No, not the piss poor garbage that Sega Sammy is shilling nowadays, I mean the real Phantasy Star that died an untimely demise back in the 16-bit era. I'm feeling it now, as I'm nearing the end of PS IV on the Genesis Collection.

     When I look at how advanced the original Phantasy Star was compared to its other 8-bit counterparts at that time and see how much the series as a whole has faded into obscurity since, it almost makes me want to cry. Is it possible that Phantasy Star could have been the main rival to Final Fantasy? The potential was surely there. The early Phantasy Star games did in fact, highly distinguish themselves from Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest/Warrior series' that were stuck in the template of the Medeval emulating worlds that they took place in. Instead we got a sci-fi flavor which was a fresh change of pace, on into to travelling the stars to other planets.

     Yeah, yeah , its a lot of useless, "what ifs" and all that, I get that, but the fact of the matter is how did an early, popular franchise die so quickly? Well, that gets us back to Sega doesn't it? You see, Sega makes a lot of nutty decisions. I won't bother going into them, I don't know if Gamespot's bandwidth could handle such a list. Eventually this led to them being, well.....not really the old Sega anymore.

     It didn't have to be this way. A remake of the Phantasy Star games including a remake of IV were on the way until the remake of IV was cancelled, and then Sega Ages: Phatasy Star had its North American release cancelled as well. So it would appear the series is dead altogether. Sammy probably figured, "Hey why bother returning the series from the past, when we can bastardize the Phantasy Star name, and come out with an online RPGs, thereby turning it out like a cheap whore!"

     Chances of catching a disease playing PSO as opposed to retaining the services of a Las Vegas prositiute, slimmer, and yet all dirty either way. Naw, you know what? Props to Sega Sammy, I hope they're all making lots and lots of money while handling the legacy of Phantasy Star with all the grace of a full on gang rape.

      "Awwwww........that doesn't seem fair, does it Marcus?"

     No it isn't fair, but hell, what's fair in the RPG genre anymore? Especially when you have Square Enix sitting on a veritable gold mine of dormant franchises that are going to waste while they pump out the next 10 Final Fantasy games. And the old franchises that they are bringing back out, they just can't help pissing all over the legacy of such raw games from the 32-bit era that brought much needed evolution to RPGs such as Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile. VP2 was passable save for the garbage ending and a myraid of other issues, but SO3, ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, don't get me started.

     And let's not forget Xenogears being tarnished by the bastard creation known as Xenosaga, thank you Monolith Soft for butchering that one. I guess Square figures if they're not going to work on it, no one will.

     Let's hope Atlus doesn't get to nutty with the Shin Megami Tensei series, and keep your fingers crossed (AHEM, cross your fingers don't hold your breath silly, you have a death wish?) that Square Enix can stop milking the damn cow for five minutes and put Chrono, Parasite Eve, or the Ogre series (which it purchased from Atlus) to some good use.

(let the tarring and feathering of Marcus commence)

Tank Johnson says gun arrest 'opened my eyes'

Oh is that so, Tank? Opened your eyes? As if you honestly believed you were in the right by hording three semi-automatic rifles, three handguns and 550 rounds of ammuntition in your bedroom? How did you and your attorney manage to plead not guilty with a straight face? Oh yeah, you're a football player, that's right. Sure moron, they'll let you keep on playing, right?

Did the first 30 times the police visited your home in two years not give you a hint that perhaps you were a **** up in the eyes of the law?

You're a real piece of work Tank.

"It showed me that you've got to be more careful with who you surround yourself with and some of the time you spend off the field," Johnson said.

Really Tank, were those shady types the ones who forced you to maintain a greater arsenal than that of your local police department? It took you getting arrested three times in 18 months to realize that you had a problem?

"It's taught me that the [Bears] organization, they do a great job of supporting their players ," Johnson said. "It's taught me a lot about my teammates ... You know, you don't know a lot of times what people think about you until you go through a tough situation. For our guys to come rally behind me, it taught me a lot about my situation and my teammates. "

They backed you up because of the injury to Tommie Harris you dolt and you know it.

But hey, as long as he racks up some sacks and a turnover, we're cool man. Lock and load baby!

Idiot.

