News

Check it out, fellas. Square Enix released the official North American boxart for Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, due out in the States on September 11th, 2003.

View the Boxart Here

Source: Square Enix

Looks kinda plain, IMO. Just like the game itself. Eh.

The folks over at Quiter are reporting, through an anonymous source, that Square Enix is currently planning to create an online installment of their Front Mission series.

Square Enix Japan recently registered the name "Front Mission History," and on top of that, Square Enix USA recently acquired the rights to develop a "computer game strategy / video game strategy through a global communication network."

As you can see, this new game is all BUT confirmed at this point. Remember, this is unconfirmed news, so take it for what you will, folks.

Source: OPGaming.com

This is soooooo awesome. All signs point to this being true, and dammit, I need a strategy fix after completely mastering Advance Wars 2. The Front Mission series was always interesting to me because it was one part Strategy RPG (which is always cool) and one part sci-fi (also cool). The customization options in the previous games were also top-notch, and online titles are known for heavy customization.

OPGaming.com reopened on March 1st, 2003, at around 5:00 PM Eastern time. The site was reworked since November by R51, Tiddles, and myself, along with my personal staff who helped fill in content. So what's new?

The Latest Gaming News & Media
Coverage for Gaming on ALL major Platforms, as well as old ones.
New Forums
An Extensive Games Database
Weekly polls
A huge, 64 character tournament, which is already underway.

Plus lots more to come. R51 told me to be a spammer, so yell at him, AFTER you check out the new OPGaming.com.

GamesAreFun.com reports that Enix has purchased Squaresoft, and that Square & Enix have merged to form a new company called ''Square Enix,'' headed by Square President Yoichi Wada.

To any RPG fan, this is GIGANTIC news. Square and Enix are the two biggest RPG developers in the world today, and have been in competition with each other for years, mainly because of Square's ''Final Fantasy'' series and Enix's ''Dragon Quest'' series.

The reason for this huge merger? Square and Enix are merging to cut down development costs, which have become higher in the industry recently.

Enix will primarily be the "controller group" of the merger, even though they are the smaller company. Square shareholders will receive 0.81 a share, since it is a larger company than Enix.

This merger will help out both companies, as Square has been suffering some huge losses since releasing the Final Fantasy motion picture, and Enix has never really been big in America. Thus, this merger will help to soothe Square's profit losses and help establish Enix in the States.

Once again, Square Enix will be presided over by Yoichi Wada of Squaresoft, and the chairman of the company will be Enix's representative director chairman, Yasuhiro Fukushima. The merger is set to take place on April 1st, 2003, the fisrt day of the new fiscal year.

Source: GamesAreFun.com

Some files were named wrong on the server, so a few of the links to some of the songs came up as a 404 error. It's all been fixed, so now you can all enjoy the MIDI goodness of FF6, in full. Check out FF6 Music here.

Gamefront reports that Square's Kindom Hearts' (being made in cooperation with Disney) limited edition release, called Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix, will be released in Japan on December 26th, 2002. Kingdom Hearts features characters from Disney and Squaresoft, together in a single adventure to stop what's known as "The Heartless." Some of the features include summoning Disney characters such as The Genie or Dumbo to help you in battle.

This is pretty good news for those looking forward to this game. December is only a few short months away, and the US release of the normal version is imminent. Personally, I'm looking forward to the game, so yay.