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. You're not getting paid enough to die! Now get out of my way! Don't say we didn't warn you.

I had a great intro all set up for today, but one of you clever little monkeys already wrote me a letter on it. And although I could just steal it back, I'd just as soon let somebody else have their moment in the sun.

Onward.

The site went up yesterday, and I saw it right after I put up the column last night. I was all set to rant and rave about the good and the bad therein, but Vishal beat me to it.

I can confirm that you will be able to play the game in both English and Japanese, both vocals and subtitles, like Sonic Adventure. This should make a US release extremely rapid, if not instantaneous. At the same time, I'm a bit worried about how this is shaping up. Dream Factory does a decent fighting game, but nobody's seen any live gameplay yet, and the English dialog and dubbing both sound rather stilted. It may seem less so when seen in action, tho, and Square's been on a roll with their translations lately. Perhaps it just needs polishing.

On the plus side, the visuals and overall design sense of the game look pretty good - very solid, very urban, like the original Double Dragon arcade game brought to life. Unless "Action Role Playing Game" means something other than "lots of fighting with long story breaks inbetween" (as our own Mr. Vestal aptly put it) the site probably won't be covering it, but I still think the game looks solid, and I hope to see both it and a shiny new PS2 hooked up to my TV by the end of the year.

We probably won't see games in 16:9 much until we get a gaming system designed specifically for 16:9 HDTVs, which is not the PS2. The PS3, maybe, which'll put the GS to shame.

I'd take argument with your first statement, of course. Both the other major systems currently on the market (N64 and DC) have the same faults you mention, as far as being top-loading and costing money to save. (Well, that was the plan for the N64 and those memory modules, before the Rumble Pak took over the controller slot and forced developers to add battery saves. Now that's bad design.) Besides, a system's library is an intrinsic part of how the system is judged. It's widely known that the NES was technically inferior to the Sega Master System, but few would argue that the Nintendo was not the superior box.

A lot of people have suggested the "don't burn out, but fade away" idea for the PS2, but I really don't buy it. The PS2 has already sold 3 million units in Japan, and looks on track to have a record launch here in the States, so developers are going to want to put titles on such a large and rapidly growing platform very badly. It's true that even 10 million PS2s (a number I thought I saw Sony mention by year's end) is paltry compared to the 100+ million PSXs out there, but since PS2 development takes at least as many resources as PSX games do, I can't see companies coding for the old system much longer. 

I don't see graphics as being as trivial to a system as you do. Yes, you can have a great game that has dated or poor graphics, no arguments. But the truth of the matter is, it's nearly painful to look at the PSX when you see what the Dreamcast is capable of. 3D models with smooth curves! Sharp texture mapping! Character models that actually look like real people, and nary an oversized pixel to be seen! In fact, as much as anything, I think that's why gamers are going to demand that developers change their focus to the PS2: once they see what the system's really capable of, playing old PSX games just won't cut it.

Actually, I cued Richard Strauss - the guy who wrote the music that eventually ended up as the theme to Kubrick's 2001. On the one hand, I'm pleased to have such literate readers, on the other hand, it kinda kills the column to have to explain every joke I make. Hmm... maybe I should stop explaining them, you think?

I have no clue on this one, except I think that the part of the Dreamcast that encodes the bitmap into an analog TV signal is separate from the software, regardless of if it's PAL or NTSC. Thus, your American Dreamcast encodes a signal for your US TV, and things work ok. Either that, or your TV is capable of automatically translating a PAL signal, but that seems like a longshot. If anybody has any info or ideas on this, send 'em in.

Man, this thing's getting way out of hand. I'm not even going to go into all the further proposals, counter-proposals, declarations of undying love, etc. that this has brought out of the collective unconsciousness of the readers. All I can say is, take it to the boards, people.

And I'll take a moment to remind AK of the sacred oaths we took as letters columnists, where we pledged to inform, belittle, amuse, confuse, and all out entertain the readers, but to never become romantically involved with them.

Unless they're really hot.

It's just a good thing you didn't, because with the "zero tolerance" policy most schools today are adopting, possession of a cartoon mallet could get you expelled, or get you an anvil dropped on your head.

At any rate, games are prevalent enough in society for such ignorance to be a relatively rare thing, so don't worry about it too much.

Excellent, Genji. I assume this means our plan to kidnap him and hold him hostage until Square agrees to simultaneous US/Japanese releases is going as planned? And while you've got him down in your basement, could you get him to sign a couple of game discs? Worth big bucks on eBay.

Makes sense to me.

Closing Comments:

Contemplating The Bouncer brings up the interesting subject of what really makes an RPG. Now, I know we've tried to define RPGs in excruciating detail before, so I want to attack this from a different angle. What other genre of games would you like to see imbued with RPG characteristics, and what would those characteristics be? Menus in racing games (yes, I've heard of Racing Lagoon) or experience points in puzzlers? I await your reply.

-Chris Jones, getting some facial piercings for The Bouncer's release