Drew,

"...anyone who enjoys the escape from reality afforded by video games as much as we do has to have something a bit wrong with them."

Face it, the world's not fair, people suck, and murder is illegal. I think we should all be COMMENDED on finding an escape that is certainly cheaper than hard drugs. $50 here and $60 there and we'll be gone for months. It's nearly twice that A DAY on the streets. Overcharging thieves.

Now get back to your damn Playstation.

-Red Raven, certainly the Assassin of Time

Drew

I'm only 3 hours into Chrono Cross. Fuck school. Fuck work while I'm at it.

Justin Freeman

Drew,

A digital actress, why not? In Star Wars, we watched a movie that was 90% digital, with many of the characters being computer generated. True, they were all aliens or whatnot, but isn't this just the next logical step?

If the technology is there to give you an actress/actor that is 100% life-like and you can get her/him to say any line, smile in such a way, or perform inhuman feats, why not? The question that needs to be raised is, will it take away from the movie experience? Will people be able to tell? How does it affect the movie?

We aren't cloning pigs here, we're just doing what we've always done, used special effects to enhance a movie. Thumbs up.

BTW, I'm 9 hours into Chrono Cross, I'm impressed so far with what I see, and I must say, the battle system is a sigh of relief from the usual.

-EdgarFigaro

Hmmm... digital actress....'Someone' who won't bitch and moan about being paid less than her male co-star, or that the lighting makes her look fat, who won't get hooked on diet pills while trying to win the starve-the-actress contest going on in Holliwood, thus causing production to slow down while she tends to her health...Couldn't possibly be a bad thing, could it?

Princess Jemmy, so it's an half assed response...so what? I'm busy....

First off, I enjoyed today's column ( 8/17/00 ) so much I had to write to you. You were a cynical little SOB, and it was cool. The shut the hell up award was long over due it sounds like. And I am glad you gave it to 'Carnicerae'. I would have given him a drink from the fire hose though, cause UHF told me to. To the point Batman!

Samba de Amigo is horrible! How can I say this? I live in Seattle, every year we have a toy test ( test video games ). But while I was there I accidentally saw that game, and shuddered. Two little kids were standing there, shaking these pathetic maracas and cheesing their heads off to.. THE MACARENA!! AHHH! I was terrified. Does Sega know what it is doing? Does Sega EVER know what it is doing? Samba is like Dance Dance ( which I love ) with Maracas and crappy music. It is sick, and it should burn, like Sega.... Onto my last topic!

Mask of Majora rocks! I got to play it and man am I impressed at how Nintendo can take an old engine and spice it up. The thing I am most impressed with.. It is harder than Ocarina of Time! Game play is also 100% better, but that isn't what impressed me. The fact that the game wasn't geared at 5 year olds impressed me. I thought after Perfect Dark the 64 would go to the toddlers, and pre-schoolers.. I was wrong, thank god.. But I still prefer my PSX and RPG's to anything, anyday..

-The Man who wonders.. 'Why Sega?'

"So here's another topic: what do you think of this whole "digital actress" thing? Is this the future of cinema?"

Sure it is.......50 to 100 years from now. Why so many years? Because actors and actresses are not going to take this lying down. Look at how upset the SAG (screen actors guild) got over just this incident. I'm sure the SAG will fight this to bitter end. Plus I think you need to add to fact that the technology has to go a bit further too. Looking at the FF trailers you can tell it's very realistic. So realistic it's scary. But it's not quite to the point where it would be incredibly hard to discern between fake and real life (it's damn close though). Also you have to realize that people who make dramas may not be as open to this changing of the guard as people who make action movies are. Trying to imagine a computer graphics version of something like Gone With the Wind is a weird thought. The last thing that will make this transition so slow is cost. I'm sure it costs a lot of money to make a fully computer animated movie. Low budget productions for a while will be forced to use real people simply because it will cost too much to do it using computer graphics. In the end though I think people who make movies will come around. If it gets to the point where you can have ultra-realistic graphics it will be very tempting for people who make movies where they can design the people in the movie to look, move and act however they want them to be with exact precision. Of course I don't think actual people in movies will ever totally die out. There will always be a group of people out there that will insist that it will be more pure if they use real people over computer generated images. It will also be interesting to see if it gets to the point where mostly everything is computer graphics, which means all the actors/actresses will all be voice actors/actress, if they can still pull down the humongous salaries they do now since they will only be acting with their voices.

-Pendy, Maintainer of the Dragon Quest Dragon Warrior News Network

Hello,

I doubt that this will be the only letter you get in response to the following statement:

"We here in North America can blame all of our woes on Canada"

You probably meant it as a joke, or in a different manner than my interpretation, but anyways...

I'm not quite certain how you would manage to come to that conclusion considering the United States is the source of ESRB rating requirements, congressional investigations into videogame violence, medical associations that grandstand with the declaration that videogames can be linked directly to increased youth violence, and a widely-held mentality among adults that any shocking behavior exhibited by youths MUST BE the fault of the entertainment industry. Not that I am bitter, or don't see the merits of a videogame rating system, however you should be able to admit that attacks on the videogame industry have been far more frequent and have carried far more political weight in the United States than in anywhere else in North America.

Following Columbine, we had a pair of similar incidents involving highschool students in Canada, one in Taber(Alberta) and another in Ottawa(Ontario, you know our capital). Having closely watched the fall-out from Columbine, I was half expecting the Canadian media to react in the same manner as their US counterparts. It didn't happen. No mention of the boys' videogame or CD collections were made. No calls for the government to "get tough" on the entertainment industry. They saw both events for what they were, tragedies (well okay, the knife-based Ottawa attack only resulted in several minor injuries) that arose from personal issues within that individual and a lack of acceptance among their peers. Such clarity could have benefited those investigating the Columbine tragedy greatly, particularly those in the American media.

As far I as can testify, the only real problem we've had with the videogame industry in this country is the recent ATTEMPT by the Quebec government to pass a PROVINCIAL law that would require all games to have French instructions in order to be sold in that market. The law was never brought up for a vote by their legislature and therefore has never been passed. So why were the releases of both Vagrant Story and Legend of Mana 30 days later than promised? The blame can "Square-ly" be placed on some stupid management decisions made by Vancouver-based EA Canada.

Why they would delay the release of two potential blockbuster titles over a PROPOSED law in a province that only represents 8% of the Canadian market, only EA knows. Why they also didn't inform retailers of the delay was another one of their stupid decisions. I'm sure they (retailers) were incredibly pleased when they saw one potential sale after another walk out of their stores when shoppers couldn't buy games the store had already ordered and paid for well in advance of the incredibly late delivery date.

You can blame the North American videogame market's woes on Canada all you want, but I'll point out that an all-out ban on videogames in Canada wouldn't effect how the videogame industry operates in the United States. The opposite however, would likely place us in the "important markets" category along with all those poor bastards in Australia who are probably just getting their PSXs and copies of Wild Arms about now.

-Spear.

p.s. Sorry for the length :(

My name was mentioned BEFORE J. Parish's in Brad B.'s letter! Ha!

And you thought RPG experts were sad.

~Ian P.

Drew

no morals... No opinions... sounds good when do they come out with Digital Spouses.

-Cahill