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It took more than a little while, but the action RPG Pandora's Tower, first mentioned here almost two years ago, has been given a new lease on life with an announced North American release. Announced just yesterday, the North American release will fill the final major gap in the game's worldwide coverage, as Australia and Europe both got the game in 2012.

The game will be published by Xseed, famous for bringing The Last Story here as well. It's assumed that there will be no new localization given that an English-language version of the game already exists, as described above. It's assumed further that the driving force behind getting the game published here was Operation Rainfall, a grass roots gaming group famous also for their campaign to get The Last Story.

Xseed says that the game will be released this spring.

Source: Siliconera

Ah, top x lists. Defined solely to create arguments and page views among a site's readership, because nobody has ever agreed with such a list completely, ever. IGN knows this, as do we all, and right here I'm going to throw them some more page views out of the goodness of my own heart.

Well, not really. I'd have a hard time caring about this, given how generally without merit I find most of these lists, but this one is tailor-made for CoN: three of the games we cover are in the top five, and not one of them is Final Fantasy VII.

Don't worry, Final Fantasy VII is on there! While Square Enix claimed over a quarter of the spots on the overall list, the games we cover came in as follows:

• Final Fantasy VI: 1st
• Chrono Trigger: 2nd
• Final Fantasy IV: 5th
• Final Fantasy VII: 11th
• Final Fantasy Tactics: 14th
• Final Fantasy I: 73rd

The only game of ours that didn't get included was Final Fantasy V.

Enjoy arguing the list here, at least until they release a new list. Have fun - it's miserable to navigate.

Source: IGN

The site leak from a couple weeks back was confirmed today as Square Enix officially announced the existence of the Final Fantasy VII re-release on PC via its official site and social media.

The site is either really poorly optimized or is getting absolutely hammered right now (probably a bit of both, in fact), so you might not be able to reach it. It's pretty general information, and most of it is stuff that was reported before from the leak. One thing certainly worth noting is that the site says the game will be available exclusively from the Square Enix store, which would imply that the achievements and cloud saving features will be unique to this game and will not use technology like Steamworks. Additionally, the exclusivity might mean that a Steam (or Origin, if you're a masochist) release may not be in the cards at all.

Will it still be worth the rumored twelve-dollar entry fee without Steam? I'm no longer sure it is for me, but I'll have to see how it looks and runs, first. That information isn't yet available, nor is any kind of real release date.

Source: Final Fantasy VII PC

Square Enix CEO, Yoichi Wada, has told shareholders that the company won't be remaking Final Fantasy VII until such time as the franchise produces a new installment which surpasses the fan favourite. This statement was made hand-in-hand with the admission that recent Final Fantasy games have been inferior and that a remake at this point would imply that the franchise is finished. It's open to debate whether or not any Final Fantasy game has passed this benchmark to date, but it appears Wada certainly doesn't think so.

It remains to be seen whether this strengthens or weakens the recent rumours of a PC re-release, as reported previously, but one thing is for certain - we won't be seeing a full remake any time soon.


Source: Den of Geek, Andriasang

Website NowGamer reports today that a Square Enix-owned Final Fantasy VII PC website implies that a new Final Fantasy VII release for PC might be coming soon.

The page, which was taken down and now exists only in Google cache (keep clicking "cancel" to eventually see the content), implies that this new game has some new features. Achievements will be added, and the game will also include the ability to save games to the cloud - or is that Cloud? Finally, if you want to enjoy the game again without having to grind through it, it appears that this version of the game will even include a "character booster" that will allow you to edit your savegame to make grinding unnecessary.

Is this a real thing? We don't know yet, unfortunately. If it is, though, for the low price listed ($7.99 US!), I'd be up for owning a new version of this game.

Source: NowGamer

Nintendo last night had their second major press conference of E3, this time focusing solely on upcoming games for the Nintendo 3DS. I'd expected something a little faster-moving, showing a huge number of games, but Nintendo took a slower, more methodical approach, instead going into significant detail on a smaller selection of games that are coming up very soon.

Most of the games there looked pretty good, speaking as someone who doesn't have a 3DS and doesn't follow it much. The fall-release Castlevania: Lords of Shadow sequel looked like it had polished camera work, and the vibrant Epic Mickey sidescrolling platformer also looked sharp, though the action seemed slow-paced in its demo. For RPG players, Nintendo showed the new Paper Mario, which uses as its conceit a collectable sticker book to control battle and other interactions with the world, and to me it looked like a pretty fun game.

Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance came up next, and led with a trailer that really made it obvious that it would use a lot of the 3D capabilities of the system; some on-rails flying and coaster sequences look made specifically to have some pop-out features. The game will also support Street Pass, AR cards, and the Circle Pad Pro. The game will have quicktime attacks, as well as touchscreen input for "Reality Shift" attacks. The release date is still the end of July for North America, and a DLC demo will be available "soon."

One more game got an extended preview, Scribblenauts Unlimited, and then the conference shifted into a quick-cut video of other upcoming third-party games, including Lego Batman 2, a Transformers game licensed from the movies, a Rabbids game, and Squenix' own Heroes of Ruin, which also has a demo coming this summer.

The conference moved on to talk about the Nintendo e-store, and how it will connect to the new versions of Pokemon Black and White that are soon to be released, and then the whole thing wound up with more demo of New Super Mario Bros. 2, followed by the curtain falling. Not sure that this blew my mind, but it was nice to finally see one of the big three give more than a couple seconds to Square Enix. Seems a pretty far cry from just a few years ago, doesn't it?

Source: Nintendo E3 Portal