Two weeks in Japan (part 1)

It's been quite a while since my last post. So here's a new post about my last vacation to the land of the rising sun and the origin of Otaku....Japan. Having been in Hong Kong earlier this year (May), I thought it would be a nice extension to explore the Farther East. We started the journey with a flight from Amsterdam to Osaka in the Kansai Region. Many people will think about Tokyo first, but the Kansai Region is also interesting, because of the well-known cities as Kobe (Kobe-beef and unfortunately also the 1995 earthquake) and the former capital of Japan, Kyoto, which has far more history than the nowadays Tokyo metropolis. The first flight towards Osaka Kansai International Airport was a comfortable one with a KLM Boeing 777-200ER. Although having flown for many times in widebodies like 747-400, it was actually my first flight in a triple seven.
We were staying at a hotel in Nipponbashi nearby the busy district Namba. We discovered that it was located in the middle of Den Den Town, a shopping area for electronic equipment, games, anime and a heaven for Otaku which is comparable with Akihabara in Tokyo.
Our first activity was visiting the Tsutenkaku tower in Naniwa ward. It gives a great view on the southern (minami) section of Osaka. It wouldn't be the last tower we are going to visit.
We also visited the Osaka Zoo for the time being till we could check in at 15:00 later that day.
The next day we went to the famous Osaka Castle. It provides a great view.
Unfortunately the world famous Himeji Castle, one of the few original surviving castles in Japan from the 17th century, was under renovation at this time which will last till 2015! The southern districts, known as Minami has the Shitennoji-temple. The narrow streets has the well-known electricity- and telecommunicationpoles and cables. Well, that's for now. More reports are comin' up soon!

Are you going on a vacation this summer?




Great view from the Tsutenkaku Tower

A rollercoaster in the middle of the city! Only possible in Japan!

All pictures taken with Sony-Alpha A-300 + 16-80 mm Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar.

Review - Macross Frontier kit VF-25G Messiah Valkyrie Michel Blanc Custom

As promised, here are the pictures taken from the VF-25G Messiah Valkyrie Michel Blanc Custom. The kit is supposed to be at a MG level, but there are some downfalls to mention.
Overall design is excellent, colorschemes are good and...amongst the three modes, the fighter mode is by far the best pose.
There are 3 modes for the macross frontier kits. The first is the Fighter mode. In contradiction to the Gundam Franchise, the Fighter/ jet mode is the primary mode for these models. It declares why the Battroid Mode is less attractive in comparison to the Gundam-designs.
Of course there is a 'robot'mode called Battroid mode. This is for battle-scenes which do not require to much velocity and becomes handy is space-scenes.
At last, there is a gerwalk mode. This is n intermediate form between Battroid and Fighter mode.
As if a Fighter has a pair of legs and arms. in the series it became useful in narrow spaces were no velocity could be generated.

Back to the building proces. the internal parts of the inner skeleton are tiny and delicate. But a pain in the ass to built. As the skeleton became ready, it was a little bit loose as a whole. Transforming to Battroid mode or Gerwalk mode is a mission apart.
Because all the parts have not much of a margin left, the whole kit is a little unstable if the parts do not fit correctly. During transformation it will give loads of frustration. I've been messing for two hours to get this photoshoot done! Thats why it took so long for a review. I wasn't looking forward for an afternoon like this.
The additional action base 01 S.M.S. version is very good and a nessecity to pose the Valkyrie properly.
As I'm a huge fan of ther series and MF models, the kits are somewhat dissapointing. That means: The thought was very good and the meaning also, but the execution did not met the idea. The majors flaws in my opinion:
- Knee-cover are loose.
- Decals, tons of it to cover wrong colors!
- Some parts which are supposed to be white, were blue!
- Parts fit too tight!
- Transforming means frustraton.
- Sniper Rifle is a bit loose. By all this, the kit will be showed as a fighter, not because it's the best pose, but also most stable form. The limbs are not as posebale like a MG Gundam model, so in Battroid form it looks a little stiff, like the Valkyrie is stored in a hangar.
Here are the rest of the pics.

