Omegasquash

I'm still seeing Kingdom Hearts selling used for $44.99, and the release date is listed on Gamespot as 3/28/06.

Yeah, half the price after nearly half a year.

Also, I'd rather my money go to the developers, not the middle man. Personal choice, but just an observation.

Bah, I meant Nomura, not Takahashi. For some reason I always do that. Please to be forgiving my error there.

The comment about it depending upon taste is correct. I just think that the Dragonball craze that swept the U.S. a few years back biased people against Toriyama.

On a side note, I didn't think that Amano was still designing the FF series, and that it rolled over to Takahashi on FFX. You can still see some of Amano's influence in FFXI, but I had thought he was pretty well done with the series. I guess you learn something new every day.

Regarding the "old" comment, this is the first time that Toriyama's style has been projected onto a handheld system with the amount of detail that the DS can crank out (for what it's worth). I'm pretty sure that we got a healthy dose of it on the PS2 with the Dragonball fighting series, but let's face it, DQVIII was a fantastic game, in terms of both visual and gameplay aspects. But, returning to my first sentence, I agree. It's all about taste.

My issue with Sony and pricing stems from 1) the frequency at which the first run models of the PS1/2 had issues (yes, they were plentiful, and 2) the quality of the DVD player in the original PS2. I have both the original and slim models of the PS2 in my own home, and I can say, without a doubt, that my $99 Panasonic 5 disc DVD player has better A/V quality than either of my PS2's. Before you say anything, yes, they're both running off of an old S-Video connection and the audio hookups are standard.

So shelling out extra dough for Blu-Ray I can understand. Shelling out extra dough for a sub-par Blu-Ray is a pill that I can't swallow. Sony hardware has screwed me in the past, and that's my bust. It just won't happen again until I have about a year and a half's worth of reliable information about the product. And even then, it won't make the pill easy to swallow.