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

After months of speculation on the part of its fans, Squenix has finally confirmed the upcoming North American release of three legacy Dragon Quest titles on the Nintendo DS.

Remakes of Dragon Quest IV, V, and VI are in the works, and North American audiences can expect to see the first of these, Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen, on 16 September 2008. The three remakes will feature updated 3D graphics in a similar vein to Final Fantasy III DS and the upcoming Final Fantasy IV DS remakes.

Source: GameSpot

RPGamer.com has discovered that the ESRB has re-rated Earthbound as an 'E for Everyone' title (replacing its old K-A rating, which no longer exists) and has it marked as a Wii title. A quick search on the ESRB's website confirms these findings, which as of this posting have not been covered up or hidden. This is being taken as a sign that Earthbound will soon be released on the Wii's Virtual Console. There has been no official announcement made by either Nintendo or Ape Software, so no more details are known.

This is fantastic news. The Virtual Console, while a great concept with a few gems, has been sorely lacking in a lot of my favorite games, most notably SNES RPGs. With this release of an old classic and cult favorite, perhaps the doors will be opened for more games and companies to jump on the Virtual Console train and try to get a few more bucks out of their older titles. However, for those hoping for Final Fantasy releases, with the rate that Square-Enix is pumping out remakes, I wouldn't get your hopes up for any of those. For now, fans of the series can enjoy the game once more, and people new to the game will be able to discover their love for New Age Retro Hippies and Multi Bottle Rockets.

Those links again:
RPGamer.com
Re-Rating and Wii platform for Earthbound
The ESRB's website

Recently, bit-tech.net conducted an interview with Yoshinori Kitase, who some gamers may recognize as the director of Final Fantasy 7. The interview is mainly about the recently released Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core, a spin-off game for the PSP. However, the most interesting bit of the interview comes near the end, when the question is raised about whether or not there will be more prequels or sequels in the FF7 series. Kitase remains noncommittal, but mentions that they wouldn't even look at a remake of the initial game unless they could bring together the core of the FF7 development team, who are split among various projects, most notably FFXIII, so the idea won't be explored until at least after that game is completed.

Though I think a lot of good could come from a remake of FF7 on a system with much more power than the original PS1, I think I would much rather have the development team of such a great game working on newer projects. FF7 is getting a tremendous amount of overexposure as a new title within the universe seems to be released every year. It appears that the idea of a remake is at least put aside until after the completion of Final Fantasy XIII, so gamers who, like me, would rather see new content, will be placated to that end.

Those links again:
bit-tech.net
Interview with Yoshinori Kitase

A website for the North American release of FFTA2: Rift of the Grimoire was promised just days ago, and Square-Enix has already delivered. The company has once again put together a beautiful website for the game. As is par for the course for RPG websites by Squenix, not all of the information is available, but we already have access to a page for the story; a page for characters, which includes information about characters Luso, Adelle, Hurdy, and Cid, with spaces for 6 more; a look at five of seven races and some of "more than 50 classes"; and sections under construction for the battle system and multimedia.

In addition, some questions were answered on the Square-Enix Members Blog regarding the game, which says that the storyline of FFTA2 will be completely independent of the other FFT games, so gamers new to the series can jump right in.

The website just makes me more excited for the game. The characters have neat designs and I'm really excited to hear that there will be over fifty classes. I'm hoping that that doesn't necessarily mean class/race combinations, so they could, theoretically, give a Hume White Mage and a Viera Whtie Mage different abilities and call it two different classes, but that could possibly happen. Either way, I'm looking forward to June 24 more and more.

Those links again:
Square-Enix NA FFTA2 Website
FFTA2 Blog Entry
Square-Enix Members Blog

A preliminary song list for Guitar Hero: On Tour, the DS adaptation for the franchise due out in the United States on June 22, has been released. In addition, over the last several weeks, more details have been released about how the guitar mechanism will function. An adapter plugs into the GBA slot of the DS and it is held vertically like a book, with the GBA slot to the right side. Strumming the guitar will be performed via the touchscreen. Additionally, there will be microphone functionality, including activating your star power and blowing flames out on the guitar during battle mode.

The functionality of the game sounds extremely fun, with the buttons on the side of the system and strumming with the touchscreen. The songlist, however, leaves me with a little to be desired. Of the 15 songs announced, I am prematurely excited for just three of them. Fortunately, there will be at least ten more songs yet to come, and as another bonus, nearly all of the tracks will be master tracks so we don't have to deal with terrible covers, as we did in GH2. There has been local wireless play announced, but I would be much more interested in seeing some DS Wifi play as well. All-in-all, they're discovering new ways to bring out more function in the already-amazing DS.

Also it's going to retail at $50. Yoaaurgh.

Those links again:
GH DS preliminary song list
GH DS Details