Well, since a small group of craven cowards at GGD couldn't just answer my points in this thread, I guess I need to respond in my defense.

Once again, the holy relic known as Zelda:Twilight Princess and its "disasterous" review of merely being regarded as great as opposed to godliness, has come up again in a more long-winded manner. "Disasterous" only that it empowered thousands of entitled, self-important, wankers to rip the GGD board asunder after Jeff Gerstmann had the audacity to grade Zelda below a score of 9.0, OH NOES!!!1 TEH HUMANITY!!!!111SHIFTONE!!11111

The Nintendo nation's reaction to that review alone must have made GS the laughingstock of the web and made me feel embarrassed to be a regular here.

And now some rebel without a clue named MattC thinks he's unearthed an eeeeeeeeeviiiilllll conspiracy at IGN.

(to be continued)

Now then, irregardless of what actually happened at IGN as it pertains to determining Zelda's standing, the behavior exhibited by MattC is very much representitive of what I've coined the "Culture of Entitlement."

Its not as if this stuff is too difficult to dig up. In that thread I cited the seemingly countless GS hating threads and their accompaning thousands of posts as well as the vicious and vile attacks on Gerstmann.

There's no question that GS's Zelda review and the GOTY snub at IGN opened up a can of worms and general hostility aomngst the mainstream Nintendo faithful that had been festering for quite sometime that I would imagine that coincided with the introduction of the XBOX back in 2001 into the home gaming market up to the present.

Just look at the reactions that my posts garnered from the usual suspects. Just as they complain about the term fanboy (more on this later). They're complaining about the use of the term fanboy, but then are just as quick to dismiss totally legitimate points brought up backed up in turn by actual events that occured? Not consistent at all boys.:wink:

In the thread, they took to personal attacks rather quickly or complained about thread derailment rahter than actually address the points I made let alone even acknowledge them and doing so in the same manner that they compain about with the use of the term fanboy.

Now, I'm sure such displays of insecurity have their reasons. Is it because Ninty fans have taken the brunt of flames over the years? I'll concede that much and I'm totally open to discussing that honestly. I've certainly bene around the forums long enough to have observed this. In fact, I recall I was one of the GGDers who defended Nintendo's direction with the Wii. But that's neither here nor there. At any rate, I can comprehend the shot nerves of the average Ninty fan.

However, this does not excuse the harsh reaction to the Zelda review nor anyone else who questions their premises with which they base their claims.

Getting back to Dvader's blog, it begs the question, why are he and the rest of GGD's sweethearts up in arms over the term fanboy and/or putting themselves up on a pedastal as if they're so much better than everyone by all of a sudden assailing and outlawing the term fanboy?

Surely their timing is quite curious. A sure fire sign that my points made in that infamous thread scored a direct hit. Why? Because no one has actually attempted to rebut them, that's why. Rather than address the argument, they scramble to change the subject altogether.

Why is that exactly? What is there to hide? Are Ninty fans sweating over bullets that aren't there? The Wii has been a bit of a renaissance for Ninty in the home gaming market, already having doubled the sales of their supposedly superior counterpart, the PS3.

I suppose the world just isn't enough for some though, i the case of Ninty fans, its more like the entireity of the bunch. Cooler heads cannot be satisfied when a group thinks their company of choice is the chosen one, which in turn breeds entitlement.  Zelda wasn't the game of the year, BUT IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN!!!!!:cry:

Why one wonders. Is it because Zelda is so deified because it is a classic franchise? Perhaps. Or is it becaue on not just one, but now two of the major gaming websites it was snubbed by a game for "teh casual" and the other an obscure, low-tier project that mimics the gameplay of the sacred cow it just one-upped?

Who really knows. And it should be instead, "who really cares." If you can't be content with the games you buy, what can you enjoy?

Last week, I got a frustrating reminder of why I rarely post in GGD these days.

Upon labeling FF VII's gameplay as "mediocre", a very annoying poster who's name will remain unmentioned, proceeds to unleash his knowledge of freshman psych on me by describing me as one of those "L337" brand of gamers who just like to bash on what's popular and avoiding the topic for their first five posts in the thread which they instead dedicated to taking personal shots at me. (thereby affirming that only FF VII fanboys are more obnoxious than the Nintendrones)

Has defending a sacred calf of gaming gotten so personal that people won't openly discuss the actual topic and merely call names while flaming at will, while sadly going unmoderated for some inexplicable reason?

