Show The Ewoks Some Love
This video was posted on youtube for the 25th anniversary of Return of the jedi. They even managed to snag Billy Dee Williams for a cameo.
Jetfire
The ebay deals continue. A couple week ago I won a Generation 1 Transformers Jetfire. It is only missing a couple of pieces. The figure usually sells for close to $100 and I got him for $26 plus shipping. Not bad if I do say so myself. The owner actually found a couple extra pieces of the armor and included them for free. Robotech fans at first look automatically think “rip off!” This figure uses the same mold as the Robotech Valkyrie, but it was used with permission. Here is an excerpt from wikipedia about the figure
- Generation 1 Jetfire (1985)
- The first two years of Transformers toys were comprised of figures taken from older Japanese toylines, primarily Takara‘s Diaclone and Microman lines. 1985, however, saw several figures reused from lines created by Takatoku Toys, of which Jetfire was one – that of the VF-1S Super Valkyrie Fighter from the Macross/Robotech series.
- Problems over the Jetfire toy began when Bandai absorbed Takatoku Toys, and Macross regained popularity, leading to Bandai’s desire to reproduce the Valkyrie toy themselves. This led to problems for Takara when they imported the Transformers toyline – although Hasbro was able to market the Jetfire toy in their markets, Takara was not, nor could they promote it via the animated series, since the mold was owned by their main competitor. Although an animation model had been created for Jetfire based on the appearance of the toy (which could be seen in the original toy commercial advertising the figure), this was quickly scrapped and completely redesigned so as to no longer resemble the Valkyrie. This was the design that went on to feature in the comics and cartoons – additionally, the cartoon character was redubbed “Skyfire,” presumably because the character no longer served to advertise the Jetfire toy.
- Jetfire only saw a few American production runs, as the show the original toy was based upon, The Super Dimension Fortress Macross, was exported to America to become the first third of Robotech. Ironically, since Hasbro released Jetfire first, there was never a U.S. release of an authentic transforming version of the toy for Robotech, even though the design was the series’ most recognizable and popular mecha.
Legend of the Green Dragon
I have been wanting to do this for some time now and finally got to it. Back in the days before the internet (makes me sound old) many of my friends and I used to play a text based roleplaying game called Legend of the Red Dragon on a local BBS. It is very fun and highly addictive. When our time was up for the day we used to wait until midnight to get another chance to play. Anyway an open source derivative of the same game now called Legend of the Green Dragon has been around for some time. It is still the same basic game and all text based. Anyone that would like to give it a go can create an account at http://lord.kemple.us
Masterpiece Megatron
Well after mulling about it all day Sarah convinced me to go ahead and order a Masterpiece Megatron. I have wanted this figure for over a year now. The 1st batch sold out quickly and they starting rising to the $200 mark and then Takara released a second run a few months ago. Mine was $75 with the Botcon sale I mentioned in my earlier post, so I think I did pretty well. This figure will never get released in the U.S. since the toy laws have changed so much since 1984. To try and comply a lot of sellers have been opening them up and adding an orange plug to 
the barrel of the gun. I believe the seller I bought from though will not have the plug. Also, in Australia their customs actually started to seize imports coming into the country. Luckily I am buying from a U.S. seller, so it is already here.
I plan for this to be the last Masterpiece figure I add to my collection. There already are talks of doing the rest of the jets since all they have to do is recolor Starscream, but one jet is enough. Once I get him I’ll post a pic of the 3 I have.
Sonic 2 HD Remix
It looks like Sonic 2 will be getting the HD treatment. This however is not being developed by Sega but instead as a homebrew based project. Hopefully it will get finished before they are slapped with a lawsuit from Sega or have Sega pick up the project. I really like the idea of taking these old console games and improving them this way. The idea is already officially happening to Bionic Commando and Street Fighter 2 which will be released later this year though Xbox Live. I would love to see the whole Castlevania series redone this way. Below is an example I found on one of the message boards of what Sonic will look like in action.
More info can be found at racketboy.com
