O frabjous day

31 March 10 | 20:01 | Posted by:

Wow, Apple's spellcheck recognizes "frabjous" as a real word. Apple is good people.

Tomorrow is the most annoying day of the year. No, not because it's April Fool's Day; people try and fail to be clever on the Internet all the time, so there's nothing especially interesting about a day for concentrated mediocrity. No, tomorrow is going to be annoying because it's the day that Sekaiju No Meikyuu III comes out in Japan, but there's been no U.S. release date announced yet.

I mean, obviously it's coming, because I'm pretty sure Atlus publishes all its first-party creations in the U.S. these days. Also, I ran into the company's PR guy at PAX East and he casually mentioned something about the game... under the name "Etrian Odyssey III." I guess that is what is known as a "no brainer."

I'm pretty psyched for the game, but also terrified. I've been reading rumors about extra unlockable classes and, worse yet, a New Game Plus mode. Yeah. As if the first two games didn't eat enough of my free time without the ability to carry over progress into a second playthrough.

We'll be importing the game from Japan, of course. I want to cover it, but even more to the point I need something to drag me away from Pokémon HeartGold. The other day I started organizing the critters in my PC boxes by their pokédex number, including duplicates of different species to allow me to have one of each evolution. And then I found a Ditto and turned it into a breeding machine so I could generate a bunch of duplicate starters for trade. Yeah. I need me an Etrian Intervention, all right.

category: games | forums | fourteen comments | §

GSQ4: All apologies

30 March 10 | 10:07 | Posted by:

I'm finding it more and more difficult to write these days. Not because I'm burned out on writing, but because I have less and less time for it. It's really quite annoying, since I began the year determined to post something interesting here every day, yet life has done its level best to prevent this from happening. Stupid life.

Anyway, it's been a few days, but at least I do have something interesting to post.

Suikoden V vs. Tierkreis
As someone who gave up on the Suikoden series after the second game -- the move to 3D derailed just about everything I liked about the PlayStation entries -- this article was intriguing. It cemented my conviction that I made the right choice in bailing when I did... but it also made me ponder an alternate universe in which I forged ahead in a desperate search for some hidden nugget of quality.

category: games, gamespite | forums | eleven comments | §

Holy crap I'm busy

26 March 10 | 21:08 | Posted by:

Hi! I'm at PAX East. It has been keeping me busy, and tired, too. I'm way too old for this jetlag nonsense.

Anyway, here is some proof that I have not just been sitting around drinking milkshakes. Actually, I haven't been drinking milkshakes at all. Which is a shame. A milkshake sounds kinda tasty right about now.

• I saw Get Lamp, which is an upcoming movie about Interactive Fiction. It was really quite good.
  
• I played the new Hydro Thunder game, which was, you know, a racing game on water. Yep.
  
• On the other hand, Puzzle Quest 2 really looks quite good and I would like to play more of it. And I say this as someone who grew bored with the original very quickly.
  
• Also, I reviewed WarioWare D.I.Y., although this information has nothing whatsoever to do with PAX.

And now I'm off to get a few hours' sleep before I launch into the 16-hour marathon that will be my Saturday. I'm pretty sure that I will be an incoherent mess by the time the Retronauts panel rolls around tomorrow at 9 p.m., so, you know. That'll be fun.

category: blog | forums | five comments | §

GSQ4: On with the show, this is it

24 March 10 | 22:05 | Posted by:

Dragon Quest V: Heavenly Heartbreak
Something about GameSpite Quarterly 4 that sort of went unpublicized is that the first half of the book is a loose dissertation on the state of RPGs. I've been skipping around with my postings of the book's contents, but not anymore. Now it's time to get serious. By which I mean "posting all the articles in sequence." Beginning with this bit on Dragon Quest V. Enjoy.

category: games, gamespite | forums | thirteen comments | §

GSQ4: Chaos in the windy Megaten

23 March 10 | 00:59 | Posted by:

Shin Megami Tensei: Law, Chaos, and the American Way
Hey dudes, I hear tell there's a new Megaten game out today. I also hear it's the best RPG of the month! (I heard this from a guy named "me.") So: Here today for your delectation is a piece from GameSpite Quarterly 4 called "SMT: Law, Chaos, and the American Way" by new contributor Cole Lastie. It may spoil Strange Journey a bit, but it's totally worth it.

category: games, gamespite | forums | three comments | §

"PSA" is pronounced "pshaw"

