Unfortunately, when it comes to MMORPGs like Maple Story, it is highly unlikely you can ever legally play an earlier version of the game once new updates go public. Since the game is played in an evolving world shared by players all over the world, it would be very difficult for them to justify supporting 'old version' play. They would have to set up whole new servers and divert resources to run those servers, and just running the main game itself can take a great deal of effort and resources.

The game I have always said was my all time favorite would be Xenogears, which I still play all the way through about once a year. However, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy 6, and Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask are all a very close second through fifth.

I do a little bit of both, to be honest. Sometimes I even mix the both, like dipping carrots in peanut butter. I also switch between drinking Gatorade and Dr. Pepper.

I have just one brother whom is twelve years my senior. It is really weird that my parents only had two kids, as they both came from sizable families. My mom has eleven siblings and my dad has four. I guess they both decided not to do the 'large family' thing based on their experiences of living in ones themselves. LOL

It seems very unnecessary to be releasing another 'new' console every 8 months or so. The fact that Nintendo has developed this pattern as of late leaves my worrying for their future. If they keep saturating the market with products which are essentially nothing more than last year's model with one or two minor tweaks or additions, and then charge the same price they would for a whole new console, I fear even those most loyal to the brand will begin to sour on them. A good parallel would be Sega with all those peripherals they released for the Genesis. I sincerely hope he don't see Nintendo walking down that same path. I don't know what I would do without a new Zelda game every couple of years or so...

The absolute best thing to do is the completely wipe your mind of everything concerning what ails you and to do something you really enjoy that will also engage your mind. Playing a video game that requires you to focus is one way to go about this. You could also try getting some friends together and play some form of sport, like football, soccer, or bowling. The point is to not give your mind the opportunity to dwell on that sick sinking feeling caused by being heartbroken.

I was going to try and make a run at Yellow and Red yesterday, but then I saw Dazzsheil and their 2100 word post, and I just couldn't drum up the motivation to try and beat that. On top of that, I got invited to a friend's house for a nice cookout dinner and had to stop a few hundred words short of getting the Red jersey. Curse me and my desire for steaks, hamburgers, and hot dogs cooked until lightly charred on a grill!

In my youth, I won several State Junior Bowling championships. One in singles bowling, one in mixed doubles, and three straight five person  team bowling titles. My cousin and I and three of our friends dominated the youth bowling scene where we lived and even got an invite to Nationals in '97. Sadly, we weren't able to go because three of us had school-related obligations. Oh, what might have been. :/

There is not doubt that Square was at its best from the mid '90s to the early '00s. That was when they released many of their best games of all time, including my personal favorite in Xenogears. It was also the best time for Final Fantasy. From FF6 up through FF10, including Tactics. They were all fantastic games. Sadly, the franchise has steadily gone downhill ever since the travesty that was X-2. In my honest opinion, the best of the bunch has to be Final Fantasy 6. All the pieces fell into place with this game. Everything was expertly crafted to near perfection. What truly sets this game part from the others, in my opinion, is the main villain. Kefka is one of my all time favorite baddies, and I don't just mean from video games. Along with the Joker and Darth Sidious, he is one of my three favorite villains of all time. I know Sephiroth is easily the most beloved of the Final Fantasy villains, but he just doesn't do it for me. I feel that he is too stereotypical, too bland and transparent.

On top of that, I think that Locke and Terra are the best protagonists from any final fantasy game. They are most definitely less annoying than Cloud, Squall, or Tidus. I think we all can agree on that.

I have a simple Tracfone that I use for emergencies only. And I honestly don't understand the point of having all these crazy features, such as internet access, on your phone. It seems like just another reason to inflate the prices of cell phones so that companies can make a little more money and justify buying the large jacuzzi instead of the medium model. That is just my, however, I have never completely trusted large corporations. I get the feeling they all have their own agenda that revolved around making money, not providing a worthwhile service for the general public.

I personally use Internet Explorer. Not because I find it to be superior to any of the other browsers or anything like that. I use IE because it came already loaded on my laptop and I am too lazy to take the time to download any other browser. If I ever do get up the motivation, I will probably switch to Firefox.

Being 29 years old, I have managed a number of doozies. Let me recant a few of my less flattering moments for your entertainment.

When I was fifteen, I got involved in a 'hobby' called backyard wrestling. That in of itself is a dumb idea. However, during my time participating in this dubious past time, I did several less than intelligent things. These included:
- Jumping off of the roof of a one story house unto another human being.
- Jumping off of the roof of a two story house unto a table.
- Jumping out of a third story window, aiming for a bile of boxes, and missing entirely. I got really lucky on this one. I could have died or broke my back or neck.
- Throwing another human being out that same third story window. This was weeks prior to the aforementioned incident. Thank goodness he hit the boxes.
- Hitting and getting hit in the head and shoulders with various items.
Fortunately, I only did that for about a year and a half. I got out before I ended up killing myself or causing long term damage.