(to be continued)

What makes this game so ******* special anyways? Is it that myth that somehow this was the game that made RPGs mainstream?

Really now? I'm sure that Chrono Trigger, FF VI/III (U.S.), Breath of Fire, Pokemon, Zelda's RPG elements, Phantasy Star, Dragon Warrior/Quest (four of them on the NES alone), and oh yeah, and the other five damn entries of Final Fantasy had nothing to do with that.:roll:

Look, just because Sony rode the Final Fantasy train on route to snagging gamers away from Nintendo, doesn't suddenly mean RPGs become mainstream. If RPGs hadn't been already mainstream, the Final Fantasy franchise wouldn't have been such a factor now would it?

Now onto the gameplay. When I call FF VII medicore, I'm taking shots directly at its archaic gameplay. To think that some people (this self-described RPG expert)actually consider the materia system complex is astounding, and this from a self-proclaimed RPG expert. The FF VII materia system was about as complicated as hitting the power button to boot up the game console. Give me a ****** break. And its these wankers who are the first ones to criticize FF VIII's junction system, which truely did bolster gameplay, go figure. "With materia you can do hundreds of combinations, yada, yada, yada.... And that contributes what exactly to gameplay? Oh yeah, nothing.

When looking back at Chrono Trigger and FF VI/III, one would be hard pressed not to admit that FF VII took gameplay a step backwards for the genre. Hell, I'd go so far as to argue that Dragon Warrior IV, an 8-bit NES title, presented more stimulating gameplay than FF VII.

(to be continued)

As far as the plot, I won't bother getting into it, to each their own, however, don't try to put on me that it was really frigging deep, sure, deep as a puddle. And everyone, please spare me your analytical tripe about the relationship between Sephiroth and Cloud and Sephie's objectives. Please, just stop already. FF VII was nearly a modernized textbook for RPG cliches, which is the formula that Square Enix seems perfectly comfortable with maintaining and expanding upon into their other franchises to this day. (see: Valkyrie Profile 2 and Star Ocean 3 for some particularly underwhelming plot.....uh...."twists")

And now, my two cents on the FF VII fans. I'm sure deep down inside they're just a swell bunch who mean well. But when they want to force feed their opinions upon the rest of us who were RPG gamers long before them that FF VII is the greatest game ever, this is where I personally have a problem. This I might add, strongly supports the notion that the popularity of FF VII is attributed soley to being the first RPG played by newer generations of gamers that helped build Sony's home console dominiance. The sheer arrogance of these people honestly disgusts me, sort of like this RPG expert I keep referring to.

The fact that he couldn't even carry on an argument and resorted to one personal attack after another was quite telling indeed.

(to be continued)

Who could honestly argue that FF VII would be anywhere near as highly regarded as it is if it had been released at any other time in gaming history? No one, that's who. In the scope of the RPG genre, FF VII remains popular and notable like Leonardo DiCaprio being an accidental star by appearing in Titanic. Just being at the right place, at the right time, with questionable merit.

With that, does this mean I completely dismiss what FF VII did for RPGs? Absolutely not, I'd be a fool for doing so. FF VII surely does have its place in gaming history. The widely popular and world famous Final Fantasy franchise had a legitimate role in stealing hordes of  longtime Nintendo gamers into Sony's clutches, thereby changing the home console market possibly forever.

WIthout the poularity of FF VII, who's to say we'd have ever enjoyed the masterpiece that was Xenogears along with all the other assorted titles and follow-ups of other series that RPG gamers attribute to the so-called, "32-bit Golden Age."

But IMO, that's where it ends. When looking at FF VII as the game itself, it just doesn't stand the test of time.

Oh and one last thing, this RPG expert also mentioned something about a job/class system in FF VI/III, I'd sure like to hear more about this. Out of the several times I completed the game I never game across any such thing.

