Year Start
Spectacular
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| January 6th, 2012 |
01/06- 12:00PM EST
Welcome to the first Q&A of 2012! 2011
was a good year for RPGs, and hopefully 2012
will follow suit. I finished out the year by
completing Dark Souls and just got the
review for that up yesterday! What
games did all of you finish last year?
Nobody sent any guesses for the Zelda challenge
over the holidays, so I'm going to provide a
new hint to make things a bit easier. The
hint is: Wind
Waker is number two on the list.
Now you only need to guess three spots! Good
luck.
Anyway, I just wanted to take a moment to
talk about the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act)
that everyone's been talking about. Don't
worry, I'm not going to get political! I'm
just going to provide, as requested by a
reader, a quick overview.
What is it?
From Wikipedia (they describe it better than
I could):
"The originally proposed bill would allow
the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as
copyright holders, to seek court orders
against websites accused of enabling or
facilitating copyright infringement.
Depending on who requests the court orders,
the actions could include barring online
advertising networks and payment
facilitators such as PayPal from doing
business with the allegedly infringing
website, barring search engines from linking
to such sites, and requiring Internet
service providers to block access to such
sites. The bill would make unauthorized
streaming of copyrighted content a crime,
with a maximum penalty of five years in
prison for 10 pieces of music or movies
within six months. The bill also gives
immunity to Internet services that
voluntarily take action against websites
dedicated to infringement, while making
liable for damages any copyright holder who
knowingly misrepresents that a website is
dedicated to infringement."
Why does it matter to people not pirating
things?
I think the big worry here is that a lot of
creative elements that use copyrighted
material could be at risk, such as "Let's
Play" video series, the many custom videos
on YouTube made with clips from people's
favorite shows/games/etc. That's at least in
terms of the game community's worries.
There's of course worries about censorship,
infringement of free speech etc. I encourage
people to research more and come up with
your own opinions. The full wikipedia
article can be found here.
I hope this has proved informative.
Now then, on to the letters!
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@AskWheels Describe your all-star Final Fantasy.
What battle system, music/art, etc. would
you use from current games or ideal dev
staff?
@FinalMacstorm
Wheels
Ah
what a fine query. Let's start
with music. For the music I'd go
with a tag team of Nobuo Uematsu
and Hitoshi Sakimoto. I'd want
this all-star game to take place
in Ivalice, so we'd need
Sakimoto to compose similar
themes, and Uematsu would handle
new versions of the classic Final
Fantasy tunes. Art
style would stick to the themes
and styles of the Ivalice games.
Battle system would go for a
hybrid of Final
Fantasy XII and Final
Fantasy VI. Characters
would have unique abilities and
be able to learn magic, and the
combat itself would closely
resemble that of XII.
Yasumi Matsuno would be heavily
involved, as would Hiroyuki Ito.
Finally, the maestro Kawazu
would serve as producer and
throw in some crazy ideas as
needed. As for the actual dev
team, I'd want that to be
handled by Eidos Montreal. I'd
like to hear what your all-star
Final Fantasy would
be, and that of you, good
readers!
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@AskWheels Ok. So aliens annihilate the
earth. You can escape via spaceship to
safety but you can only take one song from
the all-time greatest vg OST ever, the music
of Chrono
Cross - which song do you preserve
for the future?
-Cara
Wheels
That
is an incredibly difficult
question. Would I go with the
battle system? Probably not, as
I find that can be a tad
annoying after awhile. Do I go
with the amazing opening theme?
No I think that's too typical an
answer. I'm going to have to go
with the world map thing that
harkens back to Chrono
Trigger, Fields of
Time. This
is the song I'm talking
about. Really, that's almost an
impossible task. How can someone
choose only one? What monster
would force such a choice?!?!?
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Found Buried in the Inbox
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What is you favorite Kirby ability, wheels!
-Noodle
Wheels
That
is a good question! I haven't
played too many Kirby
games, but I've played enough to
make that a difficult question
to answer! I'm going to have to
cheat a bit and say Samus
Kirby's abilities from Smash
Bros are pretty rad.
Kirby with that suit on just
looks so cool! One I wish
existed, would have to be Black
Mage Kirby. I once met the
artist of VG Cats at a
convention and he drew a picture
of that for me. get on that
Nintendo!
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Connection Challenge Time
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link Tag: The Assassination Game to
Sailor
Moon: Another Story
Wheels
The
Assassination Game starred
Linda Hamilton -> Linda Hamilton
starred in the movie Terminator
-> The Terminator
TV show aired on Fox -> The Sailor
Moon anime aired on the Fox
Kids network in Australia -> Sailor
Moon: Another Story is
based on the same property as the
anime
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I should have better connection challenges -
I blame the lack of Turner Classic Movies in
recent months. Still, linking Uforia
to Seventh
Cross Evolution ought to be fun.
JuMeSyn
Wheels
This one ended up being shockingly
easy: Uforia was
distributed by Universal Pictures
-> Both Universal Pictures and
NEC were backers of the now defunct
HD-DVD disc format -> NEC
published Seventh Cross Evolution
in Japan.
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That's it for this week, get those Zelda guesses
in!
See you next week...
-Wheels
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Links
About the Host
Quote Archives
What I can't wait for:
1. Mass Effect 3
2. Tales of Graces F
3. Final Fantasy XIII-2
4. Grand Knights History
5. Tales of the Abyss 3D
On my Playlist:
1. Mega Man music
2. Mega Man X music
3. Zelda music
Hot Topics:
1. Will Dark Souls continue to raise FROM
Software's profile, or will it fade back to
niche status?
2. How do you think XSEED was able to succeed
with Falcom games where others failed?
3. What franchise needs an RPG?
4. What RPGs do you want to see get an HD
update?
5. Will Western developers ever return to first
person dungeon crawlers?
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