I bought these vintage Arii Macross model kits on YAJ this past week. The standard Regult on the left and the Light Missile Carrier on the right. I’ve already built the Heavy Missile Carrier and Scout Regults. These kits were not repopped for the Macross 15th Anniversary in ’97. In fact as far as I know, the only models Arii released for the 15th anniversary were the 1:100 Destroid and Valkyrie kits (and maybe the 1:170 Valkyrie kits).
The standard Regult was released first, and the “knee” joints aren’t so good. These parts were re-tooled for the scout and the two missile carriers, but the first one isn’t capable of bending into a sort of “fetal position” in standby mode like the others can. Despite their age, the decals for both kits seem like they are alright. Like the Regults I’ve already completed, I will use aftermarket parts by Wave and Kotobukiya to improve detail.
Wow, I’ve never seen this box cover before! This is the 15th anniversary 1:100 VF-1J kit by Arii. Of all the 15th anniversary boxes, I’ve never seen one featuring DYRL artwork. I came across this on Mercari and would be tempted to get it for the box art alone (well, that and because I have an impulsive mental problem), but I wouldn’t pay 4,300 yen for it. Still, the bags inside are unopened and the decals are in good condition. The figure inside is a mystery since the black bag it comes in is unopened. I’ll pass.
I remember when I first visited Japan in summer of 1998, I saw piles of these 15th anniversary Arii model kits. They were on a discount table at a department store and while I was happy to see Macross stuff prominently on display, at that time I had already given up on modeling a few years prior out of frustration and didn’t get back into the hobby until 2005.
So when I went to the Winter Wonder Festival in February, my friend Adrian who works for Big West told me that they have a stash of Macross models that model companies give them as free samples. He said that I was welcome to as many as I’d like, as long as I just pay for shipping cash on delivery.
I was hoping that I might be able to meet up with Adrian when I visited Yokohama a few weeks ago, but that wasn’t possible. Instead though, he told me that day that he’d take pictures of the contents of those three big boxes of Macross kits and give me first dibs on what I’d like. So I gave him a list of models for me and some friends of mine and on August 25th, I got a big-ass box of Macross neatness.
So all of these kits are by Wave. On top is the 1:100 VF-1S Strike Valkyrie. The next row down is the 1:100 VF-1S/A Super Valkyrie “Multiplex” (it can be built as the Valkyries flown by Roy, Hikaru, and Max) and VF-1S/A Super Valkyrie Battroid Multiplex. Under that is the 1:72 VF-171EX Nightmare Plus and under that is the VF-171EX Armored Nightmare Plus. I’ve never seen Macross Frontier, but the VF-171EX Nightmare is such an incredible fighter jet, and I now have both versions! When I first saw this Nightmare kit at the All-Japan Hobby Show, I really liked it but I figured that I’d never get this kit because it’s so expensive.
This is what I sent to my friend Gary in the USA. He got another of the VF-1S/A Multiplexes, a VF-171EX Nightmare kit as well, and Hasegawa’s Miria resin garage kit figure, Bandai’s 1:100 YF-21, and a Hasegawa decal sheet for 1:72 scale Valkyries.
I’m sure that the Big West employees are welcome to take what they like for themselves. These are kits that are leftover and I figure that since they’re just taking up space at their office, I did a favor by letting Adrian offload so many onto me!
We went on a drive down to Souka City in Saitama Prefecture on Sunday. While the two ladies had their thing to do, I checked out a couple of Hard Off/Hobby Off locations. The street I was driving on said that Ueno was just 13km ahead, so I really was right on the border of Tokyo. I’ve never driven to Tokyo before and the expressway system is a bit confusing in the middle of the city, but at least it was a straight drive along the Kan-etsu Expressway to Souka.
The first place I went to had these expensive Arii Macross kits. The stickers on these say 掲載商品 (keisai shouhin) which means an advertised product. That Spartan for 27,500 yen confuses me… That’s an Imai kit, right? It says it’s 1/72 scale, which would make it by Imai because Arii made the 1/100 version, but the white price tag says that it’s Arii. It’s also a “Macross diorama” kit. The stack on the right are 1/100 variable Valkyrie kits. I didn’t know they go for so much these days.
More obscure Macross kits. “System Fortress” diorama kits. Weird.
I proceeded on to another store location, and it wasn’t very far away.
Lots of legacy Gundam kits from the ’80s at this location.
Here are B-Club resin aftermarket detail parts for 0083 kits. I ended up not really finding anything of interest. I stumbled upon a Surugaya by chance, but there wasn’t anything particularly interesting there either. Lastly I went to the Book Off Super Bazaar in that town, but it was boring.
This is the building with Gunma Leisure Land game center and Mandai Shoten in Takasaki. We went down to Takasaki last Saturday. Mandai doesn’t open until 10, so I spent some time at the game center where I played some shmups like Senjin Aleste, which I wrote about in an earlier post. Then later I checked out Mandai.
Plenty of Macross model kits, old and new.
The Nautilus double set from Nadia. I have the regular submarine Nautilus, but not the nu-Nautilus starship.
The flag of Zeon was hanging overhead. Nice touch.
I didn’t notice these Eggplane Girl resin kits the last time I was here.
The high prices of Saturn games (and all retro games in general) is sad. I really need to sell a bunch of games now hat Ulan is getting braces. It’ll be a tough decision to make which ones I want to keep. I really can’t play any retro games anymore since my new TV has no S-Video inputs. I’d have to see if I have the regular composite inputs, but it looks like ass on a high-def TV. Rats.
There’s a new Neo Geo console coming out that features HDMI output. Neat stuff, but I won’t be buying one. I also found a boxed Sakura Taisen Dreamcast. I bought mine when I first lived in Japan, in December 2000, IIRC. Unfortunately, the plastic has yellowed and the pretty pink color has been ruined. Rats.