Upon disembarking from a cruise ship in Miami, I approached the customs officer at the checkpoint with my passport in hand and all that jazz to reenter the country. Now mind you, I had been hauling heavy luggage through hallways and up several flight of stairs and down a few flights of escalators and all this while suffering from a head cold with sore throat and a slight fever, so naturally, I might have worked up a sweat.

Anyways, I appraoch the checkpoint, and the guy asks me,

Him: Why are you nervous?

Me: I'm not nervous

Him: You look nervous

Me: I've been hauling luggage and I have a cold

Him: Oh yeah, what kind of cold?

Me: Head cold I guess.

Him: Are you travelling with anyone?

Me: Well yes, my girlfriend.

Him: This passport looks pretty new.

Me: Well the government did issue it.....so.........

Him: Come with me and bring your bags.

So I was detained by customs officials and as they went through my bags we had another stimulating conversation:

Him: Something the matter sir?

Me: I'm frustrated and I've got this sore throat and all.........

Him: Sore throat? I thought you said you have a head cold?

Me:............... (OMFG........I can't believe this guy is for real)

Him: What do you do for a living?

Me: I'm a security guard (note: They didn't even bother to look at my guard card which in case none of you know, requires fingerprint registration and a criminal backround check to obtain, but hey, a spanking new, legal passport from the U.S. government wasn't enough)

Then another guard asks me some question about medicinal marajuana and if I were to take it or someother crap and I'm thinking, WTF does any of this have to do with the price of tea in China?

Do you know how tempted I was to ask if they received the memo regarding 9/11 and that it was perpetrated by Arab males? Apparently a young white guy with 100% legal documents, one of which, a newer passport, and a native born American citizen prompts more scrunity than someone more ethnic with multiple entries on their passport and a naturalized U.S. citizen, because after all, no one wants to be called a racist right? So we'll just pull aside the white guy so it looks like we're doing our jobs. Oh yeah, and travelling to the Carribean, yeah, those terrorists are just chomping at the bit to get after such juicy economic powerhouses like Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, VI, and St.Maarten, eh?

Given our troubles with our border and the illegal immigration debate, I'm sure you all could at least comprehend my frustration even if you don't agree with it. I especially got a kick out of one of the officer's reactions when they saw my Minuteman book, "good book sir." Yeah, blow off.

Rest easy America, this is your Homeland Security at work.

With going back to school and getting sick of retail, the girlfriend recommended that I get into being a security guard like her sister did. After all, its a low-stress job that requires little to no grey matter to perform, I'm not going to have to deal with many people, and I can even get some studying done while getting paid, much better than retail management!

My application process was beyond belief. I may have been applying to be a rent-a-cop, but you'd have thought I was applying to be a real one given the process. The application was 40 pages long!

Every single line needed a mark of some sort inculding the addresses and phone numbers of each place of employment I served at since the age of 18, I don't think I had ever dialed 411 so many times in my life. Same thing for my places of residence, all of them since age 18 and in my case, that took a second page.

After that, its onto a 640 page standardized personality exam, whatever.

Then came the REALLY tough training. I had to suffer a really boring two hour video which was tactless and about as irresponsible in corporate America as you can get nowadays. Why you ask? Every person being stopped, searched, and questioned was black. The video was produced in the 80s so go figure.:roll:

As for my exams, pretty rigorous stuff. They put me in a study room with that video, the answer booklet..................and the answer key.:lol:

No wonder security guards are such a ******* joke. No way I would ever do mall security, that's why I'll be guarding computer servers on the graveyard shift.

Yes, fear not ladies and gentleman, I'm a well-trained security professional!8)

Oh yeah, and you know what's truely pathetic? My rate of pay, you guessed it, the same pay that I made while busting my ass in retail management, except now I have about a 1000 times less responsibility!:lol:

Running a game store, many things annoy me, mostly the customers, that's another story, but nothing boils my blood more than the pre-order snob.

Being the spiteful person that I am (it's a retail thing), nothing is sweeter than seeing a disappointed customer searching all over town for the latest game they wanted and coming up nil. And 9/10 times, its the oaf who couldn't even be bothered to make a $5 deposit on the game to guarantee their copy.

