Gabe never gets out exactly why he's running a petition around his neighborhood in the comic, but I've got space to do it here.  If I had to say, I'd put it like this:  Final Fantasy XII is an insult to a once proud franchise and to the people who have made it so.  I think that gets it across.

With the extended delays of the title, I had imagined that the rough trade they received at the hands of almost every person who saw it had sunk in and they had begun to realize the intense shame they'd bring upon themselves by continuing in this direction.  That's not what happened.  They're Final Goddamn Fantasy, they don't have to worry about larger industry trends toward approachability and away from turn or phase based combat.  They create trends, like a massive stellar body distorts local space. 

This isn't just slavish devotion to tradition - the fact of the matter is that the system they had works better.  It's more explicit regarding game events, and the player has greater control.  You don't have to take my word for it - Dragon Quest VIII is awesome, and includes the same demo I played.  There are two combat modes, the "Wait" mode being slightly less bad but not what you might call "good."  Give it a whirl, the whole thing is trash.  If for some reason you do enjoy it - and I've certainly done my best here to lower expectations - then rejoice.  You must be the person they're trying to appeal to.  It'll feel good for a while, until they determine that mass market annual "footy" titles are where it's at.  Then you and I can sit together in a cafe and talk about those good times.

I've had a chance to play a ton of 360 stuff on a "press" box, no steel case unfortunately, but the rest of it is the same.  I'll go into what I've seen either today or Monday, before the official launch in any case - but I do have one tip that will help you get set up with a minimum of fuss if you're already a Live subscriber and you're just upgrading your box.

The procedure for moving your existing Live account over to the 360 is more onerous if you have not "linked" your Gamertag to a Passport.  Yes, Microsoft Passport.  This is one of the ways in which they "get you."  It does enable some interesting online functionality, but the main reason I'd suggest it is that you'll just enter your passport account/password and be done with it.  The launch definitely has some high notes in it, but the sports/ports ratios do leave me a little cold. 

(CW)TB out.

I used to be a big fan of the Wizbits cartoon series when I was younger. I went through a phase a few years ago where I was buying up old cells and model sheets from the show off of eBay. I hadn’t looked at that stuff in years but all the action going on over at the ELotH:TES wiki got me excited. I pulled out some old boxes from storage and found a bunch of original Wizbits artwork.

Something I keep forgetting to mention is the multiplayer portion of Metroid Prime Pinball. After the game came out, we almost immediately ended up at Blizzcon, so I had quite a lot of uninterrupted time on flights there and back to play it.

Child’s Play this year is going incredibly well. To date we've raised just over $100,000. All kinds of companies are stepping up to help out Child’s Play this year. One of them, Smugmug.com has helped us out with Child’s Play in the past by hosting our CP photos. This year they are going above and beyond. Smugmug is offering to match match every cash and gift donation from a Smugmug customer with the same amount of cash themselves, up to $10,000. You can read all the details here on Don’s blog.

With Goblet of Fire hitting on Friday, I guess we couldn't resist. I enjoyed the fifth book while I was reading it, at least, I thought I did, but I couldn't tell you a single thing that happened between the hard covers of my collector's edition with wand. The Sixth Book (or tome, or whatever) got me back on board.

I know it's been requested.

So many dedicated Epic Legends fans have come out of the woodwork to help fill out the PBWiki, and it's really amazing to see the enthusiasm with which they've dedicated themselves to the task.

Um... Yeah.

Try out the PBWiki I set up for this most powerful of franchises, make your own additions, etc. What I had originally was really loose, but then I couldn't stop typing. I have new sections to go up eventually, about the Artifact Guild and Ice Elemenstation. They'll get up there at some point.

The very first page of our Prince of Persia 3 comic is now online. This is a really cool project. Ubisoft is allowing us to sort of investigate the relationship between the Prince and the Dark Prince. It’s an eight page story that examines what the internal dialogue between the two characters might be like. If you’ve been following the game at all you know that the Prince actually transforms into the Dark Prince. Our story essentially illustrates that process and suggests what might be going on inside the prince’s head. Tycho obviously is writing this one. I’m handling the pencils and the inks. My stuff is then being masterfully colored by Joe Pekar. I think this is some of our best stuff, hopefully you guys will dig it.

I'm almost shocked at how indulgent Gabriel was on this comic. Earlier, I suggested that the sort of thing I'd do by myself would largely revolve around commas having sex with each other. That's not exactly true, it's infinitely more likely that they would take the form of musical extravaganzas. Indeed, he even put in a reference to Weyland Darkspurr there at the end, which marks the last occasion he let me take the reins: allowing me to blend dancing and the occult toward some questionable purpose.

It was great to touch base with Jeremy Parish and (writer supreme) Chris Kohler at that Nintendo thing - I've been reading both of them for a while, and the Mutual Appreciation Society was both active and intense.

I'm going to start off with some Child's Play news. We went Live with CP 2006 on Monday and as of right now we're sitting at about $64,000 in cash and toy donations. What's incredible is about $40,000 of that is in actual wish list donations. I try not to cuss when talking about Child’s Play but that’s fucking incredible! I’ll admit that I was worried about CP this year. There are a lot of worthy causes asking for your charity this year and I would not have thought any less of you if you chose to send your money elsewhere. I’m honored that so many of you see the value in Child's Play.

It's certainly not their fault - allotments of the 360 were cut pretty much in half. I went and preordered the first day I heard about "shortages," my mind flashing back to the frigid PS2 launch. I don't think that the similarities are entirely superficial. I don't see any reason to believe that reported shortages constitute a marketing "bonus round" coming into the holidays. I hope that you came away with one, in any event: it's an amazing platform. There's some faint praise, for you.

I know by now that when a word sounds kind of officious, it probably bears investigation.

I apologize that I'm a bit late linking this. Things at PA industries have been pretty crazy lately. We just moved into a new office with a lot more space but they don't have the intertron hooked up yet.