21 March 10 | 22:29 | Posted by:

I spent the weekend babysitting a tiny, tiny infant and trying (and failing) to grok the appeal of Sega's most recent RPG offerings, so I didn't have much time to do... well, anything, really. But I would like to offer up this friendly reminder that Blurb's free shipping ends really soon, so if you were planning to grab any volumes of GameSpite Quarterly, now would be the ideal time to do so. I don't know when they'll offer a shipping break like this again, but I'm gonna guess it'll be a while.

category: blog | forums | five comments | §

GSQ4: MegaTiny

20 March 10 | 22:40 | Posted by:

Persona 4: Thinking Small
You know me. I'm all about the synergy. I spend weekends proactively synergizing my paradigms. So, with Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey due out in a couple of days (p.s., you really should pick up a copy), I figured now would be a good time to post the SMT-related bits of GameSpite Quarterly 4. It's fun, this pretense of being relevant.

category: games, gamespite | forums | three comments | §

How was the earth conceived?

19 March 10 | 17:10 | Posted by:

I'm not really terribly excited about Platinum and Sega's new RPG-ish space thing, Infinite Space, but the sheer ubiquity of its title over the past few days finally convinced me to go ahead and buy a copy of Emerson Lake & Palmer's Tarkus from iTunes. Why? Because Tarkus features a song called "Infinite Space," of course.

Actually, "Infinite Space" is pretty much the album Tarkus in a nutshell: The work of a bunch of intellectual kids in their early 20s who just realized, hey guys, that whole "religion" thing is pretty dumb, huh? Lyrically, it's slightly less hamfisted in making its point than '70s-vintage Neil Peart, but demonstrates far less grace than its contemporary Aqualung. At least Jethro Tull had the decency not to take themselves entirely seriously. "Infinite Space" features deep gems like "Do you believe/God makes you breathe?/Why did he lose/Six million Jews?" delivered straight-face by a falsetto Greg Lake. It's awesome. Awesomely bad. Charming in its pompous little way, though.

Tarkus's title cut is pretty amazing, though: It's a 20-minute rock epic about a mighty armadillo tank that, so far as I can tell, declares war on the Catholic church.



I mean, come on. How could this be anything less than a masterpiece?

Despite its somewhat unconventional length, structure, and style, not to mention its relatively slow time signature -- or perhaps because of these things -- it's one of the most intense songs I've ever heard. I remember listening to it once in college; when it was over, a friend of mine whose tastes tended toward speed metal and other loud, angry music asked, quietly, "Can we listen to something else? That was way too oppressive." I guess it must have something to do with the leaden weight of the sound, which is predominantly bass guitar, Hammond organ, and shrieking Moog.

As for Infinite Space the game, well... I like the variety of customization and such, but it all seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to in order to play rock-paper-scissors. Plus, I'm pretty sure Tarkus would whup any one of the game's spaceships in combat.

category: games, media | forums | eleven comments | §

GSQ4: Me Kratos smash

18 March 10 | 10:05 | Posted by:

God of War: Titanic Fury
I was so excited this week when I heard that War Gods III was coming out! Then I discovered it's actually just God of War III, and that I'll never learn the final truth of what happened to Kabuki Joe. Heartbreaking, man. However, this does give me a excuse to post a darned fine article on the first God of War from GameSpite Quarterly 4, so that's pretty rad, right? Right.

P.S. Only a couple more days for free shipping on the aforementioned book.

category: games, gamespite | forums | ten comments | §

Speaking of Lost

17 March 10 | 13:01 | Posted by:

I was happy to discover that a Google search for "John Locke" still results in a bunch of hits for engravings and paintings of the philosopher/economist, with the Lost character first appearing as something like the eighth result. Nerds destroy everything they touch, but at least we haven't corrupted the comparative weight and value of history vs. pop culture that badly just yet.

On the other hand, I was fairly disappointed to discover that my hilariously clever name for the Ponyta I recently captured in HeartGold, "Ignitemare," is considerably less original than I had hoped. Stupid Internet, coming up with my jokes first.

