Chronocidal

I think I'm more baffled that whatever they're doing at any level is purposefully not adhering to any other standard that makes VR work across multiple platforms. Maybe the PSVR2 is correcting that? I don't know. PC hardware is pretty much compatible across the board, with some minor background software management to do the necessary translations. If this headset is so much better, I think they're losing out on a lot of sales by not making it just work with PCs from the start.. but that assumes they're interested in sales that don't push PS5 demand along with it. When it comes to these huge corporations, I have to assume they have some kind of background analysis that is designed to maximize their margins, regardless of how beneficial it is to the end user.

This... is utterly baffling. Why on earth would they forcibly kill off the games the original PSVR headset was used for? Think I'm sticking with PCs for anything VR related. I can vouch for Squadrons at least being a fun diversion for short bursts, but there's barely any single player content in the short campaign, and if you don't like online pvp matches, that's... about all there is to it. I've been having fun with it on PC just enjoying flying around and shooting stuff in the training mode, but it feels like a demo for a much larger game that never got made. It might be the best thing EA has put out for Star Wars, but it's also the biggest wasted potential I think I've ever seen.

YES. Once again, my lack of interest in consoles is reinforced. I need to get my head around modding this.. and then tackle DCS World.

I'm actually kind of glad I didn't pay for it ahead of time, the yen rate will help this one hurt less XD If HLJ has any extra, I might get a second, even... 🤪

Yeah, unfortunately that's always bugged me to death with how amateurish it looks. Always gives me the impression of them just being slapped on sloppily, or drawn with crayon. The numbers don't have that issue, but the markings have never felt very precise on the HMRs. Putting it side-by-side with the Yamato really makes it stand out. Even things like the little nose stripe tip look bloated, as if someone heavily over-sprayed the stencil. At least it's been consistent though.

I really do wish Bandai could figure out who smashed the "BOLD" button so hard it broke. All the text is like that on every HMR release.

See, that just cracks me up. But that does give me an idea. Would it be easier to strip the silver than repaint it white?

The way it sounds like it was packed, I don't think this is a case of blaming the delivery guy.. but it probably didn't help anything. This is a really impressive undertaking though, and getting amazing results!

I had to double check which way the yellow guy was facing, because I seriously can't unsee this face.

HLJ has the 1/72 Falcon kits listed too, but like the Zero kits, all backordered. BBTS also has a fair number of kits listed, primarily the larger fleet vessels, with higher base prices, but $4 shipping, so that might come out roughly even compared with HLJ. They only have the one Cosmo Zero kit, and it's listed as a pre-order for March 2023, so they may be anticipating more stock soon. Been really tempted to mod a Falcon to give it bigger wings. I love the design, and I know why the wings are so narrow, but it looks like it would make a really nice atmospheric fighter if it had some more lifting surface. One kit I found interesting was the "Blackbird" type Zero, which mostly is just the original molded in different colors, and with some different weapons. I thought it was weird because it actually comes with a canopy molded in transparent green plastic, which I think was what they were all supposed to have all along.

I think.. this is the direct opposite of anything cancel culture related. For me, "Cancel Culture" in a very general sense is people decrying some thing, and demanding it be deleted from existence due to taking some form of offense at what it is, or against someone attached to it. It's very much the equivalent of a child throwing a tantrum to get their way, threatening their parents' public image if they don't give in to their demands, and sacrifice what they know is better for the child in the name of getting some peace and quiet. In this case? This isn't a cultured cancel, this is just straight-up cancelled, in the vein of a Vaudeville performer being yanked off stage by a shepherd's crook, or dropped down the garbage chute like Veruca Salt. And good riddance. It's a long-overdue culling of garbage that should never have been allowed to continue this long.

