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. Fair enough, Mr. Parish, but if it happens again the lawyers get involved. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Sometimes I watch TV and I'm amazed at how stupid this hobby isn't.

Sure, games have cliched plots, trite emotions, and characters who often aspire to be merely two dimensional, but it could be a lot worse. Have you seen beer commercials lately? Or what most sitcoms are passing off as humor? Good lord, just watching the promos for Jerry Springer make me feel like Stephen Hawking visiting a special ed center. In comparison to all that, even the Legend of Dragoon flames seem pretty reasonable... ok, maybe not, but it still helps to put them in context.

Onward.

We should have seen this one coming... who knows, if I feel like a laugh over the 4th of July, maybe I'll read through one or both and write up a review for the site.

Here's where I smugly declare that I only have the one sibling, and she could care less about playing my games. Aside from a bit of arguing over who got to play Secret of Mana vs. who got to watch Full House, no problems there. Still, you have my sympathies, because at some point I'll most likely end up co-habitating with my gameplaying girlfriend, and she'll almost certainly hog the controller the whole way through FFXII...

You know, that's something I've noticed too - nobody's repeatedly messed up my game endings, but the phone invariably rings during key story sequences, and any attempt to pause the scene just ends up skipping over it entirely. And since most key sequences are after a major boss battle, I have to reset and start over from my last save point if I want to see what happens, or just give up on the scene and gather what happened from context.

The only way to get around it that I can see is to record all such scenes by piping the game signal to my VCR, but that frankly crosses a nerd threshold I'm just not ready for.

I think things may have changed a bit, now that ads for FF7 - 9 have been plastered all over MTV and the like, but you're right; when I was a kid, most people who found out I was seriously into games thought I was being childish, which led to something of a don't ask don't tell policy about RPGs. Which is a shame, since, for all I know, half the school was into Final Fantasy 2, but we allowed ourselves to be silenced by people whose idea of entertainment was driving around empty parking lots all night while getting plastered.

Of course, now that I've grown up and hang out with computer people almost exclusively at work, it's less of an issue - they may not understand my need to have Metal Gear Ray wallpaper on my computer, but they're hardly going to complain when their own hobbies involve herb gardening or cattle ranching. I still pity my gaming brethren who publicly declare their love for their hobby in environments where the latest Julia Roberts movie is considered high art.

Hell yes. Hasn't been an issue since I left for college, but I could hardly play games all weekend because of my dad wanting to watch sports Sunday afternoon, or the family wanting to watch Murder, She Wrote on Sunday evenings. Add that to the occasional attempt for someone to figure out what was going on: "Who's he? Why did he do that? What are you doing to that guy? Why did you suddenly crash into that wall?" (Because you wouldn't stop distracting me, dammit!)

No, gaming in households where everybody shares one decent TV is far from ideal. All I can do is recommend moving out on your own and getting a killer entertainment system, once you can afford it - there's nothing quite like the thrill of realizing that the 32-inch flatscreen is all yours, and NOBODY's going to kick you off to watch Monday Night Football.

I tend to agree, but think it'll have more to do with shallower things than that. Consider that once somebody sees the FF movie, regardless of what they thought of the story they'll be impressed by the graphics and the action, and want more of the same. Bad enough if they pick up FF8 or 9 and see the smooth, perfect textures get turned into grainy polygons with a clunky battle interface, but Square's releasing the FF Chronicles just before the movie (today, as a matter of fact), so their first experience to Final Fantasy might be FF4.

Don't get me wrong, I love FF4 and always will, but compared to what the movie's like, it'll be like running into a brick wall. Some few will doubtless see past the limited graphics to the greatness inside, but it might have been a lot better for Square if they could have launched the much more polished FFX alongside the film. Pity, that.

Never happened to me, although something similar once broke me of the habit of pausing my games. Way, way back, when I first got my Atari 5200, I put my game of Joust on hold to go eat dinner using the then revolutionary pause button. About 15 minutes into the meal my sister noticed that the TV was flashing back and forth with different colors, turning the black background disturbing red and yellow primaries. Looking back, I now know that it was simply going into a cheap form of screen-saving to avoid burning an image into the picture tube, but at the time I thought my system was dying - I rushed to turn it off, and it was years before I ever paused for more than a few seconds again.

In a similar vein, though, I have fond memories of playing the original Zelda before I knew about the insta-quit feature, so whenever I'd have to stop playing I'd yell out, "Hang on, I've got to kill myself!" and proceed to run Link into as many monsters as I could, as quickly as I could, all in a quest to get to the continue/save/retry screen. All I remember is, Link with the red ring and two full rows of heart containers took a looooong time to die...

Excellent idea; I'm sure everyone will love to read it when I begin my retirement from actually having a life... right around 2041, I'm guessing...

Between this letter and a few I got about my comments on tabletop RPGs, I think it's time we review an important concept called the "qualifier". (Can you say that with me class? Qualifier.)

In this case, I specifically said most people won't go professional, just as I said you probably won't get your D&D scenario published. Obviously some people manage to make the jump, or there'd be no writers or pen and paper RPG designers at all, but, statistically speaking, most people won't. This is a true statement, but I'm not trying to crush anybody's fragile spirit, just pointing out basic facts.

So next time you feel a rush of anger coming on when you read this column because you think I've made a blanket statement to which there's an obvious counter-example, take a breath and read it again: I'm probably already there myself with the qualifier.

What was that word again?

Qualifier.

We now return you (hopefully) to your regularly scheduled, non-prick DA.

It's been my experience that most people stop gaming right around the time they start a family, will they or nil they, but if you've managed to keep it up after marriage and kids, then I say more power to you, sir. You're an inspiration to us all.

All I can suggest is doing what two brothers I knew once did - when there was a dispute over who got the machine, they'd switch to Street Fighter, and whoever took best of three rounds would get to have the system for the next few hours.

And that wasn't my laundry you swiped from the dryer, that was my next door neighbor's.

And dude, she is pissed...

Closing Comments:

It is, of course, a horrible idea to try to tie the FF plots together. Square's said numerous times that each plot is independent of the others, and any grand framework intended to tie everything together would only cheapen the series as a whole.

Still, we've already had a free topic this week, so I'd like you to come up with the most ludicrous scenario possible to tie things together, to demonstrate how bad an idea this really is. Go nuts - try not to bring in crossovers by Crono or Mulder and Scully, but otherwise, the sky's the limit. Have fun, and I'll see you tomorrow.

-Chris Jones, figures The Matrix has to tie into it, somewhere...