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EXCLUSIVE CHEATS! ЫЎ;

New modes and , % any weapons for any fighter!

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RESIDENT EVIL 4...

...АЕ: Outbreak and 11 other Spooky games previewed!

ELECTR

XBOX: WHATS NEXT?

See what you can expect from Microsoft in

RETURN OF THE KING

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AND А FREE RINGS — 50

POSTER INSIDE! МА FIRST SCREENS! (NI PAA Sequels revealed! J ж Got Cash? . K | I SAVEYOURMONEY А

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CONTENT RATED BY ESRB

© 2003 Avalanche Software LLC. Developed by Avalanche Software. Avalanche Software and its logo are trademarks of Avalanche Software LLC. © 2003 Viacom International Inc: AlFRights Beservat Ni registered trademarks ot THQ Inc. All rights reserved. All other trademarks, logos and copyrights are the property of their respective owners."PlayStation" and the "PS" Family {ogo are registered gfddematr

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Comic Mischief Mild Language Mild Violeni

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Dog, Inc. ©2003 Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc.

THISWORLDIS Ë ETTER LEFT TO JAK.

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It ain't no namby pamby fairyland, pal. It’s a whole new kind of evil. Crawling with ruthless dictators, backstabbing allies and blood thirsty freaks with an appetite for extra rare meat. All pansies kindly tippy toe on out of here. This requires someone with serious ass-kicking savvy. And that someone, my friend, is Jak. This time he's pissed off and battle ready, with a frighteningly large gun, get-the-hell-outta-my-way hoverboard and a nasty case of mutant powers. So please, save yourself the detached appendages and let him handle it.

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LIVE IN YOUR WXRLD. PLAY IN OURS:

[NAUGHTY ce PlayStation.e

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LETTERS

PRESS START —

The latest news, inter features, and gaming

40

42

50 52 54

56

58

60 70 72 74

76

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102 THE RUMOR MILL

106 JEDI ACADEMY

108 THE HOT 5

110 COMING SOON

WIRELESS GAMING REVIEW

phones and PDAs aren't just yapping to your ir buddies. ог updating | your calendar. This month in EGM, head over to a special section dedicated to gaming-on-the-go news and reviews.

Enough with the fan fiction, please. | | 3

RAINBOW SIX 3 We list the essentials for huntin’ down terrorists

SPLINTER CELL SEQUEL UPDATE All-new details on Pandora Tomorrow JADE EMPIRE DETAILS

Another RPG from the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic crew

DR. GAMENSTEIN

A mastermind who designs pint- Sized versions of old consoles

FIRST LOOK: COLD WINTER

No need to bundle up before taking a peek at this PS2 first-person shooter INSTANT EXPERT

How to build an impressive game collection any geek would envy AFTERTHOUGHTS

Just how naughty is Jak 12

THE SIMS BUSTIN’ OUT

More info on the sequel to everyone's favorite life simulator

EGM INTERNATIONAL

Japanese gamers love playing around with big balls

DEUS EX: INVISIBLE WAR

To kill or not to kill? The choice (and many more) is yours

CELEBRITY INTERVIEW

Whenever the prince of porn Ron Jeremy speaks, we listen

XB0X: WHAT'S NEXT?

We sit down with the only man inside

F THE RINGS

Hobbits, wizards, and Orcs beware. We’ve launched

an all-out attack on Middle-earth with our coverage of Electronic Arts’ The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Here’s what came outta the onslaught:

144 Our cover story

Microsoft who'knowsñforssure GRAND THEFT AUT0: VICE CITY Just as deviant on Xbox: PLAGUE OF DARKNESSINFO

us| A “Trip to Middle- гап contest

тет

181 First-eve

Plus, look in il

The.Lord of the Rings | posters

Namco's new action game for PS2 and Xbox is all about the kill

2003 CLASSIC GAMING EXPO _. — We visit the event every hardeore,

‘old=sehool gamer dreams about.

MEDAL OF. HONOR: RISING SUN.

