Well, despite my disgust for all things Nintendo, I decided to sit downand play Zelda 64 for a while last night. I fell into my usual state ofcataplexy and did my usual 5 hours of preliminary play before finallyrealizing what time it was. Now, I may not have gotten very farcompared to what other writters have, but I would like to say somethingabout Zelda 64: It's a good game.

That's really it. It's a good game. I am not any more impressed withit than I have been with any other game. I am glad I didn't try tolearn how to play with the guide book, cause that thing is just too dangconfusing. Zelda 64 is not the game of the decade. It is not the RPGof the decade, it is not the action game of the decade. It is a goodgame. It may end up being the best selling game of the decade, but thatis because it has had the greatest hype of the decade.

Zelda had not lived up to its hype, and those people who think that ithas are trying to convince themselves that they did not fall victim toover-advertising. I will continue to play Zelda 64 because it doesinterest me, but I feel that those who have been expecting a gamingexperience above and beyond their Mario 64 cartoon have been robbed.The only extras that they got were a better storyline and a sword.

I_Am

Ah yes, my first email to any "Letters" section. Now, B knows a reeally easy way to get in, but all that would do is get me strange looks from you guys, and I'm not like that anyway. So...

1) First of all, I have some mutant cheese in my refridgerator that calls itself "Seraph-Cheezwiz" and is threatening to convert some of that old corned beef (or is it taco meat?) in my fridge to "the Ultimate Being NeoCornedBeef". What should I do with it? It ate the pizza I had in there for lunch!

2) Weird things about Xenogears:

The music that plays when you're about to do something big with the Yggdrasil (a FAQ calls it "heroic theme", goes "dm tatatata dm tatatata dmdm tatatata") sounds like FFT.

Both "Kislev" and "Shebat", as well as another place I can't think of the name of, are months on the Hebrew calendar.

I just fought an enemy named "Id". Are there enemies named "Ego" and "Superego"? Or would they be "Ion Storm" and "Epic Megagames"?(Obscure computer game joke)

4) Did you notice that if you translate Tellah's name differently, it comes out "Terra"? (Not to all rabid revival conspiracy theorists: Terra was Tina in FF6j.)

- Tellah

Hey, Allen! [Toma notices the dark-garbed figures suddenly surrounding him]Um, I mean, hello Double Agent Trenchcoat Guy. Let me say that it's great to 1) see you back doing a column 2) see that yourlove life seems to have straigtened out, and 3) see that you're still gettinga steady stream of people telling you how great it is to see those thingshappening.

Anyway, first a question about Xenogears, since you're playing it. What kindof indication will the demo give me about the game? I've seen a lot of peoplewho love XG, but I found the demo tedious in some way I can't really explain.Is the rest of the game like that?

Now, responding to what FF5Rulz said about translations, I disagree. TedWoolsey's translations of FFVI, Chrono Trigger, and SMRPG are probably thebest I've seen to this date. Japanese and English are distinctly differentlanguages in terms of how people talk, so what sounds great in Japanese maysound lame, literally translated into English. Faithfullness to the originalis nice, but one thing that really involves me an RPG is characters who talkand act like real people. People I've talked to who've played FFVI inJapanese say that the dialogue is generally bland and sometimes melodramatic,and that Woolsey did a lot to spice it up and make it make it more readable.I know the crispness of the dialogue helped me relate to the characters prettywell the first time I played FFIIIUS.As for the "mature themes" argument, well, what little mature content wasedited out of FFVI was changed because of Nintendo of America's restrictions,not because of the translator.

