My first car, back in 1996, was a 1986 Toyota Corolla SR-5 coupe with about 67K miles on it.  LOVED that car.  I'm willing to bet that even now, I could start that car and the engine would fire up immediately.  

Over the years I've had a 2000 Pontiac Grand Prix (solid car, but the front passenger door panel was poorly fit and once the car god flooded), a 1994 Buick LeSabre (that car was nothing but trouble), a 2003 (I think?) Mercury Sable that started out amazing but pretty much crapped the bed after 75,000 miles.  

That's when I decided no more American cars for me.  In my family's experience, American cars all did fine till about 75,000 miles, then they crapped the bed ('cept the Chrysler LHS my dad had years ago.)  I'm all about Japanese cars now, because that's what I liked best.  

I currently drive a 2010 Honda Fit and I LOVE it!  I named it Faye Valentine and have a picture of Faye hanging from my mirror, because my car's headlights look like anime eyes and it's the color fo Faye's hair.  If I were to get another vehicle, I'd probably want something like a Honda Pilot or a Nissan Murano to haul lots of gear/people AND have some towing capacity for a tow-along.  The Murano seems to have better specs.  My Fit can hold a lot of stuff, but it struggles under a heavy load.  

Aeolus- What, I'm not allowed some wishful thinking, even if it's a little "pie in the sky?"  

I'm definitely with many of you about music.  With the Grandia games, I found myself loving and remembering the battle themes, but almost never the dungeon themes.  Grandia 2's final boss music is one of my all time favorite final boss themes.  The boss music from when you fight Mareg is excellent.  Though my favorite boss music is from Grandia 1 when you battle Nana, Saki, and Mio simultaneously.  It combines my favorite battle theme from that game with their whimsical theme and it's killer.  

Grandia Xtreme may have been a meh game, but I agree with you folks that it had perhaps the best take on the Grandia battle system.  Oh, and anything over "spell grinding" any day.  

As for the topic at hand, I already said what I'd want in a hypothetical new Grandia game.

I feel like nowadays, everyone in the community is pretty chill.  I'd love any and all of ya at one any of my band's shows if/when we tour your area.  But back in ye olden days, there were plenty of doucherockets (both male and female) that I would not have wanted to meet at all.  I'm pretty glad I can't say that now.   

And I think plenty of us would want tattoos from Klyde.  If I had the disposable income, I'd make the trip and commission him for something original.

And now the question be begged: which RPGFanners would you want to meet and whom would you rather not?

Before I answer the question at hand (which was inspired by a Grandia song just randomly popping into my head and realizing we haven't had a new Grandia game in forever), allow me some exposition:

What I liked about the first two Grandia games was that they were personal journeys for the protagonists.  For Justin, it was a coming-of-age journey and convenient plot devices be damned, we saw him come of age.  For Ryudo, it was a journey of redemption; sappy endgame sequence be damned, Ryudo did find that being a festering cynic is not quite synonymous with being a realist and that there are positive aspects to reality too.  I don't recall any journey theme for whatshisface in Grandia Xtreme.  And Grandia 3's Yuki... it could, nay SHOULD, have been a simple journey of a boy chasing his dream and leaving the nest.  A good theme to tie into that could, nay should, have been his mom's psychological journey coming to grips with her son becoming a man and not her little boy any more (though any mom will always view her son as "her little boy" no matter how old he gets.)  A simple tale of a boy, his plane, and the changing dynamic of his relationship with his mom.  But it definitely didn't happen that way.  

My wishful thinking would be that the next Grandia game returns to form where the theme is a personal journey for the protagonist.  And even more wishful thinking would be to have the next Grandia game have a female protagonist, but that's probably stretching it.  

That song is f'n brutal! 

UPDATE:

PSN: DustRagger
3DS: 2208-4742-2278
iOS Game Center: Dincrest

A lot of people are shy about that, Goosie.  Like whenever I play out with my band, people in the crowd are shy about approaching me even though they want to, so I always go up to them and say hi.  Oftentimes, they reply, "We were hoping you'd come over and talk to us."  For me, I've never been shy about, say, going up to musicians and stuff and saying hi and everything.  

I'm the kind of person, if you say hi to me, I'll talk to you... unless you're proseletyzing.  Then I'll blow you off. 

Outside of E3, I've hung out with Sensei Phoenix, TurnBasedDude, Ramza, Slime/Dancin' Homer (old staffer), Akira, and a couple others I'm probably forgetting.  

At E3 last year, I met and hung out with a bunch of other staffers.  We're all so split up, regionally, that we never really get to hang out in person.  

Granted, even the 'fanners who live closest to me and whom I've hung with the most (SP, TBD, and I shared many "Harvest Day" trips over the years), I haven't been hanging out with them much and it seems like the best way for anyone to see me is at one of my band's shows.  So maybe once we tour your area...

You get the idea in my analogy, though. 

But, yeah, grandma's cooking is great too.  I very much enjoyed my grandma's cooking my last couple of trips to India. 

And this is probably the 371,292,854,089th time I've used the comfort food analogy when discussing FF9. 

FF9 is like mom's cooking.  You don't appreciate it at all when you're growing up but when you're older, go off on your own (like to college or something) then you realize how "together" mom's cooking is. 

I see that with FF9.  When it first came out, it wasn't as fresh, sexy, or exciting as the McDonald's we wanted as kids (esp. those with the play areas) but as we've grown and matured, we lately seem to appreciate FF9 more because it was cohesive (it did not have screwy plot holes, straight-up plot cop-outs, or brooding self-hating characters like FF7 and 8 did).  And, hey, even when stuff's spiraling out of control, somehow mom pulls it all together come dinner time. 

Yeah, Agarest 2 is more turn-based and the prior Agarest games are more SRPG. 

And I agree that the plot direction is rather vague in the game. 

http://www.rpgfan.com/reviews/Record_of_Agarest_War_2/index.html

I chaperoned an overnight camping trip with a bunch of my students this week, and was introduced to Ga-Ga (or Gaga Ball).  I think I spent most of yesterday and most of today playing it with the students.  Some of them are pretty cutthroat, and it's great fun!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ga-ga

I was given a hard time when I bought a pink Game Boy Advance. 

I bought Soul Hackers from a mom 'n pop game store. 

Gangnam Style is a horribly overplayed and overhyped song. There are hundreds of K-pop artists whose music is far superior to Psy's ("Candy" by H.o.T. is still my favorite K-pop song; brings back crazy college memories), but in spite of myself, I actually like this particular Psy song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmHdefsaL6I