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. Neptunian Nymph? What the hell...? Don't say we didn't warn you.

Ok, so I'm back. It's always nice to go on vacation, although oddly enough I still ended up wasting most of the time that got freed up by not having to do the column. Considering this was the third time in as many months I took a week+ hiatus, I'm actually sorry I couldn't keep going, but there were good and important reasons for all the breaks , including this past one, so no real regrets.

The big news, I suppose, is that I managed to finish Chrono Cross last night at about 3am. I gotta say, one of the great things about this job is that I now actually have an excuse to stay up that late and play games. Not that I need an excuse, but it's nice to have. I'll probably open up CC debate in the column tomorrow, but in the meantime let's take a look at some of what's dribbled in over the past few days, shall we?

Onward.

There's a lot of good will towards the FF remixes, and I agree they look pretty damn sweet. I especially like the new style logo - gotta get a large copy of that for some wallpaper. But I really don't see this thing going anywhere. There's no real possibility of the WonderSwan Color providing serious competition for the GBA, FF or no. Pokemon is just too damn powerful, not to mention that just about every game developer in the free world has signed on to Nintendo's platform. In a strange kinda way, it's like the NES all over again, with only one real contender in the handheld arena and a few wannabes.

Not that I want to see the WSC fail, but I just don't think it has much of a chance, sorry.

From www.m-w.com:

Vacation:
1 : a respite or a time of respite from something : intermission
2 a : a scheduled period during which activity (as of a court or school) is suspended b : a period of exemption from work granted to an employee for rest and relaxation
3 : a period spent away from home or business in travel or recreation (had a restful vacation at the beach)
4 : an act or an instance of vacating

Any other questions?

As sweet as the revamped shots look, I think reason is starting to set back in on me. At the time, FF1 was an amazing game, and it's still a marvel design in much the same way a Model T is. But as a game, right now, for me, it doesn't cut it. (The preceding was yet another Blasphemous Statement from Chris™.)

Look, I loved the original when it came out, and still do. And I bow to no one in my obsession toward it at the time - I leveled all my characters to level 50, as high as you could go in FF 1. And I had fun doing it, because at the time the combat was very deep, the world very colorful and I was really bored. (And it was damn cool to see a Black Belt with a Fast spell hit Chaos for 2000+ points of damage.) But this is 2000, and for me, padding a game out with lots and lots of battles just to increase playtime is uncool. It was fine in the late 80's, but not now, and I'd think there's too much good, new, innovative stuff out for most people to spend time wading through this.

Ok... There are plenty of jokes I could make here about this being the kind of relationship where somebody gets completely wasted and calls somebody else up on the phone at 3am, but the situation here isn't funny, it's just creepy. If nothing else, I'll try to keep up with the letters from here on out to avoid stuff like this.

And dude, get help, ok?

Closing Comments:

Ok, here's the situation. I beat the game pretty much spoiler-free, because that's the way I wanted to do it. But having done that, I feel I've gotten my money's worth on the game and have now pretty thoroughly researched the alternate endings, hidden characters, and important stuff I missed the first time through. In other words, I'm ready for some CC discussion.

On the other hand, I don't know if you're ready for discussion. So tomorrow's topic is this - let me know if you want to see discussion of Chrono Cross Wednesday, and more importantly, let me know in general when you'd like to see games discussed. I admit I've been the bottleneck on discussion so far this summer, but from here on out I think I should be able to move through the major new releases pretty quickly. So if you want spoiler discussion of a game two weeks after it's out, or a month, or two months, or never, let me know, and let me know why. See you tomorrow.

-Chris Jones, settling back in to the groove