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Be sure to send in your questions for the next thrilling update!

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(This is not an affiliate link.) I got mine in a store last week, and as I write this it's available for delivery and in-store shipping. But not pickup. Go figure. It's a really excellent color scheme, so if you missed the Walgreens Earthrise Bluestreak, or even if you got it, here ya go.

Hasbro has essentially stopped stickering exclusives as of 2018 - that's when Toys R Us went out of business and a lot of product had to find a home. Since then, many items have unique trade dress for each store - for example, "Gaming Greats" for 6-inch Star Wars figures at GameStop. Walmart's exclusive Transformers have largely been in white Netflix War for Cybertron packaging since the pandemic started, and now Target's exclusives have shifted from being in Earthrise packaging (sometimes with some unique graphic on the back) to this distinctive yellow packaging. Technically, Silverstreak is marked as a Legacy item - meaning we've now had at least three Legacy exclusives before most people found the main line toys anywhere. (For those keeping track: Black Zarak, Silverstreak, and Lifeline all have Legacy branding.)

A couple of notable packaging exceptions are T-Wrecks and Road Rage, the latter of which is on clearance for $16.09 and remains exclusively for Red Card holders. (Why they don't just sell it at full price to everybody, I don't know.)

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Improved! The Hasbro Transformers Buzzworthy Bumblebee Studio Series 86 Deluxe Kup Action Figure takes a recent release and adds some animation-specific details to make it look slightly closer to what you remember - complete with cracks. So read on, and come back tomorrow for more fun!

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It looks and sounds like something of that vintage, but you don't need me to tell you that there are better ways to play most of these games. It is, to say the least, interesting to check it out. Space Force is a nifty Asteroid clone, and it's the kind of thing that would likely be mind-blowing if you're old enough to remember an era where the idea of video games without using the family's one TV set would be a world-changing experience.

Super Cobra is a lot like Scramble. Turtles is an arcade game I never played but it's about finding and saving baby turtles. Defender is a low, low-res port of the Williams arcade classic which has probably been ported to most major game consoles, including the newer ones, thanks to old Midway or Williams collections of older games. You have a space ship and a radar, and you can go around trying to save people from being kidnapped by aliens.

The FPGA project also now supports Joust 2, but the core isn't complete yet so some features are presently missing. For example, most of the audio. Mystic Marathon is also supported, assuming you've heard of it, which you have not.

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The new stylized look is striking and details of the game itself... well, there are none. But maybe we'll see those later.

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It's pink! The Onell Design Glyos Rift Killer Hyper Mordireus looks different under unique lighting conditions. So read on, and come back tomorrow for more fun!

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New orders are welcome.

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Be sure to send in your questions for the next thrilling update!

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The figure will be a fine companion to the Glow Raider from March, but both seem to be saddled with pretty lackluster black paint operations. At least they glow. The 3 3/4-inch figures are Glyos compatible, and I'd recommend the painted ones to anyone who has a bunch of old Kenner Cantina aliens and the glow ones to glow junkies.

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The Amazon Terrorsaur sold out quickly, so getting one in toy colors may be more suited to your desires to not overpay for a new toy. I'm really fond of the green dots and purple helmet, so I may rebuy this one if I'm bored and/or miserable enough when it hits stores in the near future.

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Become a Patron!

If you've got a dollar a month to share, please Visit the Galactic Hunter Patreon and help cover our server costs. I'll still put in hours of work, writing, photography, and research - I just need some help making sure that the site costs me only time, and hopefully not money. Thanks for your support!

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Improved! The Hasbro Transformers Buzzworthy Bumblebee Studio Series 86 Deluxe Cliffjumper Action Figure gives you the 2020 figure, but in new cartoony colors - and I like it a lot. So read on, and come back tomorrow for more fun!

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If exclusive figures are being revealed, we don't know what they are yet. But I do know you can pre-order new guys at 1:00 PM Eastern today, at stores like advertiser/employer Entertainment Earth.

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The remaining Kmarts are still in New Jersey, Long Island, and Florida.

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He was also co-host of one of my favorite podcasts, Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast. That link goes to the most recent new episode, which features Karina Longworth of the exhaustively researched "You Must Remember This" Podcast, which you also really should listen to when you have some time.

