I just bought and downloaded the first four HOMM games from Good Old Games. They were on sale, but that was just fortuitous.
I've played so damned much Master of Magic that I think I'm wearing out the bits. It really is time to find something else I can enjoy. (Please note that this post is not a request for suggestions about other games besides these.)
So I decided to give the HOMM series a try. Way back, I bought the first game, and wasn't very impressed by it. But Wikipedia says that it was the second release where they really hit their stride, and that was the one that made a name for the franchise.
It must have been popular, since they just released the sixth one last year. But that alone doesn't prove that I would enjoy it.
What I found interesting was the size of the installers:
Yikes! #2, #3, and #4 include all their respective expansion packs, but still!
When I originally bought them, I figured I'd use the sequence to learn the system, so I'd play the first one until I got comfortable with it, then move to the second, and so on. But between my memory of finding the first one rather dull, and the Wikipedia statement that the second one was widely regarded as being vastly better than the first, I'm thinking about diving straight into #2.
I'm just worried about the learning curve. Anyone who remembers these games, do I really need to play the first one before trying to learn the second? (I solicit advice on this point. As long as it doesn't include the phrase "You might also want to consider...")
Actually, I'm considering diving straight into the third one. The first two games installed DOSBox, but the third one didn't.
1
The second one is where the formula came together. I don't see any need to play 1. 3 is basically 2 with a few extra goodies, but I don't remember anything really different in terms of mechanics; ISTR feeling it was largely milking the same formula for all that it was worth. You'll probably be fine starting there.
I don't really remember 4 at all; it's possible I never played it.
It's vaguely like MoM, only strategic movement requires a (non-fighting) hero to lead your stack, and tactical combat takes place on a hex grid. I found magic to be either too weak (most spells), or curb-stomping (certain spells like Chain Lightning, or Armageddon with a hero sporting nothing but Black Dragons).
It's been years since I played it, but the tutorial, followed by the campaign, should be enough to teach you the basics. Basically, between the high move and low hero count, you have to constantly decide how aggressive to be. Most maps reward a very aggressive initial game to gain resource sites (and one-shot hero-upgrade sites), followed by a retrenchment and buildup, defeating enemy stacks in the field, and then hitting their castles with high-tier units in late-game. There are different ways to play, and some campaign missions force you to use them, but that always seemed fairly reliable.
Posted by: Big D at April 09, 2012 04:43 PM (qLkdZ)
3
I played several versions, but I forget which ones. I know the first one I played was decent, the next one was better, and the one after that didn't hold my attention long at all. I would suspect it was 2, 3, and 4, but it could have been 3. 4, and 5.
Posted by: David at April 09, 2012 06:42 PM (Kn54v)
According to Wikipedia, the first four were created by a company called New World Computing.
They were eventually acquired by Ubisoft, who created #5. A guy named Jon Van Caneghem is credited as the writer for the first three. Someone else wrote the fourth one, and then with #5 it seems to be an entirely different development team.
5
It's not often that I feel qualified to chime in, but since I actually played games 2 through 5 as they came out, here we go:
1: Never played it, have never been told that I ought to, either.
2: Arguably the purest/best of the lot, this is the defining HoMM game. Everything that comes later is a refinement, tweak, expansion or re-jiggering of this one.
3: Actually my favorite, because I like many of the refinements, tweaks and re-jiggerings in this rendition over 2. Think of 3 as the "fun one" while 2 is the "pure one." If that makes sense.
4: I've a soft spot for HoMM4 while many purists loathe it. Introduces a "your hero gets down & dirty with the critters in combat" mechanic, in tandem with a "your critters can wander the countryside hero-less to pick up stuff" ability. Also, the hex-field combat maps aren't actually hexes, more of a free-form... thing. Kind of weird, but I like it.
And for chuckles...
5: HoMM gone 3D with a whole new publisher & everything. Surprisingly good, though the grand scale of the earlier games is chopped down to accommodate all the 3D-ness. All in all, I like it, but it's nowhere near as engrossing as the earlier titles. Combat maps are divided into squares instead of hexes, if that matters. (It really doesn't.)
6: Avoid like the plague, apparently... Ubi has saddled it with an "always-online" DRM scheme that is known to break your saves and do other random violence upon your hard-earned enjoyment. Sigh.
Posted by: GreyDuck at April 09, 2012 08:35 PM (Buiw/)
6
I am a big fan of this series, particularly the third one. Fun turn based 4x games.
I second most everything GreyDuck said. 2 is when the series really came together and established its identity. 3 extended the magic model significantly and added a lot of bells and whistles, and is my favorite. Although I spent many, many, many happy hours playing 2 and the expansions for 2, 3 is the one I come back to every 18 months or so to play some more, just because it is so enjoyable.
I was one of the people who did not like 4 as well as the previous games, although it is still interesting. Putting the heroes directly on the battle field changed many aspects of the game in ways I did not like much.
I enjoy the balance and trade offs of deciding where to invest your limited resources: more heroes to have more actors on the field, economy for more resources in the future, more units to expand now, building up your towns for higher tier units later, pushing magic to turn your heroes into army-killing terrors. It definitely has that one-more-turn, watch your empire grow, hey how did it get to be 3 AM feel that characterizes really good games.
Posted by: haphazard1 at April 09, 2012 09:33 PM (9yBYR)
7
Play Heroes III with the utility, Heroes 3 HD. Other than allowing higher resolution support, it also includes a lot of small bug fixes, and even some additional features, all of which are optional.
Kore wa Zombie desu ka of the Dead -- dropped. With three girls being added to the harem, and other things, it just doesn't seem worth wasting time on.
Medaka Box -- dropped. Medaka is just too good to be true. And Zenkichi is intolerable. I might scan it in a few months looking for top rotation pix, but actually watching it is not in the cards.
Sengoku Collection -- one more ep, and then probably dropped. I want to see if it turns into girl-of-the-week. If so, I'm outa here.
Upotte -- one more ep, because I'm stupid and like pain. And then dropped like a hot rock.
Mouretsu Pirates -- continues to fascinate and entertain, and I'll definitely continue watching it. The next plot arc promises to be outstanding.
So things aren't as bad as they have been. Last fall there weren't any shows at all that I wanted to watch, and now I've got two and the possibility of a third.
3
Ugh, I thought you were exaggerating about Upotte. I'm going to establish a new rule of thumb for myself: If you feel it necessary to censor the lead male's face in your show you've done something intrinsically wrong.
Posted by: wahsatchmo at April 09, 2012 10:16 PM (Z82uL)
4
I've taken a crack at "Mysterious Girlfriend X", which I'll be writing up over on my page in the next hour or two.
Posted by: Mauser at April 09, 2012 11:56 PM (cZPoz)
5
Besides Medaka Box, are you going to look at other dropped series for framegrabs, like Zombie?
Posted by: muon at April 12, 2012 12:14 AM (JXm2R)
6
I have no idea. No way to know until after these shows are done.
"Saki Episode of Side A" has to be among the most lame names for a show I've run into in a hell of a long time. But how's the show?
Well, "shallow" is the first word that comes to mind. The good news is that the girls don't all seem to have tragic pasts.
Ako and Shizuno were in 6th Grade with Haramura Nodoka. Even at that age, Nodoka was already developing nicely -- as a Mahjongg player, and... well... in other ways.
They used to go to a local high school and play in the Mahjongg club room, supervised by a volunteer college student who went to high school there and was the club's star. But she got tromped in the nationals and lost heart, and all the best players in the club graduated at the same time, and the club was shut down.
Anyway, she came back, and helping the local girls (all the way down to grade school) learn the game has reinspired her own interest in the game. She got scouted by a pro team, and left, and the room started collecting dust.
Nodoka had to move because of her mother's work, and as we know from the other series she went on to win the national middle school tournament her third year. And then she started attending Kiyosumi, whence we got to know her in the first series.
