Retrograding Mailbag

I was wondering what you thought of MDK 2 for the Dreamcast. I personally love the game and it is quite the challenge. The game of course didn’t get the love it deserved but it should. There are a lot of DC games like that. I really love that system.

The column rocks keep up the excellent work.

Star Wars Galaxies: I pretty much agree with you here. Sony and Lucas
Arts have too many dollar signs in their eyes with this release. I’m a
big Star Wars fan myself, though not as bad as some other fans out
there. My biggest Star Wars geek things are my collection of Star Wars
figures that hang on my walls (basically covering the majority of my
bedroom walls) and when I waited 18 hours to get tickets to Episode I.
Needless to say, that experience killed my HUGE fanboyism, and now I’m
merely a fan. Oh, and don’t worry about offending me, because it’s
impossible to offend me. Anyway, I think Sony should have worked out
the kinks in Galaxies more and let some of the hype go to the other Star
Wars RPG (and the better one, in all likelihood), Knights of the Old
Republic. I mean, it’s by Bioware, so that means it HAS to be awesome!
Oh, and as for run-on sentences, well, I had a fondness for them as
well. Back in high school, I wrote an essay with a sentence that so
ungodly long that I can’t even begin to remember what it said. I
thought for sure that my english teacher would count me off big time for
it being a run-on, but she simply put “nice sentence!” That teacher
loved me. The year before (10th grade) I had a real bitch of an honors
english teacher, so I decided to take regular english the following
year, rather than AP. So in 11th, I was just in a regular english class
and I goofed off most of the time, but still got an A+. Needless to
say, my teacher wanted me to test for AP, and I did and made it. I’m
glad I did, because that regular english class was such a blowoff. I
remember when I used to be an excellent writer. What the hell happened
to me?!

Censorship: I agree with what you say for the most part here. I hate
and abhor censorship of any type. I hate it when they show movies on TV
and butcher the hell out of them. I don’t think ANY movie should be on
TV. Likewise, with games I feel that nothing should be censored,
because if it’s the creator’s vision that something is in there, it
should stay in there. Ratings are fine in this regard, because then the
uninformed masses will either stay away or flock to the Mature rated
games. Then there’s the games like BMX XXX that shouldn’t be censored;
they should just be banned for being so awful. It just makes me mad
that in America, they want to make sure our impressionable children
aren’t exposed to anything relating to sex, but violence is all fine and
dandy, and I know it’s the total opposite in other countries. I say
expose kids to everything, because that prepares them for the real
world. In the real world there is violence, sex, rape, murder,
kidnappings, war, etc. I’m not saying that people should be numbed to
it, but I’m saying that they should be aware, because we all know that
sheltered children who know nothing about the world end up being really
f*cked up when they move away from their parents.

Oh, and if Shin Megami Tensei 3 is released in the states, I am sooooo
there. I know that there are the Persona games here, but I have a hard
time spending money on older games when it’s hard enough keeping up with
new games. Winning them in a contest is a different story though. ;)

Regarding your question to the readers, the only reason I can think of
why some goth chicks are super hot is because they prefer drugs to food.

Also, great choices on the guest columns. All were really well done and
if I were in charge, I’d give those people a job. :) Anyway, that’s
enough for me. I’ll seeya later.

Hullo. I’ve not written to you in a long, long time and it might not have been
from this address — I don’t recall. In case you forget, I mailed you a couple
of times with comments on your 411 column, and also volunteered to be part of
your PBM. I then uh, totally fell out of touch. Sorry for that.. basically,
things got hectic all of a sudden, and I fell out of touch with all
“non-essential” people whilst trying to keep it all balanced and good.

I just wanted to say that as a permanent English resident who listens mostly to
Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Cocteau Twins, The Flaming Lips and well, all
manner of disperate stuff (little of it recent), I’ve heard of Cold and
Evanescence. Cold are a generic nu-metal band who have had some song used by the
WWE in some manner, in recent months. Evanescence are a nu-metal band with a
quite attractive female singer. Imagine Linkin Park being fronted by your
proptypical ‘goth’ band female singer. Revolutionary, eh? The kids are just
lovin’ em at the moment overe where you are, I hear. The other two I’ve never
heard of. I just thought I’d mention this as I tend to have my ear fairly close
to the ground when it comes to music, or at least as much is possible in the UK.

I’m guessing that the other two are as bland as the first two.

Also, IT Came From the Desert was a fantastic game, and since I was thinking
about this only last week also, I really must get around to playing it again
now.

Tell me, however: why should I buy River City Ransom?

I have to leave very soon, so I wanted to write this, rather than read the rest
of the volumn. Uh. I’ll read it later, mom! Okay then.

Yes.

1) First off, Dragonlance *IS* being released in 3.5 edition, the month after the
Core Books come out. Complete with Kender, who have already been pre-emptively banned by two-thirds of Sheffield’s GMs… And TBQH, I’m looking forward to 3.5, since it gives me an excuse to buy the Core Rulebooks for the first time. And provided he doesn’t get nerfed in the final edit, the Mystic Theurge will be the new Default Munchkin Spellcaster Class (Strongheart Halflings with ‘Caster Prodigy’ taken twice.. Scary)

2) Tomb Raider sucks. Always has, always will. This is not a fact in dispute. But I take great exception to the comments you made about the attractiveness women in the UK. It’s an outright
lie, and I have about 1GB of photos taken over the course of a University year that prove you wrong ;) As far as the liver goes, if large portions of the US weren’t so uptight about alcohol, your ladies might stand a chance of catching up in the tolerance stakes (then again, you *do* have the Bush Twins, so bonus points there: But I still reckon I could dirnk them under the table, and am just waiting for a chance to try…)

