Caves of Narshe: News

Fanart CoNtest Summer '08: Winners!

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:42:32 GMT

Since I wasn't able to close the contest on time, I figured at least I could spend part of my Saturday making sure the winners were on time!

Thanks to all those who entered, all those who told their friends to enter, and even those who just wanted to enter but never got around to it; the CoN Summer Fanart contest is now over as I announce these two winners. We're not sure when we'll run another contest, but as long as you keep an eye out here (perhaps subscribing to our RSS feed might help), you will be sure you'll be among the first to know next time.

Now, on to the winners. We only got enough entries, sadly, to offer up two prizes; one goes to the overall top scorer among our judges' responses, and the other goes to the entry that we judged to be the most creative in concept out of them all.

First, let's discuss our victor of the most creative prize, a ten-dollar gift card to AmaCoN. Our artist's work for this prize caught us off guard. It's deceptively simple at first glance, but as you start to take it all in, you start to appreciate the different levels at which it's clever. We really quite enjoyed the way that the photo cutouts present different characters than the actual subjects of the piece, and the little detail of Umaro ripping his cutout right off the deck instead of stooping over gave us a genuine laugh when we noticed it. So, congratulations to Galsic, taking home the prize for most creative submission! You can view his new art in our gallery right now, or view the thumbnail right here!

And, our only other prize to be given out today, the grand prize of this contest, a forty-dollar AmaCoN gift card, goes to an artist who has been around CoN forever. His entry was also very clever, so much so that he nearly overtook Galsic to capture both prizes. The format he used allowed him to tell a full story and while it doesn't necessarily have the bold color and sharp detail of some of our other entries, the story both fit our 'Vacationing Heroes' theme, and showed a significant amount of effort in laying out each panel. Not only that, we found it darkly humorous to boot, with a payoff at the end that you might not see coming. Once you see the piece in our gallery, you'll know right away that it could have come from only one guy here at CoN: congratulations to Narratorway for taking home top honors this time around. Surely you now want to see his winning fanart entry, so don't let us stop you once our thumbnail below sinks in a bit!

Again, congratulations to our winners, and thank you very much to everyone who supported our new fanart system with an entry. We appreciate every one of you and if I could afford to give you all a prize I happily would. Please keep submitting and keep bringing your friends to not only submit to our galleries, but also to see the great work we already have in place. Hope to see you all again here soon!

More Dragon Quest, Valkyrie Profile on DS

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:18:06 GMT

Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride and Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume both received release dates for the United States: February 17th for Dragon Quest and March 17th for Valkyrie Profile, both in 2009.

Dragon Quest V is a DS remake of a SNES game that was previously remade for the Playstation 2. It chronicles the story of a nameless hero journeying to rid the world of an evil demon's influence while searching for the truth behind his heritage and finding love in the process. Covenant of the Plume is the third game in the cult hit Valkyrie Profile series made by longtime Enix collaborator Tri-Ace. The story is of a young warrior whose father died in battle and was subsequently taken by Lenneth (the protagonist of of the first Valkyrie Profile) to be one of Odin's Einherjar. The son strikes a deal with the queen of the damned, determined to exact revenge upon Lenneth.

Both of these games will give DS-owning American fans of Square-Enix something to spend their hard-earned money on before spring begins.

Source: Kotaku

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:07:07 GMT

BioWare announced today the project many people assumed they were working on: a Star Wars MMO (that isn't Galaxies). Essentially, it's going to take the setting, style, and basic principles from BioWare's popular Knights of the Old Republic duo of games and make it massively multiplayer. At a press conference in San Francisco earlier today, a BioWare representative labeled TOR (should we start calling it that?) as 'Knights of the Old Republic 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12-plus.' So far all they have is some concept art and a couple screens.

Source: GameSpot

Fanart CoNtest Update

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:02:33 GMT

Some of you might be wondering why there hasn't been any announcements of the fanart contest as yet. If you're not wondering, with hope you are now. The reason is twofold, and neither is terribly impressive. I'll get to those later, though, and put the important info up here:

We're extending the art submission deadline for eleven full more days (plus a few hours) - you now need to have your art in on October 31, Halloween.

Now for the reasons, should you want to know:

1) I, fortunately for me but unfortunately for CoN, had to change jobs right before the contest was set to close. Up until right now, I've barely been around while I did all the things necessary for me to leave my old job and get settled in my new one, and that precluded me from doing anything for the site that required much effort besides clicking.
2) We honestly, frankly, are low on entries. This works out poorly for me, as I really did want to give out lots of prizes and see the new fanart system become a fast success thanks to all you folks submitting. However, this can work out really well for you, as if you've submitted, you have a pretty good chance of getting some prize!

So, with those two things in mind, you have my mea culpa on reason number one. However, I do expect that you artists out there will kick in some more art in the very near future to make up for reason number two. Get started, I want to give away prizes.

Mother 3 Translation Patch Available Soon

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:52:11 GMT

Those dedicated (and SLOW) translators at http://mother3.fobby.net/ are nearing completion of their major project - a translation to Mother 3. The fan project has been in the works for over two years, and as a result of their hard work Earthbound fans the world over will be able to play the anticipated sequel without a detailed knowledge of Japanese. Rejoice!

Source: http://mother3.fobby.net/

Tokyo Game Show News

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:20:29 GMT

Square-Enix had a few gems to reveal to the public at the Tokyo Game Show regarding their upcoming RPG releases. Among them, character names! Yes, finally, some of the CG beauties you've been marveling at all this time have names other than 'Lightning... or is that the attack she's using?' Well... sorta. So far, only a few have been sorted through, and it's not entirely clear where the Engrish ends and the localized names begin...