Well, the news of her winning the middle school tournament was on TV, and her old friends Shizuno and Ako are electrified. They want to play again, and that means forming a mahjongg club at the high school they attend, which was the one they used to play at when Nodoka was around. Kuro, another player from that time, is also interested, and the three of them were the three strongest players before (not counting Nodoka) but they're going to need at least two more players, because they mean to enter the high school tournament in the same year as the first series.
They're in a different prefecture, which is why we haven't heard of them.
That's the set up for this series. Will it be any good? I have no idea. It's got a lot different feel. For all that Mahjongg is the heart of the show, we didn't really see it getting played much in the first episode.
Shizuno is voiced by Aoi Yuuki, who also did Korone in Daimaou, but they couldn't be more different. Shizuno is a genki-girl and a bit of a jock. Kuro is voiced by Kana Hanazawa, who must be the busiest seiyuu in the business right now. She is also Chiaki in Mouretsu Pirates, but Ako doesn't sound like her at all. In general it seems to have a good cast.
There is one thing which is stylistically the same: short skirts, low camera angles, and no panties to be seen. (Good Lord.)
The first series was begun by Gonzo and finished by Picture Magic. This one's from Studio Gokumi, whoever they are. It's the same director and production team, though, which is probably the reason for the stylistic similarity mentioned above.
Nodoka figured highly in the first episode, but I suspect that she'll only be cameos in the rest of the series -- basically TV appearances seen by Shizuno and Ako. For instance, there was that Action Girl TV interview, or whatever it was called, in the first series. I'm sure that'll show up in this one too.
I'll watch the next ep, at least, just to see where they're going with it.
"Then we'll catch it when it comes past our house." That's an old, old, joke back when refrigerators were new, and universal telephone service was also quite new. Say, about the time I was born.
Anyway, Mouretsu Pirates simply does not survive a trip to the refrigerator. This isn't a case where it'll all be explained later and will all make sense. They aren't really totally trying to do that. I think responsibility for that rests with the author of the light novels.
1
If it was a different kind of weapon, I'd speculate perhaps there are weapon's caches strategically situated around the ship for use in repelling boarders -- but the gun pictured wouldn't seem well suited for that function.
Posted by: Dave Young at April 07, 2012 07:33 PM (ZAk0Z)
Weapons caches like that would be idiocy, because they would be just as useful to hostile boarders.
Anyway, it's not like Bentenmaru faces that kind of problem much. In a hundred and twenty years of active piracy, I bet they have never once been boarded that way.
And by the way, it isn't a modern ray gun in the shape of an antique revolver. She's shown cocking the hammer just before she charges in.
3
Well, my assumption was such a cache would be non-obvious and keycoded to the crew. And no, didn't seem terribly likely...but it was the best explanation I could come up with.
Posted by: Dave Young at April 07, 2012 08:24 PM (ZAk0Z)
4
If Misa's gun folds it could easily be concealed in her large pink belt.
Schnitzer is a cyborg not an android, when he's not in a vacuum he
breathes normally and no one had any reason to engage any biowarfare
protocols or his rebreather until it was too late.
I think there MAY be a developing subplot involving a faction or factions that want to end the pirate loophole for Sea of Morningstar. The catmonkey release timer was clearly sabotage.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at April 07, 2012 11:21 PM (EJaOX)
5
Even though the ship was disinfected, you don't suppose any of the cat-monkeys are still on board? If so, then we may yet get to see them in a chase scene with the yacht club...
Posted by: Siergen at April 08, 2012 07:39 AM (3/gGt)
7
I'd expect that even in a soft-SF series, they'd remember to
flush the air out of a ship as part of the disinfection process; maybe not by depressurizing completely, but at least by pumping in something unbreathable. So, no cat-monkeys; I'm sure the yacht club will get in enough trouble without them..
-j
Posted by: J Greely at April 08, 2012 09:00 AM (2XtN5)
8
I wonder
if the Yatch Club members will be able to take the Bentenmaru out with it's weapons online? Considering the quasi-official nature of the privateers, special licenses might be required. Or perhaps Chiaki's that covered?
Posted by: Dave Young at April 08, 2012 08:35 PM (ZAk0Z)
9
Whatever that gun is, it's not really useful for sneaking around, considering that it rattles like a Maraca every time she shifts her stance. She might want to have a competent gunsmith look at it.
