PixlBit

If I were working for Sega, I'd be doing everything I could to get a new Valkyria Chronicles made. Kickstarter, returning bottles, you name it.

VR is one of those things that sounds better on paper than in real life.For one thing, VR isn't VR to me until I can look at my own body and see the hand of the character I'm playing instead of my own body. For another thing, I can imagine that the porn industry will be all over Oculus Rift, and that will be quite the rabbit hole we'll go down...

Furthermore, the PS1 game Koudelka was made by the same people and can be seen as a spiritual predecessor to the Shadow Hearts.

I don't think it would have mattered it it had been finished. This studio was no Namco or Sega AM2.

In a way, you're right. We set the age of adulthood at 18 because we've determined it to be the best balance between peak physical prowess (especially with regards to the Armed Forces) and emotional maturity, even though very, very few people are truly mature at that age. We also amended the Constitution to allow 18-year-olds to vote - if a kid is old enough to pick up a M16 and kill people with it under military orders, why isn't he old enough to vote for the folks sending him to war? The age of consent is 15 or 16 depending on the state you live in. At some point we decided that it generally wasn't a good idea for 14 year olds to legally be able to engage in sexual relationships or make such a permanent decision as marriage.  You can't run for POTUS until you're at least 35 years of age, and even at that, a 35-year-old is not going to be seen by the general public as being experienced enough to lead the country. But by and large, teenagers are still not equipped to deal with life on their own. Some of the ones most easily preyed upon are the ones that seem the most "mature", because their false sense of confidence leads them into situations that they get trapped in.

At the time he became a general in the Union Army, Ulysses S. Grant, later the 18th President of the United States, had been living with his parents at the age of 39 because he had been unable to make a living on his own after being forced to sign a letter of resignation from the Army several years earlier for showing up for inspection drunk, as an alternative to a court-martial. When he got his commission as General, his father wrote him and told him that now that he had a good-paying job, he'd better keep it!

There are three Shadow Hearts games already: Shadow Hearts, SH: Covenant, and SH: From the New World. A fourth game would be cool though.

Lunar 3, Valkyria Chronicles 3 (on console rather than a handheld, and in English), Sakura Wars VI, Eternal Sonata 2, and a Wii U Kid Icarus.

I think the game I'd like most, however, would be a follow up to Ni no Kuni, but not necessarily a sequel. Ni no Kuni wrapped everything up beautifully in one game. I would like to see another collaboration between Level-5 and Studio Ghibli.

A lot of it, honestly, is that we've learned a lot more about neuroscience than we used to know. The human brain doesn't reach full physiological maturity until well into your 20s Teens are very vulnerable to exploitation, and even back in the 1800s and early 1900s, frankly, most of those teens going out into the world ended up the way too many teens trying to go out into the world too early end up now - involved in drugs, crime, prostitution, shackled to abusive partners, or dead. Many girls died in childbirth. They really weren't any better equipped to handle the "real world" back then than they are now, and they suffered just as much for it. Back in the good old days, life was simply cheaper than it is now. If one kid died, oh well, you had six others to fall back on.

In the 1960s, a teenager was "old enough to kill, but not for votin'" in the words of Barry McGuire (from the song "Eve of Destruction"). And that was true. Teenagers not considered mature enough to drink or vote for public officials were given high-powered assault rifles and sent over to kill people and break things in Vietnam by Robert McNamara. Since we had active conscription, they weren't even given a choice in the matter. The only options these kids had were to get on the bus to Basic, go to jail, or escape to Canada. The ones that went came back with PTSD, little to no help from Uncle Sam in dealing with what they'd seen and done in Vietnam, and no adulation from the American public, indeed, they were often greeted as "baby-killers." Vietnam vets made up 25% of the total homeless population as recently as 2007.  The Vietnam tragedy and subsequent advances in our knowledge of human brain development are a big part of why things are different now.

Well, happy birthday, in any case. Tales of Symphonia is a great birthday game. It didn't take me long to get the Penguinist Gloves, but I totally went blank on the solution to the Ice Temple sliding puzzle! Thankfully, I still have my original ToS strategy guide.

Yaaay, Tami! Good call! :)

Seriously, I like to think of myself as the Gray Hair of Tales games. :)