Oh yes, and when I was at the game center in the basement level, I got to play Cotton: Rock with You for the first time. You can play as Izuna, the unemployed ninja! I played those two games like crazy on the DS. Her shots are shuriken, and you can slash your sword for up-close damage and to swat enemy bullets away.
It was a quiet weekend at home, and on Sunday while I was following the events of yet another attempted presidential assassination by the “tolerant left,” I finally got around to resuming work on my old 1:100 Glaug kit I started working on last summer at the in-laws’ place while on vacation. I sort of lost track of this build for several months. I’m pretty good at starting new kits and losing track of them.
I’m inserting Wave’s ball joints to add better articulation for the shoulders and the hips. While this kit does have plastic-on-plastic swivel joints, Adding ball joints should improve mobility and allow the legs to be splayed for more natural poses. I’ve sanded down the dome-shaped protrusions and intend to replace them with Wave H-Eyes lenses. I’ve also taken a mold of the mono-eye. I plan to cut out that plastic, attach the mold, and backfill it from the inside with clear UV resin. I did this with the old Bandai/Imai Q-Rau kit.
I thought that I’d buy some more of these Wave ball joint sets, but when I looked online I saw that several of them are sold out! I can still get the BJ-05 set, and I ordered a couple from Yodobashi Camera. But I couldn’t find the BJ-04 and some other sets anywhere!
My Christmas Eve was spent hacking my Super Famicom Mini console. Unlike my Megadrive Mini, I didn’t really play my SFC Mini’s default game lineup because I found them a bit boring. Not only do I prefer Sonic over Mario, but there are no shmups for the SFC Mini!
Using a program called Haxchi, the process is similar to how I hacked my MD Mini. Load the program, then under Kernel choose install/repair. This will update the Linux kernel on the device. It’ll then tell you to switch the SFC Mini on, and while pressing the reset button, plug in the USB cable and wait for it to recognize the unit.
These mini consoles are essentially Linux boxes, right? So why the hell do I have to risk contracting digital monkey pox by having to swap my hard drive out for my Win10 hard drive? I’d think that it would be very easy for them to release versions of this software for Linux, but unfortunately I am stuck having to use Win10. Gay. I read that someone had gotten Hakchi to work via Wine on Arch and Manjaro, but I couldn’t get it to work with Mint. Oh well.
So here is how you add games. When you add a game, it defaults to box covers from North America/Europe, so I had to look up Japanese SFC box scans on Gamefaqs to keep things uniform. I mostly loaded the unit with Japanese SFC games rather than English SNES games, however there are some games I was surprised that there was no Japanese port, such as Sunset Riders. There was no Japanese ROM for this game, nor could I find any SFC box art for it.
After synchronizing the additions to the unit, it’s done! As you can see, I didn’t even come close to filling up the hard drive. I didn’t think to try adding any fan-translated games, since Project Lunar on my MD Mini didn’t manage to do this for me when I tried.
The Hakchi logo now appears when booting up.
So now the game menu has this folder icon. Selecting this brings up another layer of games, the ones which I added.
Here are more games I added! Sonic Wings, Darius Twin, Tetris Battle Gaiden, and Doremi Fantasy.
With one more layer, selecting this folder icon will bring up a third set of games. Or the icon to the right will bring me back one level.
And here is the third layer, with Sailor Moon, Macross, and Assault Suits Valken among many other games.
Kiki Kaikai (Pocky & Rocky) and Hyper Iria.
Final Fight 2 and Wild Guns.
SHMUPS! R-Type, III, Gradius III, and Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie. While the MD Mini came with some great shmups, the SFC Mini came with none. Well, now mine is now full of great shmups at last.
My friend Gary sent me this small, 3D-printed Minmay figure a few years ago. I’ve slowly worked on it since then. The UN Spacy logo is from a set of Macross decals I bought on eBay years back, some of which I’d used on my 1:100 Imai Armored Valk I finished earlier this year. The pattern on her dress is from leftover decals from a Haku Rinpha resin kit from Hasegawa Eggplane Girls series.
She is VERY small, so zooming in with my camera like this is exposing the flaws I cannot see with my naked eyes. Her eyes turned out better than I thought they would. The sides where her torso joins her waist does not fit together like I’d hoped it would, but it fits very well in the back.
As for the Buck Rogers Starfighter visible in these pictures, my friend Blake had sent me this. He asked if I wanted one and I asked if he could print one in roughly a 1:144 scale version to make it essentially like a Bandai Mecha Collection-sized kit. I scanned the decals from the Monogram kit and shrunk them down to size to fit this small kit.
I finished this iron beads project using Perler Nano and Hama Mini beads. I found the sprite on Pinterest, and I believe it probably comes from one of the Macross games on the NEC PC98 computer.
I took this old Imai/Bandai Macross Glaug kit to work on while staying at the in-laws’ place for a 4-day summer holiday weekend. I figured that I’d get familiar with these older kits before building the new Hasegawa ones. But, I am a bit surprised. There are no bottom parts for the feet of this old Glaug kit! I can’t believe they made the kit like this. Seems a bit half-assed. Now I feel compelled to cut some Tamiya Pla-Plate to make my own feet bottoms. I’m also going to modify this with proper clear lens pieces as well as ball joints where I can.
This old Imai Glaug kit is from the ’80s. Bandai bought the Macross molds from Imai long ago and re-issued them under their name. Not all of them though apparently, since Bandai never once repopped the Armored Valkyrie kit I completed this year, or the Zentraedi recon ship. They repop the Zentraedi battle pod and Destroid kits every once in a while, and this one I have was released for the 25th anniversary of Macross. I paid only 1,020 yen for it about 12 years ago.
