Caves of Narshe: Final Fantasy VI

Pixel Remaster Collection Wide Physical Release

Thu, 8 Aug 2024 16:02:46 GMT

When the Pixel Remaster games were released in physical editions for consoles a couple years ago, they sold out virtually overnight, leaving only digital downloads available for players. With a couple years' water under the bridge now, though, and the continued popularity of the remasters, Square Enix have announced that a wider release of the physical games will be available starting October 8.

Like the original limited edition release, this new one will be for Playstation and Switch only. Unlike the original, though, the pack-in bonuses are limited to just a sticker sheet. The release is priced at $75, which seems like a lot - but, thinking back on it, that's still less than I spent for Final Fantasy III (US) on SNES 30 years ago even accounting for inflation.

Source: Gematsu

Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster Delayed to February

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 12:52:40 GMT

As recently as yesterday, Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster had a release date of "2021" on Steam - I know, because I checked it after seeing the latest screenshots in Famitsu. Last night, though, Square Enix published an update on social media announcing that the game would be pushed back to February 2022.

The announcement simply says that "in order to bring you the best experience possible, we're allowing the necessary time to apply final polish while finishing development on the game." So, the typical amount of detail in such an announcement, but no reason to think that things are wildly out of control.

As a make-good, two more tracks have been added to the soundtrack available for pre-orders: a Timelapse Remix of Locke's Theme, and a new instrumental of Aria di Mezzo Carattere. The Timelapse Remixes are a blended version of the original OST and the new soundtrack.

Source: Final Fantasy on Twitter, Final Fantasy VI on Steam

Final Fantasy Ultimania Coming West

Wed, 4 Oct 2017 16:30:25 GMT

The Final Fantasy "Ultimania" guides have been lore for Western Final Fantasy fans for many years; I remember first hearing about their existence twenty years ago, but I've never seen one in person. Finally, though, those of us who want to see these guides in a format we can actually read ourselves - not you, smug Japanese-knowing CoN fans! - will get a chance to own them in English.

Next June, Dark Horse and Square Enix will release a 300+ page archive of Ultimania guides covering the first six games of the series in a hardbound edition. It's expected to be the first of three volumes encapsulating the entire series. Amazon, at least in the US, has it listed for just $34 currently, and I know I have already preordered my copy.

If you want to do the same, check this AmaCoN link: http://amzn.to/2xhj5SX

Source: Siliconera

2017 Charity Final Fantasy Marathon by The Speed Gamers - Now!

Fri, 14 Jul 2017 20:59:48 GMT

Several years back, The Speed Gamers did a fun Final Fantasy marathon for charity, a goal with which CoN was happy to help. It's 2017 now, and it's time to start up again! At 6pm Eastern tonight, TSG will kick off a new marathon for the benefit of St. Jude's Children Research Hospital, with TSG players running through all of the main-series games over the course of a week. I'm posting this a bit before the start, of course, but look right below for a good place to watch if you want to tune in. I know I'll be watching a fair bit and will be doing so in CoN chat as often as I can, so come join me, won't you? They'll be doing the games in order, starting with Final Fantasy I tonight and targeting the next CoN game, Final Fantasy IV, tomorrow night.

This time around, we've provided a bit more support with promotion on social media, and our old friend Gabe provided a number of awesome fuse bead sprites for TSG to give away as donation prizes. We're not sure when they'll be given away, but keep an eye out if you're a Final Fantasy IV fan!

St. Jude has been a recipient of my own donation dollars for quite a while, so I personally think this is a great time to support people playing your favorite games for a fantastic cause. You can donate directly from here, even if you're not watching. Make sure you mention that you found out about their good cause from your friends at CoN! Don't forget that donations at particular times might also enter you for prizes like Gabe's, so pay attention, or, if you want to guarantee that you get something cool, check out these charity t-shirts on Fangamer, with $10 going to St. Jude on every shirt purchased.

Join us in wishing TSG luck over the next week, and have some fun coming up by checking out your favorite Final Fantasy games played at pace!

Source: The Speed Gamers

Final Fantasy VI Coming to Windows: Not a Remake

Tue, 8 Dec 2015 19:35:31 GMT

It's not 3D, and it's definitely not the direction of Final Fantasy VII Remake, but that wonderfully polarizing mobile release of Final Fantasy VI is now coming to Steam. Of course, we all pretty much knew that was coming - any idiot could have told you that.

