New Final Fantasy IV Section and AmaCoN Launch

I'm not ashamed to admit it. CoN's Final Fantasy IV section has been a bit weak. It was always kind of the slow child of the group, even when the group consisted of only two games; the Final Fantasy VI section always overshadowed it in a pretty significant way, and in all honesty, there was good reason for it. Even after we added coverage for the PSX rehash of the game, we weren't talking about a collection of content in the league of the Rosetta Stone—as many of our longer-time members will no doubt recall, the entire section has/had long been plagued with errors from minor to simply stupid. It seemed for a while that even our improvements merely led to more errors over the years.

Things started to change in 2005 (Yes, 2005. Sad but true). Excitement over the first Final Fantasy series remake on GBA was as close to fever pitch as I can really remember, as Final Fantasy IV was getting new content and a new platform. We ached for this game, and we ached to cover it, even going so far as to find (by some miracle, I assure you) a Japanese copy of the game to begin collecting data. When the American version was released, we dropped the hammer on it, and began collecting data almost immediately. And, like I say, that was December of 2005. It's now October of 2007. And we now, finally, have something to show for it: the finest collection of Final Fantasy IV data for all three American releases (which, of course, includes all the European releases, too) that you will find in any single place anywhere. We took the last two years to completely rebuild the Final Fantasy IV section from the ground up. We rechecked and reconfigured the data for both the SNES and PSX versions, checking extensively on data sets to make sure you were getting correct info for both older versions. Beyond that, we dissected the new (...ish) Final Fantasy IV Advance cart to make sure that we could give you all the data contained therein, as well. We even upgraded the code that drives the whole thing, so you now get all of the high-end functionality you've come to expect from the Caves of Narshe, including rapid switching between game versions and extensive spoiler protection.

As usual around here, this is hardly the result of one man's work. When you visit the new Final Fantasy IV index page, which I suggest you do as soon as you're done reading, you'll see at the bottom a big, big table of people who have contributed to the section over the last two years. I can't list them all again here, but I thank each and every one of you for sticking to this even though it was quite the mountain of ordeals to get off the ground. Especially I want to thank a few people, though, for going well above the call: Del S, for a huge amount of data entry; Mimic, for a ton of editorial work towards the end of the process; footbigmike, for always being willing to do factchecking and link-clicking at a moment's notice; Sabin, for sticking with a task until completion, even though that task was brutal; and, of course, my greatest partner in crime/greatest critic Tiddles. Please show them and everyone who worked on this section with me your appreciation without delay—this is a big one in the win column for the Caves of Narshe.

But that's not all that's coming in new today. After a full year of providing links on-demand only, we're finally rolling out the real AmaCoN store, providing everything Amazon.com sells to you via CoN. It can be a bit of a long story to tell here, but if you live in the US, Canada, most of Europe, or indeed most of the world, you can now buy pretty much anything you might want, starting from right here, and CoN will get a little cut of the money. This goes for video games, books, electronics, textbooks for you Uni-attending folks, toys, even gift certificates. We've set up pages with lots of Final Fantasy stuff for you, but don't feel limited by that, because we have search boxes so you can find anything Amazon sells. So, please, start using it, and encourage your friends and family to do the same, especially with the holiday season coming quick. We use all the proceeds to fund CoN server costs and contests, so you not only get your goods, but you get a better, more fun CoN in return.

To find out more about AmaCoN, check out the AmaCoN main page; alternatively, feel free to check out one of our country-specific pages, for the United States, the United Kingdom and European Union, or Canada.