| Hip to be Square, once more - July 31, 2000 - Chris Jones 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. AK's dead wrong - I'd rather go
out with Nicole Kidman than play Chrono Cross, and that's saying something. Don't say we
didn't warn you.
It's all my sister's fault.
See, ordinarily I don't watch VH1, and don't have much of an interest in the detritus
of former celebraties and their one hit wonder careers. But my sister got all hyped up
about The Bangles: Behind the Music, and I was sucked in. Not just the Bangles, but the
whole cornocopia of 80's stuff started falling in on me, from Huey Lewis to Transformers
to Rambo and Blaster Master. It's not that I don't ordinarily exist in a sea of
pop-culture references, but it's gotten particularly bad since last night. I'm this close
to getting an Ollie North haircut and an ugly neon-bright tie... help me!
Onward.
| The best Square letter I got during the Square
moratorium |
| Dear Chris: Which do you think is more important for Howard Lincoln to
sign next year -- Squaresoft or Alex Rodriguez?
Chuck Bednar
About.com Guide to Baseball |
This letter hits me on so many levels it's not funny. There's so many, many angles to
this I don't know where to begin, so I'll just cut to the chase: Alex Rodriguez might win
the Mariners a World Series or two, but getting Square on a Nintendo platform would
definitely create a gaming juggernaut of unimaginable power. I think Mr. Lincoln already
has a good idea that this is the case, so all we can do now is just sit back and watch
history unfold.
| It's all gouda |
| Chris, you've got to do something. AK has just sealed the fate of any
presidential, nay, world-ruling offices he might have had. He admitted to not liking
cheese. Need I remind you of that guy who was on TV? Apparently he mentioned to some
elementary schoolers that he didn't care for cheese very much and it ruined his career.
Tell AK he must be more careful in what he says.
May this be a warning to all, do not underestimate the power of cheese.
~Alexander3025 |
As tasty as I myself find cheese, I can see past the obsession that Tex-Mex cooking and
Midwestern dairy farmers have with the substance. And the heck of it is, he's right -
cheese by itself is just not all it's cracked up to be. It's very filling, and monotonous
in large chunks, regardless of the type. No, I think we're much better off having the
occasional slice of Munster on a sandwich, or Cheddar sauce on french fries, or a piece of
Blue embedded in cherry jello... or maybe it's just me. Regardless, I stand by my original
belief that we should not judge someone by their taste in food, but their taste in games,
so let's all go forth and beat the crap out of any 7th Saga fans we find, okay?
| You'll need a cape, a code name, and a running
internal dialog... |
| So, I was in a book store today, looking for the comics rack, passing
up the magazines they had there (Such as Maxim: Chauvinism and Bigotry for men). And I
come across "Batman Black and White". Looking through it a bit made me realize
that Agent X, and Gamer X couldn't possibly be superheroes, because they don't talk to
themselves whenever something happens, and after all, that's the defining point in being a
hero.
Gilbert
P.S. I was looking for Zelda: TOoT on the games page here, and couldn't find it, why
not? |
Well, like a good piece of cheese, a Zelda vault must be finely aged before it is ready
to eat. Otherwise, if the review is done before it is ready, it's impossible to tell the
merely good (Zelda II) from the truly superb (Zelda III). So come back in about a year,
and we should be able to tell if OoT was a fine Havarti or a slab of Velveeta.
| Legend of Minesweeper: Flag of Vengeance |
| Most esteemed letter-reading guy, I am currently an intern in a large
office building in New York. Being away from home for eight hours out of the day, I found
it rather frustrating that while I have constant access to a computer that far surpasses
my own in raw computing power, the State will not permit me to play any sort of games.
