SFXB Forum

I'd be interested to know what this magazine has in it about X-Bomber. It does feature it on the cover along with this Giant Robo thing, which looks like a crossover of San Ku Kai and X-Bomber.
https://www.rinkya.com/en/auction-u78396881?dollar=part

I've seen these lots before but this one looks awesome; MIB with all missiles:
https://www.rinkya.com/en/auction-w1224 ... ollar=part
Current bid: only $1,000. If you had the money to blow, it'd still be worth it to the right person.

I wouldn't mind a couple of these to do a few notes on my game when I have time to get back to it.
https://www.rinkya.com/en/auction-f1456 ... ollar=part

This little Battlecruiser model looks half-way accurate. I might be able to base my game's level 15 battlecruiser on this if I built one up.
Looks to me like the front fins are too small and the rear wings shouldn't be level though.
https://www.rinkya.com/en/auction-r1258 ... ollar=part

What do these little things have to do with X-Bomber? They have the Japanese logo on the packaging and they make the random little things in blue and white versions as well.
https://www.rinkya.com/en/auction-176462646?dollar=part
It could be the basis for the design of a EDF grunt mecha...

The first link to the magazine which features X-Bomber is a real behind the scenes goldmine. Gareth, an old member of the forum bought the magazine back in the day and scanned it for my site; basically all the black and white shots of the crew manipulating the puppets and model ships etc.

Thanks for that Shane,
Should be ours before long and then we'll have some higher-res and full page scans.

All the behind the scenes photos are still viewable by the way:
http://xbomber.co.uk/?dir=Star%20Fleet/ ... e%20Scenes
There are a couple of other bits I shoved in as well.

When the bigdaix domain phased out, I figured I would merge everything from it into my site.
The only other way woulda been to register the domain myself to keep the content available.

The only problem there is that you have a site with two aims; distribute the game and try and provide a resource about Star Fleet.
That's not bad but it means that everything has to be really-well designed and easy to navigate.
At the moment, no-one seems to know where anything is on my site.

I figure I could use some help with it.

It didn't take much imagination to turn that weird robot into a concept for a bad guy.
It was too ugly for it not to be an Alliance machine.



It strikes me like an antique forerunner of the Deathball. If you put half-a-dozen of them together, you'd probably get the same amount of effectiveness.

It would make a good tank-killer. It can use the saw/wheel on the front to attack armour or installations and the four eyes on its chest look like firing points for other weapons.
Alternatively, it can roll onto its front and use the main wheel as a faster means of propulsion and defend itself with the rocket launchers on its back.

It might be quite a good space enemy too. It can hang back and fire at you or it charge and grab a hold of you and carve you up.

I really wasn't sure that this was gonna work out but I have an okay feeling about it:



This is not the finished sprite but we're getting close to it.

The yellow colour makes me think the Alliance coulda used it as a construction vehicle when it wasn't needed in combat.

Well, I sat down at my own computer rather than my work computer for a change this morning.
After playing some music, watching Thunderbirds are Go ep.16 and messing on with the site a bit, I started getting this robot working in the game.

I think it would be best to put it in levels 6 and 7 since those are a little lacking in variety and wow-factor in my view.
The idea there is that it can float in space and fire guns/missiles at you. It can also grab a hold of you and use its flywheel to cut you up, which is something it couldn't do if it were on the ground. I do plan on putting it into a couple of planetary levels as well though.

It should be fairly easy to avoid and defeat.
It can only move at speed 25 (player can move at 50+) and has 500 of health (a lot less than a Death Ball).

On the ground, it should either be able to walk about and fire at you or it can roll onto its front and use the flywheel as a faster means of propulsion. That way, it can only fire missiles.

From what I gather, the original little robots were made in 4 colours; (blue on white/yellow and white/yellow on blue).
I'll see if I can put all four colours in the game but they'll be darkened lots and I'm going to put that 'veiny camouflage' pattern that the alliance ships have all over it to make it look more theirs.

I'd also like to sprite this thing for the planet levels:

Crash wrote:The yellow colour makes me think the Alliance coulda used it as a construction vehicle when it wasn't needed in combat.

My first thought was that it looked like a Star Fleet robot, a bigger version of PPA. But it certainly works as a proto-Deathball too

That hadn't occurred to me. Some of them have stickers on their heads with really evil eyes/faces though. That's what steered me.

About this magazine that Shane described, I had it in storage with Rinkya for over a month. I figured, if I saw something else on there that I wanted, I could combine shipping but my 60 days of storage was coming to an end and I hadn't seen anything else I wanted.
So it's with FedEx and is already in the UK, according to the tracking.

I'll scan the relevant pages when I get my hands on it.

Pages 1-8 of this Uchusen magazine scanned. There are 2 further pages that seem to be an interview with Go Nagai but aren't very image-heavy.

Here's the initial batch:
http://www.xbomber.co.uk/?dir=Star%20Fl ... X/Articles

When I uploaded them, I noticed that there were already some scans from this article on this same page. I'm not sure where I found them but they were very small and not very good quality so I deleted them.

I also managed to eradicate the Behind the Scenes gallery because, as Shane said, all the images from it were from this article and these new scans are much better anyway.