Source: Final Fantasy Insider

For fans of Enix's Star Ocean series, it should come as pleasant news that the Star Ocean: First Departure website is up and running. First released on the Super Famicom only in Japan, the beginning of the Star Ocean series will finally be making its way to North American audiences on the PSP later this year.

Furthermore, the 360-exclusive Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope has been dated for March 2009.

Source: GameSpot

Nintendo Unveils New DS Model, New Wii Functions

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:54:18 GMT

In a press conference at the very beginning of the Tokyo Game Show, Nintendo dropped a few major bombs not even hinted at during their E3 presentation earlier this year. These announcements were made yesterday afternoon in Japan, which is the late evening or the middle of the night for most of the west.

First, the DSi. The DSi is a new model of DS with larger screens, stronger wireless capabilities, stronger, adjustable audio, a built-in camera, multimedia function, and capable of supporting Nintendo SD cards for greater DS-Wii interactivity. The new system will be able to play games exclusive for the DSi that the DS cannot. There is, however, no more GBA game slot. The DSi will be out in November in Japan and in 2009 for other areas. Check sources for pictures and more details.

In addition to this major announcement, the Wii was announced to soon be able to download Wii applications and games directly onto an SD Card rather than the Wii's limited memory. In addition, gamers will soon be able to download full Gamecube games onto the Wii, with one early release being 2001's Pikmin. There was no announcement for plans to create a Wii harddrive.

And lastly, a few new Wii games were announced, with two major revelations standing out: Punch-Out Wii and Sin and Punishment 2. The former is the third console iteration of the classic cartoony boxing game, while the latter is a sequel to a cult-favorite N64 rail shooter.

Now that's a lot of news. Nothing more to say here, check the source links for more details.

Source:
The DSi
Wii games
Gamecube games on the Wii

Dragon Quest IX Gets Dated in Japan

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 08:28:28 GMT

After more than two years of vagueness, Square-Enix finally drops a bomb on Dragon Quest fans - Japan will be getting the much-awaited DS game on March of 2009. Very little is known about the title thus far other than there are customizable characters and it will take advantage of the DS's wireless capabilities, but since it's a Dragon Quest game it will probably sell like funnel cakes once it eventually comes out.

Source: Kotaku

CoNtest reminder! The End is Nigh!

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:48:18 GMT

No, it's nothing to do with the Large Hadron Collider that may or may not either expose the building blocks of the universe in the name of SCIENCE, create a black hole that annihilates the Earth and most of the Solar System or at least Switzerland, or may even cause a resonance cascade and the eventual Universal Union invasion and conquest of our planet in under seven hours (And I for one welcome our new benefactors) but something of far greater importance. The end of one of our two CoNtests running right now is near.

To be exact, it's the Fanart competition where the end is nigh. That contest ends at the end of this month and is run to the theme of your favorite Square-Enix characters as if they were on holiday, or vacation for people in countries that upgraded the English language to Eng 2.0. Those of you with the ability to draw, doodle, sketch, and whatever else it is you talented arty types do to make little pretty pictures only have until the end of the month, about three weeks. To see the rules and how to submit, simply follow the link above. Or the one below if you want to live life on the edge.

For those of you with an infinite number of Shakespeares attempting to compile the complete works of Monkeys (Is this right? -Editor) and enter the Fanfic CoNTest, you've got quite a bit more time, a whole month more, and more flexibility with the three categories in that longer contest, but you're free to write a story about your favourite characters at the beach if you like. It could be General or Comedy. Or from FF7 maybe even Scene Selection thanks to Costa Del Sol.

So, in summary, time is running out on the CoNtests to enter, and possibly also for your freedom of expression for Final Fantasy Fanwork Fantasticness should the last LHC scenario occur as I think the... Combine are fans of Dragon Quest more than FF. Remember, you have until September 30th for Fanart, October 31st for Fanfics, and about two minutes for the kettle to boil unless you've got a really good kettle.

If you have any questions about the Fanart rules and submission, email your question to fanart@cavesofnarshe.com. For Fanfic queries, email a question along to fanfics@cavesofnarshe.com or PM Del S, whoever he is, on the forums, whatever they are. Alternatively, for a faster response to questions on either contest, simply pop into chat and someone there should help you.

Links:
Fanart CoNtest Rules and Submission guidelines
Fanfic CoNtest Rules and Submission guidelines

CoN Assaulted, Nobody Notices

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 23:10:12 GMT

Well, I suppose a couple people did.

It looks like some villains tried to plant malicious code on the site a couple of days ago. Luckily, it didn't work very well - in most cases, the most visible consequence would have been pages failing to load correctly in Internet Explorer. (If you saw that happen, it doesn't mean you were infected with anything - in fact you definitely weren't attacked by any particular page where you saw that happen.)

Even so - if you visited CoN, or anything else hosted on cavesofnarshe.com between August 28th 00:00 GMT and August 30th 12:00 GMT, you'd be well advised to give your computer a once-over with a virus and/or malware scanner, and you should definitely start using something that's not Internet Explorer, even if that IE is 7. Go with Firefox, is what we say.

We don't yet know how this happened, though we have a hunch that it wasn't our issue at all - but we'll be making every effort to find out and prevent anything similar from occurring in the future.