CHRONO CROSS SPOILERS AHEAD. BE VERY FOREWARNED.

Innate colors in Chrono Cross make no sense. They can't be related to the body, because Evil Serge is innate Black (while Good Serge is White). It can't be related to the person themself, because Serge-As-Lynx's innate color is Black, but Serge-As-Serge's innate color is White. What does it all mean????????

Sincerely,
Insanerest of AOL
Servant of Darkness and D.D.S.

Gin'irochi:
You know, you have a point. I never really thought about it..... but, I can kind of see how the colors change. Let me explain. (Or try to, at least)

See, when Lynx FIRST takes over Serge's body, his innate color is white. Not until he officially becomes "Dark Serge" does his innate color turn black. Nifty, huh? Basically, he changed the innate ability, so I belive it really does depend on the spirit/body/Zen/Nirvana(not the band) crap that they all share. < Insert happy flower picture and hippies here.>

This isn't quite a question, but more of a rant. I am soo tired of all the "violence" in video game bashing! When will people realize that this problem can easily be countered by good parenting? In addition, if violence in video games makes kids go crazy, why are we still sane? One more thing, noone complained about Bugs Bunny, Wild E. Coyote, or Sylvester back in the day. If you happen to go back and watch some of these old cartoons, you'll see that they are just filled with violence. So quit complaining about videogames!

- The Red Oompa Loompa

p.s. The thing that sent me off on this rant, was the news. The local Fox station in my area was doing a report on violence in videogames and the Rating system, saying that it's grossly inaccurate. That may be true, but the examples used in proving this point were just utterly ridiculous. The reporter pointed out Body Harvest and said that it was rated E for everyone, which must obviously not be true because of the name. Anyone ever tell this guy, "Don't judge a book by it's cover"? I mean, he didn't even look at the back of the game, much less play it. Fortunately my generation will be running the world soon, so hopefully all these problems will be resolved, since we understand video games.

Gin'irochi:
You know, I've been irked by that for a long time. My opinion is that bureaucrats should stay out of my console, let alone my business. If you really think about it, a lot of our parents (and their parent's, and so on) have all gotten along without these violence restrictions, and they got along fine. So why is it a big deal all of a sudden? Do we have latent cells in our brains that are just now coming forth when we see violence on TV and causing us to go into rages and kill crap? If you do.... then I'm sorry, my friend. you are a certifiable crackhead. You make me proud.... I guess. My opinion is that parents should start being parents instead of relying on beauraucrats so much. But then again, most of said officers are too busy in their offices helping their interns dry-clean skirts to be concerned with the public anymore... ;)

(This isn't a political column, by the way.... please keep rebuttals to a minimum. If you feel you must write about it, I invite you to by all means submit an editorial to Scar.)

A couple people asked me to describe VP's mechanics, but I didn't find those letters until 5 AM, so, better late than never:

The game is divided into 8 Chapters, each of which contains a certain number of periods. Periods are expended whenever you enter a town, dungeon, or search for new characters and dungeons. The general format of the game is: Find new characters, character build them to gain levels and points to spend on skills and personality traits, send characters with the appopriate specifications (specified between chapters) off to Asgard, character build more to get a head start on the next chapter. Between chapters you can check on how everyone you sent off is doing without you, which is always a plus.

Towns and dungeons are side scrolling, complete with nasty jumps.

Fights are rather interesting. During any given round, you can hit select to bring up the standard list of RPG choices (Run, Item, Magic, etc.). Without hitting this however, each button corresponds to a different character's attack command. While there is no ATB system, and each character has a fied number of attacks per round (generally 1), timing is important. Each character begins attacking EXACTLY when you hit the button. With proper timing, characters will hit in combos, yielding bonus items and experience. Plus, if every character hits the same monster with every attack in a single combo, it becomes possible to use each character's insanely powerful finishing move. By insanely powerful I mean you can do 50,000 damage to a monster with 500 HP at the very beginning of the game if everyone pulls them off.

I think that covers everything.

-Googleshng

Gin'irochi:
Zzzzz-- wha?? Oh yeah... good explaination, google.

Seriously, I couldn't have explained it better myself. Which is good, since Google is the other columnist. ;)

Wouldn't it be fun to have a game where all your characters are summoned characters (GFs,Espers,etc.) and you have your own battles in your magical summonee world and sometimes you get called to look all big and tough and thrash some little human's pig-like foes? You could get all disgruntled and fight your master or become a bad summon! It could have a wide variety of characters and only later in the game can you get good ones like Alexander, etc. Also, I think it should make some of the best summons to be Shiva, Ifrit, and Odin, they're always the first you get, then they suck later. Also, your main character should be Bahumet. You could even form a love triangle between Ifrit, Shiva, and Odin! Sweeeeeeeeeeet!

Vegeta_Zero

Gin'irochi:
OK, Repeat after me.

Drugs.... are.... BAD. Anyway, Valkyrie Profile is somewhat similar to what you describe, only much.... MUCH less crackheaded. Anyway, check it out.

Dear Gin,

Is it me, or is Nintendo just going incredibly overboard on the hype for Majora's Mask?

I mean, the Zelda series does have the history of producing some of the greatest games ever, but, honestly. First, check out the websites www.zscience and radiozelda.com...It had actually gotten to the point where IGN's N64 site believed that Nintendo was sponsoring some company researching alternate dimensions. Of course, sharp readers eventually noticed that the domains were only taken out by Nintendo as obscure means of promoting LoZ: MM. Now, the site hoax is over but the ads are appearing everywhere. Just yesterday I saw one in my college newspaper. How far reaching is that?

Inundated with Zelda
MasterZero

Gin'irochi:
I honestly can't see what the appeal is to Majora's Mask. I mean..... Link is a friggin' tree for god's sake! That just totally ruins the idea for me there. Ah well. I'll have to wait for official screens and trailers to really get an opinion. Ah well.

Just to get the issue of colorblindness out of the way, thus attempting to prevent it ever coming up again on the letters page, I have a few statistics:

ð 1 in every 12 men (approx. 8.3%) have color perception problems.
ð 1 in every 165 women (approx. .006%) have color perception problems.

I could attach a diagram of some description to explain why this is, but chances are no one really cares enough to look at the thing.

Gin'irochi:
Wow. I didn't know it was that common.... very cool.

Hey, did you know that 46.2% of statistics are made up on the spot? ;) (By the way they're also taking the word "gullible" out of the dictionary this year. A damn shame.)

I was once *spasms* hit by lightning *spasms* but I am fine *spasms* now except for these *spasms* little spasms

You hate me. :-(

I am a famous traveler in Hell, But few realize that Hell is on earth, and still fewer realize that I'm even here.

-Tweek

I have blue hair.

Xenogears.

KFC is good.

I ran out of quickies.

The Last Laugh: