News

The CoN now has another fanfic in the FF6 section : The Candle. It's a chilling fanfic that takes place halfway through the game, from Celes's point of view.

Feel free to comment in this thread, or in the original Site Submissions thread.

As many of you may already know, we're adding a new affiliate today, Heroes of Ivalice. You all know I'm not a big fan of pen-and-paper or text-based RPGs, but Kairo's concept is so good, and he's so passionate about it that I wanted to share it with everyone via CoN. Of course, I can't explain it properly, so check out his thread to learn more.



Also, those of you who follow our fanart galleries often may recognize the name Lindsay Cibos. She's a very talented artist who has an image in our Fanart Hall of Fame. Well, now she's got another claim to fame - Tokyopop has recently published her shojo manga "Peach Fuzz." When you can read about an artist in your local newspaper, who has donated to CoN, you know she's getting to the big time. Check her out at her own site and learn more.



Finally, I've heard a rumor that another artist at CoN is iin talks for a publishing deal and is close to closing a contract up. I won't say who because I don't want to jinx it, and I don't want you all to guess for the same reason. But keep your fingers crossed anyway.

Front Mission Mobile joined Square Enix's line of cellphone games for the Japanese NTT Docomo service on March 7. Front Mission is the third major Square Enix console series to be ported to Docomo's cellphone platform, following last year's releases of Dragon Quest i and Final Fantasy titles.

Much like Final Fantasy VII: Before Crisis, the new Front Mission game has been designed such that Square Enix may periodically release future installments of the game, which are to be downloaded from their website with compatible phones. Access to the game and its new installments requires a monthly premium of about US $5, added directly to the user's phone bill.

Screenshots of the first installment, "Front Mission 2089," may be found at the game's official website.

The Washington state legislature announced on 1 March that they will seek a bill this term to hold video game companies responsible for any violent acts perpetrated "in any part due to playing video games," according to Seattle's KOMO (with secondary reporting by Games Are Fun). We've seen similar rumblings before over the years, of course, so this is merely presumptive at this point. However, the bill is currently in committee in the Washington State House of Representatives; upon approval - which is not at all unlikely - from its committee, it will be brought to the floor of the full House for a vote. (For more, locate a torrent of that one episode of "Conjunction Junction" that everyone's heard of.)

The implications of this Washington bill are potentially far-reaching. After all, two of the big three console manufacturers/first-party developers, Microsoft and Nintendo, find their American headquarters in Redmond. Whether the presence of these juggernauts is a contributing factor to the emergence of the bill is currently and will likely be forever unknown - however, if the developers can be held responsible for the actions of the gamers who play their games, it stands to reason that those who sell the platforms on which the games are played could be next.

Video game censorship and regulation has been an issue ever since games truly broke into the forefront of the American culture, over twenty years ago. So while it's easy to say that this bill is an offshoot of the swing toward conservatism in the last election, it's hard to make that case when the bill arose in the perennially blue state of Washington. Without a easy target for the issue, then, what potential reasons are there to introduce this legislation?

L. Cully has submitted another fanfic called From the Sea, which is now viewable in the FF6 Fanfiction Section. The fanfic centres around Terra, and is quite original.

Feel free to comment on this fanfic in the original submission topic, or here.

Happy Valentine's Day for tomorrow (or today, if you're from an especially silly time zone) from all of us here in the Caves. For some reason, we chose this day to launch our brand new Final Fantasy VII section.

Then we pulled it forward to today anyway.

Still.

We've deviated a little from the norm on this one. While you'll still find the game data coverage you've come to expect from us, we've focused on adding more in the way of guides and tips to this section. No longer are sidequests bundled into unexpected places in the walkthrough; you'll now find detailed guides dedicated to the optional and non-sequential elements of the game, written both by staff and various long-time friends of the site, who are credited on the section main page.

We're also trying out a new spoiler system for the section, and we'd love some feedback on it. It's not perfect — if you go and look at the last chapter of the walkthrough when you're still playing the beginning, you're still going to get things spoiled — but hopefully it should largely protect you from wandering into massive spoilers accidentally, unless you turn the spoiler option on to view the full section content.

Plus, as usual, you'll find a selection of fanart and fanfiction, and a few downloadables we thought you might enjoy.

As ever, please do let us know of any errors or omissions, or things we could improve, particularly things you think should be spoilered that we might not have noticed. And finally, a massive, massive thank-you to everyone who's contributed to the section over the stupidly long time we've been building it, and special congratulations to Mr Thou, whose work on the section leads him to officially becoming a CoN staff member as of today.

Enjoy! ♥