A few questions on programming...

Hey guys it's been a long time since I posted in the game dev. forums, mostly because I've been lurking around the net in search of useful tutorials. Anyways I'll get to my questions:

1. I have found some video tutorials on msdn (don't ask me the link cause it's way too complicated) and was wondering weather I should bother with them. I'll be frank, I've watched the first few on Visual Basic and found them quite helpful, while not going into great depth they explain quite well, especially cause they're free. Btw if u haven't watched them yet and u want to help plz don't watch the videos cause each is about 1 hour long and I don't want to waste your time just to answer my question.

2.How much flexibility does Visual basic have in terms of games?(duh..) I'm not gonna start with online games-far from that, I'd like to start with a simple 1 lvl 2D Sonic type game-This means high speed (even higher than other games because it's on PC, and then with my gained exp make that in a whole Sonic game and finally implement my own half original idea(it's already been used but not in MMOs) So how would Visual Basic handle high speeds, explosions (like ACTUAL big explosions), and other special effects worthy of a 3D game?

Anyways Thx for reading these questions and I really appreciate answers, thx in advance guys!:)

P.S. WOOT 100 posts O.o

When it comes to learning the ropes of a programming language it's each to their own. If you say you get more from watching vids then you'll continue to download them. An hour is a long time though.

I'm not to sure about VB and online stuffs. Never really considered using it for such.