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Slated for July 3, Square Enix are releasing in Japan a "remastered" version of the Final Fantasy IV Soundtrack. Later in the year, similar albums will be released for Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI. There's not much detail beyond that so far, which naturally leaves some questions. The first question might well be the tracklist - will these albums be a full OST, which would require a few CDs, or is it a single-CD "best of" compilation as some other albums have been in the past? Second, though, and possibly more important, is "what on earth does a remaster of a SNES soundtrack entail?"

Given that these albums are explicitly called remasters, and not anything like the piano collections or orchestral arrangements that have been done in the past, it would seem that these new albums will still be chiptunes as they were originally, but perhaps that the chips used to make the tunes will be of a more modern variety than twenty years ago, creating the opportunity for more realistic synthesized sounds.

If you want to find out, you'll need to import, most likely - Squenix are not currently speaking of any Western release for any of these albums.

Source: Siliconera

Things are a little different this time around for the CoNcast. Lasz took the day off, so, for the first time we're rounding out our four with a special guest: longtime CoN member Jav, also known as Dragon Fire here at the forums. Jav's delivered to us for this episode a brand new, never-before-heard theme tune, and he joins me, Tiddles, and DP to talk about it a bit.

While we're on the subject of music, we delve into the concept of the gaming-related mobile phone ringtone. It seems like anyone who really wants to make sure that everyone knows they're a Final Fantasy fan has a version of the victory fanfare on their mobile, so we instead have a look deeper to see what other tracks would make good ringtones for the gamer who always has their phone on their person, both from within the Final Fantasy series and further out into gaming as a whole.

We're talking about so much media this time around that you get extra links. First, of course, to the podcast itself, but then we have two others! If you want to hear the full version of Jav's chiptune theme, called "Neko Neko Mawaii," we've got it on YouTube, and then we've also made a YouTube playlist of all of the music we talked about ringtone-ifying as well. Enjoy!

Source: CoNcast Episode Four, The CoNcast Subscription Feed, The CoNcast on iTunes

The third episode of the CoNcast is live as of right now, and this time around we've got a look back at some gaming and entertainment April Fool's jokes from this year, as well as a brief retrospective on a couple that we ourselves have done both this year and in the past.

Later on, we discuss the new announcement that Bravely Default has finally been confirmed for a Western release, and we also give some time to the slightly older announcement that - surprise! - a Final Fantasy game is planned for the PlayStation 4. What do we think that game might be? You'll have to listen to find out, but you've probably figured it out on your own already, haven't you, clever little one.

Listen closely and you can also hear Death Penalty be accidentally politically incorrect. Listen less closely and you can hear the entire cast harass Death Penalty for nearly an hour.

Finally, we've got podcast feeds available! They should appear in every news article we make about podcasts from now on, and I'll soon be working on making them available more easily on the site homepage as well. Also, if you're reading this, you can simply click the links here for the raw feed and for the direct iTunes link. Note: Some browsers may not let you subscribe to the feeds directly, so please feel free to respond if you are having issues subscribing!

For all you out there who don't feel like Square Enix ever listen to the demands of the fans, you are getting a win today. Siliconera reports that based on some off-the-record conversations from last week's Game Developers Conference, Bravely Default: Flying Fairy will be coming to the West in English. This has been the subject of much speculation for a while, as covered back in March, and while today's news is the result of some conversations on background, Siliconera is obviously a quality source of information and combined with the aforementioned tweet from the official Twitter feed, it seems like this long-lived rumor is fast approaching being a lock.

There's not much more to it than that right now. There's no release date, no screenshots in English and no further plans because as yet the news hasn't been officially confirmed. Expect all that to be coming soon!

Source: Siliconera

After several months of waiting for our IRC host to get it all set up for us, and then another few weeks of getting it set up, we're proud to announce that our new webchat is online and ready to go. We put it up a while back and have had positive feedback, and with a few tweaks we now have it ready for everyone to enjoy by hanging out with us.

This new chat's pretty great. It looks good, it works well, and it doesn't require the Java that our old one did. Hear that? No Java! It will work on all sorts of devices and works even if the standard IRC ports are blocked for you - not that we advocate chatting when you shouldn't!

Give it a try and chat with us.

Yeah, we did a second one. No, really, the feedback we got from everyone was quite positive, and we really appreciate it. We're trying to find our feet, and what better way than to keep practicing with a second episode?

It's been two weeks since the first, and I think that's the pace we'd like to try to keep - well, unless you guys want more or fewer, I suppose! This time around, the crew from the first episode (me, Tiddles, DP, and lasz) regroup to talk about what games and media we're absorbing - as all gaming podcasts are legally required to do - and then we also moved into a recap of my time at PAX East, and some conversation about the big name software coming out of Square Enix this year, including Final Fantasy XIV and X/X-2 HD.

We digressed a little more this time around. I kept the most entertaining bits! We'll be recording again pretty soon, so feel free to let us know if you have any subjects you might want us to hit.

We don't quite have the feed running yet, as I have a couple things left to work out. I'll have it running in time for the next episode!