Double Agent
Don't oppress yourself - October 29th, 1999 - Drew Cosner

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not neccessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. You're perfect; yes, it's true. But without me, you're only you. Don't say that I didn't warn you.


Are you ready for another column? Well, who am I to hold out on you? Have at it.

The greatest Final Fantasy sound track

You crackheads. The best FF battle music is from Mystic Quest. Which also was the best, and hardest FF to date.

-Chocobert


Mystic Quest could certainly be a challenging and mentally stimulating game. Assuming, of course, that you had first been involved in a nearly fatal automobile accident which had left you with only the lower three inches of your head and your cerebellum.

Had you fulfilled this requirement, you would also find that the music had a rather catchy beat to it. Unfortunately, the area of your brain responsible for the interpretation of music and your ears themselves would have long since been scraped from the dashboard and slid into a bio-hazardous waste disposal satchel long ago.

You oppress yourselves

Here's a little bit of humor for you guys...

The last Final Fantasy I played was FF1. Remember back in those days? I don't even remember the music from it. Now I've been begging to get FF8 for Christmas (I'm not wasting $50 of my precious dollars on a video game when I have school to pay for), with no clue as to what the other six games that I missed were all about.

More power to the girl gamers out there! I'm one of that lovely 8 percent you mentioned. I don't have much time for games since I'm a full time student, and I work too! But I am the proud and happy owner of a Sega Genesis (my bro has a PlayStation), and for the past year and a half I've been chipping away slowly at Phantasy Star II. Another oldie but a goodie too. Nothing can ever beat a true classic--certainly nothing can ever beat Super Mario Brothers, Pac-Man, Centipede or Pong!!

I have yet to hear the Final Fantasy soundtracks. Being a musician myself, I can be wonderfully critical.


The last Final Fantasy you played was the first? You'd rather not waste your money on Final Fantasy VIII? You consider work and school to be more important than gaming? It's this exact attitude that will ensure countless more Barbie fashion "games" to be released in an attempt to appeal to the female market. I hope that you're content with yourself and what you've done.

Slipping in some sarcasm

Drew-drew-ga-joo,

Gilgamesh is the walrus. Or he's a big fat multi-armed Arab butt-goblin. Not "THE MAN." Shut up already, you guys. It's quite senseless to have such an infatuation with a character-less character whose only redeeming aspects are a catchy theme, stealing Genji something-or-other, and a slightly entertaining in-fight cut-scene during a battle with Seifer. I thought mentioning this might get my letter printed. But I doubt it.

Anyway, Enix has been sorely missed since its glory days (I'd have to say DW3). Then it declined into the evil days of The 7th Saga and faded into NA obscurity. If they finish their GBC color ports of DW1+2 as I've seen in news stories on your site, it'd probably replace Pokemon Silver on my Xmas Wish List. What I'd REALLY like to see on GBC is DW3 (my favorite NES RPG), or possibly DW4, which I never got a chance to play, as my mom sold my NES at a GARAGE SALE.

On the PSX, however, I doubt that DW/DQ7 (ever notice how these things always seem to round out at about 7?) will do smashingly, since it has been in "development" for so long and is too far behind technically to compete with such graphic marvels as Suikoden 2. >=P Seriously, it's taken them so long to make this game that the 'features' it contains have already been in games like Breath of Fire 3, which is already two years old. There's nothing new to make this game special, except that it happens to have the words "Dragon" and either "Quest" or "Warrior" on it. And it'll probably have those cute blue slimes.

-Steve


Ah, this is the kind of letter that I like the see. The kind which I've encouraged by the creation of the Flamers' Corner, and by my own scurrilous tone. Sarcastically insulting the viewpoints of others in a subtle fashion; not bad, Steve. However, I should point out that the first paragraph serves as more of a detraction than a point which I would print a letter based upon. Referring to Gilgamesh in such a manner is akin to calling Albert Einstein "that guy with the screwed up hair who came up with that gay math problem." Gilgamesh is so much more. His THE MANliness transcends beyond the point of description by mere words. Those so entrenched in the semantics of life, such as yourself, can never hope to understand.