What to expect from this? The same thing that we got with Final Fantasy V, naturally; a version of the game with the new, wispy-sprite art style and generic font, configured to run under Windows and with the general layer of Steaminess like achievements, trading cards, and Steam Cloud. The game releases on December 16 and does not have a published price yet, though Final Fantasy V released at $15.99 a few months back.

Source: Kotaku

Nomura Discusses Final Fantasy V and VI Remakes

Fri, 19 Jun 2015 18:45:17 GMT

Obviously, this week's news of the long-teased Final Fantasy VII remake has stolen the Square Enix spotlight. But, what of other, similarly-teased projects like remakes of Final Fantasy V and VI?

As quoted at VentureBeat, when asked about remakes of other games in the series in the wake of Final Fantasy VII, Nomura responded, "Considering that we have remakes of Final Fantasy up to IV and then we have VII — I’ve been working with Mr. [Yoshinori] Kitase since Final Fantasy V, and we’ve noticed that V and VI are missing. That bothers me. How come we skipped over those two?"

This is idle chatter, of course, but if anyone's going to get those projects off the ground at this point, Nomura would be the prime candidate. Clearly, there's no other information about the status of these projects, but one could (and should, friendly CoN posters) speculate wildly in the comments below.

Source: VentureBeat

Distant Worlds Updates and New Chamber Performance

Wed, 14 May 2014 13:30:36 GMT

It's been a while since I did a Distant Worlds update - I suspect it's because I'm still a little bitter for not pulling the trigger and going myself last October! The concert series well known by Final Fantasy fans worldwide has some new information to share this month, though, and some of the news is sure to be particularly interesting to CoN readers.

There are three Distant Worlds concerts on the books for this year at the moment; for our South American readers, two dates in Chile are scheduled for May 31 and June 1 in Rancagua and Santiago respectively.

On August 24, a special performance will take place in Chicago, a favorite destination for the Distant Worlds crowd - not only will Arnie Roth and Nobuo Uematsu be in attendance, they will also be performing solos during the set, and the setlist will focus on Final Fantasy VI in honor of its 20th anniversary. Dancing Mad, the Opera, and a never-heard arrangement of character themes are confirmed to be part of the new setlist.

The final date for 2014 at the moment returns to Toronto, with a performance at the Sony Centre. Roth and Uematsu will attend this show as well, though they won't perform and the setlist apparently will be more typical than the FF6-centric one in Chicago a few months earlier.

The new spinoff of Distant Worlds will debut this weekend, though, also in Chicagoland. It's called A New World, and it will be performed in smaller venues and conventions with a thirteen-member ensemble. In all the performances scheduled so far, both Arnie Roth and Nobuo Uematsu will be in attendance and will perform as well, with Roth on violin and Uematsu on keyboard. The series starts this Friday at Anime Central in Rosemont, IL, with a 4pm show on the 16th and a 1pm matinee on the 17th. After that, the show moves to Omaha for two shows on this Sunday, the 18th of May, and a pair of Montreal shows in August. All arrangements will be new to suit the new ensemble, so even folks who have seen Distant Worlds will get to experience something new.

If you line up a visit to any of these shows, make sure to give us a report after!

Source: Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds, Final Fantasy: A New World

Final Fantasy VI Turns Twenty

Thu, 3 Apr 2014 00:40:49 GMT

That's right, friends. The game that inspired our site, Final Fantasy VI, turned twenty today, with its original Japanese Super Famicom release on April 2, 1994. Since that time, the game's been released in Japan, North America, and Europe repeatedly for systems like the SNES, PlayStation, and mobile phones.

I know that I've got fond memories of playing this game after school every day until the first time I beat it, and then replaying it again immediately after getting the Nintendo Power Player's Guide for Christmas that year. I've got a lot more fond memories since starting up CoN - hey, I've even talked about how awesome the game is on the CoNcast! To celebrate this great anniversary, what fond memories do you have?

Source: Kotaku

Final Fantasy VI to be Released for Mobile Devices

Thu, 10 Oct 2013 19:24:43 GMT

Huge news came yesterday afternoon for anyone who spends any time on this website - Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy VI will be released on iOS and Android devices. You may have seen CoN user His Shadow's post in the forums yesterday, but alas, with old age comes slow movement. Or something like that!

