Josh - 11:33 EST

Ok, so this weekend has been so incredibly busy that I didn't even get home early enough to do the column yesterday. And even now, I'm not starting this until 11:30pm because the customers at the sushi place decided to stay over an hour later than we closed. So...I'm a little pissed right now, but other than that... :D

So, I'll go into more detail tomorrow, but for now, here's the highlights of what you need to know:

• Two questions today to make up for yesterday!
• Changes! Each day will have a different difficulty question. Saturday = Relatively easy. Sunday = Medium. Monday = Relatively Difficult.
• Potch levels will change as well for each question. Saturday = 150 potch. Sunday = 250 potch. Monday = 350 potch.
• Luca's questions will remain difficult throughout the weekend, cause really, he's that evil.
• You will now receive 250 potch for defeating Luca starting next Monday.

Ok, onward to questions! It will still be pretty short today, so send me lots of letters to make up for it for tomorrow!

Hello Matt, how is life treating you?

Well hope its good, because I have a question for you.

Rumor has it that Mother Three won't ever come out, YET according to a store employee who had some very useful info, Mother 1& 2 will come out either to GBA or DS. Oddly enough, Mother Three was a ruse, a distraction, something to keep buyers.

I went today and got that information, better yet he showed me a list on the store computer. I have to admit, I saw it with my own eyes. My question is: Which is the cover up, or is the entire thing made up?

I know that he could of easily wrote that up just so I would keep quiet, but how could he if I was near him the entire time, so was his boss apparently. Mother Three is no longer important to me, too me, its a dead end game. Too good to be true, just like Dragon Warrior Four.

I don't trust any of Nintendo's sources now, they could easily be made up, like Mother one and two.

If you know anything, please could you please tell me?

Thank you Mr. Matt!

Average gamer.

Hi there.

I just thought of a question about the versions of Final Fantasy 4. As I understand it, there are differences between some/all of them. The original super famicom game is proper but the FF2 cart for the SNES is easier and abilities/items are removed.

Is the version in the North American FF Collection as hard as the game is "supposed" to be? What about the DS version?

Basically, I seem to replay this game a lot and I want to find what version is the best for that purpose.

Thanks,
Mike

Hi Josh.

I always think people are wasting their time by trying to classify games, or anything for that matter, into categories. As long as you don't need to use the actual definition, you don't need to have a precise definition. I'm a math student, anything you say in math needs to be clearly defined and exact. But that's because you find out new things according to what you defined. Define something in a different way, you'll find new things, but that's just because you're looking at something entirely different than what you looked at before.

In games, the only reason to use a definition, that I can think of, is to explain how a game is to someone else (for example, a reccomendation). That's why I always like to say "the game is similar to this game" or "the battle system reminds of that game". Frankly, if you're not going to employ what you're trying to define, you're just arguing about semantics. I personally prefer to play the games instead of trying to think which category they fall into. Especially these days when things are even more ambigous than in the past.

It's the same thing with books or movies. If people want to know the "scientific" way of going about it, you need to first formulate a definition, then see if the game you're looking at fits the definition. Of course, you may find out some people don't agree with your definition, which is OK. You may find out a game fits into several different categories. As long you didn't say that's forbidden in the definition, that's OK too.

But that's the proper way to do it. And once things are done in this method, people can say "True, according to your definition FFXII is an action RPG, but I don't agree with your definition of an RPG". It's entirely wrong (scientifically speaking) to determine the type of game by comparing it with a list of commonly found criteria (unless your definition is a checklist - game must have this, this and this).

So that's my two cents. Maybe you could try a discussion about "How do you define a genre". Readers could propose definitions and then you could vote on them. Once that's done, such discussions (about FFXII for example) would be obsolete, apart for trying to change the definitions so they are more logical.

Zohar Gilboa

Dear my good friend... Ouro,

I have a question about an old, old wooden ship. Ok, ok, actually it's about an old game! The game is... Quest 64!

Is it really that bad?

I have it, and I remember playing it a /lot /back in the day. It was one of my favorite games! I'll admit that the ending pretty much sucks, there's not much of a plot line, and I wiiiish there was a lot more you could do in it... but I still believe it has a lot of good qualities! The graphics are quite good for when it was made, and the different places that you go look quite beautiful! Plus... the music!!! I'm not gonna lie, Quest 64 has some of my favorite game music ever! My sister and I used to spend hours playing around in the game - or making up our own stories and... er, talking the characters... ahahaha. Yeah... we were pretty pathetic, but it was fun!! XD I love just walking around in Quest 64.

