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The final round is now underway, again, sorry for the delay. This round will start immediately, and will run until 11:59pm GMT on 24 July, just to make sure that everyone has plenty of time. The final winners will be announced soon after, since I will probably be traveling for work on the 24th and 25th.

This is the round that will determine the winners, folks, so give it your all. We're taking ten of our best performers from the second round to have a shot at the big prize; your finalists, alphabetically, are:

alphasmart
archetype
Death Penalty
Dragon_Fire
FallingHeart
Nytecrawla
Sherick
Shotgunnova
Silver_Zombie
The_Pink_Nu1

And then we added two bonus participants, footbigmike and MogMaster, due to the fact that they won the two other groups in the second round. So, there you have it, the top twelve folks going for the big prizes, totaling $60 in AmaCoN gift cards!

If you're not in this list, though, make sure you participate in the final week anyway; anyone who participates this week can still be eligible for the $5 consolation prize. And, to help everyone out a little bit, we've updated the hint page to link to our last.fm pages.

Once we finish up this last round, everyone will have a chance to take all the quizzes they weren't able to take as part of the actual contest, and we'll have score leaderboards too. And after that, who knows? We'll try to set something up for you!

Revealed in yesterday's E3 conference, Sony's handheld is now undergoing a redesign. The new one is significantly slimmer and lighter, and now has a video output that lets you play PSP games on a television screen. The new PSPs also feature faster loading times and improved battery life.

These new models will be released in 2007. There is also a new package deal and price point - the "piano black" and "ice silver" color schemes will cost $199 US and come bundled with a 1-gig memory stick, the game "Daxter", and a UMD of "The Family Guy Freakin' Sweet Collection," while a "Star Wars Battlefront Special Edition" PSP (vanilla white with a black image of Darth Vader on the back) will come with the memory stick as well as a copy of Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron. The original PSP will retain its recently reduced cost of $169 US.

Source: Engadget

In the latest tidbit regarding Final Fantasy IV DS, Square Enix has opened auditions to find a vocalist for the game's title song, Theme of Love.

Auditions are open to anyone 18 and older, regardless of gender and experience. Applicants are required to send in a basic profile, self introduction, photo, and demo tape. And, in the spirit of the auditions, Theme of Love composer Nobuo Uematsu as well as Final Fantasy IV Director Takashi Tokita have recorded their thoughts and discussions regarding the topic of love. Radio streams of this discussion are available on Square Enix's website.


Sources:
GA Graphic
Dengeki Online

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I'm tempted to record a demo tape and send it in. Too bad (or, good thing) I'm very aware of how awful my singing voice is. :P

Nonetheless, this seems a magnanimous choice for Square Enix to make. I'd imagine any FFIV fan, diehard or not, would be thrilled to have their own voice gracing the title sequence of the game. And therefore Square is sure to amass quite a few entires to work through after their July 31 deadline.

On another note, and as a followup to one of our previous FFIV DS newsposts, a few more Shonen Jump scans of the FFIV DS teaser pages are available at French gaming site JeuxFrance.

Sony officially reduced the MSRP of the 60-gig model of the Playstation 3 from $599 to $499, but you can still pay the full six hundred bucks if you want to, as they also announced plans to release a new 80-gigabyte PS3 that will sell from the $599 price point.

Five hundred bucks is still pretty expensive, but hey, five hundred is less than six hundred, right?

Source: Joystiq

If you signed up for our contest, well, it's on now. You will have until midnight GMT (7pm EST) next Saturday, 7 July, to get your answers in. You've been broken into four groups, and each group gets a different quiz. The top scorers from each of the four groups will move on to the next round next week.

I'll send out a PM to everyone participating - good luck to every one of the fifty-two of you who signed up!

Yes, you read that headline correctly. BioWare, the role-playing game ace developer behind Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, is making an RPG for the Nintendo DS starring Sonic the Hedgehog.

In a recent press release, BioWare CEO Ray Muzyka was optimistic: "as huge fans of Sonic ourselves, we're committed to delivering a truly amazing story-driven experience within the Sonic universe, focusing on capturing the character's broad appeal and placing him in a completely original adventure."

This untitled Sonic RPG is scheduled for an unspecified 2008 release, and also marks BioWare's first game on a Nintendo console (other than MDK2, all of BioWare's games are for either Microsoft systems or personal computers). Currently, BioWare is working on two much-hyped RPGs, Dragon Age and Mass Effect, for the PC and XBox 360 respectively. This BioWare/Sega/Nintendo partnership might seem strange, but those three companies have one hell of a track record, so it could turn out to be something special.

Source: Joystiq