After sending my two cents to Square about having the Battle with Gilgamesh theme in the CD that's going to be included with FF Anthology or whatever they're going to call it, I got to thinking. 'S dangerous, I know, but still. Are they just going to toss the tunes from the game into the CD, or are they going to clean it up, redo it with real instruments, ect? I'm going to be pretty dissapointed if it's just the same stuff from the game. "Yeah, we know you didn't get FF4, but to make it up to you, here, we dumped some music into this here CD, so it's all better now!" Er, now I'm probably going to get flamed for speaking badly against something. Well, ah, I own a couple of OSVs, favorites being FFT and Nocturne in the Moonlight. Welp, that's about it.

-The Grand Finale

Dude Hey! With all the next gen systems having modems as a standard what do you think they will use? Cable modems or phone lines? And I was wondering what the payment method is gonna be? am I gonna need a credit card? Hell I'm only 15 and well ya know...

-p.s. I dig that evil carebear, tell him #@!~% him too!

I got a PlayStation around Christmas 1997. Someone told me different, but if I buy a Dual Shock Controller for FF8, will it work with my PlayStation?

-Guanabara J

Well, you probably already got a message about this, but what the heck...

It looks like the GIA is going to get a lot more exposure. The GIA was the source for a news story in PSM. If you are not familiar with them, it is the independant Playstation Magazine, with quite a few people from the magazine "Game Players" on staff. Specifically, your story called "FFIX revealed" and the accompanying pictures were used in the magazine, with the web page listed as the source. Oh, and it even gives a bit of a testimonial, calling you a "well-respected online news site." For reference, it is the August 1999 Issue, Vol. 3, Issue 24, page 14.

Sorry, but I'm out of champaigne .

-Newbie X

Oh, I agree with you on judging games. I think it's stupid how for years people have been begging for a Chrono Trigger sequel, and now that it's out all they're doing is bitching. And you pretty much summed up my opinion about picking apart games. Maybe if people stopped complaining and laughing at every little flaw they'd actually enjoy the game.

You may have answered this in another column (I'm not up-to-date), but what do you think of Chrono Cross from what you've seen (yeah, all 8 or so images :P)?

Also, I just wanted to ask why people don't like the Star Ocean 2 voices. I don't care if they're poorly done, I enjoy them. It adds a whole damn lot to the already cool battles. I guess that's it.

-Alex Kimbel

i want to complain about Chrono Cross.......

not that it will suck, i'm sure it will be a great game that i can't wait to play.... my problem is, why did they change the characters??? even though Final Fantasy was a better game, i played (and still do) chrono trigger more, everything from the fantastic opening music to the multiple endings. Why? i loved the game because of the characters!!! Chrono (okay, so he didn't speak at all) and the rest had a lot of depth to them, and by the end of the game, you almost didn't want it to end, cause you felt SO close to the characters. and the ending left so much to the imagination, it sets up a perfect what happens next? scenario! do chrono and marle ever get married? does frog get his body back what happens to schala? does magus find her? what happens to Robo??? since his future doesn't exist anymore!!

i could go on forever

I had always assumed that if square, if ever made a sequel, they would continue the storyline and not start from scratch, like they do with final fantasy.......... at least i hope the characters have SOME link to the old characters and they keep some of the old stuff (masamune, Guardia, epoch) but i guess at this point, it's wishful thinking... At this point, i guess we have to wait to see what the storyline is going to be!! one more point, it was called CHRONO trigger, Chrono was the main character....well i'm rambling now.... if anyone reads this, i hope you agree!!

-Vasken "drp" Balouzian

Hey Drew,

Why are we americans so stupid? Okay lets look at this. "I wish square would make a Chrono Trigger sequel," "I want a CT sequel so bad that I would cut off my fingers even though I couldn't play it, long as I knew it existed."

Now look a Chrono Trigger sequel comes out, and all of a sudden people start bitching. "Damn square they're using a system that was designed to use polygons, and guess what they're doing making Chrono Trigger with 3d graphics." Come on folks, would you like a game that showed a black screen for forty hours.

When FF7 came out all you could hear is how great it was. Now look, "FF7 Sucks!!!" I swear if the original Chrono came out right now, no one would like it. When Lunar 3 comes out (I could've sworn some sight saying that it was in the making) all your going to hear "Lunar: SSS good game, Lunar: EB good game, but Working Designs is going to screw Lunar 3 up big time." You can't please us americans.

Well if I haven't persuaded you which i'm sure I didn't, play the game before you trash talk it.

-Xenogear1, the guy who isn't a square fanatic, (I liked FF7, loved Xenogears and BFM) but who dosn't like to judge a book by it's cover.

After seeing the character design by Nobuteru Yuuki, I quickly realized something about Chrono Trigger. One of the reasons why Chrono Trigger was so good was because of the graphics and characters. Akira Toriyama's character design fits perfectly into the Square's graphics/ setting. From the main characters to the level 1 monsters, it seems that they all contribute into bringing life in that artificial world.