It's been a while since the series was fresh, so the figures and toys may be few and far between by now, or at the very least inflated in price. I want to say I remember something like a couple of Figma-esque releases of some of the figures, but I don't know who might have made them. As for toys of the ships though.. I don't even think there have ever been any, outside of a few very limited and expensive Chogokin-type releases that were even smaller than their kits. HLJ lists the old one as a 20cm die-cast model made by Megahouse that's out of production. I did find one other toy, it was apparently a crane-game prize in the $15 range by Taito, and about a foot long, but the size is the only thing going for it, as it's nothing like a DX release. It's also not specifically the 2199 version, it's an older style from what I have to guess is either the original show, or one of the movies. https://www.collectiondx.com/toy_review/abs/cosmo_zero I do see one seller of these on Amazon for $90 US, which is crazy, but might be the only reliable source. It's nothing special out of the box, but looks like it would fit a 1/48 pilot, and could be customized nicely. https://www.amazon.com/Space-Battleship-Yamato-Super-Mechanics/dp/B001L1LN30/ref=sr_1_4?crid=1VVXZWS8G3IW&keywords=cosmo+zero&qid=1677792994&sprefix=cosmo+zero%2Caps%2C214&sr=8-4&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.08f69ac3-fd3d-4b88-bca2-8997e41410bb Outside of that, you're pretty much limited to whatever kits Bandai still may or may not still produce. The 1/72 Cosmo Zero and Falcon kits are your typical modern Bandai molds, and very similar to their Star Wars kits, but the external weapons will need glue to mount. Fantastic little things, I've got several of the various releases. Most of them look like they're still available on HLJ for pretty reasonable prices, but they all appear backordered. I think those would be your best bet, even if you just do minimal model work on them to get them presentable, since they're all molded in multiple colors with both stickers and decals. Bandai also made some super tiny versions of these ships like they did for the Macross Delta planes, and there's a variety of the capital ships, but I never tried any of those.

Boy, Bandai must be hurting for skilled workers lately.. Had several mis-drilled pinholes in my Max YF-29, and now I get my VF-1S with packs, and half the markings are printed cockeyed. I might have to source some decals for the packs, because the kites are just as bad as the whacked-out skulls. Are they headhunting cross-eyed workers here? Glad to finally have a white VF-1S at least, but yeeesh.

No way to really reach it to fill it in, it's a microscopic crevice between the nose hinge and the socket it sits in. It's probably fine to leave it though, the pin just likes to wiggle out of place if you just push the nose down, but forcibly aligning it makes it stay in place.

I think the issue is that there just aren't any good places for anything to lock to. The legs don't even really attach, they just float completely independently on the hip joints. Their position is based entirely on wrangling a chain of pivot and ball joints into the right orientation to get the legs to line up. You can kind of sort of tie things together between the arms and legs with tabs, and I think the HMR does this, but even then.. the connection all of those items have with the main body is tenuous at best. Everything is just floating. Though, I really should pull that one out and revisit it, it's been a while since I messed with it. Maybe I'm forgetting something that would work well.

While I would love a properly-built 1/60 VF-2SS... I think the HMR demonstrated exactly what a sloppy mess of joints the design actually is. Nothing about the design actually has anything that locks together in any way, and the whole thing is an intricate mass of interconnected joints that have to somehow remain flexible enough for battroid posing, but be solid enough to hold the thing in an ostensibly fighter-shaped shape. I like the little thing, don't get me wrong, but the overwhelming majority of time I ever spent handling a fighter-mode VF-2SS was primarily focused on getting all of the parts back in alignment after knocking everything out of place by picking it up in the first place. It's not really a fighter.. it's a robot that happens to have joints that let it assume a "fighter-shaped" pose. If someone could come up with a way to make it lock together solidly, I would be more than happy to pick up a larger scale, but I worry that it's only going to get sloppier the bigger it gets. The HMR size seemed kind of like the ideal size to balance between having all the right joints to make it work, but not make it so big that it couldn't support its own weight.

