One thing of interest to mecha fans here: The classic TV show Voltron (the lion version), is now on YouTube. It's official too, not pirated.
http://www.youtube.com/show?p=ZGHTL85TNScFor those too young to remember it, it's basically an animated power rangers, except it doesn't suck. Also, combat in the separated mecha gets equal time with the combined super robot.
It was my favorite show as a child. (Unfortunately, once I figured out its timeslot, they switched to Vehicle Voltron, which has a completely different flavor.)
ObGearhead: (two, actually)
1. Re-watching, one thing I notice is that the pilots are often wracked with pain when their lion gets hit, even when nothing is happening in the cockpit. It's as if the pilot is exploding while the cockpit is fine....
This could be seen as just one step lamer than Star Trek's exploding control panels, but then again, Voltron is half magic. Perhaps there is some system that heals damage to the vehicle at the expense of the pilot. And perhaps such a thing could be a feature of an even-more-exotic-than-biotech mech in GH....
2. I remember way back, Joseph was working on an idea for a comic-book superheros game, NovaCity. It might be a cool idea to resurrect that idea building around a Sentai-ish team. You could carry over GearHead's split mecha-scale and human-scale architecture, but loosen the screws around mecha realism.
Instead of buying mecha, the game might come with a huge library of zoanoids, which the player gets to choose. Each would be tagged with suitable roles in the combined mecha. Voltron proves cats can do anything -- ferrets would be great arms/legs but crappy torsos....
