Radd

Speaking of great looking original titles for the Wii, there's more out on No More Heroes. Unfortunately looks like they changed the voice acting. It's still bad, but doesn't seem to have quite the over-the-top 70's Hong Kong cinema feel now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVHwL0hAHmA

Right, but

I'm not saying that there aren't plenty of cheap ports with Wii controls shoddily shoehorned in, but your comment painted a broader stroke than that. LucasArts is especially notorious for lazy licensed cash-ins, and that says something when "lazy cash-ins" is nearly synonymous with "licensed games". On the other hand, there are plenty of Wii games that aren't cheap ports with motion controls hastily added as an afterthought. Your comment implied otherwise. Narrowing it down to LucasArts, or hell down to licensed games, and it becomes a lot more "legit".

Man, you've got Broadblast and the Takara Rodimus. I'm envious! The Hasbro Rodimus has grown on my quite a bit, but I still wish it had come with the fishing pole. Why is it that interesting character quirks like that are so easily dismissed over here?

Fixed!

That's just the thing, I actually prefer the colours on the Takara Starscream. I doubt they'll release it in those colours again, a reissue will probably be in G1 colours because so many people want that, but if there are not any improvements to the actual toy, I'd rather get the first run Takara colours. I'll probably order Skywarp soon, but wanted to see if they'd made any improvements to the toy. Or if maybe most people were complaining about the colours on Starscream and he isn't actually as fragile as some posts seemed to suggest. I've not seen any similar complaints about Skywarp, so I'm guessing either the toy is actually improved, or most of the complaining on Starscream was mainly due to the colours.

I still think that it's either going to be a drastically changed version of the Macross events, changed so much it doesn't resemble Macross at all, or more likely they'll skip ahead to MOSPEADA and only make references back to earlier events.

So how does Skywarp stack up to Starscream, speaking only on how well it holds up. Are the joints better? Did they use better materials? Lots of people complained about Starscream, but lots of people seem to like Skywarp. Is it mainly that people like the colours better, or did they actually make a better toy this time?

I think that was the entire point. You just don't try to top what happens immediately before that. You just stand up, look them right in the eye, and let them know, right down to their core, that the time has come and you most certainly are going to tear them a structurally superfluous new behind. Cut to credits.

I thought it was determined that Tatusnoko had international distribution and merchandising rights, and those they sold to Harmony Gold? Wasn't it made very clear that Tatsunoko, and so HG, didn't have the rights to produce sequels or derivatives?

I expect we'll see much more MOSPEADA/Southern Cross than Macross influencing the production....if even that. HG seems to have backed off entirely from depicting Macross designs and story elements in recent productions, probably due to the results of the legal bout between BW and Tatsunoko not so long ago. If Tatsunoko has no rights to create derivative content, it seems highly unlikely that they could sell those rights they never had to another company.

Personally, I'm a fan of voice acting as well as a fan of animation, therefor a bad dub really truly grates on me, and so much north american dubbing jobs get such a poor treatment. There are some truly phenomenal english speaking voice actors out there, but few studios want to pay for quality talent. Not to mention, voice acting is such a second-class job in north american entertainment today that there is a very small pool of truly talented and skilled voice actors to choose from, and those who are known for their talent generally command high prices. Over here, the radio drama is dead, and animation is still primarily aimed at small children (who are treated as if they are all mentally handicapped in addition to being young). Voice acting is always becoming more and more in demand, but as far as the industry is concerned it's acceptable throw sub-par voice acting at animation, videogames, what-have-you. Additionally, north american voice acting has several overused voice types. There is a typical "hero voice", for example (Spike's, from BeBop, voice actor fits this mold from what I remember). While the same is true in Japan, when a north American VA with a typical archtype voice is shoehorned into a character with a very distinctive and atypical voice in Japan (Lupin III is a prime example) it really puts me off. Also, screeching is not the same thing as talking very fast. This seems to get confused all too many times in english dubbing of Japanese voices. One can indeed talk very fast without having a voice like nails on a chalkboard. And then there's also the way a lot of studios, for both anime, animation in general, and videogames, handle their voice talent. It's not uncommon for a north american dubbing studio to put each actor alone in a booth, with a script that contains only their own dialogue (with no context whatsoever, nor instructions for appropriate tone or inflection) and leave it at that. This does not lend itself to quality voice acting. All this together and I find myself unwilling to listen to even what most consider "good dub jobs", because by and large they're only "good" by comparison to the crap thrown at us. For what it's worth, though I may not speak the language, speech patterns and inflection are universal, so when I watch an anime or other foreign animation and the voice acting is bad in the native language, I still cringe. Finally, I'm also a fan of animation, so much so that I pursued it as a career, and am rather quick at reading. I have never found myself unable to fully appreciate the art and animation in an anime due to reading the subtitles. Of course, in the end this is a personal, and highly subjective, decision. If you prefer one or the other, more power to you. I'm not going to tell a fan of dubs that they "must" go with subtitles, though I have argued with people who've stated their belief that there are no good english speaking VAs at all.

