Defraggin' my hard drive for thrills (YEAH! YEAH YEAAAAHHHH) ... It's all a-- er.. Oh. Hey.. how's it going?

Heh.. just listenin' to music, er.. hehe.. Yeah. It's all good. Anyways, Welcome to the Brad Show! Okay.. fine. Not the Brad show. Woo.. I'm in a weird mood tonight. I'm not nearly as tired as I usually am, which means there actually *is* an intro and conclusion.. well, I haven't gotten to the conclusion yet.. we'll see what I'm like in an hour, won't we... heh.

I've gotten one or two pretty good submissions for Anime Brads.. but it's just going to suck if there aren't more submissions.. You don't want these people's art to win just because they were the only people to submit something, do you? .. well, maybe you do. But I don't! Anyways.. do what you must. If you can't draw, but know a friend who can.. get them to do it.. we'll uh, hook you both up or something. Get your art published on a big page read by thousands of people! Heck, I'll throw in free props for your artwork collection website or something. Just DRAW, my monkeys, drawwww.... *cough* right.

Next big announcement.. that's right.. Guest Appearance.. by popular demand... Heather will be answering some questions one day soon. I'll have to get with her and talk to her about what day is best.. but if you want a question answered specifically by Heather (lewd comments will be discarded and naughty things will be done to the sender), then send it in to me, and please put something pertaining to Heather in the subject. Like, "For Heather" or something. Uh, as for next week, well, that'll just have to wait till next week, but I've got some people in mind.

Anyways, lots of FF8 stuff.. (whoa.. not AGAIN), but there are some actually good questions that *I* had when I went through the game.. stuff that isn't really stupid that you would find out in 30 minutes if you kept playing *COUGH ODIN GEEZ COME ON COUGH* ... er, ahem.. heh. Anyways, as I like to say.. ..dude.

Hey, Brad, good to hear that you finished FF8! I only finished it a couple of days ago myself. Anyway, Questions:

Only one word for it, "Finally". Not that it wasn't fun. I just am getting behind.. two games to finish, and two more coming out this month, yikes!

1. What in the world was Ultimecia's motivation? yeah, we know she had this fixation with compressing time, but _why_? You don't find out anywhere in the game, it's all "Ultimecia's evil and wants to compress time, we have to whup her butt!" I wanna know why! At least in FF7 we knew why Sephiroth was a twisted freak who wanted to smash a big hunk of rock into the planet, they went to great pains to make sure you knew. I think that this is a major story omission.

Well, in the Time Compression, she was the only being able to exist, basically.. or that's what I understand from it. Either that or it was one of those, "I rule the future.. but that's just not enough!" type plots, where, well, .. she was hungry. Hungry like a W-- er, Hi Wily :)i ruv roo!

2. Why didn't we get to see Squall find out that Laguna was his Dad? After Ward and Kiros cryptically spilled the beans on the Ragnarok in Disc 3, I was expecting some kind of humourous scene with Squall holding his head in his hands and thinking "This moron is my father?" Oh well. Better left to the imagination, I spose.

We weren't told Relm was the daughter of Shadow either. You weren't explicitly told that Link's favorite toys as a young kokri was my little pony. It was never revealed that Samus Aran is really a --.. oh they did tell us that one. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. Deal.

3. Why is everyone so obsessed with using limit breaks at the end of FF8? I beat Ultimecia just fine without using a single limit break, just lots of Ultimas and Meteors.

Just faster that way.. and some people didn't have the Ultima and Meteor to shoot off.. I, for one, had about 20 Ultima to my name the entire game. Some people would consider sitting around and draining a couple hundred Ultima off a Gas-Station-esque draw point to be more cheating than using a couple limit breaks. ;)

Fred

Brad the Oracle,

I was playing FF8 the today, collecting Bomb cards from the Fire Cave (after I saved over my 23 hour game)and when I got the 4th one in a row, instead of being a Bomb card, it said "Aquired Krysta Card"! For some reason, I got a Lv. 6 boss card. Is it some sort of strange glitch? Has any one else had this happen? Or is it just some sort of delusion induced by my intense rage after saving over my only file of my 23 hour game?

Son of Sabin

Brad:
There are times when you can get a rare card instead of a normal one. If you look in your Card submenu, you'll see on the higher cards down in the righthand corner of the screen it lists the enemies that they can be acquired from. Like once, I got a Shumi Tribe card from a T-Rexsaur. Not a bad card, either, heh heh. And yes, Mike, I know you have like 13 of them... it's okay, I modded all my cards at the end of my FF8 game anyways.. so nyeh.

Brad, I got an FF8 question- Yeah, doesn't everyone?
Any advice on how to fight more Marlboros and Adamantoises? I very rarely fight Marlboros, and I die, but now I have things junctioned to ST-Defense. I have not seen any Adamantoises yet, the internet says to fight them on the Island Closest to Hell and the strategy guide says near Dollet. I have fought in both of those places a whole lot with no success. Please answer this I am really getting frustrated.

