Kazriko

Very, very select Gamestop locations. We have dozens of Gamestop stores within 225 miles of us, but we still have to drive 260 miles to get to a Gamestop store that actually has the event going on... They really should spread this out a bit more!

The local stores received the Pokemon specials, but no Dragon Quest 9 specials?

@baby sea tuna,

If you're looking for simple and charming RPG experiences, why are you looking at all of the high budget games and FF remakes? Have you looked into any of the lesser known titles? The crafting system and random respawning loot for crafting could have come straight from the Atelier Iris and Mana Khemia games. Atelier games tend to be fairly cutesy and silly though, so they may not be to your tastes. They don't have glitzy 3d graphics, but I always preferred sprite based games anyway. Mana Khemia even has the same avoidable encounter system that DQ9 uses. Only thing you miss out on is the 3d rendered cutscenes. All story in these is told through the sprite engine and with large hand-drawn character images with text.

If you do get Mana Khemia though, make sure you get the downloadable one and not the UMD one. The loading times are greatly improved in the downloadable.

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It has caused me to question my loyalty... to google news and the gaming news sites that it has on its news aggregator. The headlines have been inordinately misleading. Not only that but there's been tons of examples of incorrect numbers and misleading statements in most of these articles even after you get past the marginally accurate headlines.

Like the site that had the 2 million and 400k bars next to each other. They didn't even examine the situation enough to realize that the 2 million is the former world-wide estimates while the 400k only applies to US shipments. The US shipments had always been estimated to be a mere 700k. 1mil being the high end estimates.

In the end, it's all about the games. The PS3 is still my one and only hope to get games that I actually enjoy playing. The Xbox360 just won't get but maybe 5-6 worthwhile games in its lifecycle due to lack of support in japan, and judging by the currently released DS games, the Wii won't be much better due to its similarly gimmicky control scheme. I just signed up for Gamefly and went through the list of games for all systems. 80% of the list of games that I could tolerate were PS2 games. The games I want to play just aren't there for the DS, GBA, Gamecube, and Xbox/360. The 360 still has less than 4 games I could tolerate playing after over a year. The PS3's not even released and already has 2 launch games and several more slated for the first year.

To Nootaru at #19 up there, The argument that it is $200 either is ridiculous and comparing apples to oranges. The $500 PS3 is most closely comparable to the $400 Xbox360. They both have Component video, they both have wireless controllers, they both have 20 GB hard drives. The $300 xbox does not have the last two of those things and cannot even play all Xbox360 games without added hardware. The $500 PS3 is in every way adequate for the majority of game buyers and can play every game released for the PS3 and is superior in video capability and game capacity to the $400 Xbox360. Everything added by the $600 model is completely optional until at least 2011 and every added feature has no equivalent in any released model of the 360.

The HDCP will not be required by bluray movie discs until 2011, so every argument for requiring HDMI is moot until then. Even after 2011 you will be able to play every game at full 1080p resolution with the $500 PS3. The newly released Bluray movies will be restricted to 480p after that though.

I guess I'll respond to some of these in order here.

#2: The crashing problems were generally relegated to systems with extremely high end hardware that had some cooling problems. As long as you have sufficient cooling and have updated drivers. I have not had a single crash with the game yet. The very first update had a change that allowed you to throttle the FPS down on the game to prevent these overheat crashes.

Also, if you either use Stardock Central to update, or if you have an account on their system and log in, it does not require you to enter your key every time. It remembers your key for you.

#12: It's crappy games, not piracy, that is keeping the PC industry down. Crappy games combined with games that are too awkward to actually play due to copy protection. I've purchased exactly 5 pc games (and pirated 0) in the last 2 years because those were the only ones that either had no copy protection or were enjoyable enough to be worth the hassle of copy protection.

#17: You have a very pessimistic view on humanity. This is quite unfortunate. Personally, I believe that humans are essentially good and that the legal purchases will far overpower the illegal ones if they are getting enough value for their bucks. If it's easier and more hassle free to buy the game legally, most people won't mind parting with a couple hours of work for the game. If the game requires you to go download a pirated copy anyway because the legal copy sucks, then the person buying it will have to spend that couple hours downloading it ANYWAY and might be more apt to pirate it. Most of the people who are hardcore pirates and wouldn't buy it if given an easy oppourtunity would never have bought it in the first place. Copy protection doesn't work. It's almost always broken in under a week. By reducing the demand for a pirated copy from people who would have bought it legally it makes it harder for the hardcore pirates to actually get one. ;)

#18: Galciv 2 was never meant to be any relation to MOO2. It is it's own game, and the series was actually started at roughly the same time as MOO1. The only reason they haven't released a GalCiv4 by now is that the Galciv 1 and Galciv 2 in their first incarnations were for a defunct OS and basically were stolen out from under them by publishers and distributors. They decided to re-release them with significant updates to a new audience on windows. I played the first GC when it was originally released. GC1 for Windows is still a good game as well. :)

I never played MoO of any type and given the zealotry I've seen from the MoO fanbase trying to make another game something it is not, I feel richer for that lack of experience. ;)