I'm very much a fan of the post episode 12 episodes. Ya, there's more story and plot going on, less of the over the top action and battling, but it really fits the overall story. It helps that I dig the story they're telling, too. As for Rossiu's actions not making sense...well, I've seen very similar things happen in real life pretty much constantly, and given Rossiu's upbringing and the sort of person he is, it really makes sense to me. Not saying I agree with it, but I can see how he arrives at his conclusions and what motivates his actions. He's not a bad guy, really, he's just trying to minimize the damage and has no faith in their chances of victory beyond that.

Heh, ja. I was just about to post an update as I've been playing around on the second planet. Definitely oldschool Metroid goodness. Also, got the grapple beam, and figured out how to implement that into my SL metroid build, faking it using teleports. Sweet! Now if only I didn't have to work tonight...

One of the best games I've played on the Wii. Definitely hits that "traditional gamer" appeal, too. Much better control scheme than any FPS games I've seen on the Wii. Loive the immerseive touches, like reachforward with the remote to interact with door controls, thrusting forward with the nunchuck to toss the grappling hook, then pulling back to tear a shield away from an enemy or rip a door out of its hinges. Gorgeous game, too. I haven't played much further than the opening levels. I just hope it doesn't go "all action, all the time FPS madness", and sticks to the moody ambiance and exploration of previous games. The opening levels are pretty hectic. You always feel like you need to rush to the next area, both on the ship and when the leviathan appears.

Heh, I'm actually avoiding Metroid right now. At least until I finish the big project I started when I saw the videos on the Preview channel. I seriously hope a new 2D Metroid for the DS isn't too far behind.

Metroid Prime 3 is also looking fantastic. The most recent screenshots I've seen really show how it shines over the previous games in the visuals department.

I'd like to see a Green Lantern character in there. Hal Jordan, specifically, but hey, I'm not too picky. Since they're going animated, I can think of a couple VAs I'd like to see attached, but neither of them are all that likely. Big movie productions tend to look towards big name actors over voice actors too often, and the skill sets are not identical. Still, I'd love to see Mark Hamill in there somewhere. Paul Giamatti, too. He's been popping up in plenty of movies lately, too.

Hey, it's an industry where we have to get used to criticism, and even benefit from it as it is rare when criticism is entirely without merit. That said, I do hope this movie doesn't rely too much on mo-cap. It's a useful tool, but not something to depend upon almost exclusively, especially when the project is more stylized. Exaggeration and style are a part of what makes it all work and blend together, and when companies forget that the end result tends to uffer issues very similar to those rotoscoped 2D animation suffered in addition to the issues of "uncanney valley" that CG work faces. Additionally, I do hope they are not planning to pursue the "photo real CGI" angle. That almost never ends well, except when used as a visual effects aid to live action using live actors.

That's not the point, though. Just because graphics aren't the Wii's selling point doesn't mean developers should toss together something that would be considered poor looking two generations ago just to have a game out on the popular console. Chances are, the controls in this game are nothing unique or exciting either.

Yeah, sure, some EU models of the TIE fighter have shields. Do you think they'll drop some new pilot, no matter how well he scored on his exams and flight tests, into one of those? No, they drop them in to a regular plain old TIE fighter and say, "Good luck, chump!" Star Destroyers look nice. Sure. Not really something that sways my opinion.

Kinda against the whole authoritarian/totalitarian government thing, additionally if I did get in to that whole mess, I'd probably wind up going for fighter pilot and the Alliance had much better pilot perks. Little things like, oh, shields.

I suspect that developers are rushing to get games on the Wii. Most people took a hesitant "wait and see" attitude with the Wii, and now that it's so crazy popular, devs want a piece of that market. Unfortunately, crap rush-job games like this will only reinforce the idea that the Wii can only do Gamecube quality graphics, and worse.

Anyone else pick up Rune Factory? Fantastic game. Takes Harvest Moon and adds a fantasy RPG to it. Gorgeous, too. Makes me wonder if Square might not have been better off using pre-rendered backgrounds for thier DS Final Fantasy games.