News

In advance of the upcoming North America release, now under two months away, the official Square-Enix blog has now published the first English-voiceover video from the game. This video is meant to be an in-store promo, so you should also be able to see it quite soon at your favorite game shop.

Far be it from me to comment on the voice acting, as I'm no expert on the matter, but it sounds solid enough to me. If anything, it's just good to finally hear it in English; they could have Bobcat Goldthwait and Gilbert Godfried doing the lead roles and it would still be nice to finally see the progress towards launch.

Finally, of course, I have to ask, why haven't you pre-ordered it from AmaCoN yet?

Source:
Square-Enix Members Blog

Yes, we all knew it was coming. Who couldn't? But now we have a real date: 22 July 2008. On top of that, the new site for the North American release is up and ready, with a pretty-cool splash page as well.

Unfortunately, AmaCoN doesn't yet have the title ready for preorder (merely the OST), but I'll keep everyone posted once it shows up.

From what I've seen and heard, this game is a must-play for DS owners. If anyone would like to buy me a DS, I'll be inclined to try it out and agree.

Source:
Square-Enix Blog

Some of you will note that it is April Fools' Day. Some of you may also note that we have dropped the ball, as usual. We throw our hands up: we simply didn't have any good ideas for this April 1st. But, we figure, our members are an imaginative bunch. And so, we have decided to hold a quick CoNtest to find next year's gag and spare us the embarrassment 365 days hence.

The rules are simple: Suggest a joke in 3000 words or less by midnight tonight. The entries will be read by CoN staff and we'll pick out the best one for use next year. The lucky winner shall receive a small prize as well as the knowledge that they will be in on the joke next year!

Entering is also simple: Just fire off your idea to [email protected], before midnight Eastern time. Note that we won't accept any jokes that might be offensive or illegal, as even a joke must have limits. But other than that, anything goes, so get the ideas coming fast!

Good luck, and hope we get some good suggestions!

Everyone knows the biggest gift-buying times of the year are all coming up. If you're not sick of the adverts yet, you will be. So, for our part, we've just released some new AmaCoN features that will make it easier for you to get your stuff, and for us to get our cash.

• All of the game index pages now have AmaCoN links associated with the game.
• All the AmaCoN stores for each country now have links to buy several different kinds of gift cards.
• AmaCoN search has been upgraded.

Finally, the most fun new feature, the ability to take Amazon links you already have and make them AmaCoN links! If you have a public wishlist at Amazon, or want a specific item from any of our Amazon countries, you can plug in your information and have a URL given right back to you, which you can put into an email or post on your own site or blog - anyone who shops for you can use that link and CoN gets the credit.

Easy, fast, and always free; that's AmaCoN. If you haven't been, go now and make these holidays happier for both you and Climhazzard alike.

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.

So we're still not blazingly fast. But we get there when we can.

We've got 35 brand new pieces of fanart this time round, from artists old and new alike. These awesome new submissions grace our
Final Fantasy 4, Final Fantasy 5, Final Fantasy 6, Final Fantasy 7
and Final Fantasy Tactics galleries, so mosey on over and enjoy great art courtesy of:

• 
  Cloudyfan
• Frozen_Aura
• Galsic
• 
  Kaine
• LilGrim1991
• 
  Narratorway


• PrinceofDamycan


• Rujuken


• Llucilla

Let's all thank them. And thank me and
Mimic, too, for putting this update together.