News

Final Fantasy XIII may remain a far off dream, but the distant echoes of series spin-off Crystal Chronicles are quickly approaching. "Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time" has been given an official release date of January 29 in Japan, and is expected to hit the North American market sometime this Spring.

Like the rest of the Crystal Chronicles series, the gameplay of Echoes will heavily rely on action-RPG aspects and puzzles, rather than the traditional turn-based combat of the main Final Fantasy series. Echoes will be available on both the Wii and the Nintendo DS, and the game will take advantage of the two systems' interconnectivity to allow online multiplayer. Additionally, Nintendo seems to have realized that we're tired of letting those dozens of Miis we made on launch day languish without a purpose in life; players of the Wii version will be able to import their favorite Miis into the game.

Source: GameSpot

I've never been a fan of the Crystal Chronicles series, but even I'm tempted by this. The short blurb about the story in the above link sounds like it could be interesting... as long as we don't find out that the heroine is sick because she ate dragon grass not once, but twice. Stupid princesses who eat dragon grass two--count 'em, TWO--times deserve what they get. Really, the Crystal Chronicles line always seemed to me like a kiddie version of the (occasionally) more mature main series storylines. These saccharine tales of precocious fourteen-year-olds aren't quite as cute now that I'm not fourteen, yanno?

Since I wasn't able to close the contest on time, I figured at least I could spend part of my Saturday making sure the winners were on time!

Thanks to all those who entered, all those who told their friends to enter, and even those who just wanted to enter but never got around to it; the CoN Summer Fanart contest is now over as I announce these two winners. We're not sure when we'll run another contest, but as long as you keep an eye out here (perhaps subscribing to our RSS feed might help), you will be sure you'll be among the first to know next time.

Now, on to the winners. We only got enough entries, sadly, to offer up two prizes; one goes to the overall top scorer among our judges' responses, and the other goes to the entry that we judged to be the most creative in concept out of them all.

First, let's discuss our victor of the most creative prize, a ten-dollar gift card to AmaCoN. Our artist's work for this prize caught us off guard. It's deceptively simple at first glance, but as you start to take it all in, you start to appreciate the different levels at which it's clever. We really quite enjoyed the way that the photo cutouts present different characters than the actual subjects of the piece, and the little detail of Umaro ripping his cutout right off the deck instead of stooping over gave us a genuine laugh when we noticed it. So, congratulations to Galsic, taking home the prize for most creative submission! You can view his new art in our gallery right now, or view the thumbnail right here!



And, our only other prize to be given out today, the grand prize of this contest, a forty-dollar AmaCoN gift card, goes to an artist who has been around CoN forever. His entry was also very clever, so much so that he nearly overtook Galsic to capture both prizes. The format he used allowed him to tell a full story and while it doesn't necessarily have the bold color and sharp detail of some of our other entries, the story both fit our "Vacationing Heroes" theme, and showed a significant amount of effort in laying out each panel. Not only that, we found it darkly humorous to boot, with a payoff at the end that you might not see coming. Once you see the piece in our gallery, you'll know right away that it could have come from only one guy here at CoN: congratulations to Narratorway for taking home top honors this time around. Surely you now want to see his winning fanart entry, so don't let us stop you once our thumbnail below sinks in a bit!



Again, congratulations to our winners, and thank you very much to everyone who supported our new fanart system with an entry. We appreciate every one of you and if I could afford to give you all a prize I happily would. Please keep submitting and keep bringing your friends to not only submit to our galleries, but also to see the great work we already have in place. Hope to see you all again here soon!

Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride and Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume both received release dates for the United States: February 17th for Dragon Quest and March 17th for Valkyrie Profile, both in 2009.

Dragon Quest V is a DS remake of a SNES game that was previously remade for the Playstation 2. It chronicles the story of a nameless hero journeying to rid the world of an evil demon's influence while searching for the truth behind his heritage and finding love in the process. Covenant of the Plume is the third game in the cult hit Valkyrie Profile series made by longtime Enix collaborator Tri-Ace. The story is of a young warrior whose father died in battle and was subsequently taken by Lenneth (the protagonist of of the first Valkyrie Profile) to be one of Odin's Einherjar. The son strikes a deal with the queen of the damned, determined to exact revenge upon Lenneth.

Both of these games will give DS-owning American fans of Square-Enix something to spend their hard-earned money on before spring begins.

Source: Kotaku

BioWare announced today the project many people assumed they were working on: a Star Wars MMO (that isn't Galaxies). Essentially, it's going to take the setting, style, and basic principles from BioWare's popular Knights of the Old Republic duo of games and make it massively multiplayer. At a press conference in San Francisco earlier today, a BioWare representative labeled TOR (should we start calling it that?) as "Knights of the Old Republic 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12-plus." So far all they have is some concept art and a couple screens.



Source: GameSpot

Some of you might be wondering why there hasn't been any announcements of the fanart contest as yet. If you're not wondering, with hope you are now. The reason is twofold, and neither is terribly impressive. I'll get to those later, though, and put the important info up here:

We're extending the art submission deadline for eleven full more days (plus a few hours) - you now need to have your art in on October 31, Halloween.

Now for the reasons, should you want to know:

1) I, fortunately for me but unfortunately for CoN, had to change jobs right before the contest was set to close. Up until right now, I've barely been around while I did all the things necessary for me to leave my old job and get settled in my new one, and that precluded me from doing anything for the site that required much effort besides clicking.
2) We honestly, frankly, are low on entries. This works out poorly for me, as I really did want to give out lots of prizes and see the new fanart system become a fast success thanks to all you folks submitting. However, this can work out really well for you, as if you've submitted, you have a pretty good chance of getting some prize!

So, with those two things in mind, you have my mea culpa on reason number one. However, I do expect that you artists out there will kick in some more art in the very near future to make up for reason number two. Get started, I want to give away prizes.

Those dedicated (and SLOW) translators at http://mother3.fobby.net/ are nearing completion of their major project - a translation to Mother 3. The fan project has been in the works for over two years, and as a result of their hard work Earthbound fans the world over will be able to play the anticipated sequel without a detailed knowledge of Japanese. Rejoice!

Source: http://mother3.fobby.net/