I agreed to drop out of college and quit a good paying job because my girlfriend at the time wanted me to move with her so she could go to specific school of cosmetology. A little less than two years later, I catch her in bed with one of her male instructors. Nothing makes you feel more dumb than being duped by someone you love.

However, the one thing which I consider to be the dumbest thing I've ever done is this:
I went to an ATM machine. I was in a hurry and running short on time, so I grabbed my money and ran off. Unfortunately, I forgot to finish up the transaction, leaving my card in the machine and the ATM on the 'Do you want to make another transaction' screen. Fortunately, this particular ATM was set up to eat the card after about five seconds. So I dodged a huge bullet here, especially since I had just deposited the several thousand dollars that made up my student loan.

Like most people, I first joined for the RGR. I actually found this site while searching for a decent Earthbound emulator after the hard cop that I owned decided to stop functioning properly. A sad day in my life, to say the least.

However, if there is anything I thirst for more than good video games, it is stimulating conversation with other people across the globe. For that reason, I've always liked posting of forums such as these, so it was only a matter of time before I started interacting on this forum. Even though I had sworn off internet forums and promised myself not to start in again. I'm not very good at keep promises to myself. LOL

Unfortunately, I have to agree with those of Jewish faith on the matter of the 'Only Son of God.' While Yeshua of Nazareth (whom most of you would know as Jesus) was most definitely a real person that walked this planet a few thousand years ago, he was most definitely not the son of any god. He was a normal man, born to normal parents (no immaculate conception, sorry), and lead a normal life up until his late 20s, when he essentially began building the foundation of the Christian faith.

Despite my having lost confidence in all the major religions, I have still been extremely curious about the topic of religion and the way it affects people. This is easily my second favorite subject, next to linguistics. For that reason, I have spent a great deal of time studying and researching many aspects of numerous religions, even the odd or silly ones (I.E., Mormon, Scientology). One of the topics that has intrigued me the most is this strange and mystical man that everyone called 'Jesus'. 

Being a logical thinker, the idea that God had a son sounded out of place in the style of faith that we see in the Western Religions, almost as if someone had read a little too much Greek mythos and then incorporated it into a system of belief. Not satisfied with any answer I could ever glean from religious sources, I chose to do some research on my own, from a logical and historical point of view. For the benefit of the doubt, I will recite briefly what I feel is the true history of the man called Jesus.

First and foremost, it needs to be noted that the name Jesus, as I mentioned earlier, isn't this man's true name. 'Jesus' is a transliteration. His real name was Yeshua. How we came to call him Jesus can be explained thusly:

Yeshua is a Hebrew name which has been transliterated into Greek as Iesous. The English "Jesus" comes from the Latin transliteration of the Greek name into the Latin Iesus. Now Greek has no "y" sound, but the Latin "i" is both an "i" and a "j" (I.E., it can have a consonantal force in front of other vowels), the latter of which is properly pronounced like the English "y". That is why we spell Jesus as we do, taking it straight from Latin, but we pronounce the name with a soft "j" sound because that is what we do in English with the consonantal "j".

Some people even go as far as to claim that his full name was Yeshua Ben Yosef, but I won't touch on that for now. The point is, the true name of Jesus is Yeshua. For the sake of discussion, I would also like to point out that Yeshua can by translated roughly into the English name 'Joshua', so one could also refer to him as 'Joshua of Nazareth'. Not that I would. That would just be further diluting an already diluted name.

Now that I have that out of the way, I can continue. It can by historically proven that this man, Yeshua, did truly exist and was the founder of Christianity and, summarily, Catholicism. He was born in Nazareth, not in a manger in Bethlehem, into a Jewish family. His family did not leave for Egypt during the fall of King Herod. They remained in Galilee, where Yeshua and his father would have plied the family trade, widely accepted to have been carpentry.

From here, things get a bit hazy. There are some accounts that Yeshua as a child was a bit of a troubelmaker. I cannot confirm or deny the validity of these claims. I believe it is fairly clear that in his youth, even before he began is ministrations, Yeshua was religiously out-spoken and somewhat of a rabble rouser. Another clear fact is that Yeshua traveled abroad during this time. Namely, into India and Tibet. Here is where his life really begins to take shape. While traveling abroad in India and Tibet, Yeshua was exposed to Buddhist and Hindu teachings. These would have a marked effect on Yeshua, and would play an instrumental role in the rest of his life.

For, you see, I surmise that Yeshua's reason for traveling abroad was disillusionment with the Jewish faith. Perhaps not satisfied with the answers the Jewish faith had to offer, he chose to travel in search of further enlightenment. This is strictly presumption on my part, however, based on facts and logic. The point is, he went to those regions and learned about these teachings. He then incorporated Buddhist and Hindu philosophy into the Jewish faith to form his own person set of beliefs. This was the foundation on which Christianity was built.

