So I am a bona fide Final Fantsy Freak now. I am watching Kara play through FF: X again. We are playing FF: IX together and once that is done we plan to go back through the rest of them in order. I play FF: Tactics on my GBA for at least three hours every night before I go to sleep. My Ninja Army is truly a fearsome sight. I am eagerly anticipating the release of FF: X2 even though I know full well that it sports a pop star Yuna and an all girl cast. I look at the teaser sight for FF: XII at least five times a day trying to get some new bit of information from the image there. I downloaded the new tech demo for FF: XI the other day and I like to press keys on my keyboard while it’s running and pretend I’m really playing it. I used to make fun of my friend Robert for being such a Final Fantasy fanboy and now I think of ways to break into his house and steal his collection of Squaresoft T-Shirts. Then I saw the new pictures of the direct to DVD FF: VII “movie” and I got so excited I actually went blind for about twenty minutes.

And, we would be criminal to forget, the limitless patience and prodigious bandwidth of HomeLan. I don't even know what sort of bandwidth we pull down anymore, they don't bring it up and I'm afraid to ask.

Since Tycho announced that we will be closing down Club PA I thought this would be a good time to thank everyone who helped us out. I remember a couple years back when the advertising market went to shit and websites were folding left and right. Tycho and I had a very long discussion about closing the site down. We decided to give the donation system a try which at that point was essentially untested. The generosity of our readers pulled us through some lean years and I really can’t thank you guys enough for that. The advertising system we have in place now is working well though and I think it’s time to put club PA on hold. I know lots of you would still like the ability to contribute money for the opportunity to get access to special stuff each month and I can appreciate that. A more structured PA fan club sort of thing may get put together after a few months or so if the demand is there.

I may have been rude. The only thing that will improve my mood, though, is Etherlords II, so as far as retail employees are concerned it's kind of a Catch-22.

The Bard's Tale! It's back!

I know I've been sort of quiet on the site recently but that's just because I've been so damn busy. I mentioned a while back that we are making a four page Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon comic to go along with Ubi Soft's new game. The pressure of creating something that will essentially be CTHD canon is overwhelming. Sony and Ubi Soft have given us these characters to tell a story and we're working really hard to make something worthy of the CTHD name. A few of you asked and so I'll just say it here, the comic will be available online at the CTHD website next month some time for free.

Saw this over at Evil Avatar, and it seemed like something you'd want to know about. And of course, AIX Gaming has our backs again with a Torrent link. Let's get that file seeded up right, so none of our geeky brethren must suffer in the absence of this trailer.

Tiger Woods 2004 frustrates Gabe to no end when played online, and I was going to discuss it, but the only thing you could really compare it to would be Links 2004 which isn't even out. A simple request for info on the multiplayer options in Links led to an offer to try it out and come to our own conclusions - as well as give Top Spin and Project Gotham Racing 2 a whirl. So, we might as well do that. We'll go over there today, and I'd imagine that impressions and wild, subjective gesturing will go up Wednesday. Links 2004 is not, as I understand, anywhere near as feature rich as Tiger - but if it can deliver in multiplayer, it'll have the longevity.

The claim that I was actually good at my telemarketing job was made primarily for your amusement, and is not informed by actual events. Even if I were good at tricking people over the phone, it wouldn't be the sort of thing that generates pride or should be publicly announced. In reality, working there produced a scenario that was almost inconceivably melodramatic.

I neglected to mention that a very brief, low-content site for Final Fantasy XII is now available - interestingly, the poster-style preview image appears to depict a bangaa in the lower-left corner - the bangaa being a reptile race just introduced in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Hmm

A BitTorrent link for The Matrix Revolutions trailer. If you need the BitTorrent client, by all means, grab it.

I wanted to thank Mythic for advertising their Trials of Atlantis expansion with us. What I saw at E3 looked great, and I praised them since then for upgrading their game engine with each expansion. Trials of Atlantis lets you, among other things, ride friendly sea creatures - and we that sort of activity wholeheartedly.

There's a bunch of great stuff coming out of the Tokyo Game Show, a summary of which is easy to grab at Gamespot. Of personal interest to me is this Monster Hunter Trailer, which looks like an invigorating online Action RPG, a welcome Mega Man RPG, that Phantasy Star Online Card Game for whatever reason, and, obviously, a little Ghost never hurt nobody.At the same show, Nintendo announced a wireless adapter for their GBA. I was excited about it, until I realized games needed to support it specifically. As it stands, I'll care about something like this when it's built in to the GameBoy that comes out next year, you know? The one developers apart from Nintendo will actually give a fuck about.

Okay, maybe I do care a little, just not enough to discuss it with Gabe all Goddamn afternoon. As a golf game, Tiger Woods 2004 is very near perfect - as the sequel to Tiger Woods 2003, they were starting from a pretty good point. For new features, we've got Game Face (the facility we describe in the strip) which allows you to create an eerily accurate representation of yourself. Then you can delete that representation and use Tiger Woods or the variant Super Duper Sunday Tiger, which is like an unstoppable golf cyborg. There's also a vastly expanded Pro Shop, where you can procure "Lucky" garb for your character, some of it in sales that change daily. Look out for "Real Time Events," such as eclipses or birthdays, that will offer unique challenges. This is all quite apart from the huge number of courses, which include holes you must maneuver the ball into. As a golf game, it's pretty hard to beat. The only chink in its armor is the online play, and if - as a satisfied fan of the 2003 version - you purchased the game explicitly for its online additions, obviously that's going to stick out.

Some real info on Bioware's new RPG franchise, Jade Empires.