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. Famous Hollywood Celebrity Comes out of Closet, Admits to Being Straight. Don't say that I didn't warn you.

REM is, without so much as a shadow of a doubt, the most fantastic group of musicians to come together in the history of humanity. Their melodies are deep and mentally provocative; they are above and beyond the point at which they could be referred to merely as "music". Each and everyone is an auditory masterpiece. Every member of REM should be worshipped like the gods that they are. Ghandi was fine and good, and Jesus Christ had a way with speech, but did either of them write any tunes that get your toes tapping like "Find the River" or "Man on the Moon" do? I don't think so.

How did you like my impersonation of Andrew? Pretty convincing, eh? As you've probably gathered by now, it's your good buddy Drew speaking. Andrew has the rest of the month off, since he apparently gets into that "Holiday cheer" stuff, and I'm taking care of the column all by my little self in the interim. Seven blissful days of nothing but total Cosner, are you excited? Well you shouldn't be. And I highly doubt that you are. Yeah, well, the feelings are mutual, I assure you. Just read.

Normally I don't bother with letters pertaining to myself or other members of the crew. After all, this is a forum dedicated to the discussion of gaming, and shifting the focus to myself is just, well, lame. I may be tactless, rude, and generally insulting, but at least I'm not a self-infatuated narcissist whose only goal in writing a column is to further inflate his own delicate ego. And hey, my lack of further negative qualities is my only positive quality. You've got to celebrate those small victories in life, and all. So, if you came here foolishly hoping for a good piece of gaming discussion, you might as well just avert your eyes to the remaining batch of letters.

At any rate, I've always tried to balance my collegiate advancement and the homework that comes along with it, this here column, and my paying job to the best of my abilities. I suppose that I could conceivably cut out that latter annoyance, but I've become rather fond of sleeping with a roof over my head and occasionally putting food into my stomach. Bad habits such as eating are hard to give up. And besides, being Andrew's enabler isn't exactly free. Cocaine doesn't grow on trees, you know. So it's become rather apparent that the three disparate pursuits all get along about as well as a bottle of scotch and a stomach-ful of Taco Bell.

What will happen to me, then? Or, more realistically, how soon will you be able to get rid of me? That's hard to say. I'd always intended upon hosting this column until I finally graduated and got one of those "real jobs" that are so popular with the adults these days. And that is still my ideal outlook, when I'm indulging in one of those rare occasions in which I choose to be optimistic. For now, I'm on Christmas break, and despite working heavy hours so that I can afford next semester's tuition, I will have enough time on my hands to adequately take care of Double Agent. Once this month has ended, I'll attempt to schedule myself so that hosting is still a realistic expectation, but we'll just have to wait and see.

I suppose the columns at other commercial sites are always an option. After all, their hosts are paid, and when they aren't predisposed in providing the latest wrestling game news and shots for all of the drooling mental midgets who enjoy the genre to get excited over, they tend to update regularly. They're about as funny as a urinary five-year-old in a public pool, but they're there. Do you appreciate me more now? Good, I've achieved my goal, let's move on.

I realize that this is a rather melancholy way to begin today's column, but you readers have always been a great bunch, and I feel it only fair that I be straight with you. Sadly, I can't predict the future particularly well, or else I would be able to tell you exactly what the coming months hold. Not only that, but I would also make regular appearances on various daytime talk shows and inform guests that the unhappiness brought about due to their choice to become lesbian kick-boxing Nazi lap dancers stems from the verbal abuse of their mothers when they were small children.

Seaman. Read at your own discretion

Greetings, One question, and one question only: With the new facts laid out in GIAs Seamen preview, do you believe gamers in the west will be able to swallow the concept of Seamen, or do you think that we will see gamers spitting out seamen like a bad seed, not yet ready to delve into such provocative gameplay?

Well, it's not exactly a well-kept government secret that North Americans don't tend to be the most accepting of new forms of entertainment and other current trends. There's a reason why Japan often has the latest technology years before it ever sees the light of day in the West. All three of you Canadians reading this column, I hope that you appreciate the many times I've made a point of saying "North America" and "the West" rather than just "America". I expect the four thousand dollars in unmarked bills to arrive within the week. Four grand worth of Canadian cash ought to be just about enough to purchase that twelve ounce Pepsi I've had my eye on. As the entire rhythm music discussion has shown, we Westerners (Four grand, not a penny less. Or whatever the hell you people call one cent.) tend to need quite a bit of convincing before we'll buy into something as off-the-wall as Seaman will be.