3) With regard to the Goth scene: I think it’s a matter of the style of dress.Ladies’ Goth fashion is corsets, mesh tops, black leather/PVC, dresses with excessive cleabage, that sort of thing;
all in Black, of course (this is unless you are an uber-pretentious Goth, in which case you wear 18th century riding cloaks, Victorian-style dresses, and custom-made fake fangs; in that instance, you’re OK… I mean, that sort of gear looks good on EVERYONE). The thing about that sort of fashion is that it leaves no ‘room for maneuver’; unlike the Real World, where people can wear clothes that accentuate or conceal their figure (as they choose), in Goth Gear, there’s
nowhere to hide. The fashions do the same thing to everyone, sculpting the body
in certain ways; it’s a matter of how the body in question reacts to the effects. If the lady in question has a body that curves in the right places, those curves become accentuated by the clothing she wears. Conversely, a body which is not well suited to the clothes has its less-immediately-attractive qualities accentuated in the wrong way.
DISCLAIMER IN CASE THIS GOES INTO A MAILBAG: THE WRITER WOULD LIKE TO MAKE IT QUITE CLEAR THAT BEAUTY IS, AND WILL ALWAYS BE, IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. LET EVERYONE KEEP THEIR OWN CONCEPTS OF BEAUTY, BUT NOT ARBITRARILY ENFORCE THEIR OWN VIEW ON OTHERS AS THOUGH IT WERE
SOME FORM OF ABSOLUTE. PASSING JUDGEMENT IS BAD. THANK YOU.

4) For Star Wars: Galaxies observations, start with
http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/?t=archives&date=2003-06-27 and then read the next day’s comic. There have been a whole host of other references in the past few months. You probably read Ctrl+Alt+Del already, but if you don’t you should. And don’t forget… There are plenty
of Star Wars fans who would denounce you as being beneath them for your incessant obsession with old video games… Try http://www.brunching.com/images/geekchartbig.gif which you will no
doubt disagree with, but nevermind, it’s more fun if they’re wrong… I fit into far too many of those
categories…

5) Final note… That D&D Arcade Game you mentioned.. Is that I-want-to-be-a-next-generation-Gauntlet one with the pseudo-isometric viewpoint and a system where you could get a 3-letter
password to ‘save’ your character, so you could take a break? Because I gotta say, I wasn’t all that impressed by the game….

Well, that’s about all I can think of to write for the moment. More will
probably follow after your next column. ;)

My long time GF had cheated on me 3 months prior to me meeting the goth
chick and i needed some action (Rebound time).

She was a girl i knew, and was goth and f*cking fat. But i didn’t care, I
still hit it.

The thing was, she ALWAYS FUCKING TALKED ABOUT VAMPIRES. She loved that
goddamn Queen of the Damned movie and I’d always laugh and be like “Yea
Alliah plays that part great…CUZ SHES DEAD! rahahah!” And the bitch (my
ex) actually THOUGHT she was a vampire! She would f*cking bite me HARD as
hell when i was bangin it and id like have to hit her to stop. Kinky yes,
but too painful. :-p

I banged her a few times and then left her cuz she was nuts.

The moral here: Goth chicks ARE always fat and they ARE always into the
vampire shit. But they can provide some kinky sex and you can usually hit it
any way you want to…

P.S. A few months ago, i gave you a drunken rant on how they should make a
Parappa the Rappa TV show about him going into gangsta rap and then gettin
shot.
WELL THEY ARE ACTUALLY MAKING A PARRAPPA TV SHOW IN JAPAN! It aint quite
like my vision, but its being made by the nutcases who made Digi Carat, so
it should be just as crazy.

later

When I devised your character for the three part story, I made you in my
game and never removed the character.

I noticed your character was in the game when visiting the game’s
grapplefanatics.net, the Scott Keith section, there was a question of “which
wrestler do you think has gotten the furthest with the least amount of
skill?”

There you were, Scott Keith saying thanks to a promotion’s obsession with
steroid freaks, he said you were the worker to go the furthest with the
least amount of skill.

I hope to get some new reviews to you soon, as I have only a few days left before
my Vegas vacation.Look forward to reviews for Super Monkey Ball Jr, Sonic Pinball
Party, Game & Watch Gallery 4, and Dragonball Z: Legacy of Goku II in the near future.

Take care,

Another reason Atlus rocks the GBA: Super Dodge Ball Advance! Yeah, I
wouldn’t put this on any list trying to “sell” the GBA, but for some
of us old-school NES fans, Super Dodge Ball was a blast and sorely in
need of a new version (I actually have the ROM of the original…
shhhh!).

On a related subject… the best unintended feature of the GBP is that
it actually makes the GameCube a cube. (I have a black GCN, so the
color thing doesn’t bother me.) It may be nitpicking, but I’m not the
one who named the system. :)

Couple thoughts, though:

– I’d say Advance (or Famicom, or whatever it’s called this week) Wars gives
Tactics Ogre a run for its money as far as GBA strat games goes. Might be
because I cheaped my way to an uber-army first time through KoL – it
deserves another shot, though.

– THQ gets the credit for the brilliant Monkey Ball Jr., I believe. That
game is SCARY in its faithfulness to the original, however.

– Where’s the Wario Ware love? That’s the most brilliant “concept game” I’ve
played.

– I’d have tossed Metroid in during #9, even if it’s the only one of the
series you mentioned to make a successful jump to 3D. Amazing how the
success of the GBA series has managed to revitalise the franchise in 2D on
the PS2, huh?

– And you write for a wrestling site. Fire Pro must therefore be on every
list, by law. :)

Keep up with the great work you are doing, as I share some of the same beliefs on substance over style.