Hector

It's those books that are the problem. They've been infecting the movie industry since day one with all that hubbub about literary heritage. And the movies based off of plays? Terrible, terrible things. What we need are more movies based off of theme-park rides.

I've got a question for anyone who has seen Elfen Lied: Is the sound supposed to be screwed up a little? I can hardly even hear the Japanese much of the time.

You watched through 50 episodes of an anime and you hated it that much? I hope that you were at least getting something else out of the anime. I myself liked Code Geass, the first season more than the second. I like it when characters die and heroes do things they shouldn't--at least in an action anime. But I was wondering, does anyone else get sick of flying mechas? I don't mind when they fly for a little while, but I can't stand it when they spend most of a battle flying. It makes me wonder why they bothered putting legs on the things if they aren't going to use them.

Gundam seed was good. But their habit of recycling footage drove me crazy at times. And the main two characters, after their initial period of development, became quite dull. The secondary characters were great all the way through though. I'm actually just starting to watch Destiny now. I'm not at a point where I can judge it. What about Gundam 00 though? How's that compared to Seed?

This is the internet. Even if the letter is real, it would be no small feat to continue the project with a different name on a different site. It is like when a studio tries to take down a fansubbing group. When I was watching Death Note, four fansubbing groups got taken down by cease and desist letters but many of the members simply moved to another group and continued the work.

Egads, he's a singer not a philosopher or a columnist. Why don't we crucify Sting next for writing "Every breath you take". Art is often about intoxication, which is why we often appreciate songs that go with a particular feeling. Billy Joel's "Honesty" and "She's Always a Woman" both portray similar feelings but different outlooks--and both are feelings that a person is likely to have at some point in a relationship. As to whether is is a dick though, it is probably better to look at his personal life than his songs. His behavior towards criticism is a good place to begin ripping into him.

I've had one for a few months. Definitely a cool item. Perhaps it's because I've been in Japan, but unlike a regular DS you can use it very easily to flirt or do similar cool stuff.

Credit Card companies make the bulk of their money on the semi-responsible and those who are irresponsible until they realize they can barely pay their bills. People who always pay everything immediately don't give them much money and people who are too irresponsible could lead to the credit card company losing money (things lose value after purchase). Credit allows you to spread a big cost out over time--that's its major advantage. I've been stubborn and paid everything with cash so far--but I am have not had to make any 5-digit purchases yet.

There is nothing unrealistic about a gunblade. Gun-swords even existed for a time in history. They were seen as a solution to early guns taking so long to reload, so a sword was built around the gun. Before they invented bayonets, muskets were often spun around and used as clubs when things got close. Early bayonets were simply knives jammed down the muzzle of the gun. The only thing odd things about the gunblade are the level of refinement of the gun itself (a revolver) and the fact that the gun was used only to supplement the swinging of the sword. But I'm sure we would have developed them if people were durable enough to justify what would normally be overkill.

I think that I may just wait for Super Street Fighter IV Omega Turbo Ultimate Championship edition deluxe.

Villains can get away with being "Har Har Har, I'm Evil". The thing is, they have to do it right. Kefka in FFVI was a good example of a villain who enjoyed being evil and substituted craziness for depth. And they did it right. I think the major advantage of the 8bit and 16bit RPGs over the newer RPGs is that they often tell the same breadth of story in a lot less time. When Tales of Phantasia takes a LONG time to beat, it takes a long time to beat because you spend a long time actually playing the game. On the other hand, when FFVIII takes a long time it is for a very different reason. And the graphics were just bad enough for imagination to take over. Kind of like when you read a book.

Sophitia and Mitsurugi in SC & SC2. I initially chose Sophitia because I figured not as many people would pick her and I was impressed by her jumps. And Mitsurugi, he simply flows in combat. One of the best parts though, was that I had a friend who also mastered Mitsurugi and we would constantly duel with the two. Sometimes we would practically mirror each other, but at other times it was as though we were playing two entirely different characters.

I've decided to go more for a list of memorable moments than memorable games. Playing Mario Brothers when I was three/four and repeatedly being killed by the first goomba. Swinging over a pit of fire in Bionic Commando (before first grade). Mega Man 2: beating Wind Man; then beating the other Robot Masters; pounding my way through Wily's Fortress. (either this or Bionic Commando was the first game I ever beat). Going out to search for secrets in Zelda (throughout childhood). Figuring out the Forest of Illusion (Oh look, I found a secret exit...oh, it brings me back to where I started). In A Link to the Past, beating the first dark-world boss using bombs instead of the hammer because I was too stupid to try the hammer. Fighting Magus in Chrono Trigger for the first time. And then arriving at Zeal. Trying to make my way through the ghost floor in Lands of Lore. The song wasn't creepy at first, but after getting drubbed by enemies that sneak about, walk through walls, are highly resistant to most attacks and offer no chances of rest: it becomes very creepy. Discovering Warcraft and RTS. Playing the "Survive for 30 minutes" level in Starcraft, having my base get overrun in the last minute and the rescue come as my SCVs were starting to battle. Seeing the walls bleed in Eternal Darkness and fleeing the room in terror. Edit: Might not count because I almost forgot it. But spending an hour taking down Fafnir after getting thoroughly thrashed in the first minute of the fight in FFXII. And a similar battle against Zodiac where I had to shift to a two-person party to slow down how fast he killed me.

Minesweeper

Price. Systems with Windows tend to be far cheaper than their equivalent Apple systems. As to Vista, if the best that can be said about it is that it can be made to be like XP, I'll stick with XP.

It's a close call whether Activision or EA "bails" them out. Though I kind of want Sega to step in.

Considering the sheer volume of music produced every year, coincidences are bound to occur. However, this is also a very effective way for Satriani to generate new buzz for his song--even if the charge is poorly supported. It's good marketing at least.

Metroid can't really return back to 2d. It can revisit it like Mario, but it is now a 3d franchise. The problem with trying to go back to 2d is that, after a certain point of pushing the graphics, you get much less of a return in 2d than 3d. However, they could perhaps experiment a bit with shifting out of the first-person mode. As cool as the prime series has been, but it has not been as good for certain things they tried to maintain from the older games: ledges that can be grabbed, screwball attacks and wall jumps for example. Where they decide to continue the series is up for grabs. Just look at Hunters: one could put that game just about anywhere in the Metroid timeline. What they need though, is something to string a new series together similar to the role Phazon played in the Prime series.

I heard that in Brawl, if you rotate Master Hand through a 4th dimension you get Crazy Hand. I even heard the same is true in reverse. But I'm sure that that's just crazy talk.

RE4's breakthrough was to better understand the balance between too much and too little control. One should not be afraid because of camera angles or imprecise controls--one should be frightened because enemies are naturally concealed or are ridiculously fast. When controls are clumsy, there should be a legitimate reason--the best example of this in RE4 was the fight on the lake--the boat had clumsy controls, but with good reason. What it needs though, is more ability to be stealthy, more encouragement to do so, and the ability to end fights early by resuming stealth. RE4 had a few occurrences where you ran away from fights (or were supposed to), but those were mostly scripted elements (not to mention the lack of stealth sections). And finally, there is no cure for a skilled player except for moments of arbitrary chance. There are people who have beaten RE1 with only the knife--I'm willing to bet that their are people capable of beating "Fatal Frames" without ever turning left. To a person so skilled, the game loses much of its terror.

These had better be three REALLY long campaigns. None of that crapping out and making the human/terran campaign too easy (or simply incomplete--Frozen Throne). Otherwise, Blizzard is going to find that some people interpret their marketing strategy as buy one, pirate two free.

I found Sunshine quite fun too. The main problem I had with the game though, was that the most fun parts were those that denied you the jet-pack. Perhaps it was just the old-fashioned dungeon music that I liked though. And they definitely need a "Lost Levels" version of Galaxy. Something that simply screams hard-core but is either hidden in the game (like in Super Mario World) or is a cheap extra.

I've decided to write myself my own flashcard program for Japanese, but I cannot figure out how to get the compiler to recognize Japanese characters. I've tried switching the character encoding to Cp930 (all I could find that is supposed to work) but that makes the rest of my code cease working. I've only been trying to get the Japanese to work with println functions so far. Anyways, I was wondering if there was anyone around here who knows how to do this sort of thing in Java--or if anyone knows how to do it in C++. Thanks

God forbid that the Japanese use music that is popular in Japan for their shows. There's nothing wrong with the music in anime; and I have seen quite a bit of classical and jazz in the anime I've watched.

Last E-3 sucked all around; Nintendo was the only company to apologize. Why not just wait the two weeks? It really isn't worth speculating on.