The Gaming Den

Lago wrote:Don't get me wrong, The Transformers is not a good show, but it has its charms. The show is (usually) fun-stupid instead of stupid-stupid. And the movie was just missing that feeling of fun. It's neither fun-stupid or stupid-stupid

I... there is just... it's... I mean...

Goddammit, I am literally speechless.

Hey, Shrapnel, whats the deal with the legacy names? I'm sure I could google, but it's more fun to ask experts. What, if any, connection is there between the G1 Optimus Prime and the BW era Optimus Primal, or the Megatrons or Skorpinoks?

Mostly it has to do with character recognition. Your average fan - hell, your average kid - is more likely to like, or at least recognize, a character (re: buy the toy) if it's a name they know. It also further connects that character to already established parts of the brand, so if a dude is named Starscream, regardless of what franchise he's in (usually), you know he's going to be treacherous, deceitful, scheming little so-and-so and have a very disproportionate amount of fan fiction written about him. Usually by fangirls.

Of course, there are times when a legacy name is just slapped on a toy for odd reasons, such as trademark protection (which is the other major reason Hasbro reuses names: to keep their hold over their trademarks) or just to fuck with people.

I'm working on a Transformers d20 tome and the idea of running a Transformers/Knights of Justice crossover came to mind.

That could be kind of cool, actually.

Ooh, or even use the basic idea of KoJ, but replace the shitty jocks with the far more worthy transforming robots.

Shrapnel, run this.

Shrapnel, I don't know your stance on knockoffs, but do you know of a good source for seeking them out? I'm just hoping to find a decent KO G1 Soundwave and examples of different cassette molds as an office toy. Particularly in the case of the cassettes I'd be cool with someone printing them out to move through an etsy store, which my rather disheartening 10 minutes of TF research shows as the only way for me to get the dinosaur ones.

I, myself, think knock-offs can be hilarious. Most collectors seems to sneer at them, though.

As for where to get them in, though... in general, go to Family Dollar. Or Tuesday Morning. Or Big Lots. Any discount store, really. You can find 'em in droves there.

But, if your looking for (decent) knock-offs of specific characters... then I think eBay would probably be your best bet. (You can actually find some pretty high-quality knock-offs from China that are almost indistinguishable from the real thing.)

Hope that helps.

Please tell me I can buy that somewhere.

Nah, looks like a photoshop job.

Damn SA, raising my hopes only to dash them away.

On the other hand: https://www.vat19.com/item/transformers ... sculptures

These guys are real.

Oh, yeh, I know 'bout those.

(Well, I knew about the shoes. The hats are new on me.)

But what's even better, is that these exist:

Well, Optimus Prime did kill himself over a video game in the Marvel series, so turning himself into a Playstation is at least consistent with how seriously he takes gaming.

I think the real question is why it isn't Soundwave who turns into the Genesis (with game cartridges that turn into robots.) Megatron should be a Zapper.

The real tragedy is that they don't actually play games.

I really want Segatron. Sega was my first game system as a kid.

And while I'm sure the real reason is "Optimus Prime and Megatron are the most recognizable transformers" I like to think that it's because of the names Segatron and Optimus Playstation.

Sega would totally have beat out Nintendo if their consoles turned into giant tyrannical murderbots.

Segatron does what Nintendon't.

So, I'm catching up with IDW's series and apparantly Megatron is an Autobot now.

What the frag?

Right, so what ridiculously circuitous scheme is 2/3 complete?

Prak wrote:Right, so what ridiculously circuitous scheme is 2/3 complete?

Nope. He seriously, legitimately, switched sides.

It is possibly the coolest thing to ever happen in a Transformer story EVER.

Why isn't Pat Lee in jail? He owes at least a couple hundred thousand dollars in unpaid salaries and it's been that way for quite a few years.

Most likely because after Dreamwave imploded, Superstar Funana took the money and ran to Hong Kong to fuck up another company, Dream Engine. (He didn't pay anyone there, either.) There's also the unfortunate fact that these kinda crimes often go unpunished.

But while he may have escaped the law, but he didn't escape karma!

tfwiki.net wrote:While working with Dream Engine, Pat Lee spent a significant amount of the company's funds on the campaign of his girlfriend Aimee Chan, who would eventually win the title of Miss Hong Kong in 2006. This ultimately resulted in Pat being asked by Dream Engine and his brother Roger to leave the company. In the fall of 2007, Aimee Chan changed her status on her alive not dead social networking page to "single". Oops!

I really like the new Robots in Disguise cartoon. I love the Bee team dynamic and I find myself really enjoying characters that I would normally overlook in my giant robot cartoons, like Denny and Fixit.

I have only two real complaints about the cartoon:
A.) I feel that it should not have been touted as a sequel to Prime. The connections are few and I agree with a lot of fans that the mismatch in tone, characters, and plot are pretty irritating. While Prime isn't my favorite show, I sympathize with fans on this one.

B.) No overarching plot. It doesn't need to be (and in my opinion shouldn't) be serialized, but I think that there needs to be something going on in the background other than 'Bee Team hunts down criminals/Steeljaw tries to build his gang/Bumblebee learns how to lead'. Hopefully Season Two will start having some kind of metaplot arc, especially with Drift and Windblade now part of the regular cast.