At any rate, this letter seems to be the sum of the opinions regarding Enix's return. You can only ignore your fan base so long before they look elsewhere, and only the most die-hard give any semblance of interest. At this point, Dragon Quest VII would have to be the video game equivalent of pure, unadulterated bliss for Enix to really pull their chestnuts out of the fire. Nobody did this to Enix but themselves.

However, I wouldn't mind seeing a few of the older DQ games on the GBC, and it seems that just about any GBC game sells like crack on the corner of a disreputable neighborhood, so it may not be such a bad move to do so on Enix's part.

You think?

Cogito ergo sum

I think therefore I am

So when you play games, I guess you sort of...aren't (depending on the game, certainly).

-Paul B.


And so, the lessons in Latin continue. Not only is Double Agent a frivolous waste of valuable time and entirely unentertaining, it's also educational. Whenever reading one of my columns, your head is filled with useless knowledge that will soon be forgotten or pushed to the wayside by the pondering of how to back Lara Croft into a corner so that you can stare at her pointed breasts.

If thinking is the measure of reality and existence, I'm merely a shadow that appears at random, only to once again flit off into the phantom world of ignorance. When staring blankly at a spot on the wall for hours, being sure to look as though you're doing something when your boss walks by, I can often be seen.

Latin: it's all around you

I'll join in the Latin craze here:

Calculus is Latin for "little rock."

Also, in the FF8 CD case, behind the 4th CD, we have some Latin! It appears to be some sort of song/poem in three verses repeated on the page.

1. "Excitate vos a somnos, liberi mei. / Curae non sunt. / Excitate vos a somnos, liberi futuri. / Somnus non est." translates to "(You) Wake up from sleep, my children. There are no cares. (You) Wake up from sleep, children of the future. There is no sleep."

2. "Surgite, / invenite hortum veritatis. / Ardente veritate / Urite mala mundi. [Two lines that I can't read]" roughly translates to "Rise, find the garden of truth. Scorch the evils of the world with the fiery truth."

3. Two more lines that can't be read.

Just goes to show you how Latin actually comes in handy in life when you are bored and have an RPG CD case in your hands.

-Kryluck, a.k.a. Kryluckus Maximus to the Romans (Who used urine for mouthwash, but that's probably too much information there.)


And so ends today's lesson. See, the dead language isn't entirely without use. It also comes in handy when trying to read the warning labels on pills from several millenia ago.

A little Nintendo logic for you

This is for that goddamn f00li0 who dares to ask why Meowth can speak English. If he were paying any ATTENTION he'd realize that Meowth taught himself to speak human in an attempt to impress a female Meowth. This was recounted in the Pokemon comic, and I suppose on the TV show. There is my l33t answer, good day.

-Crimm

P.S. Pokemon suck your "little nuts"


Well, I never realized that there was an actual explanation for that little phenomenon. I had assumed that it was something to be taken for granted; something that was meant for all of us to come up with asinine and ludicrous explanations of our own design for. Who would've guessed there was some reasoning behind it? Albeit rather screwed up reasoning. But hey, I've never been one to frown upon sordid logic, now have I?

If anybody out there would like to confirm or deny this, be my guest.

A Final Fantasy wish list

Hey Drew, First off, great site and great job by all of you guys over there. After playing the absolutely stunning Final Fantasy VIII, I was thinking what I would like to see in the forthcoming PS2 Final Fantasy. Here are some of my ideas:

-Fully orchestrated soundtrack, comprable to the stunning ending theme of FF VIII, and of course Uematsu must compose it.

-A world which is "truly realistic"-a combination of the fully polygonal world of FF VIII and Zelda 64. Think of exploring a Final Fantasy world where mountain were as tall as the clouds, and the ocean stretched out as far as the eye could see.

-shifting between night and day (this has become an excellent feature in recent games adn maybe Square can push it up a notch), as well as environmental changes (wind, snow, rain, maybe even earthquakes)

-the same mature theme and story as was in Final Fantasy VIII's but also fleshing out the back-stories of the supporting cast, the only area in which FF VIII faltered in my mind (maybe a subplot for each as in FF VII)

-this may be an impossible idea, but some kind of CG scene in which the player has control over the character (it would be even better if the WHOLE game was CG quality)

-maybe even the possbility of multiple worlds: exploring another planet or maybe something like Zelda III's Dark World.

