This game was always under my radar, I would pick it up and look at box each time I perused the GBA/DS aisle at Gamestop. After awhile it became a bit hard to come by so I ended up renting it from Gamefly. If you are looking for an excellent and cute RPG for your GBA, then look no further!

The story is nothing new, you have your plucky hero Ein, who just happens to be an angel of death with amnesia. You have his plucky female companions, the cutesy Lina, serious Fia, mischievous Serene, and Cierra the crimson witch. Basically Ein was sent to destroy Riviera but he ends up helping the sprites that inhabit the land. The narration of the story is actually handled quite well as your party members are very chatty with their own distinct personalities. They often have witty things to say about each situation and really fill in the back story. There is also an affection meter with each chick in your harem and what girl you end up with is determined by your actions.

What makes this game different from standard RPGs is how game progression is handled. The game is divided into seven levels with six to seven sub-levels contained in each one. There is also a bonus eighth level that can be unlocked by acquiring an in-game item. After each level you return to the home town and can talk to villagers and possibly upgrade your weapons/items. Exploration in the game definitely takes getting used to. You get “Trigger Points” by fighting battles (by the way, there are no random battles; we will get to that in a sec), and have to use those points to explore the levels. Want to look at a chest? You will need to use TP for that. Don’t have any? Well, tough luck no chest for you. This will drive people who want to explore every nook and cranny in a game nuts.

The way to get around that is do well in battle. You get a grade after each battle, the better the grade, the more TP you get. All the battles in this game are scripted. You will meet the same enemies at the same point every time you play. The battle system is pretty standard turn based stuff. Your heroes have an overdrive meter that fills up as they fight for more powerful “Breakout” attacks, and your enemies have something similar called the “Rage” meter. This game also has an odd way to level up. There are no levels per say, you gain stat boosts by using weapons a certain amount of times. The weapons do break and have limited amount of uses. You can also only choose four weapons/items to take with you into battle which adds a good bit of strategy. The weapon breaking thing isn’t all bad because you can go into practice mode to level up your weapons. In practice mode your weapons do not get used up and it can be quite addicting. As soon as I got a new weapon I always went straight into practice mode to level up all my characters with it.

This game has lots of mini-games to determine if you can open a chest or dodge an arrow somebody shoots at you. They are random and usually consist of pressing certain buttons in a certain amount of time. Sometimes they pop up un expectantly and that can cause you to fail and miss out on a cool event. That is what replays are for, I guess.

This game looks like a SNES game with more fluid character animations. The colors are very vibrant, but the backgrounds in some of the levels can get a bit repetitive. Each character has a well drawn portrait that pops up when they talk. The music is very good, especially for a GBA game. There are even some voice samples when characters do their special attacks! If you don’t dig 2D then you might not like the style of this game.

It took me about 22 hours to beat the game including the bonus level. There are tons of unlockables and due to the random nature of the game you won’t see the same thing twice. There are also multiple endings based upon which girl you hook up with at the end. The game has save points galore and you can also suspend play if you need to turn it off for some reason, which I think is an important feature in portable games. I really enjoyed this game, and I am glad I gave it a chance.

Got-Next looks like this. Now you know.

The main site for that, by the way, is here. It’s fun to play with.

It’s funny how some of us have to endure through the worst of things before it reverts to a more positive atmosphere. Just when things were starting to look up, my luck took a one-way cruise to disaster. Now I’m facing yet another major dilemma that’s left me in a financial crunch and very little options. I shouldn’t need to worry about food and shelter, but my previous lapse in employment ultimately made things so difficult. The aforementioned incident with the Saturn has now made even tougher.

From the “never-thought-I-see-this-coming” category, it appears that I’ll end up having to sell off my 360 and the entire library… and quite possibly my PS2 as well in an effort to make ends meet. I don’t have much choice if I expect to have a home for another month. Even then, that won’t be enough, but I’m in desperate need of assistance.

September 14th started out like any other typical day. Routine. Woke up at 10:20 a.m., washed up and got dressed to drop off my fiance for her 11 ‘o clock shift, giving me about a half-hour extra time to make my usual hour commute to work. It also happened to be raining, but up here in Connecticut — that’s especially typical for this time of year. The drive up to commute today would ultimately be a day I’d never forget.

My Saturn Ion 2 got banged up in its first car accident.

I was about 15 minutes away from my job when I approached the final exit heading to Boston (2E leading to I-84). I was going appox. 40-45 mph when the car suddenly started to skid - - leading to my initial reaction to …slow it down a bit. Mistake. The car drifted and I couldn’t regain control of the vehicle or reduce my speed. My options were limited and I didn’t want to do anything drastic… but it wouldn’t matter soon as I was fast approaching the guardrail on the left. “I’m going to crash.” was all I could think.

