Happy New Year, everyone! Welcome to the first Editorials column of the year! It's great to be back home after a two week vacation in Northwestern Ontario. I apologize for the lack of column for those two weeks, but I did not have my computer with me. Any ways, I had an amazing time, and I did something I've never done before: I went Wassailing. For those who have no idea what Wassailing is, its caroling, and in exchange for one's singing, you carry a cup and people who open their doors to you will provide you with a form of beverage... usually alcohol. My comrades and I went to eight houses, and only six houses offered us inside for treats and beverage. One house begged us not to sing (his daughter was asleep), but he did provide us with scotch. I want to thank my boys from Fort Frances for allowing me to participate in their tradition. It was truly a blast!

Also: Nanaimo bars are love.

Any ways, two weeks of vacation and on the gaming front I only managed to play my DS. I ended up finishing Kirby's Super Star Ultra in a matter of a few days, and was teased profusely by my boyfriend for my love of Kirby. I also played lots of Rune Factory 2, but I'm no where near finishing this game, even with the twenty-ish hours I've put into it. I hope to start generation two this weekend. I also worked a bit on Final Fantasy IV DS and I got a pretty tragic point, and then died, so if I pick up my game again, I'll have to fight that irritating Barbariccia again. Such is life.

This week we have two editorials - one from the always awesome Mike 'JuMeSyn' Moehnke, and the other from myself. JuMeSyn discusses Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu at length and why he feels it deserves the opportunity to be played by Western audiences. I, on the other hand, write about why I don't understand the appeal of Harvest Moon games, but why I seem to keep going back to them every so often. A couple of new items: I have updated the 'Your Opinion' questions, which I hope you readers might write and respond to. I will change the questions each month in hopes to give some ideas on what people could choose to write about if they like. Please DO NOT answer my questions in the forum, as the point of the questions is to help inspire some new editorial content. I love new content, and considering some of the heated forum discussions that I've seen recently on the site, I hope it will inspire people to transform their debates into editorials. As always please submit! I love reading what people think, and I hope once again we can get this column to generate some heated discussion (but no flaming or trolling, I don't advocate that), and this wraps up the first column of 2009!

Also, wow, I am such a crazy babbling old lady sometimes.

Editor@rpgamer.com