Googleshng:
The only Square game for which Amano has done character designs since FF6 was FF9, the nostalgia-fest. I can't really say whether Square got sick of working with Amano or vice versa, but I do know that he has an awful lot of other things to keep him busy. For example, watching Hitomi's pendant, and piloting Gunbuster! So the FF series will most likely continue to feature character designs by "Punks Only" Nomura for quite some time.

As for the whole Games for Guest Hosts bit, eventually it hit a point where the current host dropped off the face of the earth. I'd start a new chain of it, but I'd have to have some way of picking a random reader to get a free game to kick things off. Maybe I'll have a contest or something down the line. In the meantime, staff guest hosts it is.

Googleshng:
OK, here's the thing. Most Q&A hosts keep silly pics in the same directory as their columns. Brad on the other hand kept his in a special dir in the main RPGamer directory. The problem is, years later, seeing this, and other such dirs floating around, a good number of people on staff got it into their heads that RPGamer had a policy of letting employees have as much free web space as they want in little dirs like this. So when drives started filling up from people who only worked here a week filling the server with pictures of their cats and such, the whole lot of these directories were deleted, without checks being made as to whether any of them (like Brad's) actually contained things that belonged on the site.

So, in summary, that and various other silly little pics have been deleted. Of course, a decent percentage of silly pics in Brad's columns were made by me, so if you want to see that borg-Quigon picture again some time, that can be arranged.

Googleshng:
Angry? That'd be an odd reaction there. Especially from me. Anyway, the humor of spoony bard is pretty much just that that's a really odd choice of words to use when someone just more or less got your daughter killed.

Googleshng:
Yes it should, and presumably it does. So I suppose the blame falls upon programmers not wanting to take the time to accurately portray the percentage which has been loaded. Or heck! Maybe PSX memory cards are set up like 8-tracks and the reader has to hop around at the end!

Googleshng:
That's a pretty screwed up sense of priorities there. I mean, this isn't the 80s. Losing video game reflexes won't hurt your ability to finish modern games. So I'd stick with the school stuff, although if you really care and get some free time, half an hour with something like Fantasy Zone or Mega Man 1 will fix your reflexes right quick.

Googleshng:
Ah yes, I recall that little area. What you have to do is go check out doors until you get a message about possibly being able to listen in, then just bring up the menu, and hit call. Obviously, you have to do a lot with listening in on conversations like this here, but you should be able to figure the rest out.

Googleshng:
I assume you're refering to our awards for the best games of 2000 and 2001, not the more recent feature on the most anticipated games of the rest of this year (since there's a big honkin' link to it in the sidebar on the left there). I could have sworn there was a link to past features hiding somewhere around here, but I can't find it either. In any case, Staff 2001, Reader 2001, 2000's. There you go.