I thought I'd save you some time with the Zelda: LttP question. Here's the response to a letter I wrote to Nintendo about the same question: "The secret room can be found anywhere in the game, as it is random. Nintendo Power magazine had a contest in which the winner would have his or her name put in one of our games, and Chris Houlihan won. The room you found is where his name was placed. While there is no way to get Chris Houlihan's room 100% of the time, we've found a method that will work fairly often. You'll want to start from Sanctuary, so save your game in the Light World and press Reset.

Now Dash all the way to the bush that Link had to lift at the beginning of the game to enter the Hyrule Palace. When you get to the bush, Dash down the hole without lifting the bush first. If you were fast enough, you should find Chris Houlihan's room every time."

I've tried this method and I've gotten it to work several times. So, there you go.

-Link65

If this letter finds its way into the column I'll be flabbergasted, but I had to write to vindicate myself:

Mage-boy, C-minor is a CHORD, not a note.

Thanks.

--Bill Johnson

The only series that I would like to see overtake Final Fantasy as the king of RPG's is one already made by Square, and that is the Chrono Trigger series. I know with only two games its not much of a series yet, but they my two favorite games ever, nothing else even comes close. I have a slightly higher than average understanding of Japanese, I'm in my fourth year of it in high school, so I imported Chrono Cross and have a decent understanding of what's going on. It's as good as everyone is saying it is. Probably better once I play it in English. Chrono Trigger is still my favorite game of all time,I've played pretty much all the other contenders for best RPG, and still haven't found anything that comes close. I've gotten all the endings, and have played through it at least once or twice a year for as long as I've had it. Even though it still comes from Square, I feel that the Chrono series, if it should extend beyond two, should become the next big thing in RPG's.

Also, the mention of Chrono Trigger's ending made me think of something that's been bothering me. In almost every game I play I'm almost always disappointed by the end. I can only think of a few games that had endings that didn't disappoint me. In fact I've found that in books and movies the ending often doesn't live up the story. Is it just that I can't be satisfied, or do others this way too.

-E, needing only a single letter to represent himself

P.S. The best cartoon of all time was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, my friend and I, we used to watch it all the time, and we still sing the theme song to annoy people and show off, and we also had our own names, I was "Turtle-o"(White) and my friend was "Pizza-o"(green). I see it sometimes and think "damn that was an awesome show".

Check out Mainframe's web site at http://www.mainframe.ca

There will be two TV movies about Reboot, and it looks like they will pick up after Season 3.

Mainframe is the cartoon equivalent of Blizzard Entertainment. By this I mean it is without a doubt GOD of cartoon goodness. I commend you on your good taste.

By the way, if you notice, the head honcho at Mainframe is named Ian Pearson.

I think I would have paid good money to see you writing this column in your car on your laptop while driving back to Austin at 10:00 at night. Or at least I would have laughed.

CO

Lunar: Hah! Lunar: SSS sucked big time. 25 hours of gameplay on 2 discs. Horrid dubbing, I have seen better dubbing in every anime I have ever seen. Cloth map, err, I mean colorful snot rag. Did anyone else notice how the map was missing the name of every town not mentioned in the demo? The Art Book was nothing more than a hardbound instruction manual. No, Lunar will never be a major threat to Square (only a threat to your intelligence).

BoF: Well, I don't know about you, but only the first Breath of Fire game was very good, great in fact. Breath of Fire 2, 3 and even 4 were/look boring. I had to trade in 3 because I became so bored after the first couple of hours.

Phantasy Star: Well, it would be great to see a resurgence of Phantasy Star but unless Sega pulls a collective miracle out of their ass they will go under in a year or two (980,000 PS2 sold in Japan in THREE DAYS). We will just have to see if Sega can stay afloat (which is unlikely).

Shining (Force, Holy Ark, etc.); This is one of my more favorite series. I loved every game. Unfortunately #3 on the Saturn was a huge disappointment. they translated only the first part (of three). At the end of part 1 they lead you in to the begining of part 2, damn that made me cry. Also, Shining Force has been Sega only.