(As much as the Japanese love the guns they can't have, they so often make mistakes that all their book-reading and stat-memorizing can't help them with. It's kind of like Hollywood writers who give the "Crazed Vietnam Vet" stereotype character a pump shotgun, which he racks repeatedly to show how crazy-serious he is.)
Posted by: Mauser at April 08, 2012 08:58 PM (cZPoz)
10
The movement clicking annoys me to no end, although I do have a rifle that has a clicking sling loop in front (a Mini-14). There's nothing to click in a pistol. It happens in all media, except the ultra-realistic one like Cat Shit One.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 08, 2012 09:39 PM (5OBKC)
11
"which he racks repeatedly to show how crazy-serious he is."
Why do you think they call them semi-automatics?
I wanted to italicize "semi" above, but it wouldn't let me italicize just that word.
Posted by: RickC at April 09, 2012 12:52 PM (GeLQf)
12
The point is, if he keeps racking it, eventually he'll eject all the shells. Well, I guess that's one manifestation of his being crazy.... except Hollyweird doesn't seem to notice it.
In case you're wondering: you use the cursor keys to put the cursor where you want. Then you hold down the shift key and use the cursor keys to control the selection, on a character-by-character basis. Once you've selected exactly the characters you want, you hit the italic function in the box heading.
You can put italics in the middle of a word that way: Abracadabra
15
(Probably a topic for some completely different medium, but the editor here can be really confusing if you don't make all your changes AFTER you've finished writing. I made the mistake of trying to put in a link and then continue typing, and finding all the rest of my text in the link style. And it was sheer luck that I was able to figure out how to create a directory for the pictures I added to the Deadman Wonderland review. The system here is VERY confusing).
Anyway, the point is, a pump shotgun isn't a semi-automatic. The offending show was, I think "Midnight Caller", where the late night radio advice DJ was caught in the middle of a bank robbery, which of course turned into a hostage situation, and the CVV would frequently pump the gun and point it at someone's head while screaming. Over and over, while the rest of the robbers tried to be intelligent about it. Made you wonder WHY they let this guy on the team. Maybe they gave him an empty shotgun to begin with. (He gets one shell, but he has to keep it in his pocket.)
But getting back to the topic. Is it any wonder that I suddenly saw Mami as Meiling to Marika's Cardcaptor Sakura.... Although if she really wanted to design something for her uniform, a bottom half would be nice - so she doesn't have to wear her school skirt, socks and shoes.
Posted by: Mauser at April 10, 2012 02:14 AM (cZPoz)
It's the same character designer as Ladies versus Butlers and Kanokon, and it looks it. All the girls look a bit plump, and have very round faces.
This show is pr0n squared. It's gun pr0n plus it's pr0n pr0n, at least a little bit. Fan service for gun otaku, and fan service for generic otaku. Our main characters are all guns. Exactly how it is that guns become cute middle school girls isn't really explained, and I think you're not supposed to ask those kinds of questions.
The white-haired-pretty-girl is Funko AKA FNC, from Belgium.
The one with brown hair is Shigu, AKA SIG SG550, from Switzerland.
The blonde genki-girl is Ichiroku, AKA M16A4, from America. Reportedly she has a triple-tap but no full auto. (Is true?)
Eru, AKA L85A11, is British. Needless to say, she has the biggest breasts. It's an anime trope that girls from England have huge breasts. Think Lynette Bishop, for example. Also, needless to say, genki-girl Ichiroku likes to grab them.
The male teacher doesn't have a name, and his job is to get shot up every time he makes an off-color remark. FNC puts him into the hospital twice in just the first episode.
It's hard to see how there could be much mileage in this concept. It's based on a 4-koma which ran almost 2 years, though, so what do I know.
I'll give this one more episode, just because I'm curious where they think they're going with it. The first episode was just character introduction and scenario setup. If that's any kind of plot or story, it'll start appearing next time. I bet not, though; I bet it's just a gag show, plus an opportunity to dish up good visuals, of the girls or of their weapons.
