News

We've lost a couple of affiliates lately - one appears to be having severe trouble with their site, the other has simply vanished.

However, we do have a new affiliate - Final Flash. It's not the biggest FF site ever, but it's run by nice people and it's a very, very unique site. The staff enjoys it very much, and we hope you do too!

Thanks!

That's right, the site is having another birthday today. This marks the end of the first year of CoN5, and the sixth year of Caves of Narshe as a whole. To learn more, you'll want to read the CoNHistory feature article that was published several months ago.

You may not know this, but this birthday shows yet again that CoN is one of the oldest Final Fantasy sites still in existance. For instance, our affiliate Final Fantasy Gurus started life in mid 1998 as an FF8 site. Eyes on Final Fantasy started in 1999. Even FFOnline started, that's right, three months AFTER CoN came into being.

It's been a long time running this site for me. Cliched as it may sound, there really have been a lot of ups and a lot of downs. Recently, though, it has been almost all up, and I'm not just talking about the site stats, or the chat stats (even though the month concluding today was our biggest month ever for both).

I started this site as a lark, with no goals or plan in mind. If you've seen CoN2, then you know that not having a plan is not really a good thing. To be quite honest, though, I still don't have many specific plans for this site, which I am sure vexes Tiddles to no end. While the following is not a real chat, I'm sure it's not far from the truth:

Quote

Tiddles, let's make the site bigger and better today. Okay, but we did that YESTERDAY. What are we going to do differently today? Maybe you weren't listening. I said BIGGER and BETTER. Now let's get to work.

I'm rambling now, as I am wont to do. Sorry about that. Let's wrap it up now. I want to say thanks to the staff, most of whom have been with me as teammates for two and a half years now, and as friends for much longer. I intend specifically thank each and every one of you, especially my fellow admins - you have touched my life all in your own special ways, and I'll not forget that. I'd also like to thank the forum and chat membership as a whole for your support and enthusiasm, and a few of you in particular for contributing to the site and its community, like Tommah, Narratorway, Sabin, Murrrr, Phoenix, and many others.

I'm still working on plans to celebrate. Knowing me, we'll celebrate in about a month.

Oh, and I'm retiring effective midnight Central tonight.  (Not really, for those too lazy to read the whole topic.)

It's abbreviation MADNESS, I tell you. MADNESS.

Nintendo is putting some major backing into the return of Square to their consoles after a nearly ten-year absence. According to the Japanese game magazine V-Jump, by way of Magic Box, Nintendo of Japan intends to release a limited-edition NGC set with a "Crystal White" 'Cube and controller, a GBA Player, memory card, and, of course, FF:CC.

No word yet on whether this will come to US shores - in fact, it's still not official in that country with the red dot flag, but GAF has a picture of the set.

As far as I'm concerned, who really cares about the special color of the console? Unless they're also planning on selling that pack at a significant discount from what you could buy the individual pieces for, then there's no point in doing it. We'll see if it goes forward, though.

I finally started catching up with CoN email today, and I was able to put up thirteen fanarts by Miss Lindsay Cibos of cutepet.org. A dozen of the new pieces from her are SD FFT characters that are, to borrow a word from Hikaroo, very "kawaii" indeed. The ending art in this baker's dozen is a great piece of Rydia. You can see them all in the "Newest Fanart" section for the next thirty days.

I hope to add more today, if so, I'll post again!

Looks like Squenix released some of the very first character renders for Crystal Chronicles yesterday. The renders, apparently by a Toshiyuki Itahama, all look more than just a little bit creepy. Kinda like some sort of demonic-looking dolls I would have been scared of as a kid, or last week. The center male and female remind me a bit of Zidane and Garnet, too.

The quality of these renders is on par with anything recent the company has done on PS2, but how will the in-game graphics match up on the two competing systems?

The tidbits about this game keep trickling in, but nothing seems to be concrete enough to form a real pre-launch opinion, in my mind. We really need to start seeing some more detail soon, especially with the Japanese launch looming.

Sorry we're a bit late on this one - Squenix released about a week ago a trailer for their first outing on the NGC, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles.

For those who haven't been following this game, FF:CC is another offshoot game that carries the Final Fantasy name, similar to Mystic Quest or Tactics. This one looks to play more like the recent Zelda games, though. The game is classed as an "Action RPG", and, for the first time, true multiplayer will be included.

I believe the video weighs in at about 14.5 MB, and is in Quicktime format. Enjoy!

Watching the video, for me, actually built a little interest in this game that I didn't have before. It's surely a striking game visually, but that shouldn't surprise anyone. If the music in-game is as strong as what Squenix put in the trailer, CC will certainly have a soundtrack worth possessing, too.