Gilbert Gottfried and Frank Santopadre interviewed hundreds of people, most of which are currently behind a paywall. John Astin is currently available - I listened to that one in JFK Airport on the way back from Toy Fair in New York a few years ago - but they've also interviewed numerous songwriters, comedians, movie stars, book authors, and Adam West. If you have the inclination to check it out, it's a fantastic show, especially the annual Mario Cantone Christmas episodes.

On the show he frequently went on about his favorite monster movies, and the magazines and monster stuff he had as a kid. You got to hear insights on an incredibly long career form his early days doing stand-up in New York City to tales of his legendary Hollywood Squares "You Fool" appearance. He also interviewed Bob Saget and Norm Macdonald, both of whom passed earlier this year, plus the legendary Bob Einstein a few years ago. I was eating lunch in a chain chicken restaurant the day that came out and I don't think I ever laughed so hard, by myself, in a corner, holding a chicken leg. Even the episodes with old showbiz guys are amazingly fascinating, so in addition to saying I've been a lifelong fan and am fortunate to have been able to see him perform live a few years ago, he and Mr. Santopadre also heaped on hundreds of hours of amazing showbiz interviews - some of which are undoubtedly true - which gave a platform to tons of voices from our pop culture past who may have otherwise been forgotten. He re-introduced us to Drew Friedman! And Kliph Nesteroff! He had Richard Kind on a bunch too. Mr. Gottfried will be missed, but if you never got to hear his interview podcast, now's the time to hear why a lot of comedy fans are heartbroken today.

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New orders are welcome.

It's available now! The Jada Toys Universal Monsters Entertainment Earth Exclusive Creature from the Black Lagoon Action Figure is a lot of fun to fuss with, as he has great articulation and a decent smattering of accessories. And glows green. And is currently here sitting on my Starscream throne. So read on, and come back tomorrow for more fun!

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Be sure to send in your questions for the next thrilling update!

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The ROM is €10, the boxed game is €45. That's $48.55 in American currency. Curiously, $49.99 was what a lot of Sega Genesis games cost back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and adjusted for inflation $50 in 1991 is roughly $105.54 today.

I played through the two-stage demo, and it's pretty good. There are flying shooter segments that control like Section Z (one button shoots forward, the other backward.) There bulk of the action involves a lot of running and jumping like Mega Man or Trophy, with a few upgrades like a three-way spread shot blast and a powered-up skull blast weapon. You can also earn a gravity-flip which you've seen in Strider and a lot of other games. In terms of mechanics, graphics, sound, and control, it's pretty amazing stuff.

The story is ridiculous and feels very much like what you would've seen in the era of you let kids write it, with plenty of cursing, blood, death, and some art that looks like it was scrawled in the margins of your math notebook and other art that looks like it was made by professionals with decades in the business. Gameplay is tight but not particularly varied, especially with seeking and spread blasts, but it's fun and a lot more interesting than a lot of original 16-bit Sega titles. You really ought to snag that demo, you'll probably dig what they're doing too.

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If you've got a dollar a month to share, please Visit the Galactic Hunter Patreon and help cover our server costs. I'll still put in hours of work, writing, photography, and research - I just need some help making sure that the site costs me only time, and hopefully not money. Thanks for your support!

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Not ideal! The Hasbro Hasbro Transformers Generations War for Cybertron Golden Disk Collection Chapter 2 Autobot Jackpot with Sights Figure Set is an update of a recent Jazz, with a head that was poorly manufactured and doesn't quite fit together. This isn't a hyperbolic collector opinion - the pieces don't quite fit together, and to date all units of this toy were made like this. At least Sights is OK. So read on, and come back tomorrow for more fun!

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12 figures are shown with accessories, including what may well be the biggest sword I've ever seen for this line.

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New orders are welcome.

It's blue! The Hasbro Transformers Studio Series Decepticon Sweep looks a lot like Scourge, but with different fists and slightly bluer colors. It's a very good mold and should be one you pick up at least once. So read on, and come back tomorrow for more fun!

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The Q&A has a lot of reader questions that will no doubt interest long-time fans of the band, so be sure to check it out. There are mentions of some unheard vault recordings... sadly with no definitive date of release after almost fifty years.