War across the Pacific Jj" awaits ONLINE. ©

The skinny on clan life

HIT SQUAD

Ме force five designers to deliver us: adam the ultimate videogame 57 -— —— MAFIA

Family life is killer

SCARY GAMES PREVIEW

120 Boo! Did we scare ya? Probably not, butthese games might do the trick: Check out which frightening titles will one day lurk on store shelves; including Resident Evil 4, Geist, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly, Van Helsing, Ghost Hunter, Siren, and Legacy of Kain: Defiance,

The latest PS3 gossip.

You'll never doze off during one of Master Skywalker's lectures

Konami's snake eater is on top again

The future is full of gaming delights

14% ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY. е www.egmmag.com

REVIEW CREW

Not one, not two, but three reviews for each game

Multiplatform PlayStation 2 181 The Lord of the Rings: 206 SOCOM II: U.S. Navy SEALs

The Return of the King 210 Space Channel 5: Special Edition 184 Kill.Switch 210 Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior 184 Star Trek: Shattered Universe 212 Castlevania: Lament of Innocence 185 Gladius 216 Karaoke Revolution

186 Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - 216 RPG Maker 2

190 558 . 218 Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando 191 NBA Jam 222 Bloody Roar 4 192 I-Ninja

192 SWAT: Global Stril

224 WWE Raw 2: Ruthless Ашчы

This at Home 2 2% ` 226 Links 2004

195 Rogue Ops 195 Teenage Mutant. Ni 196 XIII

rb

logue Squadron Ill: Rebel Strike

Beyond 201 Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup 202 Conflict: Desert Storm II Back to Baghdad 204 FIFA Soccer 2004 204 Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy

Game Boy Advance

236 Fire Emblem

236 The Lord of the Rings: Ш рит of the King

SOCOM Il: 206 U.S. NAVY,

CONSOLE CONTEST

ЕСМ is Ging away five " consoles with à stack of f games. Don't forgetetotill Г ош the simple entry form before it’s too fate

TOKYO GAME SHOW REPORT Check out the news on Kingdom Hearts 2, a Final Fantasy VII movie, and more

TRICKS OF THE TRADE

Game hints, tips, and cheats

240 Freedom Fighters

240 Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3

241 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

241 WWE Raw 2: Ruthless Aggression

242 Crimson Skis: High Road to Revenge

243 Soul Calibu II

244 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

245 The Lord ofthe: Bings: The Return of the King

246 WWE Wrestlemania XIX

GAME OVER

Crud, crosswords, and comics 248 REST OF THE CRAP

No Jurassic love found here 250 CROSSWORD 254 HSU & CHAN

POWER SHOPPING Tips on getting the most bang for your buck at the game store’

editorial |

ee As muchas! dread writing these editorials, 1 7^ extra-dread Le Writing them about the controversy Surrounding videogame violence. Not that it's unimportant.... It's just Such a tired topic, and it's no challenge preaching to the choir. But events this past September

| force те to speak up again. The

Grand Theft Auto devil struck again,

| recently "influencing" two teenage

boys to shoot—and kill—a passing motorist in Tennessee; now the

| victim’s family wants to sue the game publisher’s parent company, Take 2 Interactive.

Of course, | have the utmost sympathy for everyone who's suffered in this sad turn of events. But this editorial is directed more toward the opportunist lawyers and politicians who take advantage of these situations to further their careers. Since it seems like they don’t already have enough to do, 1 thought Pd actually help these guys out by compiling a list of other possible targets for lawsuits or campaign attacks, Suing these guys should make as much (or even more) sense as suing the makers of a videogame that’s clearly made, and labeled", for an adult audience:

1) The parents who let those kids play violent games they're not old enough to play, 2) The parents who weren't able to teach those kids any sense of responsibility or the differences between reality and fantasy, 3) Anyone who's created any form of media that helped influence the creation of Grand Theft Auto in the first place (we're looking at you, Martin Scorsese and the estate of Mario Puzo—and we'll throw in HB0 for good measure), 4) The parents who allowed those kids to have access to firearms, 5) The тапиїасїшгег of the shotgun used in the shootings (correct me if Рт wrong, but technically, didn't the gun do more damage than the videogame?).... You get the idea.

Pm actually not trying to make any political statements about firearms, so please save your angry, pro-Second Amendment letters. 1 just wanted to point out how arbitrary it is to fault a single game for this horrible tragedy.

—Dan “Shoe” Hsu, Editor-in-Chief * Parents, if you haven't already, please familiarize yourself with the ESRB (www.esrb.com), which works almost exactly like

movie ratings. Not all videogames are for children, ya know. Especially those named after felonies.

ДІ content Сору!!! © 2003 Ziti Davis Media Inc. Reproduction, modificAtiGAPOAsansmissionsin.v/hole or in part; By пу means, without written permission fom Ziff Davis Media Inoçis strictly prohibited. All rights reserved;

ELECTRONIC. GAMING MONTHLY. е www.egmmag.com * 15

———

шһеп editors attach

DAN "SHOE" HSU, Editor-in-Chief

Shoe's been with EGM since 1996, and now he's running this three-ring circus we call a magazine. Shows what a lot of game-playing and ass-kissing can do for one's ca

Now Playing: Soul Calibur II, Mario Kart:

Fave Genres: Just about everything under th

MARK MACDONALD, Executive Editor

In anticipation of SOCOM II, Mark's been brushing up on his online smack talk with repeated viewings of the movie Predator. "Give away our position once more, I'll bleed you." Now Playing: SOCOM II, Fire Emblem, Viewtiful Joe

Fave Genres: Action, Adventure, Shooters, "Strategery"

JENNIFER TSAO, Managing Editor

ly in her career, when she worked at MTV and hung with the likes of Tupac and Weezer, Jennifer never dreamed that, one day, she'd work alongside real live EGM edito

Now Playing: SSX 3, Karaoke Revolution, Soul Calibur И Fave Genres: Action Sport:

RPG, Music

CRISPIN BOYER, Features Editor

Before EGM and the newspaper gigs and the various game: store jobs, Crispin dressed up as the Chuck E. Cheese rat and made a million kids smile. Oh, and he once killed a guy. Now Playing: The Return of the King, SOCOM II, Rebel Strike Fave Genres: Action, Adventure, RPG

CHRIS "CJ" JOHNSTON, News Editor

J escaped the perils of deadline by traveling to Japan for Tokyo Game Show—though in his many trips across the Pacific, Chris has yet to witness a giant monster attack. Now Playing: Ratchet & Clank: GC, Mario Kart: DD

ave Genres: Action, Adventure, Puzzle, Mu

SHANE BETTENHAUSEN, Reviews Editor

After surviving all-nighters back at ye olde Gamers.com,

Shane thought he could breeze through editing a December eviews s 5 later, he realizes his folly.

Now Playing: Mario Kart: DD, Final Fantasy X-2, Karaoke Rev.

Fave Genres: Action, RPG, Fighting, Karaoke

JOE FIELDER, Previews Editor

Joe wrote a Star Trek comic book a few years ago and, while it wasn't very good, he's the only one here who knows what a Tholian

Now Playing: Beyond Good & Evil, Fatal Frame Il

Fave Genres: Action, Shooters, Adventure

DEMIAN LINN, Editor-at-Large After riding a robotic couch with Sims creator and robot-phile Will Wright while “researching” an upcoming story, Demian was eminently qualified to review robo-game Metal Arms. Now Playing: Mario Kart: DD, SSX 3, Metal Arms

Fave G ion, Hockey, Racing, Fighting

PAUL BYRNES, Associate Editor

Having never gone snowboarding, Paul w.

prised to learn that quadruple-backflip tailgrabs, while com- mon in SSX 3, are basically impossible in reality. Go figure. Now Playing: SSX 3, Metroid Fusion, Soul Calibur И

Fave Genres: Adventure, RPG, Fighting

BRYAN INTIHAR, Associate Editor

Bryan's game-store spies taught him all the ways to save big bucks. The end result: multiple copies of Disney's Extreme

Skate Adventure. The boy's still learnin’, people.

Now Playing: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Fave Genres: Action, Adventure, Sports

SHAWN ELLIOTT, Associate Editor Shawn may have given up his coll aching gig to play games for a living, but he'll still school you at Soul Calibur I. Now Playing: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,

Soul Calibur ІІ, Beyond Good & Evil, Battlefield 1942 (PC) Fave Genres: Fighting, Shooters, Adventure, Racing

16 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY ° www.egmmag.com

Guest Reviewers

JON DUDLAK

Former fulltime editor Jon Dudlak left our offices to make paper tubes for toilet tissue.

GREG FORD Why's Ford a grinning fool? Try Mario Kart: Double Dash! and

JOHN RICCIARDI John's our resident man in Japan

Lesson #1: “Genki” means “healthy.”

GREG SEWART art's bı writing about games in m: ht years now.

KEVIN GIFFORD EGM's new web liaison hides a tragic he onc cuddly fox in GamePro.

PATRICK MAURO ted г

Ш Every two months, XBOX NATION offers its independent take on every: thing to do with Microsoft's console... W EGM too risqué for th

gamers in your house? Why not intro- duce them to our family-friendly sister mag 6AMEN0W.

demos, look no further than the 0FFI- CIAL U.S. PLAYSTATION MAGAZINE. Wi From PC to Playstation, the guys at GMR cover it all (but somebody, please buy them a vowel).

The Contributors

m For our Power Shopping article, New

York City-based LAUREN GONZALES

infiltrates the game-store biz to find out

how to save major moo

ш JON М. GIBSON

Gamingstein, a Wisconsin mad 5

who builds nifty handhel

deceased consoles,

8 Game scholar LEONARD HERMAN

and the Digital Press’ JOE SANTULLI

teach the secrets of savvy game collec-

tors in this month’s Instant Expert...

M SCOTT STEINBERG kindly convinces

(i.e., blackmails) five famous developers

to design the ultimate game for our Hit

Squad story...

18 JUSTIN SPEER his fear of the

dark in our Scary Monsters feature, and

take first look at Plague of Darkn

in Press Start...

№ CASEY LOE treks to Canada to see de Empire, the forthcoming RPG from

the developers of Star Wars: Knights of

the Old Republic.

Editor-in-Chief Dan "Shoe" Hsu Executive Editor Mark MacDonald Managing Editor Jennifer Tsao Features Editor Crispin Boyer

News Editor Chris "CJ" Johnston. Reviews Editor Shane Bettenhausen Previews Editor Joe Fielder Editor-at-Large Demian Linn Associate Editor/Production Designer Paul Byrnes Associate Editor Bryan Intihar Associate Editor Shawn Elliott

Tricks Editor David Hodgson International Editor John Ricciardi Japanese Correspondent Yutaka Ohbuchi

DESIGN Art Director Monique Martinez Associate Art Director Stefan Belavy

CONTRIBUTORS Chris Baker, David Chen, Che Chou, Robert Coffey, Kevin Convertito, eBoy, Chuck Ernst, James Dziezynski, Jon Gibson, Lauren Gonzales, Leonard Herman, David Hodgson, Michael Jennings, Casey Loe, Miquel Lopez, Andrew Mendoza, James Меке, Thierry Nguyen, Henry Obasi, Greg Orlando, Andrew Piste Thomas Puha, Joa Rybicki, Marc Saltzman, Joe Santulli, Norm Scott, Seanbaby, Carrie Shepherd, Gerry Serrano, Rey Serrano, Nik Schulz, Justin Speer, Scott Steinberg, Gary Steinman, Phil Theobald, Giancarlo Varanini, Dave Ziganay

Founder Steve Harris.

Senior Vice President Dale Strang Editorial Director John Davison Creative Direclor Simon Cox Business Director Cathy Bendoff

COPY DESK Copy Chief Kristen Salvatore. Copy Editors Tom Edwards, Greg Ford, Maritza Refuerzo

PRODUCTION

Art Production Manager Michele Manousos Senior Production Manager Anne Marie Miguel Production Manager Monica Brent

Assistant Production Manager Teresa Newson

CIRCULATION

Group Circulation Director Tracy Schultz

Single Copy Sales Director Bob Kerekes

Senior Newsstand Sales Manager Don Galen Internet and Partnership Marketing Dir. Chris Wilkes

SALES AND MARKETING Group Publisher Lee Uniacke 415-357-4910, fax: 415-547-877 Associate Group Publisher Stan Taigen 415-357-4915, fax: -547-8777 Advertising Director Marci Yamaguchi 415-357-4944, fax:415-547-8777 Bay Area District Sales Manager Mary Gra 415-547-8782, fax: 415-547-8777 Account Execulive Aaron Gallion 425-823-1635, fax: 425-952-7028 Southwest Regional Sales Manager Julie Steelman 14-491-3996, fax: 714-491-3998 Account Executive Eve Friedman 415-547-8781, fax: 415-547-8777 Midwest Regional Sales Manager Marc Callison 330-810-4095, fax: 630-810-4099 Account Executive Candace Droz 415-357-4920, fax: 415-547-8777 East Regional Salgs Manager lan Singlair 203-255-5795, fax: 203-255-4560 Account Executive Amy Mishra 415-547-8780, fax: 415-547-8777 Online Internet Account Manager Bill Young 415-547-8453, fax: 415-547-8777

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Assoc. Research Director May Tong 415-357-5430

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Charles Mast (Circulation)

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Jason Young (Internet)

Vice Presidents Ken Beach (Corporate Sales)

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Aaron Goldberg (Market Experts)

Michael Krieger (Market Experts)

Charles Lee (Integrated Media)

Jim Louderback (Editor-in-Chief, Internet)

Eric Lundquist (Editor-in-Chief, eWEEK)

Bill Machrone (Editorial Development)

Ellen Peariman (Editor-in-Chief, CIO Insight,

Beth Repeta (Human Resources)

Pam Spector (Business Development and International Licensing) Tom Steinert-Threlkeld (Editor-in-Chief, Baseline) Stephen Sutton (Internet Audience Development) Elda Vale (Research & Market intelligence) Stephen Veith (Publisher, CIO Insight)

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IT West Coast. Senior Technical Analyst Bill Schmelzer Technical Specialist Bob Hall

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Blood and Gore «| E A М Intense Violence | E је >|

Utilize powerful telekinetic abilities to hurl Engage in thrilling combo moves using As Kain or Raziel, feed your dark hunger enemies into objects, impale them on hysical agility, telekinesis, and the by sucking the blood and devouring the sharp objects, or throw them off ledges. ormidable Reaver blade to destroy souls of enemies to survive.

hordes of human, and undead foes. ғ +

gm mS

) COMING NOVEMBER 2003

legacyofkain.com

ranting, raving, and bruce uiLanch's incredibly Large head

EGM

| just want to thank you for your great reviews of the videogames that I'll buy when | get back to the States. I'm a soldier with the 82nd Airborne Division; your magazine has helped me enjoy my time in my real-life shooting adventure in Iraq. Too bad there's no restart button. Here's a picture of me in Baghdad.

books about that one day in American history, and then read even more about World War Il in general. Who says games have a negative effect on intelligence?

And by the way, if the difficulty level is on Hard, then the game does re-create the day relatively accurately.

—Aaron Gordon

—Andrew Bramsch Frontline Executive Producer Rick Giolito responds: “It’s heartening to That’s...surreal. learn that Medal of Honor spurred on “ » club one of its fans to take a bigger interest

| know a lot of people (especially parents and politicians) who think videogames are bad for the mind and get in the way of work or school. Well, when Medal of Honor: Frontline came out, | played the D-Day level and was in awe. | wanted to know if the actual day was like the way the game depicted it, so | read up on it. | read four

Letters

in WWII. We strive to deliver an experience that gives players some sense of what it might have been like to have been there.

If МОН, in some small way, can contribute to the memory of these extraordinary people who fought to preserve the society we all enjoy today,

Talk to the turtle Hello, | recently obtained a strange pokemon type game called diamond from a place | shall not say. In the game you go to the electric monsters world and talk to a turtle who gives you some sort of mouse then you fight little creatures and if you win you get the creatures phone number and you can fight with the guy. and because | have never left the U.S. and 1 know that you guys have seen foreign games and 1 would like to know if it is a pokemon game so please tell me, thank you.