Wild Arms: Yeah, only two games but the first one was pretty good and the second one is looking even better. Perhaps this series will carry over to the PS2 and will become more popular.

Suikoden: Same as above.

Vandal Hearts: Same as above, only Vandal Hearts 1 Sucked miserably (I beat the game in 19 hours, I started at 5 am and beat it by midnight). I liked Vandal Hearts 2 though.

Dragon Warrior/Quest: Well, alot of us have played the majority of these games (I recently finished 6). The only problem is that they haven't been translated over here en masse. With word of Dragon Warrior I & II coming to the GBC we could finally begin to see a release (re-release) of the game that forced schools to close in Japan so every child could get their copy (no kidding, this happened).

Legend of dragoon: Okay, the game isn't even out yet and does not qualify in any way as a series, but if it lives up to the hype generated by all the magazines reviewing it, this could be the game to give Square a run for it's money. The game looks amazing.

And of course Square could continue Xenogears (best RPG, ever) or Final Fantasy and continue their dominance. Expect Square to continue to churn out top quality RPG's (like Parasite Eve) at their current rate. There are some series I would like to see do well, and even de-throne Square, but I just don't see that realistically happening.

Akira Toriyama
(a.k.a. Wong Fei Fong)

The Lufia series, because Lufia II was just sweet. Suh-weet. Looking forward to future incarnations, yes I am.

And speaking of watching an unhealthy amount of Pokémon...

...That James is one sexy bitch. Am I right, Chris?

~Ian P., who also watches way more Pokémon than he should.

I honestly thought that Shadow Madness would be a worthy contender for the Final Fantasy series. It was produced from ex-Square employees and made in English. I concluded that the product would be a great game with clever dialog and plot, a formula for success, right? Unfortunately, Shadow Madness included all the insignificant things that were missing from the Final Fantasies (such as being able to skip the summons) and lacked all the important things that made the Final Fantasies great (such as fun).

I can't think of any other company that even comes close to Square's ability to produce RPGs, both in quality and quantity. When I think of RPGs, I think of Square. This is probably because Square's main focus is RPGs. Companies like Capcom and Namco make RPGs, but are best known for fighting games. Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see if any other company will ever amount to Square's greatness. Maybe Working Designs has a chance.

By the by, do you read all your letters, or do you just read the ones with clever titles?

-Wesley

God damn you Chris, a resurgence of Phantasy Star would let me die happy, that along with the fact that I'm seeing nine inch nails Tuesday night. Imagine a few more sequels, and some prequels even, to come out and expand the already awesome story. Imagine playing at a time before Alis' story started, or as Lassic when he was little, or finding out the origin of Dark Force/Falz, or the origin of Wren, or a billion different things that happen after PS4, or, or, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I can't take it, there's so much that could be expanded on. The same goes for Lunar, but not on such an orgasmic level. If anyone could give Square a run for its money (if it's even possible...) it would have to be Sega or Working Designs. And yes I know WD didn't originally create Lunar but what does it matter. If I HAD to pick a 3rd contender it would have to be Capcom, but I never liked BoF as much as other stuff, but still could kick some arse.

Thanks, cya

Zack "about to bite a grilled cheese & beat the first disk of RE:CV" Ready

It's been awhile. Two things that I learned in France: Rinoa is called Linoa and the the Giant Cactuar is called...Pampa Senior. Now you know...

Any do you know what the letter writer was talking about yesterday with Fei's final "darkness" power? Does he mean his last Deathblow? I was confused....

As for your topic, I must say, I've never thought about that. I think that the way things are, Square only has to compete with itself to produce better and better games. What with the most recent releases of Chrono Cross and Vagrant Story, I think that they're doing a better damn good job. Frankly, I don't have enough time to play any other series. However, I think that Sony's Legend of Dragoon was a good idea in theory, spend a ton of money to make an awesome, intricate game. But they forgot the awesome part. The only RPG from another company that I'm waiting for is Namco's Project X (Hopefully Xenogears 2...)

--The Steve