The Gold Saint issue

I have been looking at it from the sidelines since BanDai started releasing their Myth Cloth EX line.  Reworks of the older range, so far we have seen `version 2` bronzes and a large part of the Gold Saints already out.

The models are a definite improvement over their older Myth cloths, where basically their age really shows for most of them.  With now Deathmask out and within my grasp (I`m raising funds for him), I bit the bullet and am going to collect the series to go alongside my `regular` Myth cloths. 

Here you can see the old vs the new versions of the Gold Leo saint, Aiolia, as an example.

But that would mean I would have the Gold Saints double... and that would eat a lot of closet space.  So after pondering on it for a few weeks now, I found the simple and elegant solution.

The classic Myth cloths will be replaced in `saint mode` in the cabinet, while the older versions will be build into Cloth mode to go alongside them.

That way, I`ll have in the end all 12 of them (hopefully) with their armors beside them, woop woop, as will it be for the Bronze Saints released in the line.

Because say what you want, they do look mightily impressive!

Sunday Ramblings: the Geek life episode 1

A brand new feature on this bloggie thing, Sunday Ramblings: the Geek life will be just that, ramblings... of a geek... on sundays.

This will be the weekly column, bit of an improved (I hope), more intresting (hopefully) and immensly popular (fat chance) of a guy living in his own strange mindset.  Or psychosis, depends a little on your point of view against geeks (enter insane laughter here).

First of all, as told earlier my private life has been rummaged through severly the last month.  After 5 years, I waved farewel to the world of very shiny stones (well, the shipping them worldwide at least for an underpayed wage and a totally disrespectful clientele) and am since past thursday officially back to being a student.  And as such now enjoying summer vacation for 2.5 months... life is hard.

Well, it will be, as I'll be pressing Computeroperator, Networkoperator, Webdesing AND Gamedesign all together in two years of studying, which should result in that period in 2 Masters and 1 Bachelor diploma.  Life is going to become very hard...

And as such, less blogtime, and best to meld it all into one big post every week unless some cool stuff happens...

What Have I Been Gaming?

Mostly two games have been played this week, namely Transformers: Dark of the Moon on the Playstation 3 and at the same time Sunflowers on the Vita.

That second game is mightily simple... and incredibly addictive.  Basically, your the sun, and you have to shoot clouds to make them drop raindrops and have flowers grow...

... but it is a great time killer to do when your staring at the empty online lobby of the Transformers game, hoping that at times 3 more lost souls pass by and play a few rounds to reach the gold 'The Champion' (reach level 20 online) trophy.  Taking into account you'll need about 50 online rounds to accomplish that, many an hour have indeed been spent just, well, staring and watering flowers...

At least it's out of the way now, and the platinum grind can begin for the game, having to grab trophees like 'kill that many in such time', 'don't die doing this or that' etc etc... those kind of little bronze 'left over' trophees, so sometime during the holidays, the game will pop platinum after enough rince and repeat sessions.  First I'm going to try and give Andy a serious extra spanking though, to set up a safe margin for the severly limited time I'll be having come september.

I also received a note that my next pre-order is in, the Lego Chima game for the Vita, which I'll be collecting tomorrow at the store.  Nothing to fancy probably, but one has to keep his collection up to date.  Which reminds me I still need to finish the Batman one even.
Truth to be told, the Lego Chima series didn't rock my boat when it came out, I'm actually waiting more for this Lego game to appear in september:

What Have I Been Watching?

Well, Star Trek Into Darkness of course, which for some silly reason was released in Belgium almost a month after the rest of the world.  It's an enjoyable movie.  It is a reboot of The Wrath of Khan, though for me it doesn't come anywhere near the 1984 classic.  It incorporates some elements from the Search for Spock even (the new 'big ship' class for the Federation, here called the Vengeance, but we all know it's the new Excelsior), with Scotty sabotaging it's energy grid.
The new take of switching roles with the dilithium matrix is okay, Khan wasn't to bad, and there was one detail I found supreme.
At the admiral's office, there was a line of scale models of 'Enterprises', and it included non of the originals... but DID have the NX class in it.  Solving Enterprise's canon issue this way Mr Abrams?

All in all a good film, I would rate it in the higher half of the all the franchise's movies, but NOT for me the 'uberfilm' some people go around saying it is (usually, non Trekkies but heck).

What Have I Been Reading?

The best thing I read this week was the The Transformers volume 5 omnibus, Chaos Theory.  Oddly enough, this comic is HEAVY even for non Transformer fans.

Dealing with issues as being able to make a free choice; putting faith in, but being able to pick without, religious guidance; choosing between lifelong imprisonment or the death sentence; doubting believes that guided you all the way... that was definitly NOT a children's comic.

And with all the recent news about the bellringer Mr Snowden, the Syria war etc... oddly placed in the current day 'tijdsgeist' even though the comic is a few years old.

What Have I Been Collecting?

Some Transformers arrived this week (see for one my Dinobot post from a few days ago) including this very cool Transformers Generations Swerve model.  An elegant model in both vehicle and robot mode (even though he doesn't become a sleek sportscar at all) this was a great buy for 15 dollars thorugh a promotional offer.

On the part of my main intrest of all times, Saint Seiya, I finally bit the bullet and ordered these...

To many of the newer models are really intricate and heavy, that in order to stabilize them better, I finally went with the stands, and now if I see them pop by for a decent price on the belgian webstores, I'm snatching them up.

So that's about it for this first week of geekiness, feel free to leave any comments below and otherwise, I'll see you all next week for episode 2!

