Sean:
Interestingly enough, the Japanese view any animated work as 'anime', not simply their own, as it has come to mean here. Fitting, perhaps, since the word was taken from the French. In any case, the lack of such styled games is likely due to the majority of Windows game developers being based in North America rather than Japan. I'd wager that as that animation style becomes more and more accepted and aped by the United States, though, that more games with that style will appear magically for the PC.

Googleshng:
Short form: PC RPGs don't look like Japanese cartoons because they aren't made in Japan.

Sean:
The same company was also responsible for a one-handed controller for the Super Famicom as well. I remember it being advertised in Nintendo power as the perfect RPG controller – You could play while drawing maps! As I recall, it was about palm-sized, the d-pad was on the face, the four face buttons were on the side, where your fingers would naturally grip it if it were held in your palm, and the rest was on the back. Not sure if it was ever released over on my side of the water, though, and no, I don't want to know. Don't send in letters to tell me tomorrow.

Googleshng:
Ah, the days of drawing maps... That was so long ago I can't even remember if I miss it. Oh, and Rico realized I mentioned yon SNES controller yesterday after writing that reply there. Shame on him... or something.

Sean:
Although mention of me seems to be lacking, I'd really like to play Ura Zelda. By and large, the dungeons in Ocarina of Time were fun and used their respective gimmicks well. As long as the additional dungeons in Ura Zelda share more in common with the Shadow or Spirit temple than the Water temple, I'm down. I swear, Kondo must have turned into a sadist somewhere along the line... stupid song of the Royal Family...

Googleshng:
You know what creeps me out about Metroid Fusion I wrote down a complete plot summary of it EIGHT YEARS AGO. Every single weird convoluted rationalization. Heck, I even wrote down that you end up wearing blue armor since you don't have access to the standard suit!

Anyway though, expansion to Zelda Toot. GIMME.

Sean:
Personally, I rather like Andrew's style. I'm a sardonic man myself most of the time, and I think that belittling everyone isn't necessarily a bad gimmick. It gives columns a personality, and keeps the insults from being taken personally.

Regarding the Game Boy Advance, Golden Sun didn't really strike me; I never finished it. Both the Castlevanias are good, although Harmony of Dissonance is the weaker one, with considerably easier enemies and a less interesting magic system. Plus, Jeust moves slower than the original Simon... Mega Man Battle Network I'd recommend highly, and knowing Capcom, that recommendation probably works for the sequel as well.

Googleshng:
I wasn't expecting the sort of chew-out everyone style yon new weekend host decided to run with when I gave him the gig, but it makes for an interesting read and yields shockingly few complaints. Plus like Rico said, insult one person and you're a jerk, insult everyone and you're just running with a premise. Plus the way I figure it, if the anger angle really puts people off, they'll just stop writing in on the weekends, which would yield a fairly immediate change in tone I'm sure.

Anyway though, both MMBN games are extremely good, as is Circle of the Moon. Then there's Golden Sun which is either extremely unremarkable or one of the greatest games ever made. Either way it's darn pretty, and pretty standard fair for the developers. (See also: Shining series, Beyond the Beyond)

Sean:
I remember back when it came out most people loved FF8. That sort of thing happens often enough: A game is received very well, then a vocal minority starts complaining about parts of the game and people either follow the trend for kicks or because they take a closer look at the game. In any case, I prefer 8 to 7. While 7 had a much deeper plot than any other FF to date, it was a rather poorly executed game. FF8, on the other hand, had a poorly executed ending, but the game itself was quite well done. People mostly seem to get fed up with the "ridiculous amounts of Drawing", but that's pretty much equivalent to bashing FF7 because it's tedious to level up to 99.

Haven't played any MMORPG, really, so I can't comment on Dark Age of Camelot. D&D based RPGs would seem pretty safe to jump into, though. There're usually a lot of controls to learn, but the actual mechanics of D&D are probably somewhat familiar just from your playing of console RPGs; It's pretty standard stuff, really. Plus, all the nasty rules are implemented automagically... which is usually a good thing.

Googleshng:
and it's not like there's a story to D&D you'd want to be familiar with or anything. Anyway, getting back to FF7 vs. FF8. First of all, that's a debate with 5000 incoherent rabid fans on both sides I'd rather not set off before leaving for the weekend. Still, it breaks down like this:
FF7- Case for: Most people's first RPG, impressive for the time, mini-games out the wazoo. Case against: Lousy translation, summons that take forever, didn't age too well.
FF8- Case for: Tried a lot of new things, set new graphical standards for the series, aged pretty nicely. Case against: Truckloads of micro-management, uninspired character design, lost a lot of the feel of the series.

Final Note: Drawing 100 copies of a spell in FF8 takes something like 2 minutes. Mastering a Materia/Job/Esper takes a couple hours. It's actually much faster and more convenient, you just have to do it actively instead of going through a few dozen fights.

Sean:
If I had a nickel for every time Googleshng here has said he likes the majority of the Final Fantasy series, I'd have been able to buy Metroid Prime already and I'd be playing it instead of answering this letter. I'll leave it up to you guys as to whether that's a good or bad thing.

Googleshng:
First of all, there are three magical friends who live in most blocks of text. Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar. If you write something without the help of at least two of these friends, you look like a complete idiot.

Second, unless you consider Parasite Eve 2 and Vagrant Story to be in the FF series, I don't go around bashing it. Heck, even if you do, I don't complain about the lack of difficulty in them, I just complain about how they're unplayable piles of dren.

Third, the advantage videogames have over passive forms of entertainment is that they require quick wits and/or reflexes on behalf of the player to successfully navigate various challenges in a mentally stimulating fashion. Therefore a certain degree of difficulty is always required to keep from being simply a long cartoon with terrible production values.

I'm not sure about your planet, but here on Earth more or less all RPGs have solid storylines, dungeon crawls are far longer than five hours, and now that I really think about it, only two or three Final Fantasy games make a noticable effort to make their characters more well rounded than their peers. 1 and 3 don't even give any of your characters any dialog or individuality whatsoever.

Finally, if the stories of recent Final Fantasy games have any relevance to your life, you need to get yourself into therapy pronto.