But some people I suppose just expect to find anything, anywhere, I didn't realize driving around wasting time was so fun.:|

If it's a game like a GTA, Madden, or a Halo, something that most company's buyers are going to buy en masse, sure, I could see someone having less concern about having to have it the first day or worrying about quantity, fair enough. But not every game gets that kind of treatment

You would think the RPG crowd get it by now. Look, you're not irrelevant, but your crowd is niche and there's no getting around that. No company is going to buy 500,000 copies of Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner, it just isn't going to happen and whining about the casual gamer playing Madden isn't going to help anything.

What gets me the most about the fans of these less mainstream titles is the manner in which they ask for these titles. Almost as if to suggest that every store should have a stockpile of these games. Give me a break, go to a Best Buy and see if they load up on those kind of titles if you don't believe me.

And naturally they're such huge fans of said series that they didn't even bother to pre-order, because naturally, that's just somethng the casuals do because they don't know the industry like the hardcore gamer does.:roll:

But the other half of the reason why pre-order snobs bug me is that they have the audacity to also thumb their noses at used games as well because they proudly support the devleoper.

Really now? So let me see if I've got this worked out, they won't pre-order the game they want, but they also don't buy used because it doesn't supprt the developer? Wow. Just wow.

You see, pre-orders are important to developers because company buyers take that pre-order data and make their requests to the developer and publisher to determine the quantity of games to print you see. So if a game doesn't get many pre-orders, chances are a given store will see possibly 1-3 copies tops if at all.

Yes, I've heard the counter argument, "BUT MARCOS, TEH BYER SHULD NO ABUT TEH GOD GAMEZ ALREDDY HUHUHLOLOLOL!!!!111SHIFTONE!11111"

Sigh.....no, it doesn't work that way and quite frankly anyone who uses that argument clearly has never had a job in their lives. It's a business people, a sales driven business whether we like it or not. No pre-orders? No demand. Pretty simple, eh?

Game companies are going to mass order whatever they know is going to sell well. They're not going to order large quantites of everything with cost cutting being of such a great priority unlike the old days. It doesn't benefit a retailer to have many copies of new titles sitting on their shelves only to be finally moved during a some buy two get one free sale.

So yes, I would say that pre-ordering is the best and truest way to support the developer. But sadly pre-order snobs will never quite get it. Then they wonder why companies like Working Designs go out of business or God forbid, a small company gets gobbled up by EA or Microsoft. Go figure.:roll:

Yes I know I just moved back to California and all, but its amazing what a **** or get off the pot conversation with the ex can do. In a nutshell, I grew tired of us living a lie.

For years we had this agreement that we weren't doing the long distance thing, but how can I continue to date around with her in the back of my mind? Its not fair to me or to anyone I was dating.

So I read the riot act to her in so many words, and in a few weeks I'll be moving to San Francisco to live with her and her sister. My plan to go back to school for computer programming hasn't changed (just the school at which I was going to do it), but at least the next couple weeks in retail will be the last for me. I'll be working security when I get up there. With something as time consuming and mentally taxing as the field I'm pursuing, there's no way I could continue to hold a job pushing sales, managing people, dealing with the public and all the other baggage that comes with retail management.

As for teaching? The more I thought on it (for months mind you) the more I realized I was all wrong for it. There are enough horrid teachers out there and I certainly don't need to add to it.

When you get to be my age, if you're going to make any drastic career changes, its now or never time. Uncle Marcus has a retirement to start saving for.

This move has so many advantages for me and is most certainly the right move and I'm really excited about this.

Ok, so I've decided that I despise all of humanity, I'm sick to death of retail and I want to upgrade my job skills.

So I'm going to keep my crappy retail job and enroll in community college and get my computer skills pimped out, web page design, coding, the works.

I'm depressed and pissed off at watching the parade go by while I continue to work my ass off and be broke.

Well, rather than whine about it all, I'm getting back to burning the candle at both ends, anything that allow me to escape from this hell I'm in.

I tried this years ago at a university but ran out of patience having gotten bogged down in business courses that conflicted with what I was actually after. Not this time, I'm finishing what I started.

Ah yes, back to the human zoo known as The People's Republic of California. This all just comes so much sooner than I wanted, but I can't turn back now. I wanted the bay area, but I got the central coast instead, not a bad consolation prize.

Hopefully someone out there still knows how to speak English.