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Everybody who’s sick of hearing about how Rogue Leader is the game of the century, cures cancer, etc. put your hands up. Okay, someone’s lying. Any console conversation I get into these days tends to go like this:

Random Gamer: “So you got an Xbox?”
Me: “Yeah”
RG: “Why not a GameCube?”
Me: “Well, see…”
RG: “Have you SEEN Rogue Leader?”

No, of course not. I mean, sure, I’m a huge Star Wars fan, and I run a website that’s completely based around the video game industry, and I was recently shopping around for a next-gen console, but I’ve neither seen nor played Rogue Leader. Of course I’ve seen Rogue Leader! Yeah, it looks great and plays, well.. exactly like Rogue Squadron. Which isn’t a bad thing. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to buy a system for one game. I didn’t buy an N64 to play GoldenEye, I didn’t buy a WonderSwan to play Final Fantasy on the run, and I’m not going to buy a GameCube just to play Rogue Leader. I wish I were exaggerating this point, but I’m not. Not ONCE has someone in that little scenario ever said “have you SEEN Luigi’s Mansion?” or “have you SEEN Wave Race?” or Pikmin, or Madden, or Super Monkey Ball. And it’s not even that those are bad games, but as far as most people are concerned, Rogue Leader is the only thing that matters as pertaining to the ‘Cube. Well I’ve played Rogue Leader, and as nice as it looks and all, it’s not enough. Not for me anyway, and until I can be certain that Nintendo is going to offer more than just a bunch of cutesy licensed character games and movie tie-ins, I’ll hold off on the ‘Cube. In the mean time, there’s stuff that needs blowing up, and people that need to be schooled.

Before I leave you for the weekend, I’d like to make an appeal to all of our caring readers on behalf of our friend praet0rian. You see, prae will soon be going home for the holidays and will be without Internet access. I’m sure you can appreciate how horrible that would be, especially for someone who sits on his ass all day playing with his website the way prae does. So here’s how you can help: send prae’s mom and email, expressing to her how much it would benefit the entire family for her to get Internet at home. Do it for prae. Do it for prae’s family. But above all, do it because it’s fun to do silly stuff. Thank you.

-JBE