Saint Seiya Omega Crusade series 2

A few weeks ago, Cardass released their series 2 of the Saint Seiya Omega set in the Crusade system.  Telling the tale of the battles against the Gold Saints, I received my 'traditional' 3 booster boxes from Papermoon Japan.

Everything filed and sorted out, this resulted in me still missing three cards from the set, unfortunatly including the ultra rare chase card, the Purple CH-002 Saori Kido, alongside two gold saints, Red U-005 Libra Genbu and Grey U-004 Capricorn Ionia.

Bar some buy-a-box promos that is, but it isn't easy tracing down checklists of the japanese promo cards.

So if anyone has these cards, and is willing to sell them (or trade them, pop a list to hear what I have and you need), just place a post right under this blogpost.

Thanks a lot!

The 12th Platinum: Disney's Pixar Up

Up.  I always thought it one of the best, and underrated Pixar movies ever released, telling the tale of the old balloon widower and a boyscout, going to Angel's Falls with a house carried by balloons through the air.

THQ... before they folded, they did a good job on releasing the franchise games of most of these movies to the Playstation 3, but unfortunatly, some of their games are... well... crap. 

While The Penguins of Madagascar and MegaMind where quite funny and enjoyable, Kung Fu Panda 2 was uber rubbishness.  Unfortunatly, Up is more leaning toward the latter.

The good thing is that at least it doesn't get finished in half a day like the Panda game, but it does have some of the terrible errors of that game as well

* Controls are at times very 'unfriendly'
* Where in the Penguins you controlled the 4 heroes smoothly, the 2.5 heroes here (Dug pops in now and then) have a habbit of blocking each others paths, resulting in missing jumps, getting stuck, and on three seperate occassions even dropping of the screen forcing to restart the level.

Trophy wise, it is a bit of a challenge in that for some you trail away FAR from the game 'path', even if your collecting artifacts.  Anf not to decent a clue of where to go.

All in all, it was a relative easy platinum for the virtual closet, but in all honesty, a kid can get frustrated at times by the controls (and the plane levels are horrible to pilot).

Target in Sight

Okay, so we're nearing Andy's current platinum mark, as he is on 13 at the moment, and preparing ourselves to gain two more platinums this month, though not the most simple ones to get.

On the Vita, I'm one gold trophy away from reaching it, but Batman 2 on that platform needs the Justice League completed on gold level, not the easiest of things to do due to some controller issues, I'll explain those when I finish the game.

On the PS3 X-Men Destiny is also only 1 gold and 2 bronzes aways from platinum score, all three comming naturally through the remaining gameplay.  I'm at the irritating Magneto fight on that one,  but once I (finally) dodge jump guerilla smash my way past that hopefully, it will be a breeze to round it out.

After that, I'm going for the ultimate price of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, still a lot to do there, but first I'll need to struggle through the online part, not simple on a 2 year old game, to be able to start hunting the trophies and complete chapters in that game.

Best `facebook Funny` picture ever

In my opinion at least, I can see myself cursing just the same if it should happen to me...

Now, apart from that, Optimus DOES lend himself to some great jokes, like these ones:

Dinobots, transform and beat the shit out of those Decepticons!!!!!

They`re here!!!!!!  FINALLY all my youth sentiments have come together as I have the full series of the Dinobots now residing in my display cabinets.

Grimlock, Sludge, Slag, Snarl and Swoop, the most powerful and dangerous Autobots, have aquired bit of a cult status in the franchise.  Partly because of their isolationism, their not respectation of authority, and sheer brute force make them in the Autobot strike team.

On more then one occasion, they have saved the Autobots from big do-do (the Movie, Rage of the Dinobots mini-series, etc...) and trashed about a heap of `cons.  And on more then one occasion, Grimlock has become (or tried to become) the Autobot head honcho... but let`s put it mildly and say that diplomacy isn`t his forte...

Snarl is the medic of the team, and he hates his Dinobot form, but he is as valiant as the rest.  Bit of the emminesce grise of the team (okay, so that would mean like he could count to 10, I`ll give you that).

Slag is the most ferocious (okay, now THAT means something) and as a result often gets in way to many fights.  The fact that he is still around means he is good at it to boot.  Toy wise though, it is my least popular model, the tail is just trailing behind in robot form.

Swoop is lither and smaller then the rest of the team, as he is the scout and transforms into a flying Pteradon.  But nevertheless a loyal and ferocious fighter, even he is mild mannered.

Sludge is together with Grimlock my favorite of the toys, transforming into a `clean` robot more then the other three members of the team.  Slow witted, he is a force to fear on the battlefield as he brings his sheer size to bear...

So there they are, the coolest Transformers ever made, now residing in their new residence...

Saint Seiya Myth Cloth: Black Phoenix

The Black Saints of Death Queen Island are warriors fallen from Athena's grace, becomming a force of evil saints and wearing cloths ithe same as the bronze equivalents.

Led by Ikki of Phoenix when trying to steal the golden cloth at the Galaxian Wars, the leader of these saints is the Black Dragon, and while the Phoenix is perhaps the strongest of the Bronze Saints, the black Phoenix is nothing more then a foot soldier, numerous copies being chased through the city in the beginning of the story arc.

The model however, is top notch material.  Highly detailed, great fittings for the armor parts, poseable and stable... this model is winner.
It is a recouloring of the Phoenix saint, like most Black Saints are for obvious reasons, and has always the visor closed face like in the anime itself.

I found the model at Antwerp Convention last month for barely 30 euros, a top buy costing me about half of what they go for online, and peanuts if you see that the Dragon / Cygnus duo set of the Black Saints is rarely available under the 250 euros.

I can only advise people to get the model if they can pick it up left or right, it is a good addition to any collectors cabinet!