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No word on the Sega Genesis version, but hey, this ain't bad. The original NES cartridge typically goes for $80-$120 these days, and adjusted for inflation this game would probably have been about $59.99 in 1993 - or $120 in 2022 dollars. (Or $10 in 1997 clearance bins, had they overproduced it, which they didn't. That honor would be held for Kirby's Adventure and StarTropics 1 and 2.)

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Pricing is around $40 for PC/PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Xbox Series X/S/Steam/Epic standard editions, with Switch as "coming soon." A deluxe version is also available with some added animations and features. If you aren't already satisfied with the existing collections and ports, or Sonic Jam, or whatever is on your emulators, MiSTeR, Sega Genesis Mini, Raspberry Pi, and so forth, things like a new mirror mode may be of considerable interest to you.

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If you look at June 2023 there's already Indiana Jones, a Pixar movie, Transformers, The Flash, and others - Spider-Verse 2 is big enough that it could warrant in big schedule shifts which in turn could move a lot of toy launches around.

Given Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is set for June 9, I would expect Hasbro and friends to move that one up (or back) to not get trampled by the box office gold spun only by multiple spiders in a single film.

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New orders are welcome.

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Be sure to send in your questions for the next thrilling update!

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With only 40 games (plus whatever hacks, homebrew, and other demos you have) there's not a whole heck of a lot to the 32X add-on, which you may recall was a $160 unit that plugged in to your Sega Genesis about 28 years ago. And was blown out at Toys R Us for $19.97 because nobody really wanted to play Cosmic Carnage. This core is particularly interesting because there aren't really any good ways to play 32X games on hi-def TVs other than upscalers - there's a whole set of cartwheels you can do using the Mega Sg, a real 32X, the DAC, and an upscaler, but why? So you might enjoy this, so you can try out Kolibiri or Knuckles Chaotix if you haven't already given them a spin on an emulator or on real hardware at your weird friend's house.

A Saturn core is also in development, and has been for quite some time, but there has been no word of a release date for it as of yet. While there's been chatter for Nintendo DS and Nintendo 64 cores, not a heck of a lot seems to be going on there to make those look likely to happen in the near term.

--AP

Become a Patron!

If you've got a dollar a month to share, please Visit the Galactic Hunter Patreon and help cover our server costs. I'll still put in hours of work, writing, photography, and research - I just need some help making sure that the site costs me only time, and hopefully not money. Thanks for your support!

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Improved! The Playmobil Special Plus Special Operations Agent Figure gives you the 2020 figure, but in new cartoony colors - and I like it a lot. So read on, and come back tomorrow for more fun!

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Other movies currently set for December 2022 are Pinocchio and a Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody, but given all the movie switcheroos going on that could change. But probably not. Because Avatar 2 or COVID will keep people from going to other movies. Shazam! Fury of the Gods is also set for December 16... but let's be honest, people, if Avatar 2 doesn't move, the DC movie will.

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Lots of old retail landmarks are going away - that's the lesson I impart to you children of tomorrow - as your favorite place to see a movie and get a hot pretzel becomes family homes with parks and parking garages.

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"The prospective new owners would keep the two brands separate while cutting Kohl's costs by $1 billion, The Post reported, citing a "well-placed" but unnamed source. "

That seems like a lot of money for a store chain to buy for another store chain, especially when I would have assumed Kohl's would be in the better financial position. JC Penney has about 669 US locations, while Kohl's is at about 1,162.

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Last week's release of the core had high-pitched, overly fast audio samples that rendered a lot of voices and sound effects, and I believe this is a technical term, "goofily." Everything in Star Wars Arcade sounded pretty good so far today, but there are some other glitches that'll no doubt be fixed soon. It's still pretty amazing given that this is - I believe - the only way to get FPGA-based 32X output without using a series of DACs and upscalers.

If that weren't enough, a core for Turkey Shoot, a Williams game I've never heard of, has been added. But maybe you have!

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I got to see them at a State Fair roughly 20 years ago, and I can say they put on an excellent live show. Stay for the encore if you want to hear their early stuff.

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New orders are welcome.

It's available now, but good luck finding some! The Hasbro Transformers Studio Series Gnaw is a troop-builder that's hard to find in quantities greater than two. It's neat though, so get one if you see one. So read on, and come back tomorrow for more fun!

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New orders are welcome.

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New orders are welcome, and figures are expected around September.