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Hidden gems in game code, SimCity rants, and Final Fantasy Fixes abound in this week's PB & Jason.

You may have heard the news that F-Zero AX was discovered inside F-Zero GX. That news inspired a brief bit of talk about other places where things were hidden pretty deep inside a few games from the past, mostly on the N64. Naturally, SimCity took up a lot of time, too, and Issue 118 closes with some of Julian's Final Fantasy piece. Be sure to listen to the beginning to catch a few more details about the Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate Community week! Click through for listening and download links!

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Game Over Man!

Unlike most reviewers, I feel like I had a unique perspective going into Gearbox’s Aliens: Colonial Marines. My fandom of the series only reaches back a few months, when friends recommended that I check out Alien and Aliens. While both movies were great, I didn’t really have the grasp on the series like most that grew up with the franchise. Also unlike most that went into this game, I didn’t have the chance to play it until after the backlash. Reports of the game being horrendous can be found everywhere, and while I agree to an extent, I feel that the majority of this game’s lackluster reception is due to the lofty expectations of diehard Aliens fans. However, nothing can stop Alien’s Colonial Marines from being a generic shooting experience that fell way below the standards of a great game.

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Private Messaging! Notifications! The ability to hit the Enter key to log in! All this and more in today's changelog.

If you were up (for whatever reason) around 1:30AM last night, you might've noticed that a new feature stealthily dropped and hit the home screen. That feature is the frequently requested Private Messaging system! But wait, there's more!

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We give Square Enix some friendly tips for keeping the Fantasy alive.

When Jesse Miller, our resident features guru, asked if I would be interested in doing a Final Fantasy retrospective for the series’ 25^th anniversary last year my answer was a resounding “yes!” In the months that followed, I poured all of my love and dedication into a five part series detailing the 14 core Final Fantasy games. It was a labor of love for me; no series of games has been more influential or important to me as a gamer. I’m a staunch defender of these games, even when they go into weird territory like iOS time-wasters. That doesn’t mean that I’m blind to the fact that the series isn’t what it once was, however. As excited as I am for the future of Final Fantasy, I think that the fine folks over at Square Enix need to take a good long look at where the series stands. To that end, I have 5 things that I think could help immensely as we move forward into the next generation.

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