News

Courtesy our friends at RPGamer:

Square-Enix has announced a prequel to their blockbuster hit, Final Fantasy VII, named Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII. Unlike Advent Children, which is a movie, this is an actual game with battles and action and everything you'd expect from an RPG. What you wouldn't expect is the platform of the game -- Square-Enix has decided that the cell phone market is good enough to release the game there. This raises questions about the ability to bring Before Crisis to the United States, because as anyone who has been to Japan can attest, the cell phone technology in Japan is much more advanced than what is available stateside.

Personally, I think that it's a good idea for Squenix to do the prequel, because it will sell. I think it's a horrible idea to release the game on cellphones. I don't know if their plan is to goad people into buying their cellphone technology or what, but I certainly wouldn't buy a phone just to play a game. This should be a big thing to discuss -- please do it here!

Recently, there was a concert of Final Fantasy music performed in LA, for the E3 convention. According to the article by Gamespot.com , it was a smashing success, and even had a surprise perfomance of One Winged Angel, from FFVII

Among the compositions played, there was:

* Terra's Theme (Final Fantasy VI)
* Theme of Love (Final Fantasy IV)
* Dear Friends (Final Fantasy V)
* Aeris's Theme (Final Fantasy VII)
* Not Alone (Final Fantasy IX)
* New Melody From Final Fantasy VII Advent Children
* Final Fantasy (Theme)

Apparently, there were also many video cameras in the audience, so there is a chance that the taped version will be released to the public (or illegally to the internet) sometime in the future.

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I'm sure there are plenty of Final Fantasy fans that wish they could have been at this concert, it sounds like it was a wonderful evening. The article does say that there may be more concerts like this in the future, so keep your ear to the ground if you're interested!

There is new a FFVII: Advent Children magazine scan floating about the internet. Newsworthy is that it appears to feature the first images of Tifa, Marlene, and the Turks. There are also pictures of Vincent, Cloud, and the Sephiroth clones as well.

Don't mind the goofy pirate. He is just Jump magazine's mascot.

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I think the character shots like great. Tifa's proportions seem to be a little more realistic now. The only real gripe I have with the scan is something that Elena99 pointed out in CoNchat. Cloud and Sephiroth's eyes appear to missing their glow.

In order to help maintain the high quality of Final Fantasy games, Square Enix has moved forward the release dates for the next installation of the series. Originally to come out in Japan this summer, it will be pushed back a few months.

The game should arrive on American shores sometime between this winter and next spring.

Full article: Gamespot.com

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I'm a little disappointed to hear this, but the delay isn't by that much. The game will still be coming in due time, and if they want time to get quality, that sounds like a fair deal.

On the 1st of May, RPGOne translations released the first version of their translation patch for the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VI.

If you ever saw Sky Render's project named "End of Fantasy", this is where it ended up. It's a complete retranslation from scratch, foresaking Ted Woolsey's FF3US efforts. The readme claims that the translation is primarily focused on accuracy, with readability second, and that it tries to keep some name consistency with the more recent official Final Fantasy translations where they are sufficiently close to the original Japanese.

Bear in mind that translation is a somewhat subjective issue, and that there's no 100% right or wrong way to translate something between languages. Any comments on this forum from players of this version insisting that they have played a "DIRECT translation" so that their interpretation of an event is bound to be absolutely correct will be met with severe beatings about the face. That said, I'd recommend trying it out to anyone who can do so, as it probably is indeed more faithful to the original game than the official translations (which had to pass through Nintendo's still overzealous censors at the time).

Note that you need a Japanese Final Fantasy VI ROM to apply the patch, and that it can't be combined with modifications for FF3us, such as i90east's expert versions. The download does include an optional patch to prevent Vanish/Doom from working, for anyone who wants a little extra challenge.

Interested? Head over to RPGOne's Final Fantasy VI download page and grab a copy. I encourage you to check out the readme first of all, if only for known issues and patching instructions (though the procedure should be familiar if you've used IPS patches in the past). Finally, please read lead programmer ChrisRPG's message and donate to him if you appreciate his work and have some cash to spare.

On the heels of Elena99's recent news update concerning new FFXII screenshots, Square Enix has released another trailer for the title. This one is a bit longer than the previous one, lasting a lengthy 7-plus minutes.

The good folks at Games_Are_Fun are hosting the video. Pay their site a visit and check out the video.

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I didn't watch the entire video (short attention span++), but the parts that I did see looked great. There seemed to be FMV footage. I'm starting to look forward to the title. The video is quite grainy if the size is increased as the video only weighs in around 15 MBs.