>Lunar 2 the last PS One game? Soulless wretch...you've forgotten Megaman X5, >shipping as I type this. Being the ONLY game I've been looking forward to for quite some >time, the carelessness of your omission can only be righted by a sledge hammer to your >thumbs. >Snort. >SonicPanda

Ehh......both of you are wrong. The latest game coming out for PS1 (that I know of) is Dance Dance Revolution, coming in March....this is one of my favorite games, how dare you forget about it!

But seriously, if I have my released dates right (and not counting TBA release date titles), Time Crisis: Project Titan would be the last one, coming in June.)

*grabs sledge hammer from SonicPanda* *starts aiming*

-CuBEz

DC,

By creative, you obviously mean something so far-fetched that there's no actual real chance of it ever happening, just so you laugh at the writer's inability of finding something more productive to do with their time than to write a letter columnist who's only going to berate and belittle their precious idea anyway. Nice try, Cosner. Maybe YOU should be a little more creative next time.

...

...

I think this is a sign that I've been reading your columns for far too long.

-Red Raven, the itch that can't be scratched

Which direction would I steer the gaming industry? It can be summed up in thrre words:

Full Frontal Nudity

Nuff said.

H-Box (I am nude right now.)

If you could choose the direction the gaming industry would take from this moment forward, how would you direct it?

I'd have it so that there would be at least one naked woman in every console game. I'm serious.

-Lee Meador, Holy Whore

Drew I'm not going to lie to you man. If I was in full control of the video game market, you'd likely see nothing but hardcore porn in about 2 years. Not only that, but I could justify it by saying its all an elaborate maneuver to make the industry more mature, and thus receive more respect. We all know porn gets respect and being mature consists of deciding which animal gets lucky on any given day. Then I'd pocket all of the money horny old men would spend on my games, and run off to Russian where my fancy American dollars could purchase damn near the entire country. Russia in hand, I'd stop the black market sale of nuclear weaponry just for press. There'd be a big parade, and I'd do something stupid like march all the nukes through downtown Moscow before attempting to light them on fire, symbolically destroying Russia's EVIL past, thus making myself a worldwide icon. Of course, lighting nukes on fire would actually just take the "symbolically" and "EVIL past" out of the previous sentence, and replace the word "icon" with the words "wanted criminal". So basically, if I controlled the gaming industry, we'd all be dead within 5 years.

Better multiplayer implementations, for every genre.

Now that broadband access is more available than not (okay, it's still a little pricey, but look at how fast computers got cheap), publishers ought to start figuring out ways to make that broadband work for them. EA Sports games where every player is human-controlled. Online RPGs done right, with the funding and talent given to games like Final Fantasy. (Didn't you ever want to see whether your FF7 party could trounce your buddy's?) Gran Tourismo World, where human players compete directly with each other for national rankings.

I played single-player Doom for about a month, and then I managed to get a multi-player game going. And since then I've only finished about three games, because the rest of my time has been spent playing against OTHER PEOPLE.

-Mike Powers

What direction the game industry would take from this moment onward?

Sorry Drew, that would be telling.

Richard "KZ" Knight

The RPG developers have swished their KOOL-AID between their cheeks for the last time! I'm turning the RPG genre around and we're going home right now!

I would immediately reverse the trend towards RPGs being interactive movies. I believe the major cornerstone of RPGs and all videogames is player involvement, and every year the player's involvement gets eroded away more and more. After a strict console-RPG diet, I picked up a copy of Fallout 2 and was glued to my monitor all night. What did Interplay, with less than one tenth the budget of a big Square RPG, manage to put into Fallout 2 that compelled me enough to play it all night, sleep 2 hours and then get up and play it some more?

For the first time in a long time, I felt truly involved in an RPG. As developers have added more and more storyline to RPGs, it hardly seems like it's MY quest anymore. Why even bother PLAYING anymore? The actual RPG gameplay is quite boring if you think about it. Select a command from a menu and watch the character do it. Go from point A to point B. Play a card game.

I think more and more control will get people more into the games. Sales of RPGs that are movie-like and uninvolving are growing, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't grow also if RPGs were different.

It can be a happy compromise... many PC RPGs have too much freedom, so story and characters take a back seat. FF6 was a great cross between story and player involvement. You had a main storyline to follow, and selected anyone from a group of 16 characters to have in your party. The forcing of characters down your throat like FF8 did can alienate the player if they don't like the character they are given. Choices and options, without adding too much freedom or eliminating too much story is the way RPGs should be. Nobody will pay $50 to watch a movie.

hey drew...

So I was in College Mall here in Bloomington, Indiana on Wednesday afternoon, on my way to Software Etc to pick up my copy of Phantasy Star Online when I felt a sudden strange presence. Well, maybe I felt a strange presence, maybe I didn't. Who cares either way?

Anyway, the Software Etc in College Mall is located right across the hall from a Victoria's Secret. As I sensed this aforementioned "Strange Presence," I looked to my left, toward the Software Etc. And what did I see?

A group of about nine or ten Tibetan monks, all wearing orange robes, red coats, and brown leather sandals. All around eighty years of age, all bald. Standing amidst them was a more well-dressed Tibetan man of about fifty, whom I recognized, and standing next to him was another man dressed the same as the other monks, except he appeared slightly younger. And he was wearing black horn-rimmed glasses. And carrying a big bag from B. Daulton bookstore.

I looked him right in the eye, for a noticable second, and as I did this, he looked at me and smiled. He nodded to me, and I nodded back.

It was the Dalai Lama, shopping at my mall with an entourage of nine or ten monks and his younger brother.

I could go into details, explaining exactly how it was possible (and probable) that I run into the Dalai Lama at College Mall in Bloomington, Indiana, just a few blocks outside of the Indiana University campus, though, well, I would rather comment on the fact that I shook of my encounter rather quickly in the name of childish excitement about buying Phantasy Star Online. Even being the avid reader of articles concerning Tibetan studies that I am, nothing beats a new RPG, nor an online one at that.

So I bought PSO and a new, official Sega 4X memory card, both for a "dead" system. I was pleasantly surprised to see that a Sonic Adventure 2 demo was included. I went home and played them before my Chinese film class. I had fun. PSO is hard as hell.

Just today, playing Skies of Arcadia again, I realized, "I saw the Dalai Lama, at the mall."

Just one of the things videogames can do to you. Imagine how complicated my life would become with drugs and/or alcohol. I think this one little addiction is to RPGs is enough. Spread the word, eh?

--tim rogers

Yo Drew,

I think that this is really easy. First, I'd make it so that there is only one console. This can only help the gamer, as they won't have to have one system for Zelda, one for Metal Gear, and one for Sonic Team stuff. Then I'd make sure that by penalty of capital punishment, no Tomb Raider, wrestling, or Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen games could be produced.

Ah...utopia...

--The Steve