Double Agent

Ooookay.

Sort of a messy day today, in the old personal life arena, so my motormouth is a touch low on gas. Also, this site came under some fire from several areas over the past twenty-four hours for a certain story that we published, and are standing by. There's clarification and argument about it down below, with guest commentary from Andrew Vestal, since he knows the issues better than I do.

There's a new Deep Thought up on the subject of staying true to source material in translation. Quite frankly, I disagree strongly with it, but I'll leave rebuttal for tomorrow. All of you should feel free to share your thoughts, though.

Holy fishmongers, Batman!

The title of the first letter is a take on "Surf Nazis Must Die," or whateverthose guys at Troma decided to call it. See, Lloyd Kaufman was disappointedwith the way "Class of Nukem High Part 3" (actually, the best in the series)and "Sgt. Kabukiman LAPD" (despite the fact that the normal Troma humoursuddenly went *poof* and disappeared, it was a nice attempt), he filmed themovie "Redneck Zombies" (if you ever find this rare gem, get it) and "Tromeoand Juliet" (During the final shoot-out scene in Kirk Wong's "The Big Hit"between Mark Wahlberg and Lou Diamond Phillips, you can see half of a "Tromeoand Juliet" theatrical poster, which makes no sense because A] No Troma movieas of yet has been released in theatres, therefore, there would be no need fora movie poster, and B] Why would a video store post a Troma movie poster? But,I'm rambling). But, he didn't seem to be satisfied with these, either. So thenfilming of "Surf Nazis Must Die!" began, and an instant classic was born.

So there you go. Do I get my ten points, now?

gouranga


Holy whack-a-mole-ilicious, a whole slew of people did indeed catch the reference to Surf Nazis Must Die!, and thereby picked up ten points. What the points are for, I have no idea. But everyone who wrote in, ten points to you.

Wow. I've gotta get a whole lot more obscure in the future, I guess. So... anyone wanna talk about Mayo Methot?

Now this, I wasn't expecting

I need money. About $500. Anybody willing to make a donation contact me at dsh2000@juno.com I need the money because I want FF8, FF Collection, Lunar, a Dreamcast, and a game for the Dreamcast. Please don't tell me to get a job because I'm baraly to young for McDonalds to hire me. If I do not raise enough money I will be forced to rob a bank or do something else illigal to get what I want. I'll be getting what I want in the end. It's only a question of me getting it the easy way or the hard way.


I, er, okay. I'm printing this one on the strength of sheer originality.

An orange is an orange and a lemon is not

As of right now what seperates Hybrid Heaven from MGS is terms ofgameplay, etc.,?

-Paggledutas


Well, quite a lot. For one thing, HH has active RPG style battles, very much in the Parasite Eve vein. For another, it's clearly divided into 11 sections, whereas MGS is a bit more free-form, if similarly linear. HH is very much an RPG, with HP and MP, level-based advancement of stats and skills, and so forth. It also places emphasis on martial arts and hand-to-hand combat, whereas MGS has an arsenal of weapons.

Hybrid Heaven seems to have a lot in common with Parasite Eve, gameplay-wise. So I'd say that's a better comparison than with MGS.

Why FFIV was important

Hey Agent,

I really have to disagree with Jeffrey from yesterdays column. Hecomplains to Square about not bringing FF IV to the U.S in the collection.What is his problem? Just two years ago we wouldn't have a llamas chance inAntartica of having even one of these games being localized. Just be gratefulof what we are getting.

Also, what is it with people who think FF IV was the best game ever? Theonly basis for this claim that I've heard is that it had lots of romantictension between Cecil and Rosa. What's up with that? In my opinion it hadfairly good gameplay but an overly cliche'd story (although being able to gounderground and onto the moon was cool) If people liked what was going onwith Cecil and Rosa, they should just check out Xenogears with Fei and Elly.Ah well, just my thoughts

- Ginzsu


Most of the people who responded to the FFIV rant from yesterday bucked the previous trend and agreed that, at least once in a while, we should be happy about something. Which is nice. Happy is good.

As for FFIV... ah, here we go. Others are going to write in tomorrow about how fantastic they thought FFIV was, a lot more convincingly than I can right now. I should point out, though that FFIV holds a special place in the hearts of a lot of RPG fans. It was the first true cinematically-styled RPG, and the first RPG that screamed 16-bit. It had cutscenes, it had minimal level-building, it had lots of changes in party makeup, and the bosses looked absolutely fantastic. It was storytelling in game form, pure and simple, a huge departure from the gameplay-centric, dungeon-hopping style of most RPGs prior to it. The story and characters were the focus of FFIV, for the first and most obvious time in a US RPG, and people remember that fondly. There was nothing like it, and nothing better.

Allan is soft, like poultry

That letter title is a play on the title of "Space Bunnies must Die", a crappy lil' 3D Adventure game. By the by, Mr. Milligan, just how do you get those sexy kneecaps of yours to look their shiniest?