Multitasking between Microsoft Office and a SNES emulator running FFV is apparently out of
the question. It was during one of my long bouts of perpetual boredom, stymied by the
amount of "work" that was put before me with minimal "fun" allowed
within the day's time that I stumbled upon a delightful little program by the name of
"Minesweeper." Since there was no plot, no eye-catching animations for posting
flags or getting obliterated by bombs, or anything of the sort, I was forced to devise my
own system for playing the game, which I could conveniently minimize to the taskbar
whenever Big Brother came walking along in the general vicinity of my desk. The
Minesweeper storyline and premise is as follows, and I've done what I can to make certain
that it keeps in touch with every RPG storyline ever crafted:
A long, long time ago, the people were oppressed by an evil force. That force, as I
mentioned in the sentence previous to this one, was pretty downright evil. The evil, evil
force hid multiple explosive devices in the earth beneath the country of [enter random mix
of consonants and vowels here for the name of the country... for our purposes, we can call
it "Desktopia"] Desktopia, and made it so that every tract of land looked like
every other tract of land. The people were all mercilessly slaughtered or something, and
the only people that were left were all crude stereotypes. Enter the hero... Minesweeping
Guy. For the sake of having a short, one-syllable name with a five-character limit, we can
call him Minez. Minez vowed to go after the evil force and vanquish the bombs, because the
evil force had killed his father... or mother... or something. So Minzes went out and
talked to a bunch of NPC's on each tract of land to ask where they thought the mines
were... and then something else happened, and then the great smiley face that overlooks
all activity in Desktopia made his opinion clear by donning the Holy Sunglasses
Distinguished Approval. Then an office intern was impaled for composing an e-mail that has
nothing to do with the State's official business. Right, back to work.
- David Bard
Keeping office buildings safe from mines for over three weeks and counting |
Excellent. Really excellent - epic, touching, and powerful. I give it a 10, and I'm
calling Hironobu Sakaguchi up right now to make sure you're in charge of scripting the
next Final Fantasy. If not, I say we organize a boycott of all Square related products
until our demands for a Bard-produced game are met! Are you with me, my brothers? Courage!
| Or does the water get him instead? |
| Chris I'm out on another secret mission (no R&R for us Agents!)
for the next week. While I'm gone, here is a bit of wisdom for you to chew on:
Is it really the water that makes us wet, or is it actually the air that makes us dry?
-Agent X "that's the most profound thing I have ever said!" |
Actually, I've always thought that people's intrinsic natures are unchanged regardless
of the external environment. Thus, someone could be bone dry even while drowning in the
Pacific, and soaking wet in the middle of Death Valley. It's all about inner truth,
people.
| Say it with obscure synthesized pop! |
| Chris, For my girlfriend's birthday, I burned her a CD with music that
reminded me of her, and almost 3/4 of it was game music (a lot of it redone with an
orchestra). She fell in love with the songs Aeris (orchestra), the Chrono Cross trailer,
and Battle With Gilgamesh (piano remix), as well as a few others.
She usually dislikes games, but she absolutely loved it. Why? Half of it was because
she'd never hear the songs on the radio, and because they really are good songs, but the
other half was that I'd put such hard-to-find songs on a CD for her. She really liked it,
even more than the expensive presents her family always gets her. Am I one lucky bastard
or what?
Mike Drucker |
You're rather clever sir, I admit. You managed to give her a present that's cheap,
thoughtful, sensitive, and can only serve to draw her deeper into our twisted little world
of games. Now if you can only get her to reciprocate with a pre-release beta of FFX,
you'll be set.
| And the weirdness continues |
| Um...heh....[cough]. Ahem...[sigh] whew, just get it over with. Uh,
will, um, will you marry me?
Bill |
This puzzled me greatly, until I realized he must have been talking to AK, and must
have been referring to the botched HTML that went up Saturday. Well, the good news for AK
is that the HTML has been fixed (though not by me) so he doesn't have to fear incomplete
tag fetishists anymore. As for you Bill, keep searching. I'm sure your soul mate is out
there somewhere.
Closing Comments:
Very odd column today, so it seems appropriate for me to mention this. All I can say is, thank you
Mr. Parish for finally seizing on the most ludicrous image I've ever seen in a game - a
giant Chu Chu crucified next to a bunch of Gears. As much as anything that screenshot is
why I can't take Xenogears seriously - any game that can show that without even the least
little bit of self-mockery is way too full of itself.
In keeping with my momentary 80's addiction, I'd like to hear your best and brightest
memories of the system that started it all: the NES. Whether it's Nintendo Power, the
Dancing Mario trick in SMB1, the complete and utter worthlessness of the Nintendo Seal of
Quality, or your childhood crush on the Dark Queen from Battletoads, I want to use your
precious memories of a peaceful, innocent time for my own evil purposes. So let's hear
'em. See you tomorrow.
-Chris Jones, fighting hard to resist a Manic Monday ref... dammit! |
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