Equally disappointing is that I turned Very Old yesterday and was playing Pokémon at all. There's a sick, sick part of my soul that really wants to fill out a Pokédex to completion, and I really don't understand it. My only hope is that the opportunity to finally create Jetpack Goonies (even if it is just in microgame format) via WarioWare D.I.Y. will be my redemption.

category: games, media | forums | eleven comments | §

I am watching television

15 March 10 | 20:16 | Posted by:

That's noteworthy, because I never watch TV! Well, not of my own volition. I love my fiancée enough that I don't leave the room when she decides it's time to watch Desperate Housewives or Sex and the City, but lately I've been electing to watch How I Met Your Mother, because it's amusing without being trashy and dumbed down like pretty much every other sitcom on television, and Lost, because it's really quite interesting. It's a solid mix-of sci-fi and character drama, with both elements ending up in very different places than where they began.



For instance, in retrospect, this scene is really kind of weird.

Anyway, I've discovered that the best way to deal with lengthy, serialized series like Lost is to pretend they don't exist until their final season, and then catch up all at once. (Netflix is an invaluable tool for assisting with such an endeavor.) Taking the last-minute compressed approach helped me survive the later seasons of Alias, and it came in just as handily during the third season of Lost, which frankly I don't even remember. There was a third season, right?

Unfortunately, Cat and I misjudged our Lost endeavor. We caught up to Alias about two episodes before the finale, but with Lost we still have like ten episodes to go. Going from five seasons in three weeks' time, never having to wonder where the plot was heading, to waiting a week between episodes is a painful transition. However, I am making a sincere endeavor not to be one of those fans, the one who loudly speculates at length about his dopey, half-assed theories every Wednesday morning. If I fail, and you happen to pass within earshot, I apologize. The good news is that both shows I am watching are in their final seasons, so once we survive the spring I can go back to pretending TV doesn't exist.

category: media | forums | 26 comments | §

GSQ3: An international affair

14 March 10 | 09:41 | Posted by:

A new batch of GameSpite Quarterly 3 entries has arrived on the scene, and by random coincidence this trio shares a common thread: They're all international heroes of folklore. Beginning in Britain, we have Royal Egg Gatherer Hen House Henry; next we move further east to Russia to honor decorated national hero The I Block; and finally, we end up at the far edge of the Eurasian continent to discuss the life and times of Ishikawa Goemon, the man so famous they named a restaurant after him right here in my neighborhood. (Which is nice, except they decided the menus should feature artwork of a man being boiled alive. This is why I will never, ever order their nabe.)

category: games, gamespite | forums | two comments | §

A poll of utmost importance

13 March 10 | 16:39 | Posted by:

Hey dudes (also dudellas, or whatever name is properly used to refer to females of the species these days), my copy of GameSpite Quarterly 4 arrived. I feel silly about being so down on its layouts before; it really looks quite nice inside. The lack of pagination and the crowded page borders bug me, but otherwise it's some fine-looking stuff.

Naturally, I'm already thinking ahead two issues, so please take a moment to respond to our GSQ6 planning poll. It is the first of two!

category: gamespite | forums | six comments | §

GSQ3: The O.G.s (ordinal Gs) of gaming

12 March 10 | 09:21 | Posted by:

Well, I'm probably stretching the definition of the word "ordinal" here, but today's entries are an ordered set! So I guess I'm not technically wrong. Just wrong in spirit. Anyway! This post fills in a bit more of the missing content backlog from GameSpite Quarterly 3. I'm sorry to say that two-thirds of the content here was written by me due to sheer random clustering. Try not to hold this against the book as a whole.

• The G-6155 Interceptor is technically the protagonist of the Spy Hunter series. Sadly, Hollywood decided to make The Rock the main character for the movies. In my opinion, the 8-bit car did a much better job of emoting.
  
• Gilgamesh from Tower of Druaga was a late entry to the book; as such, I was a little loopy, so this particular entry strays into some rather oblique side-references. Collect them all!
  
• The Guardian (of The Guardian Legend), on the other hand, was given a far more straightforward entry. It basically revolves around "LOL bewbs" jokes. I'd make a comment about low-hanging fruit, but given the context that would sound far filthier than I intended. Anyway, I'm sorry that this entry is probably the closest the world will ever come to a Guardian Legend revival.

category: games, gamespite | forums | eleven comments | §

GSQ4: The adventure begins, again

11 March 10 | 10:40 | Posted by:

The Once and Future Genre
By Luke Osteritter | GameSpite Quaterly 4 secretly features a mini-section devoted to the role and nature of adventure games in these modern times. Luke's article here serves as a sort of mission statement, not unlike the "How RPGs Lost Their Way" feature did for that genre. Please enjoy this thematic critique as we embark on a multi-day journey through.... adventure!