1
I made it through the first half. I'm stunned you actually want to watch another full episode. I'll grant the visuals of the guns are pretty good, but that's all the praise I have for this turkey.
4
I almost quit there also; I did decide it wasn't going to make a 2nd episode, but I'd finish this one. Every scene after that just lowered my opinion some more until the school nurse started talking about lubricating hammers. "That's it, I'm outtahere!" I said, but then another character walked in, and I paused...to be rewarded with a joke about constipation, of all things.
When did Japan start hiring virgin otaku internet trolls with the humor of 13-year-olds on 2chan to write anime?
Oh. Right.
Posted by: Wonderduck at April 07, 2012 03:48 PM (PVVuW)
6
Ah, but the first episode of your first choice was actually funny. I considered your second choice but having never seen it, I knew nothing of the writing.
7
Both have left me with terrible scarring that only mass amounts of therapy and rye bread have been able to obscure. Then at night, when I least expect it, they come back to me and I wake screaming and crying.
Posted by: Wonderduck at April 07, 2012 05:54 PM (PVVuW)
8
I laughed a bit. This isn't a show I'd claim to others I've seen, but I might catch up every few weeks when I want something mindless.
Posted by: sqa at April 08, 2012 12:27 AM (ZtkPH)
9
I actually laughed out loud a couple of times... at points that the production staff intended! The "skeleton stock" explanation, for example... and the gun jam.
It's definitely an "acquired taste", I think... kinda like mushroom ice cream. Someone out there probably likes it.
I'll watch Ep02 before I decide if it's worth continuing. Ain't no way I'm bloggin' it, though.
Posted by: Wonderduck at April 08, 2012 06:06 PM (PVVuW)
Well, it wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be, but we're doing the third book. And it's going to be a hoot. Unlike book 2, which was action-adventure, book 3 is comedy and character building.
Best line in this episode: "No, they're staring at you. I'm in disguise."
1
They updated the Lost Child visuals. Even in the spinning paper doll setup. Mami really updated that pirate outfit. Dark Mami also showed her fangs a bit. I love her.
I was kind of hoping for more scenes of Misa being chased by the cat-monkeys. That'd have been fun.
This'll probably take us to about ep 17, then I guess we'll get the final story arc there. Though I believe books 4-6 are actually 1 long story arc, so maybe they'll condense it? Or maybe it'll be original content to end off the series. A lot of ways to go with it, really.
Oh, and I loved the pants-suit line. That had me in stitches.
3
Here's a poster of Marika and Chiaki from Megami magazine. I guess there's no scene like this in the anime.
Posted by: muon at April 07, 2012 11:57 PM (JXm2R)
4
I'm attempting to be careful about spoilers, but I know exactly 0 about what happens in the Light Novels.
I've just seen some comments that Novel 4 is part of a bigger arc. So it raises a few questions about where they'll be going with the anime.
Now, here's some pure speculation:
I think we're going to get an anime original story arc to end the series. I say this because the copyright dates through episode 14 are still 2011. That means we're in April and the most recent episode was done over 4 months ago.
Given production lead times, it's very likely most of the production work was done before Volume 5 was fully written. Also, this series got an anime greenlight before the 2nd novel was published. So either it's just Volume 4 to end or they'll go with something original.
I would really hope, in a series like this, that they could get the author to give them a scenario to work off for an original arc. There's a whole lot going on in the background. It wouldn't necessarily be a sweeping arc like some of the rest, but it could work. It's not like our Director/Series Comp guy isn't the creator of Nadescio or Stellvia, two very good space opera-type series. (Actually, this series is SOOOOO his take on Star Trek, it's pretty obvious, but I love Stellvia, so that's why I was in so much on this series.)
I was going to say that Sato has the staff to do it, but then I looked at the staff. Sato could do this, the rest of his staff is really, really untested for original work. Okay, so it'll just be Volume 4, then hope for a 2nd series.
Oh, and could anyone recognize the references to one thing Marika was doing?
When Marika & Gruier got the suits, I feel like it's a specific reference to something. I just couldn't quite place it. I was thinking Julia from Cowboy Bebop at first, but that doesn't quite hold. It feels like I've seen two female anime characters in that type of suit getup with those types of glasses. I just really can't place it.
One thing about ep 14:
And really the series as a whole. Marika is obviously learning and she's, directly, our audience stand in for the series. We're learning through her. Yet they've never actually talked down to Marika or the audience, at all.
So for this episode, we got to see Marika work out the details of something she simply hadn't needed to address yet. But they also pointed out there's a whole lot of ways to pick a crew. Granted, Kenjo & Chiaki knew that she really didn't know how to pick them out but at the same time was trying to do it completely solo because her entire crew was in the hospital. There wasn't any "you're a beginner, let me do this for you". It was discussing the topic and cutting off the problematic answers before Marika got stuck with them.
To Chiaki, taking the Yacht club out was the most logical solution, but to Marika it really never would have crossed her mind. To Marika, Work is Work, School is School and Piracy is Piracy. She'd never mix them nor thinking of mixing them. (That and taking a bunch of High School girls on a Pirate ship sounds more like a Hentai plot than a Star Trek episode, given the "realistic" setting of the series)
Further, we got to see that Marika is very good at delegating tasks and doing her "own" tasks very well. But there are always times the Captain needs to make executive decisions that go against the people you delegated tasks to. She's going to get a fun lesson in that over the next few episodes. The "Captain needs to be the most knowledgeable person on the ship" is an old concept, but there's a whole lot of truth to the reality of it. It'll be nice to see.
I also liked how Marika wasn't comfortable with the notoriety. Until recently, she had just been a some-what cute high school student. Now she's an interstellar celebrity. That was quite the shift for here and it'll be interesting to see how long that takes. But even to Marika, she's seen the reactions that Gruier gets, so she really couldn't quite get it, at first. I liked that. It's actually the arc a lot of people go through when they do get some level of notoriety. It can take a while to sink in that life has changed, even if they don't feel they actually did all that much.
Posted by: sqa at April 08, 2012 11:39 AM (ZtkPH)
5
Sqa, book 6 was published in March, 2011, ending the story arc that started in book 4 (at least, according to the Wikipedia entry; I haven't read any of them). Book 8 ("Purple Witch's Ship") comes out in 2 weeks. Also, I can't find anything about the anime being greenlit before book 2 came out in April, 2009; ANN has it as being announced a few days before the release of book 3, and then delayed until 2012 about halfway between the release of books 6 and 7.
My guess is that they originally planned a 13-episode series based on the first three books. With most light novel series, they'd have had a bit more material than that, but this one doesn't seem to have been serialized in a magazine before being published in book form. The delay could have had many reasons, but that's likely when they decided to go to 26 episodes, and they had the whole three-parter in hand when they made that announcement.
(side note: the Wikipedia page has all of the yacht-club girls except Jenny and Lynn as "original to the anime"; apparently they never got names or descriptions, so Shoko Kobayashimaru is an original in-joke)
-j
Posted by: J Greely at April 08, 2012 01:08 PM (2XtN5)
At this point, my wild ass guess is that they're not going to use book 4. They're going to stretch book 3 out a long way, and then I agree with sqa that they'll create an anime-only story to finish the series.
And we'll get told that there's another series planned, and that one will start with book 4.
7
There was also Sato's comment along the lines of "removing the romance". Maybe a significant chunk of books 4-6 is just being chopped out; that would make sense, particularly if it wasn't about Marika. Cut a whole book's worth of material, and you're back on track for 26 episodes.
Now, if it was yuri romance that was cut, then a lot of fans will be unhappy...
-j
Posted by: J Greely at April 08, 2012 04:26 PM (2XtN5)
8
Hrmm... I could have sworn I saw an early 2009 date on the anime adaptation news. That would explain part of my mess up there. And I really should have sent Google Translate on the Japanese Wiki page. English information on the LN series is almost non-existent.
Still, this one has definitely been in the tank for a while. Which might have worked well for it, as it avoided more crowded seasons.
