Here Are People Who Are Reviewing Things.

-- Josh @ CollectionDX.com finds CM's Legioss & Tread good separately, bad combined, and not worth $300.

-- Atom @ CollectionDX.com finds the 2002 Toynami VF-1A Morpher not worth $2. For what it's worth, those were kind of crap, but I liked the Alphas a lot ...

-- People are still seeing The Shadow Chronicles for the first time. This guy seems to have liked it.

-- From the April 11 Palladium Books press release:

We hope to see new Robotech® sourcebooks released as soon as this Summer. We’d love to have the Macross Saga and Robotech Masters sourcebooks out by July, and the Deluxe, 8½ x 11 (hardcover?) Edition of the Robotech® Shadow Chronicles® RPG making its debut at Gen Con this August.

Southern Cross fans will be happy to know we plan to give the Robotech Masters sourcebook the royal treatment: in-depth coverage, new and updated information, and all new artwork. Writer, Jason Marker, is already doing research for this sourcebook.

We are thrilled to be working on Robotech® again, and are having a blast making it even better the second time around.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you need to run out to your local game store and take a look at a copy for yourself – assuming they can keep it in stock.

I'll be offering my thoughts on the book by the end of the month. Maybe by the end of the weekend. Though really, I shouldn't make any promises at this point ...

Also: Royal ... treatment ... for Masters ... sourcebook ... O_O

Can we say "YAY"?

-- Here's a review of The Art of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles at Akibanana.com. WARNING: This person misspells my name in their review. >:(

Read About Reading Material.

Image of Silverback variable jeep featured in the new Shadow Chronicles Role Playing Game book.

-- MedMapGuy finally got his hands on The Art of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles and felt the need to blog about it. Honestly, I would agree with most of his criticisms, especially about the overuse of the ROBOTECH font and the choices made regarding which pictures are big (screencaps) and which aren't (production art). Hell, I probably made most of those very same criticisms either here on the blog or on one of my YouTube videos when I went through the book six to eight months ago ... but to be honest, I don't remember anymore.

-- The Shadow Chronicles Role Playing Game is out! John @ Roleplay Life reviews it here, and Taalismn reviews it at the Forums of the Megaverse here. Also at the Forums of the Megaverse, an errata/nitpick thread filling up with things they should probably fix in the second priting. Also, here's some impressions of the book at RPGNet. Meadows will be talking about it on Liberty on Friday.

If anyone sees any other thoughts on the new book, or has their own thoughts to share, let me know.

(And yes, in the interest of full disclosure, as has been pointed out, my name's in the book, though I didn't have time to do much for it, just proofread the character bios and the big long article about the Invid and offer my observations and two cents and point out an odd omission here and there. What's really irksome is that I just know I'm going to be reading the finished product and go, "Aww, hell, if I'd had more time to read over this, this would've been fixed, and THAT would've been fixed ..." and so on and so forth.)

-- In totally unrelated news, Jeremy @ Destroy All Podcasts loves Macross 7 and isn't afraid to let everyone know it. At least, that was the impression I got from the now-vanished comments thread that was attached to that episode of the show; haven't had time to give the show a listen yet.

The Roboblog Chronicles: Episode 11.5

Offered without comment ... I read and respond to episode 11's comments thread while very, very tired.

The Roboblog Chronicles: Episode 11

Sorry I'm so late with this. I'm going through another period of feeling horribly drained right now, so every time I sat down to shoot this for the past few days, I just wanted to throw the book down and go to bed. But after two Mountain Dews and a cup of strong coffee, I got it done for YOU, the Roboblog reader/viewer.

Anonymous Art of Shadow Chronicles book review

A fellow fan who asked not to be named got to thumb through The Art of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles and e-mailed me with the following:

I spent a few minutes flipping through the book and it's very nice. Most, if not all of the pages are glossy full color. It starts with off a few pages covering the original Robotech TV series and Sentinels, and a little surprise in the form of a two-page Robotech 3000 recap, complete with group shots of the characters and a couple of mecha and ship designs. The rest of the book is devoted to Shadow Chronicles. Along with the finalized artwork for the mecha designs (some of which are hand-drawn, and others which are CGI models), there are also sidebars that cover some of the related video game and comic book designs like the Invid Overlord and the Breetai's Bioroid (I forget the exact name of this design). Overall, the layout is excellent, a huge contrast to the sparse style of Robotech Art 1-3, and I think fans are going to spend a lot of time digesting the content.

Two pages on Robotech 3000? Huh. Wasn't expecting that.

Like the rest of you, I can't wait to see this with my own eyes. Maybe not in an "impatiently glaring at the calendar and cursing certain people's names because Amazon hasn't received their shipments and still thinks its coming out in August" kind of way, like some of you ... but I'd really, really like to have that book on my ROBOTECH reference shelf sooner rather than later.

Oh, and did you notice that Robotech.com has changed the release date on their main page from "June 15" to "any day now"?

Hrmm ... yeah.

*sigh*

Don't Worry, Be Happy.

I don't think I'm the only person who noticed the above at Amazon.com -- for instance, Rosic mentioned it on the comments thread on the previous post. Clearly it appears that a variety of on-line retailers have become convinced that Stonebridge Press's The Art of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles has been delayed until the end of August. Yikes!

However, at the official thread on the Robotech.com forums, Kevin McKeever insists everything is on track for the advertised release date of ... oh, look, tomorrow! His last post on the topic reads:

Today I talked with Peter Goodman, the CEO of Stonebridge Press, about these notice of delays you are recieiving from certian retailers. He has informed me that everything is on schedule, the books are leaving the printer and the retailers should start receiving them any day now.

As with so many things, we'll see for sure what's up when the book is actually in peoples' hands ... but clearly as far as Banky McKevinpants knows, the book is en route to the shops and the on-line retailers are clearly confused. Maybe they just got the tentative release date for the RPG book from Palladium and all assumed they were the same book? Who knows ...