ш Pikachu...you look different.

—vJoe Windau

Goofballs, everybody! Hopped up on goofballs.

20 е ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY ® www.egmmag.com

of the month

and spur interest in a generation of gamers that may not be [very] familiar with WWII, then we can all be proud”

Gee, thanks In EGM #171 [page 22], you showed а picture of a license plate with “FF VI" on it, an homage to Final Fantasy VII. | have that beat! | love Final Fantasy VIII, and eight months ago we were blessed with a dark- haired baby girl we named Rinoa. —Michelle Villmer

Has anyone else made a child's life unnecessarily difficult due to videogame-related obsession? We wanna know!

Pondering

The upcoming Sony portable, PSP, is being touted as more powerful than Sega's Dreamcast, and maybe even rivaling PlayStation 2. Its wireless-link capability and PS2 connectivity (why else would a portable support Dolby 7.1 surround?) are things Sony is counting on in its upcoming battle with Nintendo's Game Boy. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing the games it offers.

But the Atari Lynx, Sega Game Gear, NeoeGeo Pocket, and many other challengers have failed to compete with the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance, despite sometimes significant performance advantages. The GBA's huge library of games (thanks in part to backward-compatibility) is an obvious reason behind its success, but the real clincher has always been price. None of Nintendo's rivals have ever been able to compete with the consumer-friendly cost of the Game Boy, or at least not until their handhelds were in the closeout bin.

Congrats, Matthew Bowers! As our Letter of the Month winner, you've got a Nyko Аїг Flo Mouse coming

your way. Keeps your hand cool, you see. It's got little fans inside it.

5- mince

Sony has deep enough pockets so that the PSP will likely last longer than any previous competitor, but it will probably cost two or even three times the price of the GBA when it debuts. And who wants to bet that Nintendo will cut the GBA's price further when PSP launches?

Not to say that PSP is doomed to failure. But | think the portable market will shift into two major groups—PSP being the main choice of hobbyists, while Game Boy Advance will continue its control of the low-end, low-cost market. Unlike the

CONTACT EGM

“Come into my office and let's have a brain dump.” We know a guy who actually said that once. Though we're antibrain-dump, we would like to know what's on your mind. Hit EGM@ziffdavis.com or write to:

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The New Unreal’ Tournament is here.

The greatest gladiator sport ever created is redefined for 2004. Now, experience more than double the content of our previous model with refinements for the discriminating thrill seeker who likes their action fast, futuristic and gloriously bloody.

We introduce: the Unreal® Tournament range of vehicles. Just one of the massive new additions that comes standard with the 2004 edition. Pleasing to the eye, powerful to the touch, punishing to the enemy.

As shown with optional In-door Med-Kit.

2004 MANTA

See our full line of 2004 Land, Air, and Space vehicles at www.unrealtournament.com.

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console wars, in this case, there may well be room for two companies to thrive and serve their customers well.

—Aaron Marshall

Got some good points there, Aaron, but PSP is a little different from the other failed handhelds you mentioned. А number of developers are already lined up to support it, and there's a huge back catalog of PlayStation and PS2 games that could be ported over pretty easily. More games means more hardware sales, which in turn means even more games.

You're definitely right about PSP's expected high price tag putting it out of reach of some gamers, and the recently announced Dolby 7.1 support does indeed suggest that GBA/GameCube- style connectivity is coming to the PlayStation camp—more on that in Q- Mann (see page 102).

One man's What with EGM #172's Final Fantasy cover story, | was hoping we could talk minigames. Now I'm not one to gripe,

but | think the general public is sick

of digging around in the mud with a

giant bird or playing a game of

glorified Pong in a goldfish bowl. Are

the good folks at Square Enix even

trying when they put these extras in? Whatever happened to the chocobo Kentucky derby of FFVII? Or FFIII's Colosseum? The most important

aspect of Final Fantasy minigames is

the fact that | can gamble my bleep

off and then just go beat on some

monsters to earn cash and feed | my habit. Please promise те ап

Youngsters: got some kind of nerve

In our Child's Play" feature in EGM 1172 (page 50), we had a few irascible little tykes play some of the olde-tyme classic games. They weren't best pleased. But that's nothing compared with our livid readers...

