The Mars Matrix piece takes the cake for me. Now I have to go home and play that after work. SO MUCH GOLD.

You forgot to promise that you'll make Aaron Sanchez cry when you mention your mother.

Generally the Gelflings from Dark Crystal just remind me of Steven Tyler.

That's amazing. What anime did you touch on?

Hmmmmm. It has to be ridiculously long too. I'm gonna go with, "From Fanged Poles to Disease Ridden Holes: An Examination of the Move from Vicious Phallus Imagery to the Womb as Abject Void in the Science Fiction Films of Ridley Scott."

You're not kidding about the urge to return to the lovely grad-school practice of thinking way harder about topics than is of benefit to anyone. Over the past few weeks, I've been ruminating on writing up a piece on Prometheus's use of the vagina dentata, and how it represents a bizarre shift from the Alien film's…

Official site is up:

Yeah. It's always fun to try and make semblances of other characters in Phantasy Star games. My main melee character in Universe was a slender, silver male Cast who I tried to make as similar as possible to the ninja from Metal Gear Solid. I picked the one-eyed face option, named him Gray Fox and everything.

I'm so glad someone beat me to the punch on this reference. That movie was goddamn insane. I wonder if "the flower to disappear" will make a triumphant return. The bizarre thing is, with Del Toro producing, the reference makes perfect sense, as the original was a Spanish-language (not sure if it was Mexican or…

Oh I definitely hear you on the multiple unnecessary characters thing. I require BARE MINIMUM a male and female Cast, and a Female Newman. The character builder is just too much fun in the Phantasy Star games to have just one.

I had a friend who is currently playing the Japanese version tell me that PSO2 is "basically everything she wanted when PSU was first announced." This is someone who I played at least 500+ hours of the original PSO with, so such a statement does not come lightly.

Definitely worth getting excited about. Now I just have to get the 3DS to play it . . .

Well that is fantastic news. I did NOT know that. Thanks for the update. I'll keep my eyes peeled for more news on it.

Oh baby. Bold daring dreams! I have that, as well as Albert Odyssey. Good old Working Designs was the king back in the day.

I actually did like Yuri alot more than many other JRPG protagonists. He was an actual mature adult with stable emotions. He was very much, as you put it, a breath of fresh air. I'd love to have the enhanced PS3 version of Vesperia localized.

ooooooooooooooooh!

My new phone that I got last Friday came with Nova 3 for free, and I straight up uninstalled it.

I haven't read enough positive things about the Agarest games to really have them merit my attention, and I've skipped out on the PS3 Atelier games as the time-limit thing is not to my liking (although the first three 2D ones on the PS2 are among my treasures). I may finally buckle down and get the latest Atelier when…

I tend to agree. I barely played Abyss for that reason. And Vesperia just seemed like "Abyss, HD non-redheard edition." I'm pretty intrigued by Xillia though. The more modern setting, with lots of machines and whatnot at least makes for a refreshing change of scenery.

Yeah. It's a shame. I would have eventually bought it just because it looks cool, without any knowledge of what it is. But I can understand the risk-vs-reward way that publishers think. I wouldn't even bank on an English download for Black Rock, even though it'd be better than nothing.