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. I am mad but north-northwest; when the wind blows southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw. Don't say we didn't warn you.

There's really only one thing to talk about today, but someone else's email captured my reaction better than I possibly could have, so...

Onward.

Yep, sounds about right. 'Course, I didn't have any coffee or see any Klonoa 2 movies, but the news packs enough of a punch on it's own.

I'm still digesting this stuff, but one thing did immediately suggest itself: in a big way, FF1 - 9 may represent a distinct block of games that will always stand as separate from later games in the series. I say this because there don't seem to be any upcoming FFs that won't be substantially modified from past games - FFX may have a unique new battle system, FFXI will be online, and FFXII will be at least partially under the control of Matsuno, one of the most innovative game developers out there. That being the case, it's probably fitting that the previous FFs are all seeing remakes... even if there's a good chance that much of this activity is just an attempt to make up Square's debts from the FF Movie.

I have no hard info either way, but my guess is that it's merely a remake, in the same vein as the FF Anthology, as opposed to the remix treatment that some of the early Dragon Warriors were given. I honestly don't think Square has any more noble motive for these remakes than money, and letting Aeris come back would be as much a betrayal of FF7 as a killing spree ending would be for "It's a Wonderful Life".

I actually think it's kinda cool to have played FF7 7 times, but if you followed the pattern, you'd have to play FF8 8 times, FF9 9 times, etc. And that's just scary.

1. Microsoft seems to be torn between two worlds here. For one thing, the X-Box is likely to be a far more limited appliance than a proper PC: yes, a P3 is at the heart of the machine, but when you consider the plethora of functions that a PC has to support and the X-Box, never will, it's hard to see how the Box will suffer the same kind of crippling complexity as a Windows system, should MS start coding the control system from scratch. On the other hand, Microsoft has a real lever here to get their software into a huge number of homes without fear of government control, so they might not want to scale back too much from Windows. I honestly don't know how the X-Box control system will turn out, but I'm very interested as both an engineer and a gamer.

2. Bungie. Halo. Enough said.

3. I honestly don't know enough about the X-Box internals to say this definitively, and it's entirely possible that someone will come along and show that the X-Box really is just a standard PC, but I strongly suspect that even though the X-Box has a P3 core, it will not and can not be emulated on a PC. This has nothing to do with the instruction sets, as much as it does with the connections between the chip sets. If the X-Box intends to go head to head with the PS2, it'll likely have to have the same kind of architecture, which means a lack of the multi-meg video buffers found in most 3D-accelerators, but the presence of a data bus between the main processor and the graphics chips that a PC will never be able to match - it'll simply be physically impossible for current PC architectures to achieve the same kind of bandwidth as a high-throughput PS2 style system.

I'm still waiting for an official release date from Square, but I guess I should eat some crow here and admit that I was wrong in the FAQ: it does look like FF4 and CT will get rereleased for the PSX - again, money troubles, as much as anything else.

As for FFT - you're simply wrong. FFT was something of a sleeper hit, but it was far from a mediocre title, and there's plenty of people who didn't get a chance to buy it until after it was out of print, but would still love to pick up a copy. That's all.

1  (Above text)                               Given 
2  Bush=President of Dawn of Millenium        Transitive Property (#1) 
3  Presidents have four year terms            Given 
4  Bush will be president a year or two       Conventional Logic (#1+#2) 
   after Dawn of New Millenium 
5  Bush is President of MGS                   Transitive Property (#1+#4) 
6  George W. Bush is Solidus (???)            Transitive Property (#1+#5) 

I'm not even gonna touch this one, except to point out two things: it's entirely possible that MGS takes place in an alternate reality where Al Gore did manage to steal the election (if you're a Republican) or where he succeeded in overcoming Bush's treachery (if you're a Democrat). Actually, that leads into my second point: look at Bush or Cheney. Do either one of them strike you as the second clone of a genetically engineered ultimate warrior, in any way, shape or form? We already know that Gore's significantly more personable in private than in public - I'd be far more willing to accept Gore as Solidus than Bush.

And of course, all this assumes that Solidus is president of the US, as opposed to Japan, or France, or some major corporation. I hope we'll find out in MGS2, tho.

Somebody might correct me here, but I believe that shot's from the attract mode sequence before the game even starts, and none of those are necessarily in the game proper, so I don't think you're missing anything.

Closing Comments:

Again, there's only one thing to talk about here: what's your take on these announcements from Square? See you tomorrow.

-Chris Jones, gladly sent both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths