Oh, the wonders of pre-planning. Hello, Agent-fans, it's your old pal Allan back in the saddle here. Most of you must be wondering what the blithering hell is up with DA these days. I've asked myself the same question, and here's the answer I came up with.

My internet connectivity comes from an ISDN line that comes into my house. ISDN is fun and exciting, but has proven to be problematic. See, I live in an area of the city of Ottawa which has notoriously weak phone and data line cables. I also have lousy luck with all things electronic. So, for a period of about five days about a week ago, my connection was totally screwed. It would remain open for maybe thirty seconds at a time. This was Not Good. So I squeezed off a message to Drew, saying "help!", and lo, the Cosner didst fill in for me.

I regained full functionality of my connection about three days ago. Now, ordinarily, I'd have just segued back into updating, as usual. However, Drew had already started off the week, and had what I thought was a nifty idea for DA during E3 - namely, he'd tell neat little stories and share impressions of the show, stuff that wouldn't fit in a news story. So, Drew and I agreed that he'd just round out the week of updating DA as usual, and I'd get a nice long break in which I could, well, do whatever.

As you might have noticed, things didn't quite work out as we planned.

Drew's E3 preparations and activities have occupied much more of his time than he expected, hence his lack of updating. And since I didn't notify anyone that I was operational again, I received no letters with which to create a column. Oops.

So, this is a short column, with the few letters I was sent just because. I invite you all to share your thoughts, insights, and really bad jokes, as always. I will be updating DA daily again, even during E3. But, when and if Drew finds the time, we'll... do something with it. Throw my column to the wolves or something. Whatever. Rain or shine, the Agent is back, so let's see some letters. Let's see some BLOOD.

... so long as it's not mine.

I assume they'll just push up the timeline a decade. I mean, honestly, how many angry Crystalis purists are going to batter down their doors in anger that the sacred date of 1999 was changed to 2009? No one. Okay, maybe AV. In any event, the game is clearly set in an alternate timeline from reality, but having the Crystalis plot as is, released now, would just look silly.

Sadly, I recently had to take down my shrine dedicated to Catherine. Something about questionable content, and doctored photos. Threats of lawsuits it I kept it up, that sort of thing. So feel free to fwd me URLs or C. Z-J websites... for educational purposes, of course. Rowr.

I'll agree with you on the first note, the first two parts of #3, and hope that you're right on the last point. The Shadow Madness demo was roundly thrashed, despite having excellent story and dialogue, and if the six months of delays were enough to improve the gameplay flaws of the demo, it should be quite an interesting game. Probably not an FF8 killer (what is?), but I'm a champion of the underdog, and SM might well be my next cause.

I don't wish ill for the Dreamcast. Okay, I'm not a big Microsoft fan. But for the existence of Climax Landers alone, I cannot hate the DC. And, in the end, I judge systems on the basis of their software, not the developers. If TTI was reformed and snagged the best games in the world as exclusives, I'd buy it. Brand name loyalty, and brand name hatred, has burned me far too often in the past to adhere to it.

For the record, use agent@thegia.com. Gaming-intelligence.com still works, but thegia.com is our primary URL for the forseeable future, so I'd switch to that. Oh, and for those who asked, we would've preferred to have www.gia.com be out web address, and we tried to get it, but gia.com is owned by a very large corporation that spends more on coffee weekly than all of the GIA staff has combined.

By the way, I've played Seiken Densetsu 3, and quite honestly, I think the "too many bugs to translate" excuse was just that - a lame excuse. You had to go out of your way to encounter those bugs. The English text/memory limit reason makes a lot more sense, though.

Some people use ice cubes rubbed gently in right circles around the tip of the breasts, but I find that's too slow and wet for my tastes. Instead, I use Tight Tits, the nipple hardening cream that's easy to apply, and leaves no filmy residue.

Closing comments

Hokay. I don't know who's going to be updating this column next, but rest assured, it will be updated tomorrow. So stay tuned, eat healthy, and send me letters or I'll carve my initials into your buttocks with a pair of red-hot pinking shears. And I assure you, that won't get your mojo working.

- Allan Milligan