I was reading back through the 26th's mailbag, and saw that in the GIA space station, there's a brothel. Doesn't that piss off the female members of the staff so much they raid the armory, and grab assault rifles. Meanwhile you guys are chilling out wit the chicks (since you're all pretty fly for white guys), when suddenly the door bursts off it's hinges! Before you can react, you're mowed down in a hail a bullet's! THEN THE WOMEN WRITE ON THE WALL IN BLOOD "YOU'RE NEXT CORNEO! YOU'RE NEXT!" AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!! FRITZ SLEEP WITH THE FISHES!! FRITZ SLEEPS WITH THE FISHES!!!

-Owen "It's Prozac time!" Humphreys

Personally, I (that's pretty redundant) think you should increase the length of the Double Agent Column a bit. By about 2-4 letters. It'd have to vary depending on the length of the letter. It would mean more work for you, but it just doesn't seem like the column is long enough.

And yes it is possible to kill Ash when he's a Vandelier. And there's really only one possible way. Being brain dead. All challenge vanished from the game (I really didn't think it was that hard in the first place, though) after getting the Vandelier class. Let's see ... choices choices, I guess I'll use plasma wave and then... oh wait never mind all the enemies are dead

Locke828

Back my day we didn't whine about not having fancy, schmany graphics, or that the story had typos. In my day if an NPC said hello to you that was a good enough story and all the plot we needed was a big bad demon and a princess. And we didn't bitch about a character dying, or that the game was cliched, or it was to easy. We walked back and forth for hours with our little sprites with four-letter names and we would kill ogres and creeps for hours on end, and we damn well enjoyed it! And then when the second and final RPG of the year came out we did the same thing over again, and we still liked it! But nowadays we have people whining and bitching left and right.

Dear Mr. Agent,

Recently, I have found a new interest in Super Nintendo RPGs. When they first came out I was young and foolish and too deluded to buy them (not to mention poor). But now, as gaming gems have become harder and harder to find I have been going back to the good times and playing the games of yore. I was lucky enough to buy Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy II off of a friend but Chrono Trigger has completely eluded me in my search. So I was wondering if you know of a good place to buy Super Nintendo games on the web or where I could find Chrono Trigger specifically. Thank you for your help.

hey agent,

=i'm just here to whine. why is it that sony computer entertainment europe releases very mediocre games like wild arms in europe but not xenogears?

i want xenogears (and no i can't import it. don't have the money)

-gunblade whineheart

Hi oh wise one,

I have a question about the Guardian Forces in FF8. Do you start with them (which would be really unfair with Bahamut and Eden)? Or do you have to fight them to earn the ability to summon them like in FF 4/5/6?

Spuzzz

After importing a few PSX titles from Japan I have noticed that there is a large amount of English words in them. For example Street Fighter 3 Zero Japanese has the characters names and some of the menu commands in English. Same thing with FF8 Japanese, the intro movie features English sentences. The trend also extends to the Anime realm, which is not a part of this section so I'll keep it brief, where many of the songs in the Animes are almost entirely in Japanese with one phrase of English thrown in.

I had heard that Japanese people were fascinated with English characters, especially the teenagers. It just seems like a really interesting cultural difference between Americans and Japanese. Does anyone know why Japanese have such an apparently large fetish with English? It would be uber interesting to know why.

- Eldon Nelson

Is that everyone hates it. There's not a person who doesn't live in Toronto who likes it.

Not that Ottawa is much better liked, but at least it's not so universally hated.

Though, really, I think that Canadian cities are either hated or ignored, though some of them(coughreginacough) which should be hated are ignored.

But I'm lucky, I live in Winnipeg, so I'm ignored, and I get to live in the city with the largest amount of restaurants per capita in North America.

And I never know how to end these things, so I'll just stop typing and hit send after this sentence.

I've been reading the column the past few days, and I've been wondering what the hell this F-F-7 thing is you guys have been talking about. I've never heard of it. Do you pronounce it EF-EF-SEVEN? Is it some kind of kitchen appliance, or possibly a brand of Butane Lamps? I'd really like to know.

- Agent J

Guess what. In November 1997, I, a 13 year-old boy with a $3 per week allowance (stop laughing!), manage to buy presents for all my family AND rent FFVII three times; enough to beat it. I gets to fight Sephiroth once, but fail to remove the threat to humankind. Taking a half hour to rethink my strategy, I build up the courage to try again. I insert the memory card, the loading bar begins to fill up.........it's almost done.......now the screen will appear which shows my save files, right at the end of Final Fantasy VII........there, the screen has appe--OH MY GOD!!!! I FELL OFF THE CHAIR!!! I'm on the FLOOR, where people have been WALKING! After taking five minutes to recuperate, I get up--only to see one of my files is now empty and another is literally "white". "Hmmm...interesting" I go, and reset the game, hoping it will go away........What's this? TWO are empty and the only remaining one is white. "Well, I'll be! I'll just go to the PlayStation's memory card screen to see !

my memory status...Hmmmmmm..All my FFVII files are empty. Oh, and my Bushido Blade file with-the-Slash- mode-beaten-without-dying is gone, too. Whaddya know! Heh, I didn't think my Tekken 2 file with-all-the-secret-characters would be gone!". I walk upstairs--there's a box. "Just my cat, frozen solid with a bullet in his chest. I should politely write that farmer asking an apology for killing my only friend. But that wouldn't be nice...at least I don't have to repeat that frightening CHAIR thing again!! I'm gonna have nightmares tonight!"

Now, Agent. I sit here in a sturdy sofa, pondering how I could develope a chair that refuses to topple over, and a thought pops into my mind. The FFVII incident...game glitch, or memory card glitch?

-The Cowardly Lion (forgot how to spell "Quizzlequek")

Lali Ho! Allan, or Lali Ho! Andrew...whoever's there :)

Something has been bugging me lately, and surprise surprise, it's FF7. I myself thought FF7 was a EXCELLENT game *dodges tomatoes* and personally think it just fell victim to the skinhead mentality, but thats just my opinion. Lately, a topic has been "Why are people still ranting about it a year and a half later?". Well....seems to be this is the usual formula: 1) someone writes in, because they felt like ranting...and FF7 was on the mind. Letter goes basically "FF7 was a horrible game because [insert writer's opinion] and everyone knows it." then someone responds, who happens to like the game, and it goes something like this "No way man! FF7 was an awesome game! Think about it! Everyone knows it had [insert writer's opinion]"

Now normally, going by the formula, I should be stating my opinions here in support of the one who liked FF7....but IMHO (a very important tag to put in to letters like this, that IMHO is ;-), BOTH sides are making themselves look ridiculous and immature. Everyone is going around stating there opinions as fact. A letter in the 2-27 column read "We all know that FFVII didn't live up to people's expectations." What the hell is with that? Speak for yourself. "IMHO" it surpassed what I was expecting of it. The recent amount of letters all begin with someone stating their side, and then begining sentances that contain their opinions with phrases such as "We all know".

What it really comes down to, is that we, as peers in a gaming community, need to learn to be less self centered. Don't keep trying to force your opinions on people, and they will become respected for their individuality. You can hate a game for your opinions, but don't hate a person for theirs.

- LockeCole3