Are you ready chu rumble?

Contrary to what you said in your reply to "Frustrated Person", the sound in FF7 PC is great, providing you have the sound card to support it :)

In order to get the lyrics to "One Winged Angel", as well as sound better than the PSX throughout, you need to be able to use the 4Mb Soundfont.

This requires either a Sound Blaster AWE 64 Gold or an SB Live!.

In fact the sound with one of these cards is better than the OSV for most tracks.

Uncle Ulty

Having blades on the end of guns has been around for almost as long as guns have been around. The idea was that if you run out of ammunition and the enemy is closing on you, you could stick your blade into their chest, rotate, then pull out their guts. If someone wants to actually research it they can but I believe it was called a baronette.

And no, I'm not a gun freak. I was on a school trip to the Fortress of Louisburg when I found out of it. Did you know that the officers were advised to only use two fingers when loading a gun? That way, if the gun went off he'd still have two fingers left so he could still load and fire the gun. How 'bout that?

John LaRusic

During the American Revolution, the American soldiers used a sort of shotgun (or whatever shotgun-esque boom stick they had back then) that had a harpoon-like blade at the end. Because reloading ammo took a while, they could be in some pretty tough positions. So, in order to avoid being killed while their gun was empty, they jabbed fiercely at the opponent until their internal organs had turned to mush and fell out through their punctured ribs in a thick ooze. Combined with the blood, it was a rather nasty sight and very slippery, thus resulting in many deaths due to hemorrhages in the head.

So, yeah, the gunblade does have a bit of truth behind it.

I see that in a wise and cunning move, you have procured the center square.

Although I commend you on your strategic genius, I must point out that I have the forces of evil on my side, meaning : I CANNOT LOSE.

btw. When is Suikoden 2 out in the US? (It's a shame that I live in the evil land of darkness, and would have to pay hefty shipping fees in order to procure such a great game.

----
Neil

OmniFritz,

File exists, but access forbidden by user.

What have I done wrong? Sniff.

Methinks the server is acting up :) Thought I'd say something if you didn't already know.

~Ian P.

Fritz-the-Man:

A question:

Can a Japanese Playstation play US games without being modified?

Lord Pendragon

Hey Fritz.

If I were to create an RPG, the first thing to come to mind would be the elimination of random encounters. Although, contrary to your statement, not *all* RPGs include random encounters (Lunar, and I believe Chrono Trigger come to mind), most do. I think eliminating random encounters also brings a greater sense of realism to a game as well.

Not in the sense of Shenmue realism, but, for example, in FF7, up in the northern continent, there were some snowboarders from Costa de Sol (not sure that's the name, but the beach city), and they seemed to have had an easy-going trip there, while you, Cloud and party, wielding huge swords and guns for arms, have a less than easy time getting there, as there are huge creatures as soon as you leave Costa de Sol that would demolish the level 6 enhanced merc from the beginning of the game, nevermind a surfer-turned-snowboarder. That differentiates from, say, LSSSC, where only certain locations contain enemies, and are supposed to be dangerous.

And, anyway, who doesn't think random encounters can become tedious? I can't stand walking 3 feet, then having some kind of "swirl" (FF7), "Glass-like break" (Xenogears), etc. I like seeing where enemies are. It contributes to the overall "feeling" of, say, a dungeon. When I walk into an empty dungeon, I think, "I wonder what enemies are here. I assume they'll be something odd-looking and a step up in power from the last set of random encounters I faced." When I walk into a dungeon, full of enemies, full of cool-looking enemies, I usually don't think of the dungeon in the same way as a seemingly completely empty dungeon.

I could go on a lot longer, but class starts tomorrow, so I better go prepare (Yeah, right).

As for the side-topic, when 9-9-99 arrives, I'll be picking up FF8, and a Dreamcast with Soul Caliber (I'm a man of all genres).

-EviLore

One of the niftiest things about Final Fantasy VII was the city of Midgar. I always hated the fact that Square's artists went to all the trouble of rendering an entire city when we didn't even get to explore one eighth of the Plate. It was such a cool setting. So here's my idea. I'd like to see a game that takes place entirely within one large metropolis with the same sinister, gritty feel as Midgar. If you've ever seen the movie "Dark City," then you have seen the look I would like. I'd also try to make the damage system a little more realistic. Rather than simply taking a hit and losing HP, specific areas of your body or enemies' bodies would be damaged. Different amounts of damage (as well as different types of damage) in different areas of the body would have varying effects. For example: a blade slashing you in the head would do a small amount of damage to the character as a whole, but a bashing blow to the head would severely harm you. Conversely, bashing damage to something like the achilles tendon would do minimal damage, but slashing that same area would cripple you completely.