What we've got here isn't a strict port, but it should be added that what we've got is no remake either. FFVI will be tweaked in several ways: its graphics, for instance, will be improved - though still 2D. The battle system will be altered a bit for the mobile platform in the spirit of previous FF mobile releases, like the recent FFV. Battle-experience will also be altered in order to require less grinding for the sake of being able to "enjoy the game for what it is." It is possible that this may be accompanied with a dialing back of the random encounter frequency, something everyone has been wanting forever, but there is no indication of this.

These changes, however small, are still generating some discussion. For instance, in the most recent CoNcast, SE took a bit of a hit for releasing games that aren't really sensitive to the nature of mobile gaming; do you think this difficulty altercation will broaden the game's mobile-friendliness or restrain it? I've also seen a few complaints regarding the sprites from earlier FF mobile releases - anyone familiar have anything to say about that?

The announcement concluded rather open-ended-ly, with the statement that "if this Legacy project works out well, we would like to one day be able to work with VII." Let's just take a concluding moment to appreciate how many qualifiers are packed into that statement.

Source: Kotaku

CoNniversary 2013! Now with More Final Fantasy VI!

Wed, 31 Jul 2013 13:55:27 GMT

No pomp, no circumstance this CoNniversary, sorry. We've been a machine of late, and that carries over to this year's birthday message. Of a one-track mind, that is to say, and that track has been directed at taking the oldest game content on the site and making it fantastic. The results of such labors, again years in the making, are visible now: the Final Fantasy VI section of the Caves of Narshe is now cooking at a far higher temperature than ever before.

This section was actually, in the end, kind of a blast to do. It was painfully hard to keep going at times, but I think that everyone who worked on this as hard or even harder than I did would probably agree that doing this work rekindled our love for a game that deserves all the love it gets. We got so excited, in fact, that we even got the original CoNcast crew together to do a quick-hit recording today to talk just a little bit about how great FF6 is, and I am guessing that the next episode might well cover more of the same. Today's episode will get its own newspost later in the day so you can download it, don't worry!

As is obvious, Final Fantasy VI was the first game we ever covered. While we updated the content considerably during the creation of CoN5 over a decade ago, this new release marks the pinnacle of our coverage for what is, for better or worse, our flagship game. Djibriel, yet again, supplied the bulk of the content from his fantastic walkthrough, while Death Penalty, EvilEye and a multitude of others worked with me to make that content uniquely CoN's. And it is that, to be sure; the quality of the content has improved in a way that's barely measurable (in the good direction!), while the technology driving it remains the standard that other Final Fantasy sites still have not managed to match after all these years. We've continued to improve the technology running the game coverage sections, and we have spun out nearly a dozen miniguides for FF6 that extend our coverage well beyond a simple walkthrough and equipment pages.

Indeed, after all these years. This is the site's sixteenth birthday, and as it now can legally drive in some locales, it continues to trundle along like the lorry it is. Note: I'm using that metaphor so I can ignore the fact that the site could consent to... other things in many places at this same age. Anyway, at least in terms of the vibrancy of the site itself, I feel as if things are a bit resurgent. In the past two years, we've revamped two huge sections of the site; not only that, you'll of course remember this time last year when we finally released the fantastic Skyglade to make the site faster and more fashion-forward. While the community aspect of the site remains difficult to maintain through the splintering and segmenting of Final Fantasy and Square Enix fans as a whole (note my thoughts in the first CoNcast for more on that), I maintain that our core community is of the highest quality, and while we don't attract the most new users of anyone, we certainly continue to attract many of the brightest and most clever, due largely to our passion and commitment to the cause. Thanks to you all, this day and every one before and after.

So what's next? Well, hopefully we can get back to posting news more frequently as we won't be in crunch time for FF6. We've got some new updates to the site planned for the next year or so, and I'll be working hard in the near future to improve the user experience behind the scenes by way of fixing a variety of minor bugs in the site and also improving the CoN development webserver to (hopefully) make future work smoother.

Okay, so perhaps this counts for some pomp and circumstance. I'm flowery when I write, I just can't help it. Enjoy your CoNniversary with us!