It's a travesty! 1 just read your article about what

online chocobo triple crown! I'll give ya 10- 10-1 on the giant chocobo. —Dave Steps

Final Fantasy X-2 will be full of minigames, Dave, and though your chocobo fantasies may remain unfulfilled, there is a girl-on-girl massage minigame, which some might argue is far, far superior to anything involving chocobos. However, you may be less excited about the main minigame in X-2, Sphere Break, which is based

PlayStation-generation kids think of the games that we “older gamers” grew up with, and | must say, I’m really disappointed in today’s youth. To see kids rip on Tetris...that game is a classic beyond anything out there. And they want exploding bricks! Sacrilege!

—Tim Borski

It's criminal!

Those snot-nosed punks you had play ancient Atari and arcade games said some incredibly clever things. Too clever. For example:

“It's Zeus. He's taking you away to the Acropolis." Zeus? Acropolis? No. Twelve-year-old kids do not know who Zeus is, and probably a lot of 20-plus- year-olds don't know what the Acropolis is. Sorry, | don't buy it.

“Mario dies way too easy. 0h, grab the umbrella. Those are cool. Unfashionable, gay, but cool.” This sounds too clever to have been said by some 11-year-old. It stinks of Seanbaby!

22 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • www.egmmag.com

on numbered coins and lots of math. It's what Blitzball players do in the off- season, apparently.

Sesame Street | just received EGM #171 and was reading the Game Design-0-Rama bit in Letters, when I noticed Matthew Lawrence's entry for Sesame Street Fighter. Today's kids just ain't got no imagination. You probably don't remember, but | sent that same idea in for EGM's Envelope Art contest over 10 years ago, and you published it in April (I think it was April) 1993. Did | win first place? Nope. | lost to some @!#?$& who drew the Mario brothers as Street Fighter characters! Not to say that you guys weren't generous, ‘cause you did give me the runner-up EGM “In Your Face” T-shirt. | remember wearing it to school and getting severely pummeled and made fun of. It hurts me to think of how many other social outcasts you created by giving away that shirt. Anyway, | just wanted to thank you and Matthew Lawrence (idea

stealer!) for adding

more pain to my

repressed memories and for also making me feel really old.

—Bob Morgan

You were way ahead of your time, Bob. By the way, still got the shirt? We'll give you five

bucks for it.

Yuna in short pants:

available for all your shiatsu, reiki, and

rolfing needs

We all know that most kids would play these games for three minutes, say “this sucks,” and move on. They wouldn't spout clever quips about E.T. eating Reese's Pieces and Tetris blocks blowing up. | think it was very bad of you guys at EGM to write witty commentary and claim it was from young kids. For shame! And in case you were wondering, yes, | am bored.

—Al Lica

Hey, don’t blame us for somehow finding the funniest kids in America. We were as surprised as you were by what they had to say. The only change we made was to remove the more gratuitous usages of the word “gay.” Kids really do say the most homophobic things!

It’s an outrage!

I'm 26 years old and grew up playing the games in the “Child’s Play” article, along with a slew of other games from

К:

іж © Good Charlotte: Proudly making punks angry since 2000!

Dave is gettin’ upset!

What's the deal with calling Good Charlotte a punk band [EGM #171, page 58]? It’s bands like these that give actual punk music a bad (or nice, depending on how you look at it) name. Pop-punk bands like Good Charlotte and Blink 182 are key players in killing punk music. Where is the message in their songs? Where is the conflict? There’s no need to even read the lyrics! You featuring them is just fueling mindless trendiness— everyone thinks they are hardcore now because they bought a spiked bracelet and an Ataris shirt from Hot Topic. —Dave Crooks

Well, they’ve got dyed hair, piercings, and tattoos, so they’re punk, right? Right?