It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... - July 25th, 1999 - Andrew Kaufmann
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot.
Don't look now, but yes, 'tis I, your old buddy, Andrew Kaufmann -- back at the helm of a
letters column. For a day, anyway. Drew has decided to take the day off and work on
other GIA-related issues, so I volunteered to try to steer the S.S. Double Agent into
safe waters while not forgetting take timeout to harpoon a shark or two along the way.
It's been quite a while since I did this sort of thing, so I beg that you forgive me
if I am stuffily stiff, bodaciously boring, and, in a nutshell, dumbfoundingly dumb.
The wise and powerful Mr. Cosner will return to this spot tomorrow, so, like,
continue to send your anecdotes and queries to
the man and stuff. If, for some bizarre reason, you feel the need to drop
yours truly a line, feel free to do so.
I can't promise I'll reply to every letter, because I'm in a cast due to a
broken wrist and typing is, literally, a pain. I felt I had to overlook the pain
and truck on, because, frankly, I missed you guys and I missed doing a letters
column every now and then! Maybe I'll even forget to update, just for old times'
sake...
Nah. Let's do some letters!
| Give the man some support |
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Why do all your ad's have something to do with female hygene or beauty
or teeny bopper music???????? I have seen Wonderbra, I have seen Platex,
and I have seen hanes Hosery. Why the hell would these people advertise
on your site, your site is mostly male readership(a sad thing but true)
so you should have more appropriate ad's if you actualy want us to click
them.
That said, I am against advertising and would never click on the links.
*insert evil laugh*
-Aziraphale The Paladin(Prexus Server, Everquest)
PS: On a side note, there has been something I have been wantig to ask
for a while...
WHY ARE YOU SUCH A DISGRUNTLED EGOTISITCAL ASSHOLE?
...just wondering, and I hope you take no offence...
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I'd like to start out by offering you my thanks, Aziraphale. When Drew asked me if
I would agree to do Double Agent tonight, the first thing I said was "Do you have any
questions about lingerie to forward to me?" Drew checked his coffers of mail and
found one, which I am glad to pounce all over.
Now, I have to point out that I believe you're engaging in a touch of hyperbole. Why,
not ALL of our ads have female products featured in them. If it were up to me,
there'd be a lot more ads of that nature. Unfortunately, most of our advertising is
handled through Flycast, and we're more than happy to accept any advertiser that wants
to peddle their wares on our page. We do get female readers, even though they are not
in the majority.
I am disappointed to learn that you don't click on our ads, though. Drew had told all
of us about what a loyal reader you are, and once we paid off our literally multi-
thousand-dollar debt, we were going to cut you a share of cold, hard, cash. But to
pay off those debts, we need YOUR help, Aziraphale. Only you can help. But you've
shown you don't want to, which is your right. So no cash donation to the Make
Aziraphale Rich fund. In your own words, *insert evil laugh*.
And for the record, I'm not a disgruntled, egotistical jerk. I'm happy as a clam
being an egotistical jerk. And Drew is a disgruntled, humble, jerk. But neither
of us are both disgruntled AND egotistical, you silly goose!
| Bradley speaks again |
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Drew, Well, I guess I should have asked about the nature of the award
before going off like that. It's just that summer though. You know, the
one right before you can drive and you've been in the house for 2
months strait. Well, you probly wont be geting any more of those from
me, as school will start soon and I can get blamed for the worlds ill
again :) Ahh the sweet sound of Mr. Doss's bitching tone. But I digress
or sumthing.
Bradley Lancaster (The new and improved all-time jackass)
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I'm not Drew, but I'll accept the apology for you. I suggest getting some sunblock
and going outside and playing frisbee with your pet dog, or sibling. I also suggest
bribing Mr. Doss into not taking attendance every day.
| Xenogears and Miang (**Spoilers**) |
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Hello Drew
Miang was never an element. Miang, in fact, was never a person. "She"
is merely an entity whose genes are present in all women in the world of
Xenogears. In every generation, there must be a Miang, when the person
who's genetic makeup is currently being taken over by the Miang gene dies, the
gene will activate in another woman. Miang is just "half" of the original
mother, Elly being the other half. Elly was meant to be a constant; appearing
every so often (it should be every generation, but I digress) with the same
personality, and in general, being the same person. Elly is constant,
Miang is a variable. Therefore, Miang isn't an element, one of the women that
she took control of may have been an element but technically Miang isn't one,
for she has no constant form.
Kefka
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To be honest, that explanation baffled me, but that's to be expected since I
haven't played Xenogears. Here's another letter on the topic; hopefully I can
just copy and paste the right letters and come out looking smart.
| More Xenogears, more SPOILERS |
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Drew,
In response to 7/24's letter about the Elements:
Yes, Miang was one of the original Elements, but his statement about
Jesiah being one can't be true. For one, when Citan made that statement, they had
not yet encountered Jesiah, and when they met him on the Thames, they
seemed rather surprised to see him there. In addition, if you look at the
flashback where Sigurd is leaving Etrenank, you see that he and Ramsus are wearing
the same uniform. Not only that, but Jesiah was *above* the Elements during
their day - he was vying for leadership of Gebler, and his rival was
Stein. Stein was never an Element. Therefore, the original four Elements must have
been Ramsus, Sigurd, Citan, and Miang (Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water? Or maybe Earth, Water, Wind, and
Fire?) Either way, those are the original four.
-David Uzumeri
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Thanks for solid info, big Dave! I hope everyone is crystal clear on the subject, I
know I sure am not. But that's not your fault, I'm just kind of slow.
| Happy Meals |
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Ah, your mention of Happy Meals brings back many fond memories of bright childhood days that reflect their shining facades in the timeless mirror of life. When I was a youngster, I was a big fan of the Dukes of Hazzard. That was one great show. McDonalds had Happy Meal promotion about the show, and rather than come in a normal Happy Meal box, your "meal" (what kid ever ate their Happy Meal food?) came in a plastic container in the shape of the car from the show. Man, was I ever excited as we drove up to the window to receive... my meal in a normal, paper bag?? WHAT?!
