Jolly Roger

Jolly Roger, like any cool NEXT (or "big friggin' robot" for those not familiar) is a creative combination of mechanical design and artistic design.  When building a NEXT it is not all about the paint job and looks, there is also a significant amount of attention to weight balancing, energy output, ammo, and stabilizing.   Basically Jolly Roger is not just another pretty face.

This is by far my most powerful NEXT.  It was able to meet all comers and carried me through many a story mode mission as well as Merc mission.  With the super Big Sioux missile, a slew of wrist and shoulder missiles, the shoulder mounted Gatling gun, as well as the shotgun side plates - this was a force to be reckoned with on the field of battle.  The surprising thing is that even with all of this weaponry added on - Jolly Roger was fast and could stay airborne for quite a while.  The large power core, and massive back engine helped with that.  Also since the major weapon type is ballistics there is not much of an energy drain when firing.

Of course the name for the NEXT comes from the paint job, done through the AC4A sticker system.  The perfect part of this is the skull in the back that is stretched over the main power thruster.  Because of the round design of the thruster it fits quite well and is really cool to see the skull roll back (or look up) to expose the main jet underneath.  The head of the NEXT in it's basic design is what gave me the idea to make this a pirate theme - the "hat" seemed very Capt. Hook-ish to me.  There are only 3 NEXTs I really really liked using and Jolly Roger is number one!