It's that time of the year where we get to experience some friggin awesome fast-paced action-packed hockey!  No matter what teams, you can always count on some top-notch hockey come April.

I for one, am ecstatic.  I'm a huge fan of the Florida Panthers, and it's been 12 years since I last got to see them play a game in the playoffs... that's almost half of my life!

Anybody else excited?  It's been interesting so far, especially that first game between Philly and Pittsburgh, what a comeback!  And Vancouver losing on home ice in game 1.  Good stuff!

The Atlus USA guys seemed pretty darn cool.  I have to admit, when you introduced Scott as the QA lead for Game of Thrones, I was really excited that we might get some insight as to what kinds of functions go into the QA for video games.  That's something I'm really interested since I'm a QA lead myself, but that didn't pan out unfortunately (other than the horror when John mentioned regression testing to Scott).

Anyhoo, love the podcasts, keep up the amazing work!

Holy crap, I just about flew through my roof when I saw that front page just moments ago.  This (which i'm most excited about) and the Last Story coming to North America (and friggin awesome localization potential from XSEED), plus Xenoblade dated.  I...just don't know what to say other than, thank you thank you thank you!!!!

Ahhhh, very clever!  I guess you could say they're all part of the mile high club.

On a sidenote, Derek, you're awesome, i don't care what the others say!

What kind of job!???  You're killin me John, I was trying to figure it out all afternoon!

With you 100% there.  I watched the intro sequence with english subtitles, really hope we get to experience the nonary game ambidex in the US this year.  999 was one of the most enjoyable (albeit depressing) experiences i've had in gaming.

No worries, Chaosoft has stated they're at least getting it to Steam, and are also looking at iOS platforms.

Oh... and I was just going to throw a crazy prediction out there for this year, Konami announces Suikoden VI for Playstation Vita.  That would be badass.

I like to try to with the Suikoden games, but I still haven't succeeded quite yet.  On the home stretch to achieving that in Suikoden 5, but I just haven't gotten around to finishing it with all 108 stars just yet.  In general though it all depends on how much I like the game.  Shining Force 2, Final Fantasy 7/10, Dragonquest 8, definitely took the completionist route on those ones.

While I hated X-2 with a passion, I think the worst was ff2 for NES.  I shouldn't have to attack my own party members and waste all my magic points by nuking my own party, to get strong enough so i can get through the next dungeon.

Played part of the demo, looks like they didn't change a whole lot in terms of the battle system and what not...which... I think isn't a particularly good thing for me since I don't give 2 craps about the plot.  I liked 13's battle system, but after 50 hours of messing around with that system, I need more than just a good battle system to keep me interested.  Serra and Noel...ya, i don't like the characters from what I can tell, and the whole Pulse & Cocoon setting is uninteresting.

This just makes me think back to 10-2, which had they kept the same cast, battle system, and feel...I would've given a damn about it because the original had a great plot and interesting world.  Instead, it was a Charlie's Angels meets Power Rangers disaster that I was embarassed to play.  At this point, I just can't see what can compel me to want to buy 13-2 due to the plot and characters.

Ahhh, sure was nice getting that podcast fix today.  You all have made me an addict i swear.

I have a request for Rob!  I was going through XBox Live's indie rpgs the other day and came across a game called Evilquest for 1 dollar, so I decided to try it out.  It plays a lot like Crystalis, but... you play the game as Rob Steinman.  I'd like to see Rob do an Indie review of that with a sort of first person review perspective.  Would be entertaining as heck!

If only Ron Paul were president...  we wouldn't have to worry about getting into this big mess.

Parn, thanks for the link, been trying to find that boss battle theme for awhile, love that song.

Damn... that really sucks.  I really liked his differing points of view and courage to stand up to anybody, no matter how controversial the situation was.  I especially liked it when he was on Hannity & Colmes back in 2007 after Jerry Falwell died, dang was that awesome!

We already lost George Carlin who was a great mind, and now we've lost Hitchens...I shudder to think who's next...

I'm a software QA consultant, currently doing mostly backend testing at a bank in Columbus (data warehousing/services).

I used to do QA for government software like Mesh a couple years back for the Florida Legislature.  And I know exactly what you mean in terms of the boss situation Mesh!  It can be very similar to Peter Gibbons in Office Space.