And I did. Within 60 seconds, my Ion had went head-to-head with the guardrail and lost. So much for being early for my shift. My head was spinning. My first car and already going through its first accident within 3 months. I wasn’t able to get out on the driver’s side and was forced to use the front passenger door. Inspecting the damage, which at the time looked much worse than I thought — it was clear there was NO way I’d be driving the Ion anytime soon. The body panel on the driver’s side had been ripped off… the control arm and axle was broken… the tire and rims were shot and the bottle holding the windshield fluid was totally busted. My heart sunk. While it normally takes awhile for a towing service, I was fortunate to literally have one tailing me seconds before the wreck. He had asked me a few questions like the make and year of the car (which as some of you know is a 2006 model). “Oh, well you’re totally covered by the warranty then.” I nodded. Although this was definitely good news, my utmost concern was how I’d be getting to work from this point on. As you can imagine, I was in a bit of shock during the whole ordeal, making a quick call to my dealership, followed by the insurance company to make a claim. Meanwhile, the tow truck driver was endeavoring to lend me a hand, advising me that I definitely did not want to have the state police involved with the decision-making process where my car would end up. Speaking of which — they gave me a ticket by the way (infraction: unreasonable speed. WTF? As if I hadn’t already been through enough as it is.)

The whole incident totally soured the entire day. It turns out that I didn’t have rental coverage on my plan which sucked because I’d end up having to pay out of pocket on-site. I ended up taking the driver’s advice to have it tow to his company’s site and checking into a rental agency (Budget) to get some substitute wheels (2006 Dodge Stratus — white) for the time being. But there still was a matter of where the Saturn was going to end up; what I’d be paying out-of-pocket (if any) for the towing and most importantly, where/when was it going to get repaired. Well, it all worked out in the end much better than I could’ve anticipated. The driver from the towing service really went the extra mile for me. We ended up having the car towed back to a body shop a few exits away from my hometown (which was a lot better than having it left somewhere that was over an hour away). The shop actually was networked with my insurance agency who are contracted to give priority to my vehicle and work on it daily. I didn’t have to pay for the towing expense either (which was great, cuz that shit gets expensive). The insurance agency sent down an rep to inspect the vehicle to calcuated the estimate damages (hint: it’s a lot) while the owner of the body shop and I talked a bit while retreiving some personal items from the Ion. “It’s not as bad as it looks”, he said, assuring me that things could have been a LOT worse and I’d be driving it very soon. Prior to the accident, I was somewhat uneducated as to the proper course of action. But after all this, I’ve definitely gained a much better understanding in the event that I end up going through this again. [knock on wood]

While it’s understandable that I’d be bitter about the incident, I’m extremely grateful that I wasn’t hurt. In the end, that’s the most important thing to keep in mind. It’s also encouraging to know that I won’t be without my car for too long — slated to be available at the end of this month. It’s only been two days and I’m already missing the Ion… Which reminds me, it’s only officially referred to as the Ion…. I ended up giving it a nickname after my fiance, her friend and my soon-to-be sister-in-law had been discussing how every vehicle should have a name.

I went with a classic name from my childhood: Optimus.

For a series of press conferences with the purpose of finally spilling all the beans, there seem to be an awful lot of beans still unpilled. I’m looking forward to buying the Wii, the money has been in the bank for months and the second I can reserve it, it’s paid in full. Thing is, questions abound.

For example- is it region free? Nintendo doesn’t even know the answer to this question! Perrin Kaplan, NoA’s vice president of stuff, says yes, region free all the way unless a publisher chooses to enable the region lock themselves. Nintendo UK’s general manager David Yarnton, on the other hand, is very clear that region encoding is very much in place. I think they may be talking about the same thing, actually, with region encoding definitely in the system (Yarnton) but only in place if a publisher chooses to enable it (Kaplan). Honestly though, who the hell knows? I say it’s a ploy by Yarnton to stop UK importers from blowing off the $338.60 price for the USA’s friendlier $250, but at this point it could be anything. On the plus side, there hasn’t been a Nintendo console yet it hasn’t been brain-dead easy to circumvent region lockout on.

The next question is- What format are the games on? It’s not DVD, but rather “A single self-loading media bay will play single- or double-layered 12-centimeter optical discs…”. That could mean anything, really.

How powerful is it? The system specs are online, but there hasn’t been any real interpretation of them yet. I like the looks of the games I’ve seen, but then again I don’t ask for much either. Keep things running at a good framerate and don’t let the textures blur and I’m happy. But the Wii is constantly referred to as Gamecube 1.5 by everyone except Nintendo, and they aren’t talking. There’s nothing wrong with a “Look at the games and decide for yourself” attitude, but some solid info in actual English wouldn’t hurt.

How will online gaming work? What’s the holdup on the web browser, and why isn’t the freeware Opera browser free on Wii? What’s up with charging the US almost $40 more than Japan, basically forcing everyone who buys the Wii to buy Wii Sports with it? And what the hell is up with charing Europe $88 more than the US for the exact same bundle?

I’m really looking forward to the Wii, it’s my most anticipated gaming purchase this year. I’m just very disappointed at the way Nintendo is handling it’s pre-launch press. Date, price, and a few bells and whistles are all very well and good, but we got that from Sony back in May for the PS3. With only two months to go until launch, we shouldn’t have so many questions left.