Zoid

They came in small cardboard boxes with funny writing on the sides. You opened up the box and there was something akin to an airfix kit on the inside, but it needed no glue. Held together by pins and small rubber squeezy bolts, slowly the Zoid took form in your hands. The wind-up motor at it's heart, the armour plating, fiendish weaponry and of course, the cockpit.

When ready you slipped the little golden (later silver) man into the cockpit (he looked like a miniscule version of Twiggy from Buck Rodgers) and your Zoid was ready to roll.

made by TOMY in 1983 the beasts resembled dinosaus, insects, mammals. Defently a cool toy.

David "Zoid" Kirsch, id software programmer, originally hired because he was the original author of the widely-popular CTF Quake mod. He is also the original porter of Quake 2 to Linux and was id's all-around UNIXy guy for a while. Apparently he likes fried chicken.

Last I was aware, he's openly gay (though not blatant about it), quite brave of him considering the rather homophobic (as a whole) Quake community.

Quoting the opening caption from Zoids Chaotic Century exactly:
"In the far reaches of the Milky Way, on the Planet Zi, there exist metallic life forms that posses superior fighting skills. These are the Zoids. Warriors by nature, Zoids have been used as the ultimate weapons in an ongoing war between the Imperial forces, and the Republicans of Planet Zi."

Essentially a Zoid is a large, sentient, mechanized being that is extremely loyal to its pilot.

---

For the full text of all Zoids prologues, see:
http://www.zoidsunofficial.coolfreepages.com/Prolog.htm

---

This writeup is under the GNU Free Documentation License