RPGuru I'm dreaming of a white Christmas   In the N64   Zelda: OoT   Any Questions?   Ask me Alex Kimbel    The holidays aren't kind to me, my friends. First of all, I have shopping to do and second of all, I feel like crap. Hopefully, everything will turn out well by the time good ol' Christmas rolls around.    There's a wider variety of letters today; keep sending your letters in.. Final Fantasy IX Hello, I know this is very early, but I think it is rather important. I was curious about Final Fantasy IX and what system it might be on. I personally hope that it is not on the PSX simply because it might be the last FF. I want the series to go out with a bang, and that would be a lot better if it was on the Dreamcast or the new sony system. Please express this issue and get opinions from other fans on your site. Thank you, Dan Graves Alex: I believe Square announced Final Fantasy IX would be on a Sony system. There were also rumors it would be released on the Playstation in Japan on September 9, 1999 (9/9/99). I don't believe these rumors to be true, but I do believe it will be on a Sony system. This doesn't count out Dreamcast development for Square, though. Complaining about FFVI.. I'd like to make a statement about the recent debate over FF6 and it's new PSX version. Moreso, towards the latter. Many people seem to hate the fact that the game suddenly drops off after the battle atop the floating continent. But my opinion is that the first half of the game does a wonderful job of building the characters, getting you involved in the story and preparing you for the first bout with Kefka. Now, afterwards, you SHOULD want to play the rest of the game out, and go through the "non-linear" parts. No one watches the first half of an action movie just to see the bad guy get killed within five minutes of the first big battle. No, you, as the gamer, are excited and care about the characters and want to see them advance. This is why I enjoyed Final Fantasy 6 the most of all RPGs. People who complain about the severe non-linearity in the second half of FF6, have no one to blame but themselves, because they make it non-linear by not pursuing the rest of the story. Honestly, I will buy the new version if it comes to the U.S., but thats just me. Please tell me what you think about this. Biohazard Alex: Some people just don't favor the non-linearity in FFVI(III), even if the first half of the game was done very well. Sure, I still wanted to find out what happened to my comrades after the world changed, but I just thought the non-linearity hurt the story a little. What's with the 'den? What's with Brave Fencer Musashi? Long before it was out, people called it "Brave Fencer Musashiden". Then a few months before it was released here, all of a sudden people stopped saying the "-den" part. I assumed it was because everybody else was lazy or had a really bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome and just couldn't bear to type the extra three letters. Then it comes out and there is no "den". What on earth is up with that? Baka Alex: Brave Fencer Musashi was released in Japan as Brave Fencer Musashiden. If I recall, I remember hearing someone mention that the "den" stood for "Legend of" or "Adventures of." Think any of you readers can help me with this one? Remake changes? Oh RPGuru! PLEASE dont tell me that Square will change story line in the least bit for FFVI(III in US) for the PSX? I never got a chance to own the game..and I honestly dont want to buy it if I know it will not be the same FFVI(III whatever) that was released here as before. And i hope the same goes for FFIV on the PSX...and did the FFV story line get changed at all once it was rereleased for the PSX? Thanks...and PLEASE post my column...I write all the time..but I never see it up there. Nasir Alex: No storylines were or will be changed in the PSX remakes. All of the games were left in their original forms story-wise. Amano, colors, and CG In FFVI, how come Terra had green hair if Amano originally drew her blonde? One trend I have been noticing is that the CG characters look nothing like their game counterparts (exept possibly FFIV). The CG pics for FFVI look great and make the videos and a (possible?) re-translation worth buying the game all over again. Alex: All I know is that Amano always drew Terra with blonde hair. I'm not sure why she had the green hair (was it because she was part Esper?) in the game. Maybe my readers can help me with this too.. SaGa Combos Something I never understood about SaGa Frontier (a very underrated game in my opinion.) In the instruction book page 26 it says that if you create a combo, the unique name of the combo is shown on-screen. My game doesn't do this. Was it taken out of the game or is there something wrong with my copy or am I reading this wrong. I don't know how else I would find out about this, because I don't know anyone else who has the game. Alex: If I recall, combos were performed when two characters did certain attacks that reacted to one another. It was sort of in the vein of Chrono Trigger, but the combos weren't selectable. Whenever the characters did the right attacks, they would perform a "combo" and the name of it would appear on the screen. I'm not sure about your copy, maybe you should try doing a wider variety of attacks. SaGa Story Hey Alex, Why does everybody seem to think that SF had no story whatsoever? Almost all 7 characters (alright, I admit, Lute wasn't too good) had good, well developed stories. They were just completely non-linear. Just because there weren't neon arrows pointing you to the next part of the story, doesn't mean it isn't there. I can understand why you and others dislike it for it's free form storyline, but how can you say it had no story when it had seven short, but well done ones? Maybe you all ought to give it another chance, it's one of my favorite games. -LW Alex: It's not that people think it didn't have a story at all, it's just that because of the non-linearity and free-form storyline, the story of each quest overall suffered. It isn't like in more linear games where events are totally pre-placed to capture the player in the storyline. Translations Do you know if FF4 and FF5 will also have full translations when they come over here to the U.S.? I can remember several years ago playing my friends Japanese version of the game(he can speak and read it very well), and I asked him what some of this stuff says. I can't remember exactly some of the things that happened, but I remember something about the king talking about how he adopted Kain and Cecil and stuff like that. I was quite surprised at several of the things that the U.S. version doesn't have, and a lot of these things make the story and the plot of the game(which were very good in the first place) a lot better. Also, do you know if the super-hard difficulty factor will be in it? They also better include Cecil's beam attack he had as a dark knight that they didn't give him in the U.S. version. Alex: If they come over to the U.S., they will have full American translations. And, I expect (if it comes to the U.S.) Square will actually give us Final Fantasy IV instead of the slimmed-down Final Fantasy II originally released for the SNES. It's getting closer and closer to Christmas; and the closer it gets, the more my head hurts.. ;)