category: games, gamespite | forums | one comment | §

GSQ4: A timely Final Fantasy-related thing

09 March 10 | 10:36 | Posted by:

Final Fantasy: Populist Mechanics
So... you've probably heard about this Final Fantasy XIII game that's out today, yeah? I know I've mentioned it in passing once or twice. I figured I'd cap my relationship with the game by posting a relevant piece from the latest GameSpite Quarterly -- it's not specifically about FFXIII, but it's definitely germane to the topic, in a roundabout way. Please to enjoy, roundly.

category: games, gamespite | forums | eight comments | §

Coddling fantasy

08 March 10 | 12:21 | Posted by:

The Internet has loudly expressed its heartache over the fact that Final Fantasy XIII is an incredibly linear game... even though this is only really true for its first half. My clear time for the game was about 52 hours; at somewhere around the 20- or 25-hour mark, I hit the part where the whole thing opens up considerably. From that point, you travel through a number of much larger environments, which include a vast savannah where the main open-ended content is set (reminiscent in many, many ways of Final Fantasy XII) as well as the final "dungeon," which is one of the most intricate settings ever featured in a Final Fantasy game -- it's eclipsed by the extensive series of underground caves spanning the breadth of Ivalice in FFXII, sure, but it's easily on par with any other series dungeon you care to name. In between these two areas, you travel through locales that remind me for all the world of something from Half-Life 2 -- packed with setpieces, fairly linear, but offering multiple routes to each objective, and dotted with NPCs who add a splash of life and scale to the world. The second half of the game is also where the Crystarium skill-building system opens up, and with it comes the availability of better items and cash for weapon- and accessory-crafting, so you're fully allowed to build your characters to your own specs. In other words, FFXIII eventually becomes almost exactly what people generally expect from a Final Fantasy game.

Given the completely unsurprising nerd-rage over how that opening half plays out, I have to wonder why the developers were so slow to unlock the "real" game. I'm pretty sure the answer comes down to sales pressure and the need to appeal to a huge range of players.

Look at your average action game, your Resident Evil or God of War or Halo. Games like these offer a single-player experience that runs about 8-15 hours. Even an outlier like Assassin's Creed II can be played to near-100% completion in 25 hours. The FFXIII team has stated they were "inspired" by games like Modern Warfare 2, which most people have taken to be some ridiculous hallucination on the creative staff's about how they think FFXIII plays like some delusional outsider's vision of a first-person shooter. What they really mean is that FFXIII opens with a 20-hour guided experience, mingling narrative and action in equal parts, with no room for straying, and thus no possibility that players will wander off-track and become lost, thereby killing the game's forward momentum. Pretty much like Half-Life 2! Or Modern Warfare! Or about any modern action game you care to name.

Surely it's no coincidence that the introductory portion of the game lasts for almost exactly as long as the single-player mode of a fairly substantial action title. The first half of FFXIII actually offers a fairly complete narrative arc in its own right, to be honest, and I'm fairly certain this is by design. The party members are thrust together, go their own separate ways, and are inexorably drawn together again. Once they join up again, the "real" game begins in that you start to figure out the main story, explore more open level designs, are forced to devise your own party and Paradigm formations, and experience your first truly challenging boss encounter.

I suspect this was intended as the dividing line between "dedicated" and "casual" players: Those who just want to take a cursory tour of a big-name game will see a lot of great graphics, get a taste of combat, and see all the heroes team up in one big happy party before shelving it. The "tourist" sections net a body as much play time from FFXIII as they'd see in any other action game, so they can put the disc back on their shelves, content in having seen the shiniest, fluffiest gaming experience $60 can buy. They get to see much of the characters' tales, take a good look at the nuances of the game mechanics, see everyone come together, and can tune out before they have to deal with the larger plot. Those who actually get into the game, on the other hand, can stick around to finally enjoy making full use of all the interesting game systems that until that point have mostly been broadly hinted at.

I am not defending this element of the game, or this particular design philosophy in general for that matter, because -- as an RPG fan -- I would prefer not to have my hand held for 20 hours. The prospect of replaying FFXIII doesn't really appeal to me too terribly much, because in my ideal world the more open, player-driven portions would appear about 15 hours sooner. I do, however, accept this approach to design as an inescapable reality of modern games. Look at Assassin's Creed II, ostensibly the poster child for freedom in modern games; in reality, it slowly doles out skills and options throughout the entire course of the game. It's not until the final chapter that you're finally given free rein to play as you truly like, anywhere you want.