On how it'll end:
With having a proper timeline now, it's still hard to say they'll cut down 3 LNs into 6-10 episodes. For a series in absolutely no hurry, that's a tad odd. 2 LN being 13 episodes is actually pretty rare. Most series are between 3 and 5 LNs into one course. So it's technically doable, but I'd be really, really surprised.
I think they probably stretch book 3 out to 6 or so episodes, then we get some wrap up, maybe a history story arc, fleshing out the other characters. Maybe Ririka joins them for a jaunt somewhere.
Granted, the translated Japanese text seems to imply that book 7 carries directly from the world changes of 4-6, so I guess they couldn't just do book 7 either. That'd have been an option. So, yeah, either a quickly done 4-6 or original. Given how much of a world there is, they really could do something original & author blessed. I'm still surprised that more creators didn't do what Oba did with One Piece's 10th anniversary movie and find a way to integrate it and make it canon. You can't tell every story in your original works, even if Oda is actually trying to.
1
Before another natural disaster strikes, I hasten to mention that I'd like an Icon A5 for Christmas (http://www.iconaircraft.com/). It's an airplane that one can tow, which basically has all the advantages of Terrafuga, but keeps the performance of a normal airplane - speed, range, and payload - because it does not carry a redundant engine and other attributes of a car. Unfortunately, A5 was a vapor for many years, as the company is struggling to create the impossible: an airplane that can be flown by any boater safely. Last I heard from them, they just completed and certified a spin-resistant design (on top of an unstallable wing).
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 06, 2012 06:55 PM (5OBKC)
2
It has 3 wheels, this opens a LOT of loopholes in US regulatory assininity.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at April 06, 2012 07:03 PM (EJaOX)
3
Brickmuppet, you're right. That makes it a motorcycle, doesn't it? So it doesn't need 10-mph crash bumpers or stuff like that.
4
That's nice work for a prototype - even the pusher prop folds itself up to stow away neatly.
I love regulations like that - three wheels makes it a motorcycle.... With a pusher prop and rotor blades.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 06, 2012 08:22 PM (PiXy!)
5
I like that one much more than the Terrafugia. Of course, aside from the fact that I couldn't afford either one, my normal commute goes nowhere near a place where you could take-off or land either one.
Posted by: David at April 06, 2012 09:45 PM (Kn54v)
6
I am not a big fan of autogyros for the reason that they combine the worst control response and stability characteristics of airplanes and helicopters. Only experienced rotorcraft pilots can fly them, and even then the last time an autogyro was on the market ("AT-2"), its crash record was unimaginably bad: something like 1 in 5 flights ended in a mishap. Most were related to a roll-over. I cannot imagine PAL-V being flown routinely by someone who's not a professional stunt pilot.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 07, 2012 07:17 AM (5OBKC)
7
Depends on the AutoGyro design. A lot of the kit-built sort don't have a
horizontal stabilizer, and have poor thrust/Drag lines, making them
very vulnerable to "Power Push Over", where in a climb, the pilot tries
to level out before reducing power. The sudden reduction in drag from
the rotor disk vs the high thrust line from the motor (mounted too high
for ground clearance) and the low drag line from the fuselage/Pilot
(mounted too low because long spindly landing gear is harder to design),
results in the machine toppling over. A properly designed autogyro
will have the thrust and drag much more aligned, and a horizontal
stabilizer will prevent toppling over.
Remember when they were first invented, the idea was to make a
crash/stall-proof airplane. There were some advantages to the original
tractor designs.
(How on earth did I end up logged out?)
Posted by: Mauser at April 07, 2012 10:27 AM (cZPoz)
Sengoku Collection is a trifle. There isn't anything at all deep about it. It's based on some sort of game, but I'm not sure of the details. My first thought was that it was a collectible card game, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
It's a dusty concept: the big names from the Warring States period in Japanese history are all cute girls, and they all come into the modern era. It's kind of the reverse of Sengoku Otome, where they're all girls and a modern girl gets dropped into their era. (Also, in Sengoku Otome they were older.)
