Googleshng:
Well, as a general rule, when I'm counting up games that make a system worthy of purchase, ports don't factor into things, on the grounds that you can play them on some other system. In this case, a system I know for a fact the person has. Plus, uh, there's a general concensus around everyone I know that Grandia 2 kinda sucks.

Googleshng:
Legally speaking, emulation is wrong, period. Morally speaking, it's wrong, except in that rare case you mentioned where it's the only way you can play a given game. Personally though, I often doubt whether that situation ever really exists. I pride myself on owning every game worth owning on every system worth mentioning, and I didn't buy them all when they first came out. I mean, heck, I bought Phantasy Star 6 or 7 years after it was released, new at that. Took a while to find it, but I did, so I get to play it with an actual controller, and there's something really satisfying about that, you know?

Googleshng:
You know... I'd bet over half the people reading this right now would actually like to see that page. As for your Chrono plot ponderings though, that would be a popular theory amoungst... uh, everyone. Replace the word brutally with unceremoniously though. I mean, it doesn't even make a big deal of it, it's just like "So... where's everyone from CT?" "Uh... I dunno. Dead I guess."

Googleshng:
OK. First off, I don't dislike the FF series. If I did I wouldn't own them all, and I REALLY wouldn't have two or three of them on my list of the greatest games of all time. I'm just of the opinion that while when the SNES FFs were released, they were undoubtably the best RPGs on the block, due to a combination of the series declining in quality and originality a bit over the years, and a lot of other very talented RPG developers cropping up (and hey, a good number of those are made up of disgruntled ex-Square people which is WHY that quality's been dropping), in this day and age, it's possible to find a good number of RPGs I like quite a bit more than the Final Fantasy that came out around the same time.

That said, on to your next statement. "you can't deny that there are as many Square games for PSX that you like as there are good games for PSX by any other developer." Excuse me for a moment while I count. PSX RPGs developed by Square that I dig: About 3. It would be more, but the developers of the others are now independant. Game Arts: 2. G-Craft: 2. Whoever makes Wild ARMs: 2. Various other developers: 1 each. So yeah, they're responsable for more good PSX games than any one other developer. I wouldn't say that Square's non-FF games are getting better though at all. Compare Chrono Cross to Chrono Trigger. Most agree that CT was better. Front Mission 3 is pretty spiffy, but in the original, you could use ten characters at a time in a fight. I can't really tell whether the SaGa series has gotten better or worse though. Then of course there's the various other series, where the people who made them have left to form their own companies, and that's only an improvement in quality if you couldn't stand those games. So, the bottom line of this is that I still like games by Square, it's just that they used to make better ones than they do now. It's pretty creepy by the way how often I have people insisting otherwise...

Finally, your actual question on Wild ARMs 3. On the main page of RPGamer, just to the right of the link to this column, is a list of the next 10 RPGs due out the gate. Just a little bit down this list is WA3, with a date of September 16th.

Googleshng:
I stand corrected. Plus Jedi Knight 2 is evidently GameCube bound.

Googleshng:
Personally, I've always been too preoccupied with the fact that the MMBN games rip their plot straight out of Tron to pay much attention to them sharing terminology with Lain.