News

Nintendo recently announced that they are  creating a limited edition Gamecube and bundle in honor of Squenix's Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.  But this is not the only bundle that they have in store for a Squenix game though.  Nintendo plans on releasing a special addition Gameboy Advance in honor Sword of Mana, the upcoming remake of Final Fantasy Adventure.

Similar to the FF:CC bundle, it is unknown as of yet whether this bundle will see a North American or PAL release.

Source: OPGaming

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I'd go for this if I had money.  I could use an Gameboy Advance and I would not mind startig off with Sowrd of Mana for my first game.  ::goes to buy some lottery tickets::

New FF5 Fanfiction

We now have our first ff5 fanfic, up in the ff5 section. Or just click that link. It's by a non-forums member (who may join the forums later, if she wishes) and is about Faris. Go check it out! It's quite good, and she's mentioned doing more.

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.

Games_Are_Fun has posted some new screenshots of Super Mario Advance 4. SMA4 is a port of the classic Super Mario Bros. 3 to the Gameboy Advance.  

The game will be a port of the version that was on the Super Mario All-Stars game on the Super Nintendo, not the original NES one.  It is scheduled for release in Japan on July 11th.  It will not see North American shores until late September though.

Source: Games_Are_Fun

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Another reason to want a Gameboy Advance.  This game is an all-time classic in many gamers' hearts.  I remember when I bought the NES versions of this and Final Fantasy I when I was a wee little lad for five dollars.  Best deal ever then and it still seems pretty good now.  Anyways, I'm done musing for now.  What does everyone else thing of this?  The screenshots look really nice, by the way.

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.