Things ranging from Crono's hair to robot styles, all give character to each individual. This definition of characters is, obviously, not present in Yuuri's drawings. Toriyama's imaginative creativeness can be seen in his infamous designs on the Dragon Ball series - without his talent, I believe Chrono Cross will not capture audience like the first one did.

Still waiting for Crono to turn Super Saiyajin or Fusion with Magus . . .

-Kokonut Kid

How many of the kids who bitched about Final Fantasy VII being all graphics and no substance do you think are currently the people who have written off Chrono Cross because its graphics and designs suck gravel? Personally, my money's on "A whole lot." I'm looking for a word with which to most effectively describe those people, but I can't decide if it's "hypocrite," "fickle," or "superficial" ("friggin' morons" would also be appropriate, except that it's two words). Let's see, complain about one game for its emphasis on appearance, and then judge another game solely by it appearance - why, I do believe that "hypocrite" is indeed the proper word.

I suppose I could make some saucy remark about how this is the inevitable result of the mass-market acceptance of the RPG genre, that once upon a time RPGs were played by people who looked past the little 8-pixel tile graphics and enjoyed the game's depth, but I won't. I used up my Boorish Prick Quota for the day on that "friggin' morons" comment.

Not that I want to rush to pass judgment, lest I become one of those hypocrites myself, but I've always figured the reason video games are called "video games" and not "video character designs" is because the point of them was to play the "game" rather than stare at the "character designs." Since a Chrono Cross demo won't even be available to play for another week (thereby making it difficult to judge the gameplay at the moment - gameplay is something Shonen Jump scans typically don't express too effectively), I figure I'll reserve my judgment until then.

But then again, I'm not a friggin' moron.

Your loving cannibal surf babe,
-J. Parish

Drew,

It seems to me that lately, we as a gaming community have experience an extreme surplus of negativity. Nearly everything I see nowadays--in relation to the video game industry--is negative. Square sucks, Working Designs sucks, N64 sucks, PSX sucks, Chrono Cross sucks, sprites suck, polygons suck, FF8 sucks, Star Ocean sucks. And that's only a sampling of the list. Why do people now feel the need to bitch about EVERYTHING? I think I can vaguely remember a time when the good points of a game were emphasized over the bad points. If a game had lousy graphics but a great plot and gameplay, most people would label the graphics as only a minor setback in an otherwise great game. Now, it seems to me that every game intrinsically sucks and has one or two good points that MAY make it worth wasting your time for. "Oh, sure, FF8 is pretty, but it'll really only be enjoyable if you can live through the horrible translation." "I suppose Shadow Madness' plot is good, but the graphics will kill you." "Star Ocean 2's voice acting is HORRIBLE.. it totally ruins the fun of the game." See what I mean? I think the gaming community as a whole needs to take a deep breath, count to ten, and just chill out. Focusing on any game's weak points will do nothing but ruin what fun there was in the game, and discourage other people from playing it. Of course, this is just a pipe dream, even though I'm sure there's at least a few other people out there who agree. Or maybe I'm the only person who's sick of bitching; who knows?

-Matt Blackie

See, the thing with translations is that Square is a corporation, and what matters to them as a corporation is making money. Before you peg me as a Square-basher, I should clarify that all big corporations are like this. Square's only real concern with the North American market is that we have money they want. This is their only concern with the Japanese market too, but with the Japanese market they're going on more than basic racial stereotypes. Anyway, their goal is to get as much money as possible while spending as little as possible. The creation of something cool is incidental. Regardless of what we might like to think, we ultra-hardcore-lesbian-sex gamers do NOT command the market, and it's simply not worth the money to make a good translation. If it can be done it's a good thing, but it's not going to have enough of an effect to be worth the money lost from hirings and delays. So long as the translation's not as bad as, say, BoF2, it won't appreciably affect the sales of the game or any future games by the same company. If someone managed to arrange a very large boycott of badly translated games, then the profit/loss rate might be altered enough to make good translations a smart choice financially...but to be quite frank, such a boycott is not going to happen. My suggestion is to just deal with it, and hope to make subtle changes over the course of time. Video games are business, and in business, the bottom line rules all.

just to add to your comments to Metroid_X's letter, one has to realize that Square, unlike Working Designs, must spend a greater portion of money on their games than most companies do.

Square spent $25 million producing FF7. To my knowledge, that doesn't include localizing the game for this side of the Pacific. I very much doubt that Working Designs had to spend that much to translate and perform the appropriate modifications to the game code of Lunar for its release here in North America. Sure, you can argue that Square is a much larger company than Working Designs, but $25 million is a whole wad of cash even to giant companies like EA and Square. Afterall, profits from recent games always have to fund the failed projects as well as any future projects.

-Reno

Drew,

Why in the world are you advertising Playtex bras on the GIA!? I don't usually think of those when I visit your site.

-SLT