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. Today I get to type 01.01.01 into the index page. Yee haw! Don't say we didn't warn you.

Yep, it's 2001. No Pan Am space shuttles, no big black rectangles on the moon, and for those of you who remember the book, no "meatless Tuesdays" in the US. On the whole, more good than bad, I think. (Mostly because I'd go nuts living in those austere 60's sci-fi sets. Where were all the Nike billboards, anyway?)

I did have as much of a column as I could assemble ready to run, but it basically consisted of 4 letters arguing the same DQ7 debate we've seen ad nauseum for the past year or so. Which doesn't bother me all that much, since I'm always ready to butt heads over pointless trivia, but then it hit me: this is 2001. By my way of thinking, the PSX really and truly is a dead platform - there may be one or two games forthcoming (and we haven't had any Lunar 2 discussion yet) but I'm not aware of any confirmed major releases left on the platform, and all the heavy hitters are focusing their development time on the next-gen systems. That being the case, further discussion of Dragon Warrior seems somewhat... obsolete. If it does get a US release then I'll play through the game and happily reopen this topic, but for now there's nothing new to add if US gamers can't form their own firsthand opinions.

Meantime, the poll is running for one more day: through January 2nd, you can drop me an email with the subject line "2000 poll". All I'm looking for is a ranked list of your top 5 games of the year, and if you really feel like it, a short (~50 words) blurb on your favorite title of the year. At the end of the period, I'll tally the votes up and put together a small feature.

And speaking of the future, I really didn't see the kind of stuff I was looking for from that last topic, so I'm gonna use it again:

10 years ago, NES games like Mega Man 3 and Castlevania 3 represented the state of the art. Now we've got an all out war between the various consoles and some fantastic games out there, whatever your tastes. Where do you see games at the end of the next decade, as 2010 turns into 2011? Adios for now.

-Chris Jones, very dissapointed in Dave