. Really.. is it too much to ask Bandai to actually watch the anime it's celebrating the 30th anniversary of?

Will do. They're not necessarily extremely fast about replying, but I'm not going to complain if they actually come through. I can be patient. I am a little concerned about what it might cost just to ship that part, but I don't mind eating postage for an envelope with a part in it. Just as long as they don't box it up in 20 square feet of newspaper and bubblewrap, I think it'll be fine.

Well, sensible in the sense that people will be quicker to buy them up, yes. If Bandai is striving to keep from having stuff sit on the shelves, then mission accomplished, because you can't find them anywhere. Sensible in terms of profit? I'm not so sure. I don't have actual numbers to go by, so I can't say for certain here, but think about it. Yamato keeps re-releasing things. They wouldn't do that if they didn't sell out to begin with, and Yamato's stuff has never been that hard to get anyway. Could mean one of two things. Either Yamato is burying Bandai in terms of production numbers and sales, or the demand for Yamato stuff just isn't high enough to cause the kind of shortages Bandai valks see. It really could be either.. I mean, despite the remaining gap in overall quality between the two, Frontier stuff is still a hot item, so they're banking on the current popularity of the series. Yamato is banking on nostalgia, and the prices reflect that, since they're targeting older collectors. I'd still love to see their respective quarterly profit reports for Macross-related productions. On an unrelated note, I'm keeping my fingers crossed, because Nippon Yasan emailed be back, and they're going to contact Bandai about getting me a spare crotch plate. It's up to Bandai now really, but it's reassuring to see NY doing what they can.

HLJ does that all the time, generally doesn't mean anything more than "we don't know if we can get more, so we're not going to let you order and get disappointed."