Upon returning to Galilee, Yeshua would begin his ministrations. For, in reality, Yeshua was a religious reformist. He was attempting to blend the Eastern philosophies he had encountered with his Jewish faith. At first, his ideals were largely rejected, but they would eventually catch on. He acquired a sizable following, most of whom would travel him for town to town, as he attempted to spread his teachings. In the end, however, he drew the attention of the religious leaders in Rome, who would label him a heretic and call for his death. The rest is largely how we know it today. Yeshua was arrested and crucified for his supposed crimes and for spreading heresy. The largely Pagan Roman Empire and the Jewish leaders of Judea co-conspired to carry out the execution of Yeshua the 'Heretic'.

While Yeshua was most definitely not the 'Son of God', he was a very important person the human history. One of the most important, as a matter of fact. He tried to use the philosophy on unity and inner peace to help temper the furor of religious hatred that, even to this day, still boils tempestuously over us all. That is the mark of a great man. It is not, however, the mark of a man who will someday return to this planet in order to bring us Salvation. That is something that can only happen in fairy tales. That simply isn't the way this world works. There will be no Second Coming, there will be no trumpets blasting in the air. No angels are going to descend upon us and take the righteous to the Promised Land. These are all empty promises made to give people something to look forward to once their life ends. But that is a matter for another time.

The way it's been told to me, my parents met at the Circle K, a convenience store / gas station, where my dad was working while attending college at Arizona State. Apparently, my mother came in and knocked over a display, which my dad then has to pick up. Somehow, that blossomed into romance. Funny how love works sometimes.

I know I've expressed this sentiment before in other places on this site, but I feel it merits repeating here, as well. So here we go!

It is not a wise idea to place very much credibility or trust in these 'studies' that are carried out on a regular basis on any subject a bored college grad or career scientist can possibly conceive. I know that it is fun to imagine how some of their finding might impact one's life, but in then end, it all turn out to be complete bunk half the time. The rest of the time, they are just confirming something which is common knowledge to most people. In the case of this study, I already knew being a little drunk helps you think outside the box. However, you need to consider the negative effects that alcohol will have on your body. These out-weight any small amount of mental stimulation being buzzed might provide. In the end, this 'study' is just a case of a group of college student trying to justify getting sloshed on the weekends. 'Oh, no, Professor! We weren't drinking until we couldn't stand straight! We were stimulating our brains so we could study better!'

That brings me to my reason for saying you can't trust these studies. As the adage goes, 'opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one.' This includes any given person that might like to perform a study on any given subject. No matter how unbiased someone might claim to be, they will always have a preferred outcome in mind at the outset of their study. And, as we all know, it is human nature that a person would want to be proven right. Ergo, there will always be that temptation to someone alter the outcome of the study. I'm not saying that every single person will give into the temptation, however the majority most definitely will. There is also the fact that anyone can find proof of anything, if they look hard enough and are willing to twist the meaning of something.

If you want further proof, all you have to do is look at the bevy of contradictory studies that claim the exact opposite of one another. There used to be studies that claimed smoking was healthy for you. Now, of course, all studies say that smoking is horrible for your health. There used to be studies that stated eggs and bread were good for you. Now eggs cause heart attacks and bread makes you fat. Hell, whether eggs are good or bad for you has changed numerous times over the last 50 years.

There is always a new 'study' with new 'findings' that claim they know the answer on how to improve one aspect of your life. In the end, all most of these people are trying to do is force their own opinions on you and using these 'studies' as a means to justify their end.

Seems like the Original Poster is a Nintendo fan. I have no problem with that, though. Nintendo is the current 'King of Consoles', in my honest opinion. That's right, folks, Nintendo beat Sony and Microsoft this generation. But don't you fret for long, Sony will most likely reclaim the title with the next generation of consoles.

As for my favorites console of all time, it would have to come down to a dead tie between the PlayStation 2 and the Super Nintendo. Both systems dominated my gaming life during their tenures, plus they both host some of my all-time favorite games. Runner up on my list would likely be another dead tie between the original PlayStation and the Nintendo 64. I had a very hard time choosing one over the other during that generation of consoles, as they both had some really good games. In the end, I think my time spent on them was split right down the middle.

Also, I feel I need to point out that the XBox 360 does not possess the best graphic in the current generation of consoles. That distinction belong to the PlayStation 3, which has far superior rendering capabilities than the 360. That said, when it comes to best use of their rendering capabilities, the 360 is in dead last. While the Wii isn't the strongest system on the market, Nintendo has become a master of finding ways of making their 'weaknesses' work in their favor. I can think of a dozen Wii games which impressed me more before I even get to the first 360 game that impressed me, which was Witcher 2.

As far as the sports games go, bear in mind that just about every sports game on the 360 is also on the PS3, where they look and play worlds better. In all honesty, the only thing the XBox has going for it is Left 4 Dead and the undeserved popularity of the Halo series. That's my opinion, any way. I know there are some out there that would disagree.