In conclusion: I still have Ozma's and Alto's Super and Armored Messiah's and I will build them in the distant future, but the original idea to collect them all is not anymore. It's quite hard to built them and show properly like I have in mind.
But the awesome design makes the hesitation thumbling toward building them.


Are you planning to built more MF kits?

All pictures are taken with: Sony DSC-P8, Digital Compact.

Preview - Macross Frontier kit VF-25G Messiah Valkyrie Michel Blanc Custom

At the end of December 2009 I started to assemble Macross Frontier kits aside the Gundam Lines.
The following pictures are a little preview of the VF-25G Messiah Valkyrie Michel Blanc Custom.
A complete review is coming in the near future, but one thing I have to say already, is that the MF 1/72 kit is quite complicated due to the transformable features. I also assembled an Action Base 01 S.M.S. version.
This is really a good and nice action base and simple to build.
More pics are comin'up.

RPG Classics

Although the Role-Playing-Game genre has been around for a long time, I didn't care about it till the mid 1990's. Before this era I was very hooked of the 1-on-1 Beat-em-up's like Streetfighter II (Turbo), Fatal Fury and the KoF series.
The following RPG-timeline describes the developments from 1992 till today, with spotlights on the classics on the SNES.
In the fall of 1996, it was like I stood up on a day and must have thought there must be more than no-thinking games like SF etc.
So I bought Secret of Mana, which I also purchased a few years earlier, but swapped it for another game due to not understanding the RPG genre.
I was hooked again and the RPG virus never left me since. Because it was also fall in the lifespan of the best gameconsole ever, the SNES, my brother and I were hunting for all the greatest RPG's on this system for about two years.
The result was a very impressive list of great RPG's. Most of them were in new condition.
A unique feature at the time for Secret of Mana (16-Meg) was the real time action where most of the rivals were menu-driven or turn based. The latter method was because of the limited processing power to realise real time action. There was also a 3-player mode which gave the players more fun. My brothers and I are still playing it nowadays!
Father of the SNES RPG is without a doubt 'The legend of Zelda III - A Link to the past' (8-Meg). In those days - and still- a fantastic in-depth story with lots of action released by Nintendo itself.
Squaresoft (Good old times without Enix) was already a specialist in RPG's and had released Final Fantasies 1 -3 for the NES. Though the story of FF IV (8-Meg) was very good and today's classic, the graphics were reminding of a pimped NES. Till winter 1994, Square releases her Golden Egg - Final Fantasy VI (FF III in the US) with rendered graphics, great music and a epic story stored in - at the time huge cart - a 24-Meg cart. Since then Square's star has rised to heaven and the following succes were even greater. This time, there was besides the turn based, the introduction of active time battle, better known as real-time battling menu-driven. In 1994, just after finishing FF VI, Hironobu Sakaguchi put together the so called dream team consisting Yuji Horii (Dragon's Quest), Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball) and Sakaguchi himself to work on a project which turned out to be the best RPG ever - Chrono Trigger (32-Meg!). Aside of them, there was the debut for music composer Yasunori Mitsuda. It was a gamble, but it turned out fantastic. Mitsuda asked too much from himself and suffered from exhaustion. Nobuo Uematsu finished his soundtrack with a few tracks, but Uematsu states that the credits goes to Mitsuda.
This game was special because it didn't had to change the field screen to action/fight screen. A few extra menu's appeared when confronting the enemy and there was a smooth transition in the music. The unique style for the Chrono Series was also the Tech-ability. Depending on which character you were using, you could spread a great arsenal of magic and fighting combo's, just fenomenal! Of course the active time battle system was featured here.
Besides of all, there were multiple endings, depending on what kind of decisions you had made in the past. Now this is Chrono (time) Triggering at highest level!
The new game+ feature boosts up the replay value. You can replay the game without searching all the valuable items/ techs once again.
Later in 1999 Sony would also release a 'sequel' named Chrono Cross. This is not a really sequel, because it has no direct connection to the events of Chrono Trigger, but takes place in the same universe about 20 years later. The extra dimension of CC was that it also junps to parallel universes, which explaines the title Chrono Cross.
Due to the arrogance of Nintendo to keep the support of cartridges, Squaresoft switched and gave the licenses to Sony to release titles for the Playstation. This is because the CD-rom (and later DVD-rom) could store much more data, which gave more opportunities and possibilities.
The results are known, FF VII till FF IX were cashcows for Sony. Many people claim that FF VII is one of the best episode that has been made. It was a high quality title with a good in-depth story. For me, FF VI is still the one above all, nothing beats the 16-bit era. FF VII & FF VIII was a little change in tactics and technical choices. The party you were playing consist 3 characters. Why Squaresoft made this choice is unknown. In FF IX was a return to the roots.
The characters were more animated like and the music is familiar with the pre-32 bit era. The party you're travelling with consists 4 characters, like before.
The summons are mostly the same as in FF VI.
In the early 2000's Squaresoft merged with Enix, it's rival company, to the biggest console RPG developper. The merger is comparable with that of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas in the aviation-world.
Critisism said it hasn't brought that good to the development of the products, I agree. The saga continued on the PS2 with FF X to FF XII. Now in March 2010 the 13th episode awaits for the PS3.

