Mikel:
Seeing how they use the city of Seattle as the example for their front page form, yes, there are two places nearby. ;> The closest is by the Universtity of Washington, where I saw X 1999.

Unfortunately, I don't have any plans to see it. However, I am going to ask some local friends, also into anime, and we very well may make the trip. While it's not far... ugh, parking in Seattle is something best avoided if possible.

Googleshng:
I have no idea if it's playing near me, but I actually saw it a couple months ago. It's significantly closer to Totoro than Mononoke in tone (and frequency of eye-popping extra-high frame rate pseudo-CG animated sequences), and even has soot sprites. And you know, quite frankly, that's all it takes to make me happy.

Mikel:
About Fire Emblem, I was so curious myself that I had to ask about it at the Nintendo Press Conference at E3 this year. Sadly, all they told me is that they hadn't made a decision on that game. I have to assume that nothing has changed, and that Magical Vacation is also in this cosmic void of undecisiveness. We'll just have to wait, and hope.

As long as the re-releases have something extra, I haven't considered them crap, and I like Pokemon myself... but that aside, I looked at your list, and a big one that sticks out is the Zelda remake (Four Swords) with the 4 player action. Further ahead is Mega Man Battle Network 3, which I may or may not pick up, but I am enjoying 2 a good deal. Maybe the lull will be the chance Nintendo and Square will use to come out with their hidden handheld schedules. I'm seriously comptemplating importing the next Final Fantasy Tactics.

Googleshng:
The GBA RPG market made quite a push recently enough, so you'll have to give developers a chance to catch their breathe before you see another batch of original RPGs I'd think. Copying Pokémon seems to be falling out of practice too, so there's something for you to look forward to.

Mikel:
I don't know anything new, and even if I did, if I told you, highly trained ninja would make me dissappear for a while. Now you know why Cheshire was gone for so long. You have to watch what you say in these columns. They're always watching you.

Googleshng:
There's been an eerie silence on the Shenmue front ever since MS grabbed the U.S. publication rights for 2 in order to sit on them. On the bright side though, this really bolstered sales of the British port. Always good when games sell there because it means they might get more.

At this point, I'd expect Shenmue 3 to either be dead in the water, or to come back on the news scene with a truckload of sudden hype. I'm leaning towards the former though.

Mikel:
This one is for Google, since I haven't played a paper RPG since High School. On top of that, I'm a programmer, not a designer, so we'll leave the true answer to the resident slime.

Googleshng:
I generally work on the kind of games I link to from my page of rantings on occassion. That's down though, so I suppose it doesn't really help you. As far as designing console RPGs for a living goes though, that's not an entry level occupation, so if you really want to get a game out there, you'd be pretty well advised to take up programming. The nastier the language the better unfortunately.

Mikel:
1) The trick about Kingdom Hearts is that you have basically decided how hard the game will be in the first 30 minutes. The entire personality quiz is nothing more than how Sora "grows". I must've picked the "I'm a wuss" setting, because I never really had a problem with anyone at all... once I finally had a cure spell.

Googleshng:
42! Can't afford KH, but whenever you need a random number, that's a good choice.

Mikel:
2) Related to #1... er, I didn't level up? I spent enough time trying to get things you're supposed to come back for instead that I was pretty beefy. Sorry ^^

Googleshng:
Fight the hardest monsters you can find. They'll probably be in whatever place you want to character build before tackling ironically enough.

Mikel:
1) 1? .. It's not 3? Okay... SO3 is "not soon". Anything I gave you would be horribly inaccurate, and I heard that the Japanese release date was just bumped back, which by default bumps the NA date back as well. You're looking at a year from now at best.

Breath of Fire V: the Japanese release plus whatever it took for them to translate four. Localization time is "easy" that way. ;>

And finally, Final Fantasy XI. I can't give any information about this *checks shadows for ninjas*... No, really. I don't know anything... honest. Okay, "not soon". Ahem, next question.

Googleshng:
So uh, no no and no it seems.

Mikel:
2 - again) *eyes glaze over* Hold on, I'll take notes for the next time I get to ask that Dave guy a question. The only stuff I know about recent D&D is the computer stuff, and I'm not even up on that very well. Google will have to field this.

Googleshng:
I am not currently in a state of conciousness well suited to logic, but I believe the spirit of any new rules on CLW in 3e are just to save you from having to memorize so many you can't cast anything fun, by letting you cast'em on the fly. So I'd say you can cast a bunch of CLWs in one round, but you do use up a spell for each person you heal.