Editor's Comments: Remakes and ports seem to be all the rage in this day and age of gaming. Is it a good thing that companies are trying to introduce the new school gamers to the art of old school gaming? Or are they only trying to make a quick buck?

Editor's Comments: Do you prefer wandering around aimlessly looking for random battles, or having enemies on the screen? Michael joins us with an analysis on various attempts to stray away from the old random encounter system and how they may not have been all that effective.

Editor's Comments: The Final Fantasy VIII love triangle is revisited this week as Hylean joins us. Questions that were proposed previously are looked at. Why did Rinoa fall in love with Squall? And was Seifer really the best candidate to be Edea's knight?

Editor's Comments: Josh returns to discuss the difficulty, or lack thereof, of final bosses in RPGs. In some games, such as Final Fantasy X, the final boss is so easy you can take him down in just a few rounds. You can't die, you have auto-life. How could this have been improved?

It's that time again...

EarthBound has owned my soul for the last couple weeks. Not that I'm complaining; I'd like to actually beat the game again. Though, I have to say, things get very pricey in Summers. Dragon Quest VIII is still on the back burner, unfortunately. Also the construction on the kitchen continued over the weekend and I was left eating animal crackers for lunch again.

Anyway. This week we have another editorial from Matt, discussing the art of remakes and ports. New school gamers are being introduced to old school games through the wonderful Game Boy Advance. Returning this week is Michael, with an analysis on random encounters and the pitfalls of straying away from them. Final Fantasy VIII is re-revisited in a rebuttal to Henry's editorial, Final Fantasy VIII Revisited. Finally, Josh discusses the difficulty level of final bosses in games and how some of them could have just been done better.

The eds box is starting to feel a little light again. Please remember to send your submissions as plain text or in the template to editor@rpgamer.com, preferably in a zip file. If you want some ideas, feel free to join us in #edscorner on EsperNet. Any of the editorialists, myself included, will be happy to sit down and discuss topic ideas with you. Eventually, I would also like to revive Editorials Hour, so if anyone has some suggestions for me, please send them here.

Stephanie "Angel" McArdle
Editor@RPGamer.com