Rather, “why I don’t recommend this.”

Dragon Warrior is enjoyable, if rather heavy on level grinding, but I prefer its Game Boy Color remake (Dragon Warrior I+II). Besides being Super Game Boy enhanced and portable, the remake tunes up the graphics, discards the Ye Olde English translation, and eases off the grindfest. You also get the first sequel on the same cartridge.

Not that this isn’t a good game, but I find that Super Mario World for SNES is pretty much Mario 3 with less cruft and more awesome. Save files, hidden exits, and far fewer encounters with the Hammer Brothers all make Super Mario World a much more enjoyable game.

That said, I plan to find a copy of Super Mario All-Stars for SNES so I can play this game with save files. Being able to go to bed and continue playing the next day really improves the experience.

I love Mountain Dew—too much, really. But I despise Diet Dew. It’s taken me years to be able to even swallow it. I used to spit it out in the nearest sink. It’s my guess that the sugar in real Dew covers the bitter taste of caffeine, and artificial sweetener can’t mask that monstrous bitterness half as well.

Diet Dew is not worth it. Drink fewer sodas or switch to something else instead. Your taste will thank you (by not dying in hordes).

In a word: Ick. Anything diet is going to taste bad, but Diet Coke is so far below The Real Thing that I honestly don’t understand why anyone would put up with it.

Diet Cherry Coke is much better, if you’ve a taste for cherry flavour (it’s what I’m drinking right now, as it happens).

Diet Coke is a thing of suck. Diet Cherry Coke, however, has enough flavour to take it from “suck” to “mediocre.” It’s also 0 calories a can instead of 150 (for regular Cherry Coke), and I drink enough soda to make that a significant difference.

It’s not great. It’s decent and caffeinated, though, and that’s what counts.

I didn’t expect much out of Ben Affleck in this movie, but overall it’s a surprisingly good flick. The inherent weirdness and science fiction of any Phillip K. Dick story got toned down to death, but Uma Thurman’s presence carries the plot along and humanizes it.

I rented this thinking it would be good for a night of vegging out; now I’m thinking of buying it so I can watch again and again.

Not quite up to the level of The Mummy Case, this sequel still manages a good amount of excitement. One small detail gave me completely the wrong idea about how it would end, but naming the detail would spoil the finale.

I’m an Egyptophile by nature, so I bought this book simply because of the title and cover art. It surprised me. The author clearly knows something about ancient Egypt, going so far as to introduce a ba spirit where another author would have just used a ghost.