Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. I am a werehamster, fear my wrath! Don't say we didn't warn you.

The N64 is our topic of discussion for today, boys and girls. We have a good matchup between the "N64 is dead" and the "N64 lives!" factions, so I'm going to move right on to the inevitable beheadings and disemboweling such a conflict will bring. Enjoy the carnage, and let's get this show on the road.

Shodan sucks, I kicked its silicon ass from here to Tuesday. That said, I agree with a lot of what you say. My own N64 is sitting less than a foot away from me, inside a desk drawer where I stuck it last year after the office's last Mario Kart competition. Haven't touched it since, and I haven't regretted the fact. I still play my SNES far more than my N64. Depending on how well the upcoming N64 titles are rated, I may or may not dust it off and hook it up, but there's nothing I'm looking forward to on the system as much as Chrono Cross or even Lunar 2.

On a side note, I'm somewhat relieved they didn't give us a Metroid 64. Don't get me wrong, I love Metroid, but I can't see them making the game anything other than 3D to keep up with the times, and I can easily forego a foggy Turok-style Metroid FPS, or a blurry Tomb Raider-style third person cave romp. Samus could look incredibly slick on the Dolphin, and hopefully Nintendo will be over its Pokemon addiction by then, so I think our chances for Metroid 4 might be looking up in the future.

While it's true that only 1 out of 4 Pokemon players has an N64, I don't think that's going to translate into increased sales of the N64. Pokemon on Game Boy is an entirely different play experience than any console Pokemon game - the RPG part of it is addictive, the character designs are cute and charming (for some values of cute and charming, at least), but the real edge Pokemon GB has is the social aspect. Being able to fight and trade other Pokemon with damn near every other kid in America has to be a huge selling point for the game, and it's not something you can ever do on an N64.

But I will grant you that some of the games coming out look very, very good. I tend to doubt that anybody can do a really good port of an RTS to a console system (not enough buttons, no mouse, at least for the N64) but if they can make StarCraft work, I'll buy it. The AI in Perfect Dark's supposed to be really great for a console FPS, and Zelda... well, it's Zelda, enough said. The basic elements needed for the N64 to make a decent last stand seem to be in place, now it's up to Nintendo not to blow it. We shall see.

Chrono Trigger doesn't impress me all that much, graphically, and I remember Mario being interesting precisely because of its pseudo-3D look. But I still think Super Metroid looks great, so I'll let it go.

I really don't want to resurrect the "games aren't art" debate, but Picasso was making a conscious decision to paint the way he did, as you mention in your letter. There may be a few exceptions, but I think by and large games are designed to show off the latest and the greatest. Trust me, if the developers are anything like the rest of the coders I know, they have a sick, twisted obsession for the newest, coolest, shiniest stuff out there. Thus technology is moved forward, thus 3D arises from the 2D world.

And I get the impression that you might, just might, be trying to make a subtly ironic comment on the 500 word cap. (I really, really hope you didn't type all that in by hand.) I'm prepared to be a tad flexible, there's a letter further down that's a couple dozen words over. But by and large, I want to get away from gigantic rants. People read this column for fun, as much as anything, and a steady diet of editorials is gonna go stale real quick. Plus, I think people write better when they stick to one or two topics at most, and most really long letters tend to touch on 5 or 6. That's all for now.

No, I'm the Jet Li Super Agent that's gonna be in the sequels. Reeves will be my punching bag, and I will look so damn cool you'll wonder why you ever wanted the rebels to win in the first place.

Any reason for this? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Ah, screw it, I'm gonna go start my own game show.

I, on the other hand, do not regret buying my N64. Zelda was great, and one particularly dull summer when I was taking about half the college course load I could have, I played a frighteningly huge amount of Mario Kart 64. I've enjoyed the odd game of Super Smash Bros., although I prefer Soul Calibur these days. Shadows of the Empire and Mario 64 were both very impressive at the time. I'd never try to argue that it's half the investment that my PlayStation is, but it was a reasonably diverting system, for a time.

Besides, as you point out, there were far worse systems to buy. The Saturn, 32X, and CDi all come to mind. And then there's the 3DO... *snicker*... *cackle*... *guffaw!* Speaking of which, I'd like to make a challenge to you readers. Near as I can tell there was a grand total of one (1) game released for the 3DO that qualified as a console RPG. For 1000 points, what was the name of that RPG? For an additional 2000 points, who developed it, and what else has that group done? And for a whopping 10000 bonus points, have you played it, and if so, what were your impressions? Yes, this is your chance to show what an utterly obsessed nerd you are to a bunch of other utterly obsessed nerds! Go to it!

I kinda like the Syphon Filter commercial, as it's much better than 90% of the rest of TV. Although I'd gladly sign an agreement to buy 10 cases of Coca Cola every time I see the FF9 commercial broadcast on American television. Hello! Coke executives? Are you listening?

I've heard of about one in four of the games mentioned above, so I can't comment all that much. I just thought it was interesting to include this to show that, just like the Playstation, NES and SNES, there seem to be a good number of obscure Japanese titles we've never seen on the N64. For the psychotic Japan-obsessed otaku among you, maybe some of these are worth checking out. (For the record, I know the Atelier series is on the Playstation, not the N64, but that's about the limit of my knowledge.)

Hard as it is to believe, the release of a grand total of 4 Square games in Europe is good news, considering a lot of Square titles haven't made it over in the past, including FFT if memory serves. And some would argue that Europe seeing Vib Ribbon is enough to tilt the scales even, but I'm not one of them. Fight on, my European brethren! Someday you, too, may see the full cornucopia of Japanese releases!

Closing Comments:

Just as an update, Front Mission 3 has been picking up lately, but I haven't been playing it as much. You see, I've gone and done something rather insane: I'm reading a book. (Yeah, I know, where do they get these bizarre letters columnists?) Specifically, S.M. Stirling's On the Oceans of Eternity, which, despite the lame title, is actually pretty good. It's not absolute top shelf science fiction (that's more guys like Bruce Sterling, Greg Egan, Neal Stephenson, and Vernor Vinge) but OtOoE is about as good a book as you're gonna get about 20th century Nantuketers settling in on a 1250 B.C. Earth. I like it, and that's the important part.

No specific topic for tomorrow, I want to see if the 2D and Nintendo debates have anything else interesting to say. Later.

-Chris Jones, literature rebel