These are just some ideas I had, and with the enormous power and potential of the PS2 hardware and the almost unlimited capacity of DVD storage, then maybe we will see the ultimate Final Fantasy.

Michael Kenny-who is about to sit down and play Final Fantasy VIII again.


There's been a rumor floating about that even Final Fantasy IX, for the good ol' PSX, will be fully three dimensional. It's all just hearsay, but it would indicate that Square is tossing around the idea. And hey, the PS2 would be the perfect platform to implement such an idea on, as it's designed with high-end 3D gaming in mind.

As a matter of fact, to respond to your comment regarding CG quality, all reports indicate that with a little effort, the PS2 is capable of in-game graphics rivaling the FMV in games such as FFVIII. Although playable FMV would be impossible as it is, by its definition, pre-rendered, it's entirely plausible that a FF created for the PS2 would be as visually impressive as such.

As for the other items on your wish list - we'll just have to wait and see, now won't we? Do you get tired of hearing that very line? Does the very utterance of it incite you to hurl a brick through the nearest window? Well, don't just take it lying down! Get to work on the creation of your own time machine. Not only would the power to create universe-decimating paradoxes be within your reach had you such a fantastic device, but you'd also be fully aware of everything that was to happen in the future.

Sure, you would probably screw up the timeline so badly that the present as we know it would cease to exist, or you'd wind up horrified of the prospects that the future holds, resulting in you devoting your life to altering the course of history to prevent such a wretched destiny, but isn't all of that just a small price to pay in order to know what Final Fantasy X will be like?

That's a little cheap, isn't it?

Hey. What's this stuff about Enix America only having $500,000 capitalization? That's gotta be a mistake. I may end up working there as a translator and this amount of money would barely cover an office. I'm interested in the real figure, obviously.

P.S. What's your biggest translation beefs? I want to do a much better than average job, and eventually be the best (but I'll leave pretensions aside for the time being)... I'd like to know what glaring problems you think can be improved upon in "localized' games. Thanks!

-Jeremiah Bourque


The 500 grand of which you speak is merely capital, not the entire amount being used to start up the new American offices.

And to answer your question directed at me, personally; my translations beefs are simple, really. There's only two things that bug me. I dislike it when the translation is obviously rushed, and as such it is riddled with grammatical and spelling syntactical. And secondly, I don't like it when a joke that may have made perfect sense to the Japanese is left in the North American version despite making absolutely no sense at all to Western players. That's just plain laziness. And those are my rather pompous opinions. That will teach you to ask me what I think.

A special update

Drew, if you don't start posting columns, Lucky Dan, pimp-daddy Tonberry, hyper-active Cactaur, and myself are gonna take a little trip to the secret GIA geosynchronous satellite high above the Earth and kick your sorry butt.

-CTZanderman


Okay, joking aside. Suffice to say that this week has been a real bitch. However, I've done what I could to be sure that there's no more holes in the archives. I'm tired of that, and I'm quite sure that you readers are as well. When you're a super hero, international spy for the secret and militant underground communist uber-government, and the official school hit man for your university, things can get a bit busy. But don't worry, I've given up the last job as the police were on to me. Thanks in no part to the mishap of my partner, who is morbidly lacking in coordination and general mastery of his motor skills, I should add.

At any rate, you may notice my new organization for the column. In addition to updating the archives, I've also added a new section. Rather than linking to the Nickname Generator, there's now the "Gizmos" section, which has all of the games and other shit that I've made. Conversely, you can browse through all of the pictures which have appeared in past columns, as well. Now you can see Bob the Nihilistic Fish and the Cursing Carebear whenever you so desire. Is this a great time to be alive, or what?


Closing Comments

That big stud Andrew will be in next to clean up the mess that I always manage to create. So, be a good denizen and send him a letter or two. And for God's sake, don't stick used gum underneath your desks; he complains incessantly about having to clean that up.

-Drew Cosner, The manly chickenwuss

 
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