News

Square-Enix had a few gems to reveal to the public at the Tokyo Game Show regarding their upcoming RPG releases. Among them, character names! Yes, finally, some of the CG beauties you've been marveling at all this time have names other than "Lightning... or is that the attack she's using?" Well... sorta. So far, only a few have been sorted through, and it's not entirely clear where the Engrish ends and the localized names begin...

Source: Final Fantasy Insider

For fans of Enix's Star Ocean series, it should come as pleasant news that the Star Ocean: First Departure website is up and running. First released on the Super Famicom only in Japan, the beginning of the Star Ocean series will finally be making its way to North American audiences on the PSP later this year.

Furthermore, the 360-exclusive Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope has been dated for March 2009.

Source: GameSpot

In a press conference at the very beginning of the Tokyo Game Show, Nintendo dropped a few major bombs not even hinted at during their E3 presentation earlier this year. These announcements were made yesterday afternoon in Japan, which is the late evening or the middle of the night for most of the west.

First, the DSi. The DSi is a new model of DS with larger screens, stronger wireless capabilities, stronger, adjustable audio, a built-in camera, multimedia function, and capable of supporting Nintendo SD cards for greater DS-Wii interactivity. The new system will be able to play games exclusive for the DSi that the DS cannot. There is, however, no more GBA game slot. The DSi will be out in November in Japan and in 2009 for other areas. Check sources for pictures and more details.

In addition to this major announcement, the Wii was announced to soon be able to download Wii applications and games directly onto an SD Card rather than the Wii's limited memory. In addition, gamers will soon be able to download full Gamecube games onto the Wii, with one early release being 2001's Pikmin. There was no announcement for plans to create a Wii harddrive.

And lastly, a few new Wii games were announced, with two major revelations standing out: Punch-Out Wii and Sin and Punishment 2. The former is the third console iteration of the classic cartoony boxing game, while the latter is a sequel to a cult-favorite N64 rail shooter.

Now that's a lot of news. Nothing more to say here, check the source links for more details.

Source:
The DSi
Wii games
Gamecube games on the Wii

After more than two years of vagueness, Square-Enix finally drops a bomb on Dragon Quest fans - Japan will be getting the much-awaited DS game on March of 2009. Very little is known about the title thus far other than there are customizable characters and it will take advantage of the DS's wireless capabilities, but since it's a Dragon Quest game it will probably sell like funnel cakes once it eventually comes out.

Source: Kotaku

No, it's nothing to do with the Large Hadron Collider that may or may not either expose the building blocks of the universe in the name of SCIENCE, create a black hole that annihilates the Earth and most of the Solar System or at least Switzerland, or may even cause a resonance cascade and the eventual Universal Union invasion and conquest of our planet in under seven hours (And I for one welcome our new benefactors) but something of far greater importance. The end of one of our two CoNtests running right now is near.

To be exact, it's the Fanart competition where the end is nigh. That contest ends at the end of this month and is run to the theme of your favorite Square-Enix characters as if they were on holiday, or vacation for people in countries that upgraded the English language to Eng 2.0. Those of you with the ability to draw, doodle, sketch, and whatever else it is you talented arty types do to make little pretty pictures only have until the end of the month, about three weeks. To see the rules and how to submit, simply follow the link above. Or the one below if you want to live life on the edge.

For those of you with an infinite number of Shakespeares attempting to compile the complete works of Monkeys (Is this right? -Editor) and enter the Fanfic CoNTest, you've got quite a bit more time, a whole month more, and more flexibility with the three categories in that longer contest, but you're free to write a story about your favourite characters at the beach if you like. It could be General or Comedy. Or from FF7 maybe even Scene Selection thanks to Costa Del Sol.

So, in summary, time is running out on the CoNtests to enter, and possibly also for your freedom of expression for Final Fantasy Fanwork Fantasticness should the last LHC scenario occur as I think the... Combine are fans of Dragon Quest more than FF. Remember, you have until September 30th for Fanart, October 31st for Fanfics, and about two minutes for the kettle to boil unless you've got a really good kettle.

If you have any questions about the Fanart rules and submission, email your question to [email protected]. For Fanfic queries, email a question along to [email protected] or PM Del S, whoever he is, on the forums, whatever they are. Alternatively, for a faster response to questions on either contest, simply pop into chat and someone there should help you.

Links:
Fanart CoNtest Rules and Submission guidelines
Fanfic CoNtest Rules and Submission guidelines

Well, I suppose a couple people did.

It looks like some villains tried to plant malicious code on the site a couple of days ago. Luckily, it didn't work very well - in most cases, the most visible consequence would have been pages failing to load correctly in Internet Explorer. (If you saw that happen, it doesn't mean you were infected with anything - in fact you definitely weren't attacked by any particular page where you saw that happen.)

Even so - if you visited CoN, or anything else hosted on cavesofnarshe.com between August 28th 00:00 GMT and August 30th 12:00 GMT, you'd be well advised to give your computer a once-over with a virus and/or malware scanner, and you should definitely start using something that's not Internet Explorer, even if that IE is 7. Go with Firefox, is what we say.

We don't yet know how this happened, though we have a hunch that it wasn't our issue at all - but we'll be making every effort to find out and prevent anything similar from occurring in the future.

Tecmo, the Japanese publisher of video games such as Ninja Gaiden, Tecmo Bowl, and Fatal Frame, has not had a very good year. After releasing XBox 360 action title Ninja Gaiden 2, game designer Tomonobu Itakagi and several other employees sued the company for unpaid overtime work relating to Ninja Gaiden 2. Other headaches included disappointing sales for Fatal Frame IV and the resignation of several top company officials.

But here comes Square-Enix to the rescue! According to Kotaku, Square-Enix is planning a friendly takeover of Tecmo in a similar manner to which happened to Taito in 2005. If the takeover is successful, Tecmo would become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Square-Enix, and if the wage issue is resolved, Tecmo's successful Team Ninja studio (Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive) would be making games for the big S-E.

Source: Kotaku

Also: wtf? Kingdom Hearts Gaiden?