Of course, there are the rare occasions in which an unusual product does manage to achieve mass popularity over here. A good example would be Pokemon; any products even remotely related to the little buggers are selling like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. And Pokemon is an RPG, a genre which has generally failed to achieve the same success as others, with very few notable exceptions. Why is Pokemon popular, when Seaman probably won't be? Well, that's difficult to say, exactly, even for someone who professes to have all of the answers to everything, such as myself. One major difference between the two is that there are many children who don't even realize that Pokemon was originally a videogame; they see the cartoon show, and they love the stuffed animals, but they've never even touched a Gameboy. Pokemon's popularity transcends mere videogaming, something that can only aid its success.

The second main difference is the audience the two are aimed at. While Pokemon can be enjoyed by all ages, there's no denying the fact that it's leveled squarely at a younger crowd. Seaman, on the other hand, has been known to give people as old as 40 nightmares. A six-year-old would probably crap his pants the first time he saw one of those freaky little things come bursting from the stomach of a squid in a cloudy black mess. And the freaking title is Seaman.

First Sega tries to slip us the tongue on the first date, and now it's trying to convince us to swallow its Seaman. Oh, sure, Sega may tell us that we would swallow if we truly loved it, but it's quite obviously a domination, superiority thing. Sega thinks the fact that it's the star quarterback and the principal's son gives it the right to tell all of us foolish enough to give it a chance to "suck it dry, bitch." Well Sega, your crappy title is sexual harassment, and we don't have to take it.

Some people choose to go the subtle route and insult the game's moniker through clever insinuation and innuendo. I prefer to be blatantly perverse.

You think I'm sick? At least I didn't make this game...

Sweet fancy moses! I have just found proof that all the kooks are right. The end is nigh. Advertised, unashamedly I must add, on the EB World website is a GameBoy Color game titled The New Adventures of Mary-Kate & Ashley, starring none other than the crotch spawn of beelzebub himself, the Olsen twins. What is the world coming to? We can sit here and argue about which game is the best, or whether Gilgamesh is the man, The Man or THE MAN (a topic that has thankfully been put to rest), but at least we don't have to worry about those vacous children being involved in any manner in RPGs. I'm going to the store now to get some canned food and bottled water. I suggest you do the same. Alex.W

I'll certainly agree that a videogame "starring" the Olsen twins is unsettling in every sense of the word. As if spreading their heinous presence to the otherwise clean and chaste world of direct-to-video film, effectively ruining a fine reputation earned by such classics as "The Ninja Mechanic" and "My Mother Was a Schizophrenic Stockbroker", wasn't vile enough, now they feel they must soil interactive media as well. The part I find most frightening is that it's a Gameboy title; do you understand what this means? Had it been a Playstation game, it probably would have been nothing more than a semi-interactive FMV piece of silicon shit. But as it's a Gameboy title, this means that they actually attempted to make a bona fide game incorporating the two.

Of course, perhaps we shouldn't make fun; maybe we should just let them enjoy they're time in the sun, before their saccharine sweet "cute" schtick gets old, and they're nothing but a pair of pretty faces, completely lacking in any discernible talent or acting ability. At this time, it's the Hollywood custom that they discover alcohol and cocaine, and attempt to cloud out the truth of their rocky financial status by a drug-induced, euphoric haze. And when the lack of cash becomes an impossible problem to ignore, they'll turn to the same industry that all of the former child stars turn to: pornography.

So, while a Gameboy title may be disconcerting, it's not as bad as the startling realization that you're watching the toddler from "Full House" taking it in some very uncomfortable places.

This is actually a question that I've seen posed in the column in the past. There are certain games that remedy the situation; Final Fantasy VIII, Shen Mue, and Earthbound all come immediately to mind. Each have their own unique way of handling funds, as making various purchases an upgrades are a mainstay of the genre. Of course, I'm sure that a lot of it has to do with tradition, more than anything else. Enemies have been dropping gold, gil, etc. since good ol' Dragon Warrior, so it's come to be an expected part of any RPG. Naturally, titles have bucked the trend, like the ones I cited, but most developers probably figure that it ain't broke, so why fix it?

My personal take on the matter? The enemies get so frightened that they crap cash into their drawers.

