People suck, I've decided.

People and ISPs. And since ISPs are run, surprise surprise, by people, I suppose it all boils down to that basic idea. You see, I had a strange night of internet access last night. You see, I could send mail. I could receive mail. I could websurf a bit. But the moment, the very second I even contemplated trying to access anything related to GIA, everything went to hell. No WWW access, no FTP, no IRC, no mail, all for a good twenty hours or so. Gods, what a frustrating experience.

I've got some other bones to pick with people who suck, incidentally, but I figure I should only bitch about one topic per day. Prevents negativity overload, y'see.

In any case, things appear to be working smoothly again now, so I can at least answer some viewer mail, and bring a little joy into the hearts of all of you. Or something like that. I'll even try and restrain my deep-seated hatred and resentment for all the world. For now.

1. Well, Wutai is (as some letter-writers pointed out) the only other place in the FF7 world with a standing army, so I'd guess that there was a Midgar/Wutai war in the past. Alternately, there may have been some rival nations that were around prior to the game's start, but I'd have to wonder what happened to their armies. Perhaps Junon was originally an independent city-state.

2. It kicks ass most mightily. It's gorgeous, the music is stunning, the gameplay is smooth as a baby's bottom, and the atmosphere is just beautiful. If the voice acting was better, I'd say it was just about perfect. As it stands, it's just really fantastic.

3. That would take a rather large amount of time, and Square seems quite intent to spend the bulk of their time and money in pushing forward development of new titles, not revamping old ones. It'd be cool to see a pumped-up FF6, mind you, but Square doesn't seem too keen on that sort of thing.

4. The Suikoden music was composed by Konami's Kukeiha Club, a group of on-staff musicians who do the music for most (if not all) of their games. Versatile bunch, they are.

Pop quiz! Name another game developer who boasts an in-house band? What's the develope, what's the band's name, and what's their most famous creation?

They're the latest in a long-standing effort for companies to emphasize key words in the dialogue. Some games do it more than others. For example, FFTactics opened with the narrator asking you to go on a search for the "truth", which of course is fundamentally dissimilar from searching for the truth. But I digress. The writers want to make sure that you pay attention to important or strange words, and emphasize them by putting them in quotations marks, special marks like the Wild ARMs thingies, or whatever. Robotrek switched the color and increased the font size of key words and phrases, so you'd be absolutely sure to PAY YOUR RESPECTS TO THE MAYOR. I guess the Wild ARMs guys just wanted to use something that stood out, but wasn't overly intrusive.

First off, welcome to the GIA cult. May our ranks swell still more in the coming days. Second, our Dossiers are still available in the About GIA section, along with linking banners and buttons so you can plug us on your own site, if you so choose.

I've played Megaman Legends a bit. It's... strange. Certainly a departure from the rest of the series, for which I thank Capcom forevermore. Talk about milking a cash cow to the bone. Yes, Data the monkey is cute as all hell, though I didn't catch the MiB reference. I can't help but wonder, however, if Megaman Legends wouldn't have fared better on the N64. I really think a stronger graphics engine would have made smoothed out the atmosphere, and made it a bit more fun to play around with. Still, an interesting experiment, and I hope Capcom tries something of the like again in the future.

Well, as the first letter this col pointed out, there's evidence that there were some actual wars in the history of the FF7 world prior to the start of the game. Some of them, I expect, were subtle infiltrations, but clearly some were not. Which were which, it's hard to tell.

SNES Shadowrun. I'd like to see a sequel. The SNES version was innovative, fun to play, well-executed, and had superb control and crisp, active gameplay. The Genesis version had crap graphics, music, and the gameplay clunked like Virtual Hylide. Avoid it, says I. I mean, the Genny version started off by selecting one of three kinds of characters, all of whom had zero personality or spark. The SNES version started off with you in a morgue. There's just no comparison.

1. Lucca is in the mayor's house in the first town. She tells you how to use save points, and steals your money.

2. Yoko Shimomura.

1. Maybe it's because you stole your copy, and the God of Justice is screwing it up, so that you'll get compelled to return it and admit to your crime. You see your error? Do you understand how much you've hurt society, hurt yourself, hurt me? Don't you see the "truth"? I want the truth!

2. Wear I go, I don't need no bikini...

3. I always did wonder why my watch looked more optimistic on the shelf than it ever has on my arm.

I don't think Square is all marketing, myself, but I certainly don't believe they gave their all in developing the PSX remakes of the FF series. Whether your idea would work or not, I can't say. I'm no techie. But the company that reduces load time to virtually nil on all their games having long load times on an old, relatively tiny product strikes me as laziness, rather than inability.

The ideas just keep pouring in. I like the last one the best, though.

I'd still like to see Id beat Michael Flatley to death, though.

Closing comments

Well, okay, so I'm not angry and bitter at the world. People don't suck. Shadowrun for Genesis, however, does indeed suck. Bleah bleah bleah what a waste of a good license. It makes me want to sing showtunes in the nude, under a full moon.

Not that I do that sort of thing regularly.

- The Double Agent