As frustrating as this market-conscious approach to game design is to me as a player, I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to the developers. Some of these guys have been in the business of making games for 20 years, and surely they're eager to build on their prior experience... only to be told by someone in a suit that, no, you really ought to tone it down, because you can't assume the player is interested or intelligent enough to appreciate the complexity of the systems you're offering. If anything, I'm grateful that some "blockbuster" games are occasionally allowed to become more intricate in their back halves, because that isn't always the case. (The aforementioned ACII ceases to even resemble a challenge after about 10 hours, and the final portions of the game are hilariously easy.) Wading through FFXIII's final dungeon, battling mobs that were far deadlier than the final boss gauntlet, I couldn't help but think how daunting some of those battles and the required strategies for surviving them must be for people who aren't really familiar with the RPG genre... but then I realized it probably doesn't matter, because they probably lost interest around the time they hit the savannah I mentioned earlier.

I'm certainly not being critical of people who don't find interest in the deeper mechanics that FFXIII lays bare in its late hours. Different strokes and all that; RPGs aren't for everyone. Unfortunately, FFXIII is victim of the fact that it's an RPG that does have to be for everyone -- and in three different international regions, at that. While many fans are lamenting the things it sacrifices in the process, having finished the game I'm more inclined to marvel at the things it managed to retain. The fact of the matter is that for every single forum post I've read in which someone expresses their fury over FFXIII's linearity, I see another post in which someone says, "Huh, suddenly I'm interested in this game." And given the fact that people on the Internet are a lot more likely to vocalize anger than satisfaction, it's not unreasonable to assume that the silent majority will find the game's structure to be a boon. So who's to say which perspective is wrong?

In the end, all of this simply reinforces my relief at the existence of portable games, where small development budgets offer creators the freedom to drill down and really cater to niche audiences. Yeah, that's right. The Nintendo DS is the last haven of the hardcore gamer. And don't you forget it.

category: games | forums | 25 comments | §

GSQ3: An awesome legacy of amazing box art... revealed!

07 March 10 | 08:46 | Posted by:

Man, old MSX box art is the best. Maybe even better than old Spectrum box art.

I miss the days when the videogame industry was perfectly OK with slapping any kind of amateurish junk on a box and hoping for a million-seller. It's all too glossy now, all pre-rendered and probably put together on more than just a shoestring budget. Bring back the good old days! The days of, you know...

• Mega Man: Fight, Mega Man! For some braces to correct your crippling polio!
  
• The Foreign Prince: As interpreted by Sega's artists, the hero of The Prince of Persia was actually Luke Skywalker on a mission to rescue the sex princess from the scary dark men who liked to make her adopt seductive poses at the door to her prison cell.
  
• Frogger: And there are simply no words for this box, but to make me rue the fact that the MSX never caught on in the U.S. -- once again, Japan gets all the good stuff. And by "good" I mean "pathetically laughable." But in a charming way.

Oh, right -- it case it wasn't clear, clicking the links above will take you to character profiles from GameSpite Quarterly 3.

category: games, gamespite | forums | ten comments | §

GSQ4: Because you just can't enough of that there Mega Man 10

05 March 10 | 10:54 | Posted by:

Alternate Bosses for Mega Man 10
Philip "Loki" Armstrong provides for us another of his fine retrogaming-flavored comics, this time focusing on what could have been with Mega Man 10. Yes, coming up with Whatever-Man joke robot masters is an old and fairly tired videogame nerd meme, but these are different. These are written and drawn by Loki, and therefore they are rad.

category: games, gamespite | forums | 17 comments | §

Free shipping for books

04 March 10 | 15:15 | Posted by:

I wish this had shown up in my email a few days ago, but Blurb just sent me a note to let me know that they're offering free economy speed shipping on all purchases through March 21st. So, if you were interested in picking up GameSpite Quarterly or something but didn't feel like paying their rather stiff shipping fees, now you're all set.

Sorry to those of you who picked up GSQ4 a few days ago. If I'd known this offer was going to be coming along, I'd have waited to launch the book.

