Googleshng:
Ah yes. The age old issue of hair colors and personalities. While it doesn't always hold true, in most anime/RPGs where people have various hair colors, there tends to be an unspoken color coding rule. Usually,
Black = Sane main character surrounded by eccentrics.
Red = Main character if male, Violent/outspoken/flamboyant/whatnot if female.
Blue and female = Nerd or quiet martyr.
Purple and female = nerd.
Yellow = Simple minded hungry guy or secondary love interest if male, selfish if female.
White/silver = Evil Psycho (unless paired with dark sun tan)
There's a few more I could list, like little pink haired girl = pure concentrated annoyance, but there are the most prominent ones that come to mind. Once you get too used to them and come across something that doesn't follow them though, you become prone to shout things like "Her hair should be BLACK!" at inopportune moments. There's always exceptions to any common convention though. I could probably name several games that contain mecha but aren't named after them for example.

Oh, and Happy Birthday. You realize that yours is just two days before that of Mikel Tidwell AKA "Da Boss" yes?

Googleshng:
Uh, you mean the system of combat used pretty much every single 8 and 16 bit RPG in existence? It was already public domain by that point, although I can't off the top of my head name an RPG prior to DW2 that allowed you any say in which monster each character attacks.

Googleshng:
Most people don't do that.

Googleshng:
DW2 came with a map. This was really the only way to get that particular crest on that particular ONE SPACE island in the middle of the ocean. Someone threw this map away on me. Wah.

Googleshng:
See above.

Googleshng:
Yes actually, in various forms of media.

Googleshng:
This question disqualified as I said yes.

Googleshng:
Bah, back in MY day, we'd play games for six hours at a stretch without even so much as BLINKING, let alone DRINKING. But then of course that was back when most games could be classified as "twitch", a name derived from the fact that you can't get anywhere without developing a new set of reflexes for each game, and pause was the most difficult button to press, being between "Start" and "Reset" with the Atari 5200, and being ON THE CONSOLE ITSELF with the SMS. Oh, and those start and reset buttons respectively started a new one player game and reset the game most of the time. Come to think of it, maybe I SHOULDN'T call the X-Box's the "worst controller ever designed". If it doesn't spontaneously break down within a month, the 5200 gets the nod. Ahem... enough of that little tangent.

Googleshng:
The official word is yes, but since most of the monsters in the series are either palette swapped versions of other monsters, or other monsters with things like crowns added to them, and I doubt they waste the time of a very prominent artist having him do things like THAT personally.

Googleshng:
No really? I thought we were talking about Dungeon Wars this whole time.

Googleshng:
I assume you're currently playing DW3 and have never finished it.

Googleshng:
Why does Mog get so many letters printed? Why it's simple. He has probability on his side. If you sent me a letter every single day, you'd probably get a decent number printed too, especially if you actually ask a decent question in them.

Googleshng:
Uh, it should be 5 times as long as the original, more action packed, and seems to contain Asuka for reasons I cannot fathom.

Googleshng:
Since I'm sure my definition of a "good computer game" differs from yours, I'm going to pass on that.

Googleshng:
Hmm... Aeris probably. You didn't give the criteria I'm judging on, but the odds of that answer being right are pretty good overall. Usefulness: Aeris (NICE limits). As a character, Aeris (Tortures Cloud), who I'd rather be: Aeris (Close call though. Tragic death vs. years of chronic back pain and ending up with Cloud). Oh, and for the record, I don't hate Cloud, just wouldn't want to ever be anywhere near him.

Googleshng:
Yes, but I am not going to list them as dates are subject to change and I'm sure I'd leave a dozen out.

Googleshng:
Yup! He was King of Spain!

Googleshng:
No, you DIDN'T read in one of my columns that the Ranma movies were cheap, you read that the Ranma MANGA were cheap. Manga is the Japanese word for comic book, or if you're offended by the term, "graphic novel". Most anime series and movies start out as a manga series, which is much more enjoyable 99% of the time, both because of the standard issue of the studio making arbitrary and insane changes to the original work at times, and because of some very nasty formatting issues. Movies will compress 1600 pages of what is sometimes nearly all text into a 90 minute movie, removing the context for everything, many key characters, and a lot of amusing side issues not related to the main plot. A TV series has the opposite problem. For some sick reason, convention dictates that one chapter of manga = one episode of TV series, 2 if you're lucky. If something is dialog heavy, or follows a fight-of-the-week type format, this isn't a problem. With a series like Ranma, or Dragon Ball Z however, it's a MAJOR problem, since the creators of those two tend to favor images over text, and long drawn out conflicts over simple wrap-ups. So, with a roughly 1 page=1 minute conversion rate, the large two page detailed splash images turn into needlessly drawn out delays in the action. In any case, if you get your Ranma fix in print form, it's just 39 volumes of 12 chapters each for $10 each or less. Animated, let's see... $25-$30 times... some very large number.

Now then, as for your second question, well, asking me which of two MMORPGs I'm most looking forward to is like asking if I'm more enthused by the premise of sticking my head in a deep frier or sticking my hands into a tub full of razor blades. I wouldn't even consider either one. While I have nothing against fans of the genre, I personally dislike Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs on a fundamental level. If I were forced to choose though, I'd have to go with WoW, as the premise is less stupid. WarCraft is a continuing series where thousands of equally important characters are at war with each other, with a bare minimum of pyrotechnic flare and saving of worlds. The FF series meanwhile is a bunch of games whose only real connections, aside from a shared pool of spell/monster/item names (a small group of characters having to save the world, grandiose 2 minute summon animations, long beautifully rendered cut scenes, and stories that revolve around the main character's personal problems) actively don't work in a massively multiplayer environment.

Googleshng:
One phrase pretty much sums up Vandal Hearts 2. STAY AWAY. There is no connection between the plots. The OUTSTANDING level design is no where to be found. The visual style is just plain hideous. The only thing that makes the game stand out at all is that fact that you and the computer each move a character SIMULTANIOUSLY (until one side has moved all of theirs, then they just sit there while the other finishes up). While this seems to be fresh and add depth at first, the AI is EXTREMELY predictable, and in practice the concept is just nasty. Let's say for example, you have a character and a monster on adjacent spaces facing each other. Naturally, you would want to walk around behind the monster and attack it. The monster however wants to do the same to you, so if you try this, both will move around each other and attack the empty spaces where they were. So instead, you move your character back two spaces and attack the air behind where he was, because by the time he attacks, that air will contain a monster, with it's back turned, attacking the space you just left. This gets old FAST.

Meanwhile, Saiyuki DOES have the same sort of interesting design as VH did. There's parts where you can walk across a log then push it into a ravine so you can't be followed, special attacks which can knock down trees and reveal new items, and only half the fights I've been in so far had the objective "Kill everything/the boss"

Googleshng:
There's also the whole "Durai" thing, and the official statement that they're in the same world made way back when. Awful lot of nasty demons in that world, no? In any case, the likelyhood of Square doing anything non-FF for a while aren't very good.