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Slated for July 3, Square Enix are releasing in Japan a "remastered" version of the Final Fantasy IV Soundtrack. Later in the year, similar albums will be released for Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI. There's not much detail beyond that so far, which naturally leaves some questions. The first question might well be the tracklist - will these albums be a full OST, which would require a few CDs, or is it a single-CD "best of" compilation as some other albums have been in the past? Second, though, and possibly more important, is "what on earth does a remaster of a SNES soundtrack entail?"

Given that these albums are explicitly called remasters, and not anything like the piano collections or orchestral arrangements that have been done in the past, it would seem that these new albums will still be chiptunes as they were originally, but perhaps that the chips used to make the tunes will be of a more modern variety than twenty years ago, creating the opportunity for more realistic synthesized sounds.

If you want to find out, you'll need to import, most likely - Squenix are not currently speaking of any Western release for any of these albums.

Source: Siliconera

Following up on some news we posted back in December, FFV has been confirmed for release on iOS devices on March 28th. We don't know yet which other Final Fantasies will be joining it, but with this latest addition to the Square Enix iOS lineup ready to hit the shelves - the electronic ones, that is - we'll probably be hearing more sometime in the not-so-distant future. This version is a port of FFV Advance, which means it will be completely covered by our own shiny, revamped FFV section!

The bigger news according to internet consensus is the Japanese price, leaked from a magazine scan: the equivalent of $19. Everyone with a keyboard and upwards of three brain cells seems to have decried the cost in the last 48 hours. What do you think? Is $19 unfair to ask for a game that is, after all, just a port of a previous version, and whose original is now twenty years old? Or is it appropriate for a game that will take 40-ish hours to complete, well above your average mobile app, and which still sells on the GBA for at least 50% higher? IF U DONT AGREE WITH ME, YOUR DUM.

Source: Kotaku

Starting today, the North American PSN store has a series of Final Fantasy games half off. Which games, you might ask? Well, a bucket of them. You can get a version of every numbered Final Fantasy game up through IX (not including III, which never has had a Sony release). Most of the games are the PS One versions, including Origins, Anthology, and the three released originally for the first PlayStation. Final Fantasy IV's PSP version is included, as is Tactics: War of the Lions. Rounding out the set are three games from the Dissidia series.

This sale is 50% off the top and will be running for two weeks. The game selection is a little different than the European-region sale that we, uh, forgot to post about until right now. That sale's over, though. Sorry about that.

Source: US PlayStation Blog

In Square Enix' illustrious history of countdown clocks and teaser sites, few things might be more interesting than one potentially offering new releases of Final Fantasy V and VI, even if those releases are for iOS. We talked about that possibility a few weeks back, and the internet in general seemed to take it as a foregone conclusion. Some folks even were leaning towards the notion that these releases might be brand-new, never-before-seen 3D treatments of those two games in the vein of the Final Fantasy IV just released.

The liklihood of new iOS re-releases now seems to be much more likely, as Siliconera noticed a new teaser page on the Japanese Square Enix site today with sprites silhouetted in the classic red gradient linked to Final Fantasy VI and the numbers "1.17." The larger sprites are quite clearly Final Fantasy VI Behemoths, while on the right, the smaller sprites are a bit more ambiguous, though it seems like they are probably Final Fantasy VI sprites (even though they don't look like a perfect match to anything that I can see). They could also be Final Fantasy V sprites, as the top one looks quite a bit like Bartz. Additionally, it seems like this page might reference the "All the Bravest" mark that Squenix trademarked last year, but it's still unclear why. (Thanks, laszlow, for that reminder!)

It should also be noted, though it's obvious, that these are in fact sprites. Would Square Enix use sprite art for a game they're about to release in 3D? Well, I wouldn't, if it were me. But we all know that sometimes Squenix have... interesting ways of going about their marketing. Either way, it looks like we only have about a day from the time of this posting to wait and see, as 17 January is only about thirty-six hours away in Akihabara.

Source: Siliconera, Square Enix Japan Teaser Site

Square Enix deployed their now-pretty-typical "hey, we released a new game" video yesterday to announce the worldwide release of Final Fantasy IV for iOS (yours for the low price of $16.99 US!).

The video is pretty standard fare, nothing particularly exciting if you've see the Nintendo DS version before; however, what has people talking is the last few seconds. If you watch to the end, you'll see a bit of crowing about a "Final Fantasy mobile revolution" and the Final Fantasy V logo. This appears to confirm that at least Final Fantasy V is coming to iOS sometime in the future, and the text below saying "and more..." would seem to imply that V is not the end. Final Fantasy VI would be the obvious "more" there, but could there be others?

Not only that, what might we see out of these? Will these be ports of SNES? Game Boy Advance? Could it even be a 3D treatment of each game, which has long been rumored but never executed? And, if it's the 3D option, will we see them also on the Nintendo 3DS or PlayStation Vita? That would certainly be fairly revolutionary; oh, if only we knew. As of right now, we need to consider this tentative news, but it seems pretty clear that iOS users will at least be seeing Final Fantasy V sooner rather than later.

Source: Operation Rainfall

As part of the celebration for the Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary, Square Enix brought in a wide array of artists to create an album celebrating the music of the series up to now. This is not exactly new news, though I believe we missed it in tidbits around the time that it was announced in October. The album was released last week, though, and to promote it a bit more, Square Enix Music posted this medley video to YouTube earlier this week, with samples of a large number of the tracks.

There's a lot of variety on show in this video, and it really makes for some fresh takes on some of the Final Fantasy music that we've heard for many, many years. It's piqued my interest, so I took some time to try to find some English-language shops that sell the double disc; while AmaCoN looked a bit pricey, I found that another of our shop affiliates, Play Asia, has the set for $35.00 including free shipping. If the video makes you want this for Christmas or... New Year's (?), hit that link right away.

Source: Square Enix YouTube, Destructoid