This wasn't a molding problem. The person drilling the holes for the pins had to be either drunk or cross-eyed to bork it up this hard. Honestly, in this day of insane shipping shenanigans, I'm more than happy to work on it and try to fix it myself, rather than try and navigate an international QC return labyrinth. Even for internationally supported products, I'm not betting Bandai would be easy to work with. To be clear though, I'm calling this a QC failure, because they failed to produce a product that does what it's supposed to do. BUT. That doesn't mean it won't look very pretty on a shelf in fighter mode, which was always my intention in the first place. I'm going to give it a fine look-over tonight and see if I can't pop the pins for the nose and re-align it somehow, but I think the limit of this one is going to be fighter and gerwalk. Considering how silly I think the YF-29 battroid looks with all the junk hanging off the back, I don't really see it as a major problem. It's disappointing.. but it does what I wanted. Edit: So getting the nose pin out is just not happening without destroying the probes on the sides of the nosecone, but on the.. positive? side.. it turns out the hole for the nose rotation wasn't just mis-aligned, it was also incredibly over-drilled, so the pinhole is about twice the size it should be. After some aggressive realignment of the nosecone, it will straighten out with the proper force applied. Apparently they just managed to cut a massive gouge in the inside of the nose, and that pin has a bunch of travel on one side. The natural tendency is for the pin to shift as the nose rotates, but if I force it into place, it stays where it should, and goes into battroid just fine. Aside from all of that... it looks like everything else works as it should, and I'm actually kind of impressed how well it locks together in battroid. I'm hoping they make these same improvements to the VF-25 re-releases, because the torso locked together nicely. Hip joints are loose, but there are screws to adjust that now, and it doesn't have any trouble standing up on its own, so I'm calling it good for now.

Yeah, I think they just had a bad drilling alignment on this one. The fighter looks fine, so I probably won't mess with it, but it's absolutely a dud. I hate thinking this way, but it kind of feels like they shuffle the QC duds off to the foreign markets. Technically speaking, this one is complete QC failure, because I don't believe it can transform, due to all the mis-aligned joints.

Just got my order of this one from BBTS, since I let it linger.. and I sort of got a dud, I guess? Not terrible though. What I noticed immediately taking it out of the box though was that the left tail was completely limp. The right snapped between two positions with a solid feeling, but the left was entirely loose, and just flopped up and down. SO... I looked at it closely, and what became clear was that the hole for the shaft mounting the left tail had been mis-drilled. It was canted at an angle that kept the tail from engaging the stops to keep it in place. I had to snap out segments of very tiny plastic covers that held the shaft in, but they're absolutely invisible on the underside of the plane, and I don't know if I will even bother gluing them back in. While I considered filling it with putty or cement and re-drilling.. I decided to just widen the hole to the correct alignment, and jam a small shim of paper to re-align the shaft. Snapped the tail back into place, and the shim realigned it enough to get the tail to click up and down solidly. I don't think I'll touch it anymore. The front gear door is a little offline, and I think the tab snapping the nosecone in place is misshapen a little, but it holds well enough. Otherwise, it looks good so far. Edit: I take it back.. they had some issues with this one.. somehow. I don't know quite how they managed it, but I'm thinking they needed to train their hired help a bit harder. Yeah, the nosecone mount is just completely offline. In fact, I actually wonder if it would even transform. The nose is so far out of line, I don't think it would fit between the sections of fuselage to go into battroid mode. Yeah, nuts to that.. I don't really care for the YF-29 battroid anyhow. It's just really weird seeing stupid production flubs this bad.

Don't know, but got a pair at HLJ and AE, so I think I'm set. Maybe I'll get a spare later, if they're easy to come by.

Honestly, I know printing makes it easier, but at that scale, I think you could really do well just printing a frame to string with wire.

I honestly don't really mind the different paint schemes they gave the M&Ms, the white parts don't look terrible. I do like the leg packs better without the extra paint though. I think I got doubles of those, so maybe I'll repaint one set someday.

Yeah, that definitely looks like a complete mess of ball joints. It's like someone threw a bottle of glue in a box of spare Revoltech parts, shook it, and out popped this thing. Though.. the positioning in the last pic.. I can't help think he's trying to impersonate a micro-sized SDF-1. Turn his hands around a little, straighten the arms, and you've got cruiser mode, with a giant gun on the front.

Don't forget the Messer scheme!

Could be cool, but I'll be really interested to see how you translate the art into three dimensions. I don't know how much art of the design exists, but I'm thinking it might be reasonable to take a bit of artistic license to the proportions, and stretch it out a little for a longer fighter mode. It looks like the legs stick really far out the back in fighter, and slide even further back for gerwalk, but the part sticking out ahead of the wing in fighter mode looks awkward. I wonder if it would look better or worse as some sort of intake.. or if that's what it was always supposed to be? Hard to tell.