Late-night updates by candlelight. Oh, it's a romantic life for me.

Reaction to GIA's launch has been wonderful. Thanks for all your letter, and please keep them coming. We can't do everything, I'm afraid, but your support and suggestions are what keep us rolling. Well, that and a healthy supply of herbal jazz cigarettes that Brian G. stores in the back closet, but that's a tale for another time.

Before we get to the letters, a quick reminder: while we think GIA is cool, and you may think it's cool, many, many people out there can't think we're cool unless they know about us to start with. So don't be shy, spread the word.

As with FF7, it's my impression that Amano will be doing environment designs for FF8. Additionally, as we've now seen, he'll do portraits and scenes of the main characters, which will hopefully find a home somewhere (an art book, perhaps). It should be said, however, that the character designs will *not* be Amano's. He'll just be doing pretty pictures. :) As for Angel's Egg, I've honestly never heard of it before. But I'm a shameless Amano freak (I bookmarked his web page, for chrissakes), so if I get more info, I'll pass it along.

Er... well, not really. I just started up Xenogears, and I'm really not seeing it. Anyone else?

Probably a coincidence. Episode One and FF8 have both been in production for quite a while, and I doubt either of them had spies working in each others' camps to uncover hidden character designs. It's an interesting look, though - sort of a 17th century fop meets Spider Queen look.

You da man.

For everyone's information, Brigandine is out already, and Guilty Gear is due any day now, if it's not already out there. Both are for PSX.

Atlus is slowly but surely growing into becoming a premiere source for weird, niche games ported for a US audience. Brigandine is a strategy/RPG, sort of like Dragon Force meets Military Madness on crack. The graphics aren't too great and the plot's fairly thin, but the gameplay is a lot of fun. It's worth checking out, IMO. Guilty Gear, being a fighting game, is sort of beyond the scope of this site, but what the hell. :) It's a glorious, gorgeous spazfest of a game, with really nifty character designs and gobs of style. Well worth looking into.

Hrm. Well, to my mind, Suikoden had three main selling points:

1. It was an early PSX RPG that wasn't Beyond the Beyond.

2. While most of the 108 characters were total ciphers, some of them managed to come across as being fairly memorable, especially in light of the rather good text translation. Gremio, in particular, sticks in my mind, months after I last played the game.

3. Chalk it up to pure taste. Suikoden was a highly traditional RPG, executed with a lot of style and panache. Yes, it was waaaaaay too short, that's seldom denied, but hell, so was Panzer Dragoon Saga. Suikoden really grabbed the imagination and attention of a number of RPGers, including quite a few of my personal friends. Guilty pleasure or hidden gem? I'm not sure. Anyone else care to weigh in on Suikoden? I don't feel strongly about it one way or another, myself, but am interested in your thoughts.

Truth be told, this was an idea batted around during the original site development for GIA. As it stands, we're keeping the Vault and Feature sections in-house for the moment, to set the tone and ensure everything's up to snuff. But at the same time, it does lend itself extremely well to freelance work by outside contributors, which will undoubtedly be helpful in the future. What does this mean, in English? Later on, helping out with the Vault will probably be possible. In the short term, we'll be handling it, so while we appreciate the enthusiasm, we can't accept freelance help. Okay?

Two days in, and I'm whacking the hornet's nest already. Heh. Well, Desmond, I'm of many minds on Zelda 64. On a purely technical level, it is unquestionably a triumph. I played it at the local Microplay today and my god, it was smooth. Flawless control, incredible freedom, extremely responsive, no slowdown, and so on and drool drool drool. This game truly exemplifies what the N64 processor can and should be doing. Gameplay-wise, Zelda is unimpeachable, at least from what little I've experienced.

The "is it an RPG or not?" question is a little trickier. I've seen solid arguments both ways. In the end, my opinion is that Zelda is an adventure game in the classic, Sierra game sense. I liken it to King's Quest, with the Mario 64 engine. There's plot, there's puzzles, there's action, but the feel of it, the quest nature makes me think of old EGA Sierra games rather than RPGs. But that's me. GIA will be covering it, any day now, as an Action RPG. There was some debate among the staff as to whether Zelda was an RPG or not, and in the end, we decided to include it in our coverage. It's a smart, innovative, classy game, and we'd rather bend definitions to be inclusive than to exclude something great.

On a truly personal note, I've never been much of a Zelda fan. While I accept and appreciate the skill and quality of them, there's something about the tone, theme, and wafer-thin characterization that always rubbed me wrong. I prefer something slightly gritter, slightly edgier than the wholesome Zelda series. But I cannot deny its success, and recommend it heartily. It's just not my bag.

Wow. I'm better at this than I thought. For the record, the Mr. T in FFTactics thing is a joke. It does not work. There are no A-Team characters in any Square game. So don't get in a huff about the nitty-gritty of it all - we're just kidding around.

As for the Konami Code, man, where've you been? Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start! There's nothing finer. That code was a staple of Konami-produced games from the days of the NES clear up to some of their SNES hits, and was the mantra of many a young gamer of the era, myself included. Man, does this mean I'm getting old?

And zat is zat. Glad to hear from all of you, and I'll have more perusables for you tomorrow evenining. Until then, good hunting and watch out for platypuses. Platypii. Whatever.

- Allan Milligan, Princess of Power