PixlBit

At least it seems to be an error, but I'm not a fan of buying directly from any gaming company.

Digital River screwed up big on Ni no Kuni pre-orders. I preordered the Wizard Edition in September and got screwed out of it. At least Namco did try to make it up somewhat with the free hardbound strategy guide they sent me, and I've since gotten the collectors' editions for both Tales of Xillia and Tales of Symphonia, but those came from Gamestop.

Pixlbit really is the new 1UP community. Even the 1UP spambots are starting to migrate over here.

I bought the original GC release of Symphonia on day one. I love that game. Playing it was like playing Final Fantasy for the first time. I pre-ordered the Collectors' Edition and picked it up at midnight at Gamestop. I'm kind of pressed for time for gaming, but I'm still finding time to play Symphonia again. It's still just as awesome now as it was 10 years ago.

I missed out on the orignal Phantasy Star run myself. Played the originals when they came out for download on PC and on Virtual Console in the 2000s. They're good games, though  I prefer the Lunar games and the Shining Force games as far as RPGs on Genesis went.

Some random Jessica Rabbit cosplayer. Who Framed Roger Rabbit is my favorite Disney movie.

Cary is exactly right on this one. That deal has long since collapsed, and all the parties involved, including Parish, have wisely moved onto other things rather than tilting at windmills, not to mention spending beaucoup amounts of money, trying to wrest 1UP away from Z-D, for what is essentially the sake of nostalgia.

And even from the standpoint of the community, what would be the point now? For all intents and purposes, Pixlbit IS the 1UP community now, and they've done a fine job at building their community, and without the drama that often characterized 1UP that we often forget about in hindsight. 1UP may have been broken, but its community lives on here, at Pixlbit.

I always thought of this game as one of the Xbox's attempts to siphon off PS2 players with a game that looked superficially Japanese. The reviews for it were pretty awful. I didn't play it as I was not a Xbox owner, but I have toyed with the idea of buying it on Steam, just for kicks and to see if it was decent as a game.

+1 for the Bill Clinton reference.

I liked the sound and the small effects they added to the game that gave the weapons and monsters a bit more weight, and the lighting was good. I kind of missed Robert Prince's music, though.

Interesting thing I read recently: Jeremy Parish and some other folks were apparently trying to buy out 1UP.com so they could run it themselves as a separate company. They had even arranged financing through a venture capitalist. They actually started this deal while 1UP/IGN were still under the News Corp. umbrella. Unfortunately, Ziff-Davis swooped in and bought IGN and 1UP, and Ziff-Davis had no interest in spinning off 1UP, yet they don't seem interested in doing anything with the site themselves other than collecting whatever money they can from the clicks of the few hangers-on left. Here is Jeremy Parish's personal blog detailing that attempt.

I bought the CE of Bravely Default myself. I love that game. Best 3DS game I've played so far, and I agree: They should have just called it a Final Fantasy game, since it is literally a Final Fantasy game in everything but the name. But perhaps Square Enix wants to develop it as a new series so they aren't so dependent on the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest names.