Do you look forward to Final Fantasy XIII?

A few titles (brandnew) acquired during our hunt late 1990's:
Chrono Trigger, FF III (US), Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Super Mario RPG, Breath of Fire 1 & 2, Lufia 2, Terranigma, Illusion of Time, Seiken Den Setsu 3 (Secret of Mana 2), Treasure Hunter G, Romancing Saga 3.

New additions

It has been quite a while since my last post. So it's about time to present my newest additions to my Home Theatre & Home Entertainment. This time it is a mix of modern computergaming and old school retro gaming.
At the end of October I bought the new PS3 Slim with a 120 GB HDD. I already know the possibilities and a few systempushers like Metal Gear Solid 4, CoD 4 Modern Warfare and the newly released CoD MW2 have convinced me. The PS3 slim has more HDD space and a renewed OS. A few features didn't come anymore with this version, but it's worth it. PS2 support is not available, which is a downside, since the PS2 is still the cashcow after 9 years of life. Directly after release I purchased the Hardened Edition of CoD MW2. This version includes besides the game disc, a steelbook case, plastic overall sleeve, a booklet with concepts & art-work and a voucher to download the first CoD, known as CoD Classic.

Furthermore, there is a new handheld. The Nintendo DSi black is a lovely gadget to play present games, but also timeless classics as Chrono Trigger DS.
I love this game and also got the original brandly new SNES cart title from 1995 (purchased in 1998).

Speaking about the SNES, i already own an PAL version and share a US SNES with my brother. But if this one dies, it will be difficult to play US games. And I got a good library of fantastic SNES RPG's. So'I purchased a spare US SNES on E-bay.
It took me € 55,00 shipping from US included, but hey......this brick is gold! The US controller, RF-switch and AC-power adaptor are rubbish, but I got a tons of PAL controllers and accessoiries. Ow...a Super Mario World game pack was also a freebee.... Nice!
But aside from it's uncool design (known as the Brick) the US SNES has a few points over the PAL version. It supports RGB-signals which was comparable with HDMI nowadays. The colors of the US SNES were far more brighter, colorful and thus superior to it's PAL nephew. Another good thing is that the Brick is running on 60 Hz due to NTSC, which is 17 % faster than the European counterpart and the black boxes on the top and bottom of the screens will not be shown.
Later this year I will spent an article about the classic SNES RPG's.
For now, i present a few screenshots which are upscaled by my superb Onkyo beast and full blown all channel stereo (There wasn't any Dolby Prologic II or DTS HD yet in 1995). The shot of CoD MW 1 & MW 2 is a little blur. Apologies for that.
(All pictures are taken with Sony-DSC P8)

Which type of gaming do you like? Retro, Modern gaming or both?