(Jan. 17, 2013 1:51 AM)Ultra Wrote: We had a magnet series remember? It was called the V series and it sucked in terms of parts. Also the gimmick was generally pretty terrible. Having a gimmick has never really gone well. The G series was based around a terrible gimmick that never worked and it was also terrible as a result.
The V series gave us: The Ten-Series Weight Disks, Neo SG's, Scissor Attacker, Panther Head, Volcano Change Base and Twin Horn. It's a pretty small series so that's not too bad, and I imagine a few of the other parts in it were probably pretty good at the time of their release (the MG Cores were the heaviest SGs, for example, and some of those I listed would have been much more important - Panther Head, without Eight Spiker/G Upper to compete with it and basically no viable Dual AR Hyper-Aggro setups would have been the best left spin attack AR, Volcano Change Base with no SG Metal Flat Base (Gaia Dragoon V Version) to compete with, the lack of the customize bases means SG Wing Base would've had slightly fewer struggles as a result of its middling LAD (though it would still struggle to find a niche it would've been much more usable).) And who knows, some of the bases may have worked better with the magnet-equipped arenas they were designed for (like Zero G beys are generally designed for swaying bowls). The F series isn't really significantly better if you count the 10-series WD's - really, it's just the V2 and S series that are significantly "better" than the others, the rest are all pretty samey.
The V2 series also had the magnet gimmick - and is the best series of the lot - every beyblade has a competitive part, and aside from Draciel V2, they all have at least one unarguably top-tier part that is original to them and basically none have two truly bad unique parts - at most it's one bad part and a 'meh' part (ariel 2's AR/SP, and I predict Orthrus will also fall into this category, the base looks like it'll be terrible and the AR looks like it could be decent with good recoil control parts). I really don't know what happened with draciel v2 though. I only realise now how out of place it is there, haha.
Struck me as a fun gimmick, honestly, I just never got the stadium/magnets to do it with - or any of the V/V2 blades, back when it was a thing. :c
As for the G series - it's not correct to say the engine gear gimmick never worked: Wolborg 4 used it quite well (though even that could've been done a lot better). Don't get me wrong, it was a pretty bad gimmick (though the sturdier base clip design was good) and they executed it horrendously poorly, but it did work just that once (law of averages or something haha).
However, the Swaying Gimmick of Zero G is one of the few competitively fair stadium gimmicks we've had and I hope takara continue to support it in some manner in future. It's really not very old yet so wanting a new gimmick already seems kinda... I don't know... Impatient?