It's a good player -- the interface is surprisingly easy to use and the music is great-sounding (throw away the earbuds that come with the player). Battery life is not as long as I had expected (something closer to 10 hours), but it is probably because all my mp3's are at least 192k encoded for high quality. Sure, it's not as sexy as the iPod, but it sure is a heck of a lot more cost-effective.
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It's now June, nearly 7 months since my initial purchase of this item. It has served me well with continued quality and reliability, and I love the way I can carry my entire CD+ collection easily and at all times. My uses of it are rather pedestrian -- it mostly sits in one spot as I listen to it while on-call -- but I have yet to have a major issue with it. Looking back at all the negative reviews that have cropped up in the interim, I keep waiting with trepidation for something to go wrong, but so far, so good. My only complaint is that with 60GB of memory, my CD-purchases have gone through the roof!

Initially, I was really disappointed. I had never played any of the N64 games before, so I wasn't used to the controls. The TIE fighters blended in with the background too often. The radar was confusing. The missions were too hard -- TIEs would relentlessly pound me from behind, my tow cable would always snap while trying to down AT-ATs, I wouldn't understand the objectives of a mission sometimes.

But I kept at it, and an hour or so later realized that this is the best Star Wars game ever made, and that this is probably the closest we'll get to flying in Luke and Wedge's cockpit for a long, long time. The visuals, of course, are spot on, and look like they were ripped straight out of the three movies. Movie fans are rewarded with cut scenes and dialogue that directly, eerily mirror the action of the movies, except that _you're_ the hero, and _you're_ the one to blame if the mission fails. The music is all very good, a blend of classic Star Wars and original Williamsesque tunes that work very well for the missions, adding further to the feeling of immersion within the Star Wars universe.

The control -- it took me a while to get used to but now I can down TIEs with the greatest of ease. You learn to use your accelerator and decelerator to max effect. You learn to use the targeting computer to quickly highlight hard-to-see TIEs. And you learn the hard way which approaches work best on which types of enemies (hint: try to approach Star Destroyers from the side or the back rather than head-on). Yes, the missions are hard, and it can be frustrating. But the inescapable realization that you are _in_ the Star Wars universe, and the incredible fun will keep you pushing that "Replay Mission" button over and over again. And secrets: there are tons of secrets to reward the persistent gamer, including a rare opportunity to play a bit of the trilogy from the "other" perspective.

Just a quick story to end: I was playing the Battle of Endor level, and the Rebel fleet was quickly doing a U-turn from the Death Star, Admiral Ackbar realizing too late that this was a trap. Suddenly, what appeared to be 200+ TIEs came screaming at me from the rear, lasers blazing and swarming around the surprised fleet. I was literally overwhelmed with targets, all trying to independently evade and fire with nary a slowdown. As in RotJ, one of the pilots shouted, "There's too many of them!"

Star Wars gaming just doesn't get any better than that.

A few caveats of Origami Step-By-Step: 1) the overutilization of foil-backed paper. The intro states that the tensile strength of foil is actually a necessity for many of the models. I have not tried folding all of these models yet, but I suspect you may be able to get similar results using wet-folding techniques. Still, I would have liked to have seen less models that depended on the malleability of the paper for its effects. Also 2) the instructions are anything but "step-by-step." In most of these models, many steps are combined into single steps, making a first-time fold very difficult if you don't already understand the mechanics of the folding. These models rely heavily on pre-creasing, and you can expect to see the first step of a given model to be a square with numerous dotted lines criss-crossing everywhere indicating the creases, but not the folds that lead to said creases. Needless to say, this book is not one for beginners, and even intermediate to advanced folders may be stymied by the lack of instruction.

Still, this book has some models you won't find anywhere else, so it's definitely worth a look. Just don't expect to go through it in a day.

Now that I've got that out of the way, let me talk about the DVD. The video transfer is only adequate in this film -- I still see some grain and the colors seem a bit washed out all throughout, especially in the outdoor scenes. The audio is mediocre as well, with little punch and a general sense of muting all through the film. And as far as extras go, the "featurette" included is a joke -- merely a glorified commercial telling you how great this movie is.

Yeah, go ahead and get it if you're a Star Trek collector, but I'd caution against it, at least not without a rental first.

Manga has done such an amazing restoration job to this film. It looks like it was made 2 years ago instead of the twenty years it has been since its theatrical release. The colors are vibrant, the lines sharp, and the sound clear as crystal. The new dub job is quite good, and much more accurate to the original dialogue than Streamline's original VHS release. My only complaint is the lack of an anamorphic transfer, but I have very little else to complain, aside from the complete lack of extras.

And of course, the film itself is top-notch. Still one of my top five favorite animated movies _ever_, Hayao Miyazaki takes the character of Lupin III and elevates him to an all new level of pathos and sympathy -- all while keeping the action non-stop and absolutely hilarious. This is one of the few pure adventure movies the whole family can enjoy together, and perfect proof that Japanese animation is not just for college kids with a lust for gore and sex.

I do want to address the quality of the DVD, however. While the DVD does offer both standard and widescreen mode (anamorphic, no less), it decidedly comes across as a sub-par job. The transfer is terrible, dark and grainy in places and completely washed-out in others (the dancing scene made me wonder if something was wrong with my player). The sound is in Dolby stereo rather than the 5.1 channel surround just about everything post-1990 is available in. Not to mention the complete lack of extras: no actor bios, commentary (which I would have really liked to have seen) -- not even a theatrical trailer. For a movie of this quality, I would have expected a lot more.

I love this movie, so I got it anyway and am happy with it (after all, it won't deteriorate like VHS). But don't expect a Matrix quality disk or anything.