-Jeffypop

Brad:
Fly Ragnarok to Dollet, then head north a ways. You'll see an island that is kinda shaped like a Moon. A little wider than Ragnarok, and it's got some beach on it.. walk around on the actual beach part.. within about 3 battles, you should have yourself some Adamantoises.. if you're high enough level, you should win Adamantine from them. For the Marlboros, (I hate spelling that, I may even be spelling it wrong, I'm using your spelling. :P) .. Fly near the Esthar Continent(Centra?). On the WEST side of the BIG forest north of Esthar, there are a bunch of small islands. Land on one, check your menu for the location. DON'T WALK AROUND. If you find yourself on "Island Closest to Heaven".. SAVE YOUR GAME Marlboros are nasty x 10^42. Make sure to have the person who has the Treatment command also have Status Defense of 100% vs Beserk, Confuse, and Sleep, if possible. If not, then the sleep will wear off. Use treatment on your best character, then on the person with Treatment, but leave one person down, or the Marlboro will Bad Breath you again. They're nasty guys, I actually just stole the tentacles from them with the Mug command and then ran. :) But I was only like lv 30 at the time, and didn't have any GFs with ST-Defx4 yet.

I was reading some of your older columns, and you mentioned Vandal Hearts 2. Can you give me the system and release date for it? I just recently found a copy of Vandal Hearts and I'm loving it.

Anthony   Your name is Steve. Your name.. is Steve.

Brad:
We show a release date of "4th Quarter" .. but that's a Japanese release date.. I'd actually kinda be shocked if Konami didn't bring it over.. and I absolutely, positively, totally, without a doubt, loved(no really!) the first Vandal Hearts. It was so much fun. It was the different win goals, all the variety, and the number of people on the fields was a lot of fun. Not to mention it was REALLY easy for you to lose someone quick in that game. Very tough. Of course, I beat it without one person dying in any battle...I really did. I even took the one scenario where everyone's supposed to run away and escape from town.. and, uh, I whooped all those guys' butts. At the normal level. I just got good at that game. I still die in FFT :(

Is there anywhere on disc 4 that i can get my weapons upgraded, or buy items?

Brad:
Heh, I hear there is a person on the Ragnarok who can upgrade your items.. I just used the Tonberry GF's "Call Shop" and the "Call Junk Shop" from Doomtrain. Other than that, though, I think you're SOL on the item/junk help.

Can you please tell me some reasons about why your Seed Rank may go down in FF8?

Brad:
If you spend too much time walking around without "progressing the story" then you end up losing a SeeD rank. I hear this happens much more quickly at higher SeeD ranks, and also, I noticed that while I did a lot of story-not-progressing, my SeeD Rank didn't seem to dip below 15.

Brad:
That's easy. I'm psycho. er.. waiit..*shrugs*

I ask of you two minor questions... 1) Any hints on beating Decus and Vesper in SO2? I swear am getting SOO SICK of Decus doing "Spicule"! The two of them are too frickin' fast!! AHHHHH!! 2)Have you ever heard of the game "Princess Maker" for Playstation? Looks a little different, but cool. You should see some of the jobs you can make your daughter do!! If you could answer these questions for me, I would be most humbled O Mighty One.

~Rhi

P.S- Have you had you monkey today?

Brad:
1. Get Bunny shoes at the Bunny Races or in the Cave of Trials. They'll help so much you'll wonder how you did anything without them. Also, check to see that comprehend is off. If it's on, you get more JP at each level, but it slows your characters down quite a bit. (Hi, I'm an SO2 addict, and .. damnit, I'm proud).
2. Uhh.. little girls.. nervous.. fear.. DESTROY!    >X( --little-girls--> *BOOM* ... oh, damn.. he does that sometimes. (In other words, uh, "no, I haven't heard of that.. sounds sick. :P)

~SmartLaine

Brad:
Smart indeed. Good call on those games. I actually never played Dragon Force.. I just watched a bunch of other people play it.. I never really did much with the Saturn. Not that I'm against it.. just, well, you guys know how much free time I have.. ;)

Chris Craig

Brad:
Uh, why are you being so picky? It's got some elements of RPGs.. like, uh, bosses.. er.. uh, yeah, and magic, YEAH, magic.. and.. uh, EVIL UNDEAD VAMPIRES.. yeah! (For those who think that's redundant, Raziel isn't just undead.. he's UNDEAD UNDEAD.. woo.. ).. er.. as for the rest of it.. well, it's fun! .. and you can eat souls. That's cool. Okay, fine, we cover it because Mike said so, and he pushes the button. You gonna die, man.