-Toma Levine

I have to agree with Mr. Luciferage, I've never understood what thewhole point of Amano's art was. In fact, over the years, I've growto hate it, because it looks so bizarre, and it makes all the fanartists draw the same, ugly to my eyes, pictures of the characters thatI love so much. It was the game dialogue, not Amano's art, that madethe cast of Final Fantasies 4, 5 and 6 "come alive" for me. (Well, the villains in 5 anyway, I dislike the heroes.) The other problemthat I have with Amano is that he draws nothing original these days.I took a look at his new FF8 art, and saw exactly what I expected tosee; characters that look just like the ones he drew for FF6. Really.I'm assuming the picture is supposed to be Squall and Rinoa. My point isthat it looks like Locke and Celes. So did his picture of Aerith andCloud. And the woman on the cover of Kartia looks like Terra. I'veseen someone else from Kartia who looks like Kefka. I could go onand on, but there's no point. Who wants to see one pale blond(e)character after another? I certainly don't.

Now, if only the translations would improve (No more literaltranslations!!!) so that I could read some excellent dialogue andfind a new set of characters to love.

-Devon V.

First of all, I would like to say that I mostly agree with HerandarLuciferage's comment yesterday when he said Yoshitaka Amano sucks. Hischaracter drawings have less coherency than an unfinishedconnect-the-dots puzzle. I would much prefer Tetsuya Nomura or AkiraToriyama style drawings that are more simplistic and show solid colorsforming solid characters. SO why do I only mostly agree that Amanosucks? Well, I heard somewhere (probably on this column) that hedesigned landscapes for FF7. Those were absolutely beautiful. If I'm notmistaken saying he designed the landscapes, then he should stick withSquare, but stay away from character drawings.

Hey allan GIA is really looking helluva great yadi yadi yada. I'mwondering why they call Body Harvest (the N64 game that should have beenout 2 years ago but is out now) an RPG. It doesn't seem to have any realelements from what I've seen and MGS could probably pass for a better RPG! Anyway great job on GIA and please answer the question. :P

Josh Justice

Greetings Citizen!

I don't think Suikoden deserves all the praise it gets, it was a very mediocre game IMO. First off, the graphics (not that graphics are everything! *ducks to avoid being hit by traditionalists*) looked like a bad PC shareware RPG. The spells were okay, but the rest was quite bland. The characters art had a nice painted look, but it didn't help much.

Some of the songs were nice, I liked the mountain theme and japanese-esque town theme, but the battle theme, something that should be very good because you will hear it a lot, was BAAADD.... super cheese.

And now to the gameplay, the most important thing right? Suikoden has something I both love and hate (in 'classic' (FF, DQ, etc) RPGs, tactical RPGs like FFT and Tactics Ogre use autobattle in appropriate way) at the same time, an autobattle feature, which tends to make battles almost irrelevant at times (I mean, if you can use autobattle to win, why bother wasting time inputing the fight command normally?), allowing you to breeze through until the bosses, where you need to cast spells to heal occasionally. I just don't think autobattle should be included in a game like this, it lowers the challenge and doesn't keep you interested in battles.

The rune system was a little confusing, but maybe that was because I didn't have the manual (I rented it). I liked the way of upgrading weapons, it was like SoM's reforging, only it didn't require the appropriate orb.

Well, I guess that's all I have to say about Suikoden, I didn't get to try out the army battles, but I hear they aren't that great anyway. Suikoden may be a fine and sturdy RPG, it just isn't that special.

--Lakupo

Evil Peer informs me that the Dreamcast will indeed be HDTV compatible, contrary to what I said yesterday (thanks for the correction), I_am was wondering about the veracity of FF9's already being in production, and likely to be released before 2000 (we haven't received any concrete information on it recently, but when Square USA in Honolulu was established, its proposed projects included CG development for the FF Movie and FF9. However, especially in light of rumblings that Sony's releasing PSX2 development kits to key clients in early '99, I'd suspect that FF9 will be a PSX2 title, and therefore unlikely to come out pre-2000), Savior413 wonders where he can see He-Man reruns (most older video stores have old episodes in the Kids section), Jon Weng wonders if GIA is affiliated with IGN (nope), and Kantol wonders if I'm really happy where I am, giving weird answers to weird questions. You bet your sweet bippy I am. I'm the Double Agent and I'm loving it.