I would still, however, keep menu-based combat (I'm a sucker for that) as well as the Active Time meter of the Final Fantasy games.

Another intersting concept for this city in the game, just to add more realism, would be adding day and night passing in semi-real time, similar to in the original Legacy of Kain, adding weather patterns (and making them have effects on gameplay, rather than just causing cosmetic changes), and having more realistic interaction with NPCs. While it appeals to "old-school" types such as myself, I still wonder what PCs say to townsfolk to get their dialog boxes to pop up just so. If you have ever played Ultima VIII: Pagan, then you may have an idea of the kind of character interaction I would favor.

These are my ideas. Industry bigwigs, I hope you're listening.

-Rob

What gameplay convention would I take out? The retarded party limit in battles, no contest. Many games cleverly disguise this as something related to plot(Chrono Trigger), others...well...are just stupid(FF6). What I'm talking about is the ability to recruit 20 characters, only to have four(or three recently) able to attack. Yes, I understand the constraints of technology, but really, I'm tired of it. If twelve people want to join me on a mystical quest for the dragon's gold, twelve people better help me defeat that dragon. I'm sure that the computing power is there.

I'm aware of FF5 and FF Tactics, and the better Tactics Ogre(relating to party size), but really, that leaves about around ten people not doing crap to help. Party restrictions are definately my pet peeve. And what's worse, there looks to be no games that allow really big party sizes. Ugh...

-redknight1

Dear Fritz:

If I could eliminate one aspect of the traditional console RPG, it would be MP. Sure, its been done before (FF8 immediately comes to mind), but not in a realistic and interesting manner.

I would propose to get rid of MP by instead having mages memorize spells in the traditional D&D manner. This would add a lot more strategy to using mage characters, because you couldn't have all spells memorized at once, and you could only have so many charges at a time.

By allowing mages to remem after every battle, no longer would you have to sit around doing nothing, just so you could conserve all your MP for that big boss. Now your mages could be fragging happily away, but limited in what they could do each battle.

Of course, having to rememorize spells after every battle would be a pain, but you could fix that just by having macros for certain sets that you pre-program. Heck, you could even automatically remem a certain set, and just change which set under the "magic" menu.

Thats the type of magic system I would like to see, anyway.

Heya, Fritz. I got tired of screaming at inanimate objects (mostly paint), so I decided to write the good ol' GIA.

Well, you asked in yesterdays column what we would eliminate from an RPG.. and that got me thinking. What has been eliminated from the everyday RPG?

Not to call a game like, say, Final Fantasy 8 an -everyday- RPG, but look at the progressive change from the earlier games of the series to that particular game. From buying/learning magic to drawing it, from 6 pieces of armor and two hands to two upgradable items, from job to junction. It seems that the industry knows when the crowd hungers for something new, they're gonna keep giving what the people want.

All that aside, you asked about the conventional aspects of the RPGs of old. Hit Points, Magic Points, EXP, save points.. but will those ever really change? They seem to be the core elements of an RPG. They make up the root of what most people refer to as Role Playing Games and push further to Action/RPGs, or Adventure RPGs, or Strategy RPGs.

And although RPGs are changing, no game has really stepped beyond those bounds and still had those core elements to continue to be referred to as an RPG.

Is it possible to remove core elements such as these and still have what you began with? I doubt it, but with the radical changes in the industry and the games we play, it's not completely out of the question.

Oh yeah. Baroque looks wicked, but not as much as Eternal Arcadia.

Nya.

-Typhus

OK, you asked for it.

1. Dungeons: Let me rephrase that. I want to get rid of dungeons where there's no clear way out and you keep running into enemies. Xenogears is the biggest offender here. (well, it's just offending, but...)

2. Random Battles: Or at least tone down the number in said dungeons.

3. Puzzles: I don't mind a puzzle, say, to get a special weapon. But when I must solve an incredibly difficult puzzle to even MOVE ON, it's bad, and when I have to consult a walkthrough every 5 seconds (Alundra, Lufia 2) it's even worse. Please, please, get rid of it. Oh wait, you guys, with all your power, can't do jack about it. Too bad.