This is pretty much why I tend to mock medieval settings. I have nothing against them, it's just that the majority of the dang things are as insipid and uninspired as they come. As for the remainder of your points, I'd tend to agree, especially when it comes to the excess of random encounters found in so many RPGs. In fact, judging by what I've read, most gamers would tend to agree. I think PSM devotes more time to the thinking up of creative ways to bitch about the encounter rate in Final Fantasy VIII than they do to actual editorial content. (Hey, any magazine that would actually use the word "cutie" in a caption deserves to be mocked, alright? It's, er, all in good fun.)

I sincerely doubt that Sony would create a DVD player incapable of disc swapping simply because of the seemingly immense capacity offered by DVDs. Keep in mind that when CDs were first included in consoles, the current games were being squeezed onto 3 and 4 Megabyte cartridges; compared to that, the 650+ Megs of available space on disc seemed practically ridiculous. And yet, within a few short years, games that required 2, 3, even 4 discs have been released.

There's simply no predicting, with any measure of accuracy, at least, where the future trends of gaming will head. I suspect that new formats and innovations that my simple little mind can't possibly imagine are just on the horizon, and we'll be seeing games that make use of every last bit of space on those DVDs. And I'm sure that Sony realizes this, as well.

So what did they mean by "most?" Hey, your guess is as good as mine. I imagine that Sony is trying to keep its bases covered should it be discovered that certain games don't work on the PS2, for whatever reasons. Legal-type stuff. Of course, if anyone else has some theories of their own, feel free to shoot me an email. I promise not to insult your opinions too adamently.

I would reply to this letter with my own personal opinions on the game, but I'm afraid that's just not possible. For one thing, any RPG with a main character of the name "Justin" is obviously the work of a group that's either to inept, too incompetent, or just to freaking lazy to come up with a decent name, and doesn't deserve a portion of my limited spending cash. Justin, nice. Why don't we just start naming RPG characters Bob, Jenny, and Mary? The cute animal sidekicks could have such fantastic names as Fido or Spot. Give me a damned break.

Of course, that's admittedly a pretty damned petty reason to not purchase an entire game, but I'm not done yet. I've also had the misfortune of seeing many screenshots in which his mouth was gaping wide open, a look of pure idiocy smeared across his bulbous head, as he recited some moronic bosh that was apparently supposed to be a motivational speech. I couldn't put up with his character for 40 hours, quite frankly. And so, I've never played Grandia, and as such I'm in no position to agree or refute your own opinions. Although I'd tend to do the former, because I enjoy being pre-judgmental.

It's amazing how well I'm able to rationalize for my lack of money.

I figured that I should slip this letter in, as I received many stating pretty much the same thing. Son Mai is apparently naughty, and they will screw you. There, now don't go saying that I never help out the RPG community.

For many reasons, really. Some feel that it is below their level of maturity, and would rather blow 50 bucks on such timeless, "M" rated classics as the upcoming ECW title. Some would rather not stare at that tiny Gameboy screen for the amount of time required when playing through a game such as Pokemon, and at least that I can understand. However, the biggest reason is because of the hysteria and popularity surrounding the franchise. Many people need to feel intellectually superior to the "crowd," and they do so by mocking popular trends based merely on the fact that they are, well, popular.

If the titles were actually that bad, you can bet that I'd be the first in line to toss around a few sarcastic lines and comments of my own. But, amazingly, the multitude of Pokemon titles that Nintendo has released in an effort to milk the franchise drier than the Sahara Desert have actually been fairly descent. I'm sure some would beg to differ with me when it comes to that particular viewpoint, most of which probably haven't played the games for more than five entire minutes, and I welcome that. I'm always up for a little debate, and all.

Closing Comments:

I'm in charge, see, so there's gonna be a topic for tomorrow, whether you likes it'r not. And since it's that most wonderful @#$%*ing time of the year, I figure I might just as well get into the spirit and toss a Christmas-related topic your way. So here it is: what is the absolute worst Christmas that you've ever had the misfortune of experiencing? That's right, not "what are you hoping to get," or "what do you enjoy most about the Holidays," or anything of that sickening nature. I don't want a season that's supposed to be about good will and kindness to somehow besmirch the overall tone I've worked so hard to uphold around here. Do you really think that just because this is a festive celebration, I should come up with some nicey-nice little topic?

Anyway, we've all had those horrendous Holiday disasters and mishaps, and nothing is more enjoyable than laughing along with others, as they recount childhood tales of Christmas misery. But for those of you who were hoping to laugh at someone, rather than along with him or her, here's a picture that should brighten your day. Hey, who loves you?

-Drew Cosner