They were OUT of the plastic shaped containers. This would not do. So I whined and moaned until my parents agreed to take me to another McDonalds, where I got my plastic container. Not only that, however, but since the promotion was winding down, the manager agreed to give my dad the life-sized cutout of Boss Hogg.
I was one happy kid.
-AK
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The more observant of you astute readers will notice that I just printed a letter from
myself. For one thing, I'd like to start a precedent for a little ad-libbing on slow
letter days, but the real reason is that I had sent the letter to Drew to print, and
it sorta got back to myself. Feel free to share your favorite Happy Meal memories with
Drew. He'd love to share in the sorrows and joys of your childhood. Don't hold back.
We all have them.
| The Wide World of Games |
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Bear in mind that this is merely the opinion of the vast miniority, but
I think that Japanese games could stand to be covered a bit more broadly
at the GIA. I'll be the first to agree that the games slated for
american release get easily sufficient, even excessive coverage, but some
truly great RPGs that, for one reason or another, will never see the
cramped and uninspired inside of an american jewel case, (Tales of
Phantasia, Ys Eternal, and the Legend of Heroes saga, to name a few) are
largely, if not in fact utterly, ignored. And while, admittedly, I could
just as easily cruise on over to a Japanese gaming site and make a fair
show of employing my mad kanji skillz in puzzling through coverage of all
the new releases, there are a few inconsequential little details which
makes this just about as effective as wading through a half-assed review
on rpgamer. First off, you'll find some obvious differences between
american gamers and the Japanese which can really complicate matters
sometimes, (Saga Frontier, anyone? Although admittedly I found the game
intriguing, I'm just citing it as an example) and second, much of the
commentary regarding similarities between elements of the games and past
games in the genre ends up being utterly useless, unless of course you've
been faithfully importing since the early SFC days.
Naturally you could always take a look at the import reviews floating
around on some of the more respectable gaming sites, but, to put it
simply, they're all for FFVIII. All of them. No, seriously.
That aside, what unbelievably sparse import reviews remain that aren't
of FFVIII are mostly lacking in any sort of redeeming quality, except
maybe as a booster for self-esteem, given that most US reviewers fail to
take into account one rather important factor; that they have absolutely
no understanding of the Japanese language. I can just imagine hardcore
gamer [insert generic american name here; 'Joe smith' works pretty well]
picking up a copy of Legend of Heroes 1&2 PSX, calling it crap because of
the 8-bit looking graphics, and then popping in Xenogears and hailing it
as the best game ever made (for those unfamiliar with LOH, just replace
it with Lunar: SSS and 16-bit, respectively, and you'll get a fair idea
of what I'm talking about.) Not a particularly pleasant prospect, but to
be scathingly honest, if you're clueless enough to try and take on any
half-way decent RPG without the faintest understanding of the language
it's in, you deserve whatever you get.
I do believe I've digressed. Basically, I'd much rather see broader
coverage distributed over a great deal of games rather than so much
attention lavished upon a single title which, while I am admittedly
psyched about, takes a definite low priority in my book when compared to
upcoming titles like Grandia 2 and Climax Landers. I'm a little tired of
just reaching into the vast Japanese RPG market and pulling out merely
what I can get my hands on, with no clue as to the quality or even
content to some of the titles, and just slightly more in-depth looks on
the Japanese side of things would spare frequent importers a great deal
of frustration and dissapointment, given how utterly saturated the market
is with RPGs. Or, alternatively, you could just buy me each game as it
comes out and save yourselves the trouble of wandering aimlessly through
the slew of lame titles that make up the majority of the market. Hey,
whatever works.
On a different note, you're all doing a bang-up job on the rest of the
site. Keep it up.
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Hey, even if you are in the minority, we'll still listen to you baby. Now, in an
ideal world, we'd all speak one language and we could all play every game ever made,
and Sadaam Hussein would spend his time reading stories to children rather than
try to take over the Middle East. Unfortunately, that's not the case. We would
love to cover every Japanese game, but it's just not practical at this point. For
one thing, to adequately cover the games, we'd have to play them all, which becomes
difficult with limited Japanese-reading resources. Not only that, it would get
extremely expensive, as few Japanese companies would be willing to work with a U.S.
gaming site to help provide coverage. We're able to work with U.S. companies
because the exposure helps sell their games; Japanese companies would see no such
benefit in a similar deal.
The biggest factor, however, is that at the GIA we strive to do everything we do
as well as we can. We don't want to do a slapshod job and toss up a picture here
and there (complete with a terse sentence that could, under the right circumstances,
possibly be considered a description) and call it "coverage" of a game. At this point
we don't have the resources to cover every Japanese and American game well, so we
choose to focus on the games that appeal to the largest segment of our audience.
I'm not saying we'll never try to expand to covering all Japanese RPG and action
games, but at this point it's not feasible. Thanks for your support of the site,
and we hope you'll continue to visit us!
Closing Comments
I'd like to take a little timeout to congratulate a couple of Texas heroes, Nolan
Ryan and Lance Armstrong. Nolan, one of the most overpowering and gentlemanly men
to play the game of baseball, was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of
Fame today. Lance overcame tremendous odds and fought off life-threatening cancer
to win the Tour de France today. Their sporting achievements are great, but greater
than their trophies and plaques is the example they set for all of us. They show
that hard work and determination really can get you anywhere.
I've had a great time answering your letters today, and I'll probably drop in from
time to time to say hi. Peace out!
-Andrew Kaufmann
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