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?

Poll Results

Again, the poll has already been closed for a while. The results shows that amongst the High End line of Bandai's PG series, the GAT-X105 Strike Gundam is the most popular version of all. If we look closer to the second place, the MBF-02 Strike Rouge, we'll learn it is the same frame. So, actually the G-frame owns 63% of the votes.
Final results:
GAT-X105 Strike - 36 %
MBF-02 Strike Rouge - 27 %
MBF-P02 Astray Red Frame - 18 %
XXXG-00W0 Wing Zero Custom - 18 %

Thanks for voting and a new poll about the Macross Frontier kits has been added.Picture: Thanks to Danny Choo.

Home Theatre - Next Generation

Way back in January 2004, half a year before I moved into my current residence, which I've had build then, I purchased a Home Theatre system to enjoy the new era of home entertainment. The Sony DAV-S880 was a good all-in-one choice at the time. My budget at that time was not that big due to my movement and the purchase of my house. For displaying the video I bought the Sony KV32FQ86 including the complementary furniture. A CRT TV with a 32" display, very big at that time. All together it had cost me about € 1900,00 (US$ 2680,00), € 600,00 HTS and € 1300,00 for the TV. In the meantime I've hacked the regioncodes and it is regionfree since then. But there were also some major flaws. The main shortcoming was the passive subwoofer. So the power of the sub wasn't that high, since it had to drain it's power from the main receiver causing the temperature rising rapidly. The satellite speakers were good with a power of 100W rms per speaker. But as usual, satellite systems are not made for audio or music events. The mid-range frequencies were not that good. Sony's S-Master digital amplifier system made the AV-receiver very compact and gave it a superslim design. But the drawback was that it could, despite the S-Master technology, overheat. Slowdown processing and even crashing could be the result. And as time goes by, the still goodlooking Home Theathre System has became a fossil in the HT scene.
This summer I assembled my next generation Home Theatre System. First thing first. The heart of a HT system is an A/V Receiver. My choice is the Onkyo TX-SR876. A high-end receiver and top of the line along with the TX-NR906. The receiver has an output of 200W rms per speaker and has many features like 7.1 with all Dolby True HD and DTS HD Master Audio + variants, Bi-amp wiring, up to 3 zones performing. The THX Ultra 2 Plus and ISF calibrating is also included. One of the great things is the upscaling proces to high defintion display with its advanced HQV Reon-VX video processing. This guy is really big and weights 24 kg! Ironically, as I'm writing this blog now, the successors of the SR876 and the NR906 are presented as the NR3007 and NR5007 respectively. Speaking of first things first. It was a pain to get a new AV furniture since the depth of the Onkyo is 46 cm. Besides of that, the old AV furniture was a part of the CRT TV and the glassplates would explode in thousand pieces should the Onkyo be placed onto it. So the German company Spectral was the solution. The Brick 1501 was my choice. My version is a black one with black glass on top and front. To get a good sound, I choose between Focal Sib & Co (JM-Labs), Mordaunt Short and KEF KHT 3005SE. Since the first two were hard to get and becoming obsolete I purchased the KEF. The black high gloss version has a good design and even the sub is very stylish. The performance is very good and in pure audio setting the satellites have enough power of their own. The packaging of the speakers also gave me confidence since it has a precious sleeve to protect them. For the video features I purchased the Samsung LED LCD-TV UE46B7090. A 46" (117 cm) wide flatscreen with an ultraslim design. The screen is only 3 cm (1,18") deep!! Originally I ordered the B7000, but it was not in stock anymore, so the retailer offered me the B7090, which has no red lighting edge. I didn't bother, so I ordered the B7090.The specs are the same as the B7000.
At this moment, I do not have a really DVD player anymore. I borrowed my brother's PS3, so I can also play Blu-Ray movies. I'm considering to get a PS3 (or the new PS3 slim) of my own, because it can also play videogames and has several other multi-media features, which a regular BD-player doesn't have. Besides, it is said that the PS3's Blu Ray player has better performances than many other players. the last thing I noticed is that the PS3 slim will support DolbyTrue-HD and DTS-HD, something the PS3 Fat doesn't do. This is something I have to think about..... Of course, there will also be a cheap DVD player next to it which accepts all legal and illegal crap from all over the world.

These finishing touches will be coming soon.

Suggestions for the choice between a regular BD player or a PS3 are welcome. (Except for the first 2 pictures, all pictures are taken with: Sony-DSC P8)

Onkyo in Pure Audio setting

Final setting Home Theatre