News

Square Enix, on its Official Grandia III Page, has announced a tentative Japanese release date for the game in Summer 2005.

The site features short descriptions of the game's plot, world, and characters. The story centers around Yuuki, a 16-year-old boy who dreams of building a plane and flying away from his island home, and Alfina, a 16-year-old priestess searching for her missing brother.

Grandia III will be the first title in the series to be published by Square Enix. Previous Grandia titles were published by Enix alone before the company's merger with Squaresoft in 2003. However, all Grandia games to date have been created by the same developer, a company named Game Arts.

Front Mission Mobile joined Square Enix's line of cellphone games for the Japanese NTT Docomo service on March 7. Front Mission is the third major Square Enix console series to be ported to Docomo's cellphone platform, following last year's releases of Dragon Quest i and Final Fantasy titles.

Much like Final Fantasy VII: Before Crisis, the new Front Mission game has been designed such that Square Enix may periodically release future installments of the game, which are to be downloaded from their website with compatible phones. Access to the game and its new installments requires a monthly premium of about US $5, added directly to the user's phone bill.

Screenshots of the first installment, "Front Mission 2089," may be found at the game's official website.

As predicted in our November 5th news update, Nintendo DS sales have been phenomenal, with over 500,000 units sold during the console's first week on the American market.

To help keep up with this tremendous demand, Nintendo expects to recruit an additional assembly firm (making a total of three) to manufacture the consoles. Nintendo has also revised its initial DS sales target, now aiming to have 5 million units sold by the end of March 2005.

The Nintendo DS became available in stores on November 21 in the US, at a retail price of $149.99.

Sales began in Japan on December 2, at a similar price of 15,000 yen.

European sales are scheduled to begin next March.

Information about features of the Nintendo DS may be found at Nintendo's Official Website; additional information about the sales and release of the Nintendo DS, along with hardware specifications, is available from UK-based news website The Register.

Paper Mario RPG, sequel to the N64 title Paper Mario, is scheduled for release on the Nintendo Gamecube this Thursday in Japan.
According to Nintendo, the sequel employs many of the same aspects of the original game--most notably the Action-RPG genre twist and cheery feel intended to help open up the game to younger audiences.
Additionally, the unusual qualities of 2D characters placed into a 3D environment are again a key point of the game, with such updates as the ability to fold Mario into various origami shapes, including an airplane and a boat, to help him traverse obstacles he encounters.

Nintendo Japan has posted an official site for the game (Japanese), but as of yet have made no comment regarding an American release.

Paper Mario RPG will retail for 5800 yen ($53-55).

As earlier mentioned by Elena, Final Fantasy I + II Advance is slated for release later this month in Japan.
Aside from a convenient new "save anywhere" function in FFI and extensive graphical and audio overhauls in both games, each title will feature new items, story elements and dungeons unique to the GBA release.

Final Fantasy I will include a new dungeon accessible at the end of the game, where players will be able to begin the "Soul of Chaos" quest.
To complete this quest, players will be required to defeat, in sequence, more powerful versions of the game's four fiends: Lich, Marilith, Kraken, and Tiamat.
And during the quest, bosses from Final Fantasy III(j) through VI(j) will appear in battle, including FFIV's Four Fiends, FFV's Gilgamesh, and FFVI's Chupon.
Additionally, a span of new items will be available, including an Ultima Weapon sword and full set of Crystal armor.

Final Fantasy II will include an extra chapter in the game's story, entitled "Soul of Rebirth." During this chapter, players will follow the activities of a new party composed entirely of assisting characters from the original game: Ming Wu, Scott, Joseph, Richard, and Cid.
Enemies during this segment of the game will be equipped with powerful new spells, and will include a new boss named Ultima Weapon.

Final Fantasy I + II Advance's July 27 release date is still tentative, as Square Enix has already pushed back the release once (from it's original schedule of July 15) due to a coding glitch.
The game is set to retail for 6,090 yen ($55-58).

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Though it's nice to see some classics getting deserved attention, and the new features sound like fun, Square Enix seems to be pushing the early Final Fantasy titles a little far--along with this upcoming GBA release, official releases have recently been made for the PSX (Final Fantasy Origins), the Wonderswan Color, and even newer Japanese cell phone models using the NTT DoCoMo service.

Four months after it's PC release, Final Fantasy XI has now made its way to the Playstation 2 console.

The delay of the release, according to Game Revolution, was due partially to Square Enix's desire to monitor success of the PC version and to the necessity of a marketed PS2 hard drive to store information for the game.

Additional information about the PS2 release, as well as screenshots from the PS2 version, can be found at Gamezone.com.