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Square Enix has announced Seiken Densetsu Collection, releasing a trailer video. The game is expected to retail for 4,800 yen and will contain three games: the original Seiken Densetsu, known in the west as Final Fantasy Adventure or Adventures of Mana, Seiken Densetsu 2, released here as Secret of Mana, and Seiken Densetsu 3, never released in the west. The trailer indicates that the three games will be ports of their original releases.

The game's Japan release date is set for June 1. It is unclear if there will be a boxed retail version at this time, or just a digital download. Additionally, it is unknown whether Switch owners in the west will ever have access to the collection; Seiken Densetsu 3 has no official English localization, which may hurt its chances.

Source: Gamespot, Polygon

I'm in my second year of not being in Boston, so I'm missing another PAX East. But my friends on the ground attended the Final Fantasy XII panel earlier today, so if you missed it on the livestream, here's what you missed. As we already knew, the game will be remastered for PlayStation 4 and will be based on the "International Zodiac Job System," which is a fancy way of saying that it has the job-based license board never before released in the West. Today we learned further that the game will not have just a remastered musical selection, but instead a completely new recording with a live orchestra. Additionally, a "Trial Mode" has been added, which appears to be a 100-stage set of set pieces, special challenge battles to tackle. This mode promises, according to the presentation, "unexpected characters [joining] the fight as an opponent!"

Special editions were announced as well, with the collector's edition containing a few trading cards, mini-busts of the Judge Magisters, and a steelbook with the game and soundtrack. A separate steelbook edition, with just the game, will also be available for the July 11 launch.

And, as a special surprise at the end, World of Final Fantasy popped up to show off Balthier as a new DLC character coming soon!

Hat tip for these snapshots and the video to our man on the ground in Boston. Hopefully we can see more later this weekend!

A King's Tale, a Final Fantasy XV sidestory previously available only with certain preorders of the main game, is now available to everyone on both Xbox One and PlayStation 4. And it's free! The game is a sort of prequel to Final Fantasy XV, and takes place as a bedtime story told by King Regis to a young Prince Noctis. Unlike the action RPG of the main title, this side game is a 2.5D, sprite-based sidescrolling beat-em-up with a Final Fantasy flair.

The game features King Regis as the main character, with access to battle assistance from his friends - like father, like son. He's got access to a variety of weapons, magic, and summons to fight against monsters from the Final Fantasy XV universe, expressed also as sprites.

Again, the game is available worldwide for download today, for free, with no purchase of the original game required. Enjoy!

Source: EuroGamer

If you missed Star Ocean: Till the End of Time when it was first released on PlayStation 2, you missed one of the better games in the series, in fact the one often cited as best. While the newest edition was not reviewed as kindly, Till the End of Time stands up, and now PlayStation 4 gamers are going to have a chance to try it out.

The new release will be digital download only, and if you're expecting something akin to what Square Enix has done with recent Final Fantasy remakes, you might be a little disappointed. While Final Fantasy X and XII were heavily tuned for their newer releases, the Director's Cut of TtEoT will instead be upscaled through software, and the cutscenes have not been re-rendered into HD. The game clearly does look better in comparisons, but those expecting a sea change or increases in playable content will likely be disappointed.

As of now, there is no release date or purchase price available.

Source: Siliconera

Announced yesterday, Square Enix has created a new games studio in Tokyo called "Studio Istolia." This new studio, interestingly named with an English word and a Greek one, will be run by Hideo Baba, recently known as a producer in the long-running "Tales" series of RPGs. The new studio was announced as a bit of a footnote to the announcement of a new project called "Project Prelude Rune," which will be the first project produced by Baba in the new studio.

Prelude Rune is described as being a new IP for Square Enix, and will be an RPG "unfolding across a vast land teeming with life." This will not be the final title for the game or games produced under this banner. Obviously, as a brand-new studio, not many details about the long-term timeline of the project are available, and many are not likely to be forthcoming soon as the studio has listed staff openings numbering at least fifteen.

A final note, their logo looks like a cross between the Final Fantasy XV Carbuncle and a moogle. So perhaps this new apple is falling not so far from the tree.

Source: Gematsu, Studio Istolia

Just a couple weeks ago, Wired reported a Mozilla announcement that half of all web traffic is served over secure HTTP, for the first time. As a user of the web yourself, you should be excited about this - obviously, sites that want your financial or very personal information have been secured for a very long time, but adding HTTPS to other sites is also a great thing. As Wired explains, a secured site makes it harder for people to intercept the things you're reading or posting out to the internet, and it helps you be sure that no malicious groups are intercepting your traffic and leveraging it for their own means.

Today, CoN has thrown in its lot with this half-and-growing chunk of the web by switching all traffic to secure protocols. All images, scripts and text you see in your browser will now be secured, including all forum traffic, news, and fanart submissions and posts. This improves the quality of the content that we're able to provide to you, and also unlocks the ability for us to extend our reach further into social media in the future.

You should now be seeing the pretty green padlock on all of the pages you visit on CoN, at least in browsers that make it easy for you to see such things (I can personally vouch for Firefox, Chrome, and Chrome for iOS!). It's possible that there are still some pages that might not be fully secure due to me missing an image or two, so please feel free to let me know if you encounter one, or if you have any questions about this update. This is the kind of nerdy stuff I like talking about, so don't be shy!