Beyond The Launchpad

With little over two months until the much trumpeted return of the Metal Gear Franchise in the form of a prologue game to Metal Gear Solid Five (“The Phantom Pain”) GroundZeroes is awaited with baited breath.   I for one am looking forward to purchase, hopefully on a new PS4.   Yet, the more I look at this, the more perplexed I become. It feels like the Tanker Chapter from MGS2.   An incomplete story, which will leave MGS fans waiting (for another year?) for the concluding part.   It won’t be a full packaged game – I surmise this for several reasons. Firstly, I’ve noticed some retailers placing the game at a pre-order price of around £25 for the PS4.   £25?   Most eagle-eyed people know PS4 games never come in as cheap as that.   Seems like there won’t be a lot of content to this, so in fairness, perhaps the price is right.   Initially the game was going to be sold as DLC on the PS4 – but this has changed (so no meltdown on the PSN site on March 20 th – good move!) due to de

Time to start posting again - but unsure as to what, given that most of my time seems to be caught up in the Twitterverse or scrabbling about at home. Was thinking of using this as a reviews thing but then all the venom that that would no doubt create would cause me issues. Then I thought, what about your building projects, what about that? Of course that is an idea but it's not exactly what Beyond the Launchpad was set up to be. I'm giving myself a window until the new year to start thinking what next.  Any ideas - well, you know where to comment...

Sometimes, when I'm not building Gundam, I set about modifying 'toys' and such to make them look cooler. This weekend I have progressed with several projects, some nearer completion than others, but I thought I'd give you a peek at something more or less complete - a 1/6 scale Jawa I purchased last weekend at the Maidstone Vintage Toy Fair. When purchased I thought I'd just got a lump of plastic to display only.  Wrong.  It seemed it was one of the 1997 Special Edition releases, which did have a neat little gimmick of light up eyes, however, the contacts on the on/off button were not in a great shape and worse still the button was a contact switch - so the light came on only when the switch was pressed... Time for some Martin magic. (turn me on!)   Hidden in the back of the Jawa, an on/off switch (the silver thing in the illustration above) which, following some slight modification of the switch opening at the back of the Jawa and a now hollow chest area,

It's May.  Japan seems so far away, in time, space and distance now.  The nights are lighter. I've been building.  But I still haven't built perfect.  I'm not sure I can but I keep trying.  That's the point. No picture for this post.  Figured I should though - it's been a while.

A picture that says so much and so little.  Boy that Cat had some real moves!

Lurking in the Imperial Palace Compound on the Emperor's Birthday (23rd December) this fella, who dared to go Beyond the Launchpad - the legendary Upchuck - surveys the scene as hundreds, perhaps thousands of people stream by.  Some laughed along with the photographer at this thing, this piece of plastic, dared the elements to protect the Emperor from harm. A true Retainer, Upchuck is ready to defend!