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. Listen: Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time. Fourty-eight hours remain. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Er... lessee, what to talk about? Majora's Mask kicks major arse, but I already said that... what else have I been doing? Oh, right, I remember, ODing on the Toy Story Ultimate Toy Box DVD collection!

Good golly this thing is cool. I'm sure numerous reviews have already been written on the films themselves and the collection they're embedded in, so I'll limit myself to saying that it looks and sounds fantastic, and the genuine art that these movies represent gives me real confidence in gaming as well. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that Pixar's done exactly what video games need to do if they want to be taken seriously - make people really believe that colorful polygon shells are real characters whose actions and feelings really mean something. I don't think any game has yet matched what Toy Story 1 and 2 have pulled off, but if it can be done once it can be done again by someone else. And I look forward to seeing it happen on the PS2, Game Cube, Xbox, Dreamcast, or whatever.

Onward.

Before I get into this, I should point out that in previous emails Zen's called himself a person "who has never in his life owned a console system". When I pointed this out to him, he countered that this was because his parents didn't allow consoles in the house when he was a kid, and that he spends a lot of time playing friends' systems. I'll leave it up to you guys as to how much that should color this argument, if at all.

You'd think one of these days I'd stop butting heads over this issue and just let it go, but I guess I'm just stupid that way.

Let's look at the core argument Zen brings up - that emulation is needed to preserve games that are slowly slipping awaqy into oblivion. It's a noble goal, certainly something that I agree with, which is why I applauded things like Bruce Sterling's Dead Media Project. (Which ironically appears dead itself, but this should give you the gist of it). Certainly some day it'll be important to catalogue this stuff, since if things like Superman or baseball have taken on real historical significance, I can't see that the same wouldn't hold true for Super Mario Brothers. And given the lifespan of consoles, terribly brief and unique things when looked at from a broader perspective, I can even see the argument that saving such media needs to happen sooner rather than later.

But the question is, is it the "emulation community's" place to do so? At this point, I'd have to say the answer is a pretty firm no. Look, I'm no fan of what big corporations have been doing to copyright law as of late - the original framers of the Constitution seemed pretty dead set on having a strong public domain, which means that stuff like "Steamboat Willie" is long overdue to be distributed free to anyone who's interested in it. But that's not the state games are in right now. The Atari VCS, the granddaddy of all modern gaming, is younger than I am, and companies are still making money off the games that appeared on it. It's not the place of "CONSOLE GAMERS" to decide what is and is not worthy of being immortalized... yet. Let the developing companies hang on to this stuff a little longer, and I guarantee they'll resurrect it again, eventually, in one form or another. By the time the Nintendo Generation hits middle age and starts having mid-life crises, I wouldn't be at all surprised for Nintendo to bring out a $10 version of the NES, complete with every game ever made for the system on a single high-density storage device, all in an attempt to cash in on the now (relatively) wealthy aging gamer market desperate to relive their youth. But Nintendo's not likely to do that if everything they own has been widely cracked and distributed already, so knock it off!

End of rant, and end of this topic for a while, I think.

I agree with you on a lot of things, except that I think the two styles you've laid out are digital standards in an analog system. Very few games put out these days don't incorporate at least a few characteristics from each of the two groups you've laid out, and arguably the best as of late have been seamlessly merging the two.

I think what this all comes down to is the fact that the distinction between action games and RPGs was, in the beginning, necessary from a technical standpoint, but not any more. On the NES a game with the action qualities of Zelda would have been impossible to merge with the deep combat of Final Fantasy or the later Dragon Warriors, but other games have merged the two genres quite well. And as much as anything the question I'm asking is, given that that's the case, is there any reason to have the action/RPG dichotomy anymore?

Vagrant Story is arguably very much an RPG, and has very little difference in its exploratory mode and its combat mode - unless you're using your definition to define what an RPG is in the first place, which is something of a cheat. In a strange way, the only way to save the traditional RPG label for traditional RPGs would be to have only the most traditional RPGs qualify as such - an FF would be an RPG, Chrono Cross, DQ7, but Vagrant Story wouldn't be, nor would Ogre Battle, or even FFT. And is that really a cut we want to make?

I haven't much played Summoner, but from what I've heard Nich's review is pretty much dead on. On the other hand, this is the single best letter responding to a review I've ever got, which makes me ecstatic. Let's look at what Greg did and didn't do that made this so cool:

He laid out his points specifically, addressing and directly arguing against Nich's points. He argued around and beyond what Nich had stated as fact in the review, rather than flatly denying it on the basis of "because I say so." He didn't personally attack Nich or the site, while making points that were in many cases, completely opposite of what Nich laid down. In short, he argued about the game rather than the review, which is how it should be. Great job, sir.

The way I see it, it's all in how you look at things. From a certain perspective, yes, you are a nerd, or at least someone with little social development. (I know, same difference.) But from another angle, you resemble the classic trick-or-treater - slightly unbalanced adolescent kid wandering around at night getting people to buy him off with candy lest he cause some mild vandalism to befall the neighborhood. Of course, you're likely in an area where this "protection fee" is so ingrained that you don't even bother packing shaving cream, TP or eggs, but there's something to be said for going old school.

Right, except that you can look at things a different way: that RPGs are all about battle. It's only recently that 80-90% of an RPGs time was not spent in endless menu driven combat, fighting the same color-switched monsters over and over and over. At the same time, these menus gave more tactical options and when executed properly, fights in an RPG could be much deeper than anything a hack and slash action game had to offer. You can argue that RPGs merely treat battles differently than action games, but going back to Imad's letter, where does that get us?

But what about Seiken Densetsu 2 and 3? They all have 1-4, and since magic is accessed through ring menus, they arguably have at least part of 5 as well. And then we get the traditional spoiler, Vagrant story, which is so close to being a straight action title it's not funny, except you have to go through a pseudo-menu to target something. From a certain perspective, combat in VS is even more static than in any ATB FF, which makes it a bit odd to say that the one is an RPG and the other is not.

Besides, I like Brave Fencer Musashi. There's just something intrinsically hilarious about Musashi Miyamoto coming back as a punk SD teenager rescuing a valley girl princess with campy voice acting... kinda like Abraham Lincoln being reincarnated as Bart Simpson, or something.

Hey, we can't be responsible for the abominations that get created from good ideas. Like Star Trek Voyager.

Right, except that I don't think actual Role Playing has been a serious part of anything we've been calling a console RPG since FF1. Ad hominem definitions really just won't work here.

Good job on the P.S. - lopsided construction is always fun.

Closing Comments:

Reader column topics are back, so read and respond and enjoy. I'm gonna go watch Toy Story 2 again, or something. Later.

-Chris Jones, never knew there were so many damned in-jokes...