Hey kids, remember to include a name or nickname at the end of your letter if you want it to be printed. I won't just automatically use the name on your email account. We got lots of great questions and comments today, and you can see how that translates to a meaty mailbag feature. Keep it up by hitting this address:

How you doing? Is life treating you well? Do you feel

good about where your life is heading, honestly? I

wanna know about you. Do you like the moon or sun

rises? Do you perfer action movies or thrillers? I

wanna know about you.

Alright, tell me you remember how Ultimate Spider-Man

was at E3?! Man, the following questions depend solely

on your prior knowledge of that encounter.

Alright the following questions are Spider-man

related, Venom can S.A.D in my book.

1) Was the trick system same as Spider-Man 2 where you

just press A rapidly in mid air and Spiderman just

cycles through tricks? Or was it different?

2) How was the sense of speed while swinging?

3) Was the difficulty of dodging bullets easy, average

or hard?

4) Could you hear Spider-man's voice? Did the voice

suit him? Did the voice actor sound familiar? If so,

who was it?

5) When NPC's talked out of cutscenes or important

events did there mouths move?

6) Was there a charge jump meter(ie. a button you hold

to make your jumps bigger)?

Thanks a bunch hip cat. Anything else you'd like to

add would be greatly appreciated.

Be heavy,

Job Van Dam

Well, there's an auspicious start to our revived mailbag. I'll try to go sequentially and answer as much as I can.

Life is treating me exceptionally well. I really do feel great about where my life is heading. I've loved the few sunrises I have seen; I'm not sure if I've seen a moon rise since the moon is often visible a few hours before sunset in my part of the world, but I do enjoy staring at the moon for minutes at a time. I prefer (smart) action movies to thrillers, but I do enjoy thrillers when they're really well done, like The Usual Suspects or Seven, as opposed to ridiculous tripe like Saw. And yes, I do remember Ultimate Spider-Man from E3. Unfortunately, we (Dan and I) weren't allowed to play the game ourselves, but an Activision rep played the game for us and showed us some cool things. I'm hoping to see an updated version of the game before it's released to the public, both because I want to tell you guys and gals all about it and because I'm a Spider-Man-aholic and want to play the game for myself.

1) I didn't see the trick system, but the swinging mechanics seem to be mostly the same as in Spider-Man 2 (same developer, Treyarch), and combat seems to be quite improved. Honestly, I didn't think the trick system was at all useful or even interesting in the last game, but I guess it could become a cool part of the game if they really expand the number of moves and give you some incentive for performing them.

2) It seemed about the same as in Spidey 2, which was pretty dang fast if you really want to haul spider-ass. In the last game, I would sometimes just make huge street-clearing jumps along the ground instead of swinging, since you can control jumps better than swings. But it wasn't quite as fast.

3) We didn't get to see the bullet-dodging feature.

4) I don't remember if the game even had a voice for Spidey yet, and even if they did, I'm sure we couldn't have heard it over the brain-melting roar of E3's South Hall. Activision showed some of their other games in private rooms that were much quieter, but Ultimate Spider-Man was out on the floor.

5) If any NPCs were talking in the demo, and their mouths didn't move, I probably would have remembered such a bizarre situation.

6) I just checked with Activision, and they tell me that the jump meter is gone. In the last game, you could hold the jump button to fill the meter and get higher jumps, but in Ultimate, there is a web-assist jump move that lets you get higher.

The only other things I would add about Ultimate Spider-Man are that the game's graphics are awesome, the cut-scenes are like nothing you've ever seen before, and Venom is going to be disappointingly tame because the game is going for a T rating and not M.

What's happened to the free and online gamecube game titled Homeworld? Is it ever going to be released in the north american areas or even japan and such? Is it still gonna be online? Any word about it? Or has it gone totally bunk.

I think you mean Homeland, and it's out in Japan right now. Yes, it really is a new online title for GameCube; no, it is not free. There were free beta versions sent out to people who had pre-ordered the final version, or something like that. I have heard absolutely nothing about whether this game is going to be released outside Japan, but I very highly doubt it. Too bad, because not only is it online (please, try to contain yourself), but it's apparently a fun little RPG. Our elusive baseball freak Mike Suzuki had at least one of the beta versions, so I'll check with him and see if he can write some impressions or something.

there is so much talk about the revolution's specs as well as its controller. simple questions -- when will we know the details of the revolution? and when do you expect nintendo to release their next gen console?