- Toaster Thiefette


Oddly enough, two other people thought I was referring to Space Bunnies Must Die yesterday, a game I've never even heard of. Huh. Well, ten points to all of you guys. Anyone care to send me extra info about Space Bunnies? It sounds quite bizarre, and therefore totally up my alley.

On the horizon

Prediction: there will only be two more generations of consoles after DC and PSX2. Why? Well, the way I see it is this (as a broad generalization):

1st generation console (eg. Atari) - god awful 2D

2nd generation console (eg. NES) - crappy 2D

3rd generation console (eg. SNES) - decent 2D, god awful 3D

4th generation console (eg. PSX) - photorealistic 2D, crappy 3D

5th generation console (eg. DC) - photorealistic 2D, decent 3D

6th generation console - photorealistic 2D and 3D

7th generation console - marginally better than 6th generation, may not exist

Technology is generally unbound. But as far as I can see, there's not much you can do to improve upon photorealism. Consoles after the 6th and 7th generations will be no better than their predecessors. The only two options from here that I can see are to turn consoles into a multipurpose creature (ie video/audio/game/word processor system) or to go to something vastly different (ie virtual reality). Even though a system made after the 6th and 7th generations would be more powerful (ie better sound, framerate, etc) there wouldn't be any significant differences to justify releasing it.

Am I being našve for thinking that consoles (as we know them) will reach the end of the technological line fairly soon? What do you think?

-CS-


If I could predict how technology was going to evolve, I'd be a millionaire. Seriously. There's that famous Bill Gates quote from circa 1982 or so, that says that 512 kb is all the memory any person could ever need. Everyone laughs at it, because it seems so naive. Back then, Gates thought he was seeing the crest of the technology wave, and he was totally, amusingly wrong. The same applies here, I think. We look at the latest FMV and go "how much further can it go?" Even if they reach the peak of graphical perfection, technology will find other ways to expand and refine itself.

No, I don't think we're reaching the end of the line. I don't know where we're headed next, but I don't think stopping is on the docket for the near future.

Confirmation and rebuttal

"First, the title is coming to the U.S. There is no doubt about that -- additional, reliable sources have already confirmed it. Any stories that go missing are a result of outside forces beyond webmasters' control, and not a reflection on the story's veracity. Second, the U.S. Final Fantasy collection will only include Final Fantasy V and VI -- another fact confirmed."

Um... when, where, and who confermed this as a fact? Not putting down your information and sources or anything, but there's been conflicting reports from different major sites and if your guys' info is correct you wouldn't have and troble telling me who confermed this as fact now would ya? If you can't you won't print this and if I see that it isn't printed then your info is probably wrong, something I'll tell people about. But like I said before that shouldn't be a problem if you could just tell us where these "facts" came from and if you could tell me where to go to see the original story, right?

Peace out,

DSH


Okay, an answer from the guy who knows the scoop on this one, Andrew V. AV, take it away.

"As a news media source, we bring our readers the most accurate information we can. On the other hand, we often protect our sources identities, if they desire, because some of the information they give us could get them in trouble with their parent organizations and/or Square if their identities were revealed. We've gotten confirmation from five separate industry resources of the Final Fantasy Collection story before we ran it. There really aren't conflicting reports -- no reputable sites are actually saying the game isn't coming, Square has just asked many to remove the news. PSX.IGN, videogames.com, Game Fan, RPGamer, PSX Nation, Gaming Age ... all these sites have run the story. Many of them have been contacted by Square and asked to take it down. The stories have been taken down because a misinformed PR representative announced the title publically before he or she was supposed to. Square is attempting to "contain" the story Nothing suggests that the report is false -- except for the spurious conclusions of some sites who saw that the story was removed and didn't bother to get their facts straight. The GIA checked with all of their sources again AFTER the story was pulled from Game Fan, before running secondary confirmation. We'd reveal our sources if we could; but we can't. We won't let that stop you from bringing the most accurate, truthful information around, though."

I can't stop you from believing that our information is wrong, but I suggest that you read the FF Collection news stories at Gaming Age and videogames.com, both of which implicitly or explicitly point out that the story isn't inaccurate, but simply being covered up by Square. We're not fringe lunatics, here. I'd feel a lot better if we could post up the names of our sources and dispel the doubt right now. It'd cut down my hate mail load, if nothing else. But that could damage the reputations of us, our sources, and our capability to get more scoops out of them, all of which are Bad.

Essentially, you've got three options. First, you can ignore us, Gaming Age, vgs.com and others, and go with the Square party line, thinking us liars and crackpots. Second, you can believe our story, and trust that in time, the story will indeed be confirmed by Square PR officially when they feel the time is right. Third, you can just shrug and move on, since it's just one story. Your call.


Closing comments

Someone asked me what the GIA staff think of FF8. Most of us haven't played it, and I won't be doing so until the North American release. Andrew Vestal and The Lick have both played it, though, and jabber about it constantly, praising it to the hilt.

Still no word on the Tales of Destiny sales issue. I'll try and have an answer by the end of Monday.

- The Double Agent

 
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