Anyway, if you're interested, just use the promo code WESHIP (for purchases made in US dollars), WESHIP2 (UK pounds), or WESHIP3 (Euros) when you check out.

category: gamespite | forums | sixteen comments | §

Etrian Odyssey III will be the end of me

03 March 10 | 08:25 | Posted by:

I've made it to the bit in Final Fantasy XIII where the game opens up and I have to run around a vast, open, interconnected series of areas hunting marks. Basically, it just turned into Final Fantasy XII. I am being forced to stay home today and do nothing but play this game. So, you know, sometimes this ridiculous job of mine is pretty OK! And now I can begin looking forward to my next addictions.



This may sound strange, but there's a small, sane part of me that kind of hopes Atlus doesn't localize Sekaiju No Meikyuu III into Etrian Odyssey III. I mean, I'm champing at the bit to play the game, yeah. But that's kind of the problem. I estimate I sank 100 hours or more into the first two games -- that's apiece, not cumulatively -- and everything I've read about EOIII looks like it has the potential to ruin me.

Right, so there's mapping of dungeons. That's to be expected. But outside of the dungeon, there's an ocean to be explored. I am susceptible to the lure of exploration! It is my elemental weakness. So that's not good.

I've read that there are ten new classes which completely remix the game's skill system. (And someone noted some blank spaces in a class menu somewhere, leading to speculation of a few extra unlockable classes similar to the previous games' Hexer, Ronin, and Beast.) Fine, fine, I can relearn how to build my party. But then I heard that EOIII offers multiclassing, allowing characters to train up in a secondary class for skill diversification. This brings EOIII a step closer to Final Fantasy V. A perilous step. Now I really can potentially create a party consisting of Ranma the monk and three shepherds without compromising my combat potential.

Also, I've read that there'll be a significant weapon-customization element to EOIII as well. You'll presumably have to gather dungeon (and ocean) loot to unlock new gear, but on top of that you'll be able to add various enhancements to your equipment to boost your power and add innate elemental traits and who knows what else.

So basically, it's Etrian Odyssey with more to explore and way more to customize. I suppose I should probably just chain my DS to my body if the game makes its way over here. At least it will save me money; I doubt I'll need to buy another game all year. Uh, except Dragon Quest IX. Oh man, this summer is gonna be like Sophie's Choice for me, isn't it? Which baby do I abandon!?

P.S.: Speaking of Etrian Odyssey, the spring 2010 GameSpite subscriber bonus book is well underway. It consists of two features: A gigantic EO feature that was entirely too large to fit into GameSpite Quarterly 4 -- seriously, at 30 pages long it would have bumped the price up a dollar -- and a 8-10 page comic called "ToastyFrog in: Metroidvania!" I'm hoping to wrap up the comic this weekend. Please look forward to it.

category: games | forums | 20 comments | §

GSQ4: Welcome to the year 20XX

02 March 10 | 08:17 | Posted by:

The awkward thing about GameSpite Quarterly is that my hands are sort of tied when it comes to promoting it. There's enough potential overlap with my real job -- or at least the perception of overlap, since in reality there's frankly nowhere on 1UP for 5,000-word essays on Super Metroid and the like -- that I don't want to give the impression that I'm putting a side project ahead of work. I never work on the books during office hours, and I never post about them anywhere but here and my personal Twitter account.

Nevertheless, I would like for GSQ to be a success. Not necessarily in sales, but in general awareness. We build a tangible product, yes, but you can also read it for free, eventually. I just want to make sure people are reading. I realize that, given the density of words we use and the lack of deliberately inflammatory content or pictures of digital breasts on display, the GameSpite venture is destined to a niche readership of those few people who like to read many words about videogames without being distracted by inflammatory rhetoric or digital breasts. So, I would like to ask a favor of you -- you, collectively, the people reading this. Please spread the word of this labor of love however you can. Our group does tremendous work every three months, and if you enjoy that work, I would be grateful if you'd be willing to share links and encourage people to check it out. This may be a niche product, but by god I would like to carve out as large a niche as possible.

Thanks! As a reward for your help, have some more breast-free words about videogames:

Mega Man X: Welcome to the Year 20XX
Since Mega Man 10 launched yesterday, and GameSpite Quarterly 4 launched yesterday as well, I thought I might accept this stroke of kismet and post up one of this feature as a sort of festive, tangential tie-in. Mega Man 10 is not Mega Man X, but the former started me thinking about the latter regardless -- specifically, why the latter is so great. Those reasons are enumerated here.

category: games, gamespite | forums | fourteen comments | §