So in the first episode our Girl from Mars is Nobunaga.
She falls from the sky, but doesn't splash when she hits. I guess they made 'em tough back in those days. She ends up falling on a guy riding a moped. He buys her lunch at a hamburger stand, and then leaves her to go to his job. His existence isn't very fancy; he works in a convenience store, and lives alone in a one-room apartment. He used to have a girl friend but she left him, and now he's lonely.
Nobunaga finds him at his store, and follows him home and stays with him. She gets his bed and he sleeps on the floor. And on his day off he takes her on a moped tour of the area.
She's pretty cute, after all. (Ahem) And he enjoys himself. Near the end of it they drive past a shrine, and she orders him to stop. She prays there. He asks her what she asked for. And she says that she asked to be taken back to her time-and-place, and also said that if it didn't happen she'd burn down the shrine.
Well, that got noticed, and late that night three minor kami come and visit Nobunaga in a dream.
Left to right, Usagi-miko, Kitsune-miko, and Neko-miko. They say they will do it, but it'll take a lot of power. Others from that same period have come, too. Each one has a ball of power inside, and if Nobunaga can collect them all then the three will send her home.
The series description implies that each episode is about a different girl. Next week is Tokugawa Ieyasu. Presumably after the whole cast is assembled then there will be some sort of story. I'm not so clear on whether our lonely guy from the first episode will be a continuing character, though, or whether Nobunaga will appear next week.
His voice sounded familiar. But he isn't listed in the credits on ANN, so I have no idea who he is. He sounds like the voice of Ayumu in Zombie.
There's little or no substance to this. It's light and frothy, and pretty good tempered. I'll give it another try next week.
UPDATE: NSFW tags added. I really should have done that the first time.
1
So, Nobunaga says "if you won't send me back, I'll burn down your shrine"; will Ieyasu say "if you won't send me back, I'll just hang out in this era until you do"?
Looks like it's a cellphone trading-card game, and there's a browser-based multi-player RPG as well that requires a Yahoo Japan account to play.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at April 06, 2012 11:26 AM (2XtN5)
When it comes to anime representations of Ieyasu, it's anybody's guess. Sengoku Otome, for instance; Ieyasu was in that one, and her character certainly surprised me more than once.
The Japanese seem to have a strange kind of love/hate relationship with Ieyasu. I don't really understand it; do they respect him, or despise him? Some of both, it seems, and maybe it's something a gaijin just can't understand.
Was the Shogunate a good thing, or a bad thing? Well, yeah, actually. That seems to be the answer.
No, it wasn't an act of war or a mistake. It's that one which was swept away in last year's tsunami and was spotted recently off the coast of Canada. It was determined that it was too dangerous to try to tow it into port, and it was a navigation hazard. So the Coast Guard sank it, with gunfire I presume. (Going on board to set scuttling charges would have been too dangerous.)
Not often the Coast Guard gets to fire their guns for real. It's nice to know they can hit what they aim at. (Not that there was any doubt about that.)
1
If you don't mind me asking, why was it deemed dangerous either to tow it or to board it? (I think I understand why as a navigation hazard)
Posted by: Jaked at April 05, 2012 10:38 PM (K1fG5)
2
Probably because its been unmaintained and exposed to the elements for a year. Not to mention having been hit by a tsunami. Who knows what kind of internal damage it has?
Posted by: metaphysician at April 06, 2012 05:52 AM (3GCAl)
3
Jaked, that's what they said in the news report.
4
The danger of towing it was one part of the decision, but the other is simply that it's scrap value wasn't worth the effort or risk. It had already pretty much been scrapped and was just a hulk at the pier when the tsunami hit, There was actually a ship in the area before it was sunk that was considering claiming it for salvage and towing it back, but they decided not to after considering the weather, fuel cost, delayed time to get back to their usual work, etc. And with where it was, the coast guard wasn't going to leave it around long enough for anyone else to come get it.
Posted by: David at April 06, 2012 07:52 AM (+yn5x)
It definitely has that one-more-turn, watch your empire grow, hey how did it get to be 3 AM feel that characterizes really good games.
