Frankly, I was deeply impressed with the Japanese commercials. Well, okay, "deeply impressed" is a ludicrous exaggeration, but it made me go "damn, that's a good idea". Despite the fact that nobody's paying you for it, you guys still have to sell the GIA to readers, and it's important when doing that to establish a strong brand identity. The GIA is pretty darn good at that, as it manages to have a lot of personality and convey an attitude which is appealing to its target demographic while still remaining more professional than most of the corporate-sponsored gaming sites out there. However, you need little quirks, clever interesting things that people can look at and say "that's GIA". It also helps if these things don't suck. The early decision to become a repository of box art in addition to all the normal stuff was a good step in that direction, but ultimately box art isn't that big a thing for most people. I mean, I look at it all anyway unless it's a game I absolutely don't care about (say, anything with "Resident Evil" in the title"), but the most pleasure I derive from it is being able to sneer at how much worse it is on certain English versions and feel like an intellectual like people who complain that movies aren't as good as the books. So in conclusion, I guess what I'm trying to say is that the "Lord of the Rings" films will suck because they're not hardcore enough.

Wait, that wasn't what I was talking about. Oh, right. Gamers love zany but sincere Japanese stuff, since the cultural stereotype is so deeply ingrained into our minds that it becomes impossible to look at a Japanese man in a business suit without imagining comical slide whistle effects and dancing schoolgirls in the background. Also, if I can curb my out-of-control sarcasm for a moment, a lot of those Japanese ads are just plain COOL. Basically, it's something I think holds interest for the demographic in question, and, most importantly, it's a market that no other gaming site has cornered. So, bravo! Now you just need to start posting those nude pictures and I guarantee you'll double your uniques per month.

-AJ

PS. What the fuck am I talking about?

Hey Drew!

No, actually, I don't bother looking at those Japanese commercials. Why? Well, most of the time, instead of showing game footage, they're about the adventures of some Japanese guy dressed as a banana, or about what you should do when you wake up in the middle of a rainforest and your body is entirely covered by monkey fur.

If I wanted to know the extent of wackiness in Japanese media, I'd go to ThoseCrazyJapanese.com, alright!?

Sir Farren, already KNOWS what to do when he wakes up in the middle of the rainforest covered by monkey fur, dammit!

Tasty Cola hunka treat, it fits so small it cant be beat.

Considering my modem speed, I could probably fly to Japan, watch TV for a day, and fly back before even one of those movies was done downloading. So I'll answer your question in a form you can understand: No. Does that make me a bad person?

-dmb, wondering what extradimensional void his last letter ended up in..

Drew,

I downloaded the earlier set of commercials you released, but not the "GIA Commercial Break: Week One" commercials. Why? Because the earlier set had commercials for really cool games that I'm interested in. >From those I downloaded the Onimusha and RE:CVC commercials, which were GREAT! These new commercials..... are for games I'm not really interested in... Perhaps I would have been if the GIA had supplied summaries, descriptions, or even just captions under each commercial to better inform me of the commercials content.

- Shake

Dr.Cosner,

I'm guessing since you can't get Milligan, asking for Jenna Jameson instead would be completely out of the question?

~Ian P.

Honestly, I don't know what kind of mayonnaise jar Mr. Blackie has been in for the past few years, or what drugs he was smoking when he played RPG's, but I've seen almost no negative portrayal of religion in RPG's lately.

In Tactics/Vagrant Story, the emphasis was on corruption within the church. The scene on the rooftops where the power of the stones resurrects Malak showed that there was indeed a holy power behind the stones that Ramza and the others were fighting to protect. The conflict was that of truth versus history, and especially religious truth versus a history controlled by a political church.

In Xenogears the game's theme was the transition from paganism to belief in God. Every portrayal of the "wave existence" is symbolic and divine, while the bioweapon was a corrupt physical entity with an insidious stranglehold on human nature. It showed that a religion like Billy's (modelled heavily on Western Christianity) concentrated on keeping the faithful in line and using them for power in the world, while there were still faithful people who, even if they didn't know it, worshipped a true God. It also had a lot of hackneyed and pointless angelic and crucifix symbolism, but I'm not trying to convince anyone it was a good game.

Even Breath of Fire 2 was very much oriented around the corruption of heavily institutionalized religion taking people away from old forms of Eastern religion. This theme is common in Japanese RPG's, and it always seems to be against overinvolvement in political matters by religion.

So Beaujolais to the Japanese for not being afraid to express their opinions through their art!

- Zen, religious as ever and playing RPG's

Drew,

In yesterday's column, someone wrote:

Since we've been talking lately about where the industry is going, and about innovation and the like, I've been thinking on some things I'd like to see happen. One thing I would kinda like to see is a game that doesn't portray religion in a terrible light.

The two major games that I think of when I think of this are FFT and Xenogears. Both of them didn't have good things to say--the Glabados Church was a Machiavellian power-monger, using God for its own wicked ends, and the entire religious system in Xenogears was based on the worship of a being that was essentially an advanced bio-weapon. There are lesser examples, such as BoF2, but on the whole, religion is portrayed in a very false, cult-like manner in videogames.

I can think of an entire series of RPGs that feature more or less benevolent religious organizations, that don't plot to take over the world or worship an alien genocide-machine or whatnot. I'm thinking of the Dragon Quest series.

Of course, the actual theological beliefs of DQ's churches are barely touched on in the games... they seem to exist primarily for the purpose of curing poison, removing curses, resurrecting dead heroes, and (in the later games) saving your game. But nevertheless, DQ5 in particular had a scene or two that gave me (as a quasi-observent Catholic) a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

All I'm saying is, not every RPG portrays religion as a dark and sinister force... just a few recent ones that happen to be highly popular do.

--AWJ--

I realize that today`s topic is about Japanese CM on which I have no comment except that I worry watching Japanese television might cause me to break out in epileptic seizures. Perhaps you can post this question on the next free topic day:

When game systems are fully internet compatible, do you think we`ll see emulators capable of being played through the console? For instance, is it perceivable that one day I can download NESticle onto my PS2 harddrive, play Metal Gear using the PS controller and then save my game onto the PS memory card?

Being a nostalgia whore, this is an exciting prospect to me. But do you think emu hackers would be able to write software compatible with the Playstation controller, memory card, etc?

I have another question, which you can answer on another day if you have too little time. That is, why can the Analog controller not handle the D-pad function? On my original NES I had a controller with an analog stick that functioned for the D-pad. So why should it be any different to program the analog stick to work as a D-pad as well? Personally I would like to use the analog on games like Final Fantasy Anthology simply because my fingers ache after prolonged pressing. Any thoughts?

Feel free to post my questions whenever and edit for length, etc. If possible I would rather not have one of the glibly immediate response-type responses which have recently come into vogue at GIA.

Thanks,
Jeriaska