Everyone seems to expect more info on Revolution this fall. I don't know any reason to believe or doubt that prediction, except that Xbox 360 is coming out this fall and Nintendo may want to remind people that they have a system of their own coming out eventually. When is eventually? I'm starting to think it will be fall 2006, but I don't really expect Sony to get PS3 out the door before that period either.

Holla from australia.

What happened to that nintendo puzzle collection

coming out on the gamecube(it had warios woods, dr

mario and tetris attack i think) i havent heard

anythign since the original vauge anouncement. Also

good to see the DS has come thru with the goods, the

PSP is a 'hotter' item but those hwo i show the DS to

are always impressed and overall seems to provide a

more satisfying experience. my girlfriend and mum both

play the bloody thing almost as much as me.

hope the mail bag gets rolling and you include heaps

of letters, letter sections are fun to read. excess

mailbag section would be tops.

cya fellas.

Holla! Nintendo Puzzle Collection came out years ago in Japan; if it ain't on the shelves in your country yet, it ain't gonna be. Better import if you really want a copy. (Hint: same goes for Band Bros.) Yeah, the DS really has a special appeal for people who don't usually play games. I got my mom to PictoChat with me for a few minutes, which is the longest time she's played any game since beating Bomberman on NES when I was a kid. I should get her a DS with Bomberman for Christmas, maybe. Thanks for the encouragement with mailbag. If the word "holla" isn't excessive, I don't know what is.

I've been reading the news, and I think I've come to a

conclusion about what Nintendo must be talking about

here. At the moment, there seems to be two conflicting

descriptions of the device: (1) It can do anything any

Nintendo interface has ever done and (2) It's simpler,

with less sticks and buttons, to be more intuitive to

the causal gamer. A lot of news articles seem to

ignore one hint in favor of the other, but the fact is

both are straight from Nintendo, so it somehow has to

be both simpler and highly functional. Of course,

console gaming as always been about ways to control a

great deal of movement and actions with a finite set

of controls, so it isn't beyond imagination to believe

the originators of the home console have designed

something just as useful as sticks and buttons, but

even more refined and simpler. That being said put

your fears about a useless novelty controller to bed,

along with those crazy Mr. Potato Head designs with

interchangeable parts. Perhaps they truly will create

a revolution in game control.

-Jonathan Decker "Lokno"

Oh I like this one, I don't even have to answer a question. But I can comment, right? Okay, thanks. I like to comment. You're not the only one who has noticed the seemingly contradictory hints about the Revolution controller. Nintendo's clues do seem to hint towards a "do everything" design, hence the speculation of some kind of modular controller with interchangeable parts...the "Mr. Potato Head" design, as you eloquently put it. I'm more inclined to believe that Nintendo means to offer multiple controllers for the Revolution, which would let them sell that much more hardware. Controllers have nice profit margins, after all. In order for the approach to work, they'll need to keep the number of options small, especially for the controllers specifically designed for new Revolution games. But I can definitely see Nintendo (as well as third-parties) releasing wireless controllers that look like and even improve upon the old NES, SNES, and N64 controllers. And of course the Revolution accepts GameCube controllers already; I'd be really disappointed if I can't use my Hori Digital Controller to play those old games.

How did Jonny get so sexies?

- Mike Sklens

Actually, I think you gave me that nickname...don't you remember? So you tell me.

ok, why have you allowed planet gamecube to be flooded with ads? everytime i log into pgc to check the latest news, i am invaded with a barrage of pop ups which are some how immune to my pop up blocker. i love my ds so much, but now i am starting to look at it differently because of that one add with the blue ds and free game. it makes me want to "click" the crap out of my ds. so is there anyway you can still have all the ads up on pgc without those annoying pop ups?

thank you for taking the time to answer my question.

anthony

I know ads are annoying, especially pop-ups, but there's no other way to consistently pay for this site to stay up and running. We gotta do what we gotta do, you know? And I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure that PGC is around for a long time and that our readers never have to pay for our content. We write for free, you read for free...if pop-ups help keep it that way, then so be it. Of course, there are ways to disable ads, which I'm sure you could learn about with a bit of searching online, but my advertisers would kill me if I said anymore.

Whew, that's a wrap for the first edition of the new PGC mailbag. Keep the gears running smoothly by squirting your email oil onto !