So... I guess the question is, do you really think it's that bad? Oh, and one more... a long time ago, when the Gaming Intelligence Agency was still around, they had a section up marked Quest 64 2. They even had pictures and a plotline! Did that just... die? I'm going to assume it did, but I just never know what happened to it.

Anyway, that's it. Thanks!

Your good friend...
Chinroku_sama!

Hey Ouro,

For my RPG I didn't mean true parallel dimensions like the world is the same but different in certain areas. I meant as in how they were all parallel, but all the people were different, all the worlds were built differently but in every world people have the same abilities as people do in another world. Kindof hard to explain though so I did the best I could(sorry.) I'm not a fan of games that have those true parallel dimensions. Chrono Cross was good, but I thought when the same characters met each other it was kindof stupid.

Also. I agree that Xenosaga 2 sucks. I forced myself to play it through solely to beat it, and for the story as well. That person who doesn't have Xenosaga 2 and wants to read the story to all of them could always go to http://www.bluelaguna.net. It has links to the movies to all three Xenosaga games. It even has every part missing from the Xenosaga movie DVD(which isn't really missing anything that needs to be seen, it's probably missing about 30 minutes to an hour of movies. I've watched the first movies in order because of the Xenosaga movie dvd and those go together perfectly(aside from a few boss fights that end aburptly without fighting -- except with Margulis which you could always put it as Ziggy getting hurt during that attack he protected MOMO.) I haven't watched the Xenosaga 2 movies so I couldn't tell if it fits together as good as the original, but most likely it does. That way he could watch the movies from the first and the second and then play the third and get what it's talking about more than missing much(although the third while having all these different characters you won't know, doesn't provide any questions you know, but fills all the questions up whether you knew them first hand or not, so even though the games are connected the other two mainly aren't needed.)

Anyways, I finished every secret to Xenosaga 3 a few days ago and the secret boss you fought on the E.S.' was amazing. I hate the E.S. battles, but just because of what I fought it made the battle actually cool in a sortof I want to play Xenogears again way. What did you think as soon as you saw that boss(and it's other side.)

For the answer to L6 I'm going to guess answer E.

And for the answer to 6... it'll be a moment, have to put in Parasite Eve... I'm going to guess answer D Evolution. I knew it but I wanted to be sure. Although, Liberation is said in the opening movie before Evolution.

-andrew- -kupomogli-

Luca Blight takes a moment to heal. (20.88% health)
Bainick moves to Tile 6.
Leaper moves to Tile 7.
Macstorm moves to tile 3.
Arros Raikou moves to Tile 1.
Slimey moves to Tile 10.
Bucket moves to Tile 9.
Draconn moves to Tile 8.
Gouden Draak moves to Tile 4.
Slashlen moves to Tile 12.
JuMeSyn moves to Tile 3.
PureLunatic moves to Tile 10.
William.T moves to Tile 12.
Arpijy moves to Tile 10.
Carabbit moves to Tile 4.
Vicissitude moves to Tile 6.
JDX moves to Tile 5.
Kupomogli moves to Tile 6.
Aurelius moves to Tile 10.
Omm moves to Tile 5.
Aylee moves to Tile 6.
Tabor moves to Tile 12.

Twice?!?! Oh that's it, I'm getting angry...

Answer to #L6: B. Call a locksmith!
Hehe. This is from the Murgg woods in Alundra, where you literally grab someone from town to come and unlock the door for you.

#L7. What are the two major hidden statistics that every Pokemon has?

A. DVs and IVs
B. GVs and DVs
C. IVs and EVs
D. Nature and DVs
E. Nature and UVs
F. DVs and GVs

#L8. Assuming that:

• Yakra was going to die anyway the year that Crono defeats him,
• That when a Yakra dies, another is born immediately,
• Yakras live for only 35 years, unless killed. Assume none have died prematurely (other than the obvious).

A. 5
B. 10
C. 15
D. 20
E. 25
F. 30

I, uh...don't have a prompt at the moment, mostly because my brain stopped working an hour or so ago. So, since we only have one more day together, it's a free day! Send in whatever you like, rants or questions, and I'll post as much as I can (I still have a couple in my inbox I need to get up too)! See you tomorrow!

***Josh hates his customers sometimes.