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. We're working on getting the FF guide back up, so stop bothering us about it. Don't say we didn't warn you.

I've woken up in four different states in the past four days, and driven over 2200 miles since last Saturday, including one monster 800 mile run in 12 hours. Needless to say, it's good to be back in one place for a while.

The good news is that I managed to finish writing one of my term papers over the break and get all the reading done for the other one, but the bad news is that I haven't managed to play more than about 10 minutes of FF9, and still haven't finished Zelda. Combine that with the fact that I likely won't be able to get any games in until Friday at the latest, and I get a wee bit ticked off... fair warning, for the next time somebody writes in bitching about how they've only been able to get to disc 2 in FF9 so far. Cry me a freakin' river, etc., etc.

Onward.

Er... ok, first thing we should point out is that such gaming addictions are only glamorous to gamers themselves. Sad as it is to say, no women will ever throw themselves at you for your ability to burn through the latest Square game in 20 straight hours, nor will they get all warm and gushy inside when you inform them that you beat DQ7 in 60 hours, when the times most people quote is 80 hours.

I think basically, you're just in that phase where gaming is one of the coolest things on earth, if not the coolest, and you admire and relate to anyone who's willing to put in the amount of effort implied in a serious marathon session. There's nothing wrong with thinking that way, and some people never move beyond it... but for me, the days where I tried to blast through an FF over a single Thanksgiving vacation or took pride in pushing all my characters to level 99 are long gone. Am I a role model or cautionary tale? You decide.

I just keep reminding myself that it's Monday, and that all these old demon topics come back to haunt me on this particular day of the week... it doesn't help, but what else can I do?

First things first - lots of name changes in FF6, and a lot of dialog was cut for memory reasons. That said, I can't find too many differences between the basic plots and characters in the two game versions, aside from the losses that will inevitably occur when characters don't get as much to say, and therefore aren't as well fleshed out. That the lyrics to the opera scene were changed is the biggest (and nearly only) modification I can think of, and nobody's ever written me saying that the opera scene was irrevocably damaged because of it.

Second, FF6 is a completely moot point. Those days are long, long gone, and while there's always gonna be a certain amount of bitching, there's little serious argument that we aren't way, way better off translation-wise than we've ever been before, and that things aren't getting better as time goes by.

So now that you've had your say, I hope we can just let this thing rest and move on, ok?

Well, if we can cover Vib Ribbon than a cooking game doesn't seem that far out there... until you look at the all-important detals. One game wouldn't be that bad, but then we'd have two or three, and marketing people from big developers would visit the site and decide that there's a great untapped demand for cooking games and we'd be deluged with licenses by Paul Pruedome and Emeril and RPGs would be overtaken by games where the ultimate goal was to produce the ultimate hollandaise sauce and finally Julia Child would end up guest hosting the column...

And I cannot let that stand. So no cooking games. Period.

On the one hand, it's great to have Drew back. On the other hand, words just can't properly express how I feel about having this particular topic dumped in my lap, although the image of being dragged over rusty nails and molten lava would be a good start. Some of these ideas I did not need to know about... it's gonna be a long, long time before I can get that Martha Stewart game out of my head, I can tell you that. In comparison, shower mold seems insanely pure and good.

I agree with the sentiment, if not the execution of the above letter... and that's all I got to say about that.

Except that the PSX is a billion times the game machine that the N64 is, and I've probably played my Dreamcast more by now than I ever did my N64. Just had to get my priorities clear.

Closing Comments:

Mucho thanks to Nich for guest hosting while I was gone. Senor Maragos did a great job, and I am indebted to him for it.

As for tomorrow's topic... hmm. Getting harder to come up with something, now that Drew's back, snatching up good ideas before I can. But for tomorrow, let's take a shot at this: does the weather/season/time of year affect how you experience games? It's kind of a strange idea, I know, but for me there are some games that seem better suited for playing during the dark, cold winter months, and some games that are better off as distractions from the summer. I dunno if I would have gotten as deeply in to FFT if it wasn't raining all the time while I was playing it, and Dewprism was a great game to play whenever it got too hot to go outside. So is it just me, or do some games fit in better during certain months? Let me know, and I'll see you tomorrow.

-Chris Jones, starting to experience Seasonal Affective Disorder