News

As noted with our coverage of Nintendo's conference yesterday, there's about to be a pretty significant influx of games from Square Enix to the big N. Of course Dragon Quest IX is on the way to the DS already, as well as Kingdom Hearts Re:coded and The 4 Heroes of Light. Not only that, Nintendo announced yesterday that Squenix would be working on titles in no fewer than four franchises for the new 3DS: Chocobo Racing, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, and Final Fantasy. Kingdom Hearts is already being shown at E3 in the Squenix booth, but not much news coming from it as yet beyond that it is an all-new title, not just an old game remastered for 3D.

What else could come up at E3 from SE? Well, now we know a bit more. The company has announced two ports to Apple devices: a port of War of the Lions, the PSP remake of Final Fantasy Tactics, and also a port of the SNES classic Secret of Mana. There's not much more to know about these two games right now - both videos are nothing more than trailers superimposed onto an iPhone screen, and the only date given is "2010." There's a trailer for The 3rd Birthday as well, the successor to the Parasite Eve games of the PlayStation, in which Aya appears to pick up the ability to take over the bodies of some NPCs as she fights in an over-the-shoulder shooter fashion. That game will be on PSP in Japan later this year.

Something I had yet to see anything about is another 2010 release, "Necromachina," coming for the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network as a downloadable title. It looks to be a four-player co-op sidescrolling brawler, and if the trailer is a good representation of the overall game, it looks to be pretty hyperactive as well.

Finally, if you haven't seen the trailer for Final Fantasy XIV yet, or even if you have, you owe it to yourself to check out the source link below for the high-definition version. It looks absolutely gorgeous, and there's a nice big chunk of classic Crystal theme in there too. Of course, these aren't all the games that the giant Square Enix now have their hands in, but they're the most relevant. Check out their E3 site below for more, and we'll keep you updated if they sneak any surprises or further information out the rest of E3.

Source: Square Enix E3 2010, Square Enix YouTube Channel

I don't even know where to start this. There were some interesting bits and pieces here and there, but in almost two hours, there were very few things that caught the attention of #narshe. A few of the things that did were general fails on Sony's part - for example, ranting about exclusives and then showing Medal of Honor and talking about Metal Gear Solid: Rising, also out on PC and Xbox 360 respectively. Anyway.

What seemed like most of the conference was demonstrations of the Playstation Move, and the Playstation 3 in 3D. The videos of the latter were a little lost on everyone who wasn't there. You know, because my monitor isn't 3D, and I don't have those super-cool sunglasses. Hopefully this will be rectified next year where a select few of the staffers here at CoN will be getting invites to E3... we wish. The Playstation Move was a bit more visible, and although it did have some good footage, I didn't see much in the way of brand-new innovations.

There was little in the way of Square-Enix news, unfortunately. Obviously, they had a trailer for Final Fantasy XIV, but pretty much no information was released other than "ooooh, pretty". A short shot of a Kingdom Hearts game was also shown, for the PSP I believe, but nothing was given on that, either. The surprise announcement was easily the most exciting part, and that was Portal 2 to be released on PS3, with a short trailer. I want this so much, though my want will have nothing to do with the PS3. PC all the way, baby.

Other things that stood out include LittleBigPlanet 2, a virtual Sony E3 Booth on Playstation Home for you to explore, an-OH GOD WHY ARE THERE CREEPY CLOWNS GET THEM AWAY FROM ME NO I HATE YOU AAAAAA-

Quote of the conference goes to Kevin Butler for:
"If you have an awesome girlfriend, and someone else gets an awesome girlfriend, who wins? EVERYBODY."

CoN Twitter has asked for #welovepit to become a trending topic. Start by retweeting us!

Nintendo put on one heckuva show today. It honestly blew Microsoft's out of the water, in my opinion, and it even gave some real CoN news to post. The games looked solid - there was no Wii Music to be found this year. They led with the new Zelda, which looked pretty solid, despite some significant technological problems in the live demo with Miyamoto. Mario's new sports game had dodgeball in it, therefore it wins by default. The not-exactly-news Wiimake of Goldeneye starring Daniel Craig looked like everything it should be. Epic Mickey was one of the best looking games I have seen ever for the Wii, but the new Donkey Kong Country and Kirby, each with their unique styles, give Mickey a run on style alone.

And did you see the 3DS? Did you? Kid Icarus launch title. Remember, kids, #welovepit. It's got a larger upper screen than the DS, an analog nub, variable levels of 3D for titles that support it, and even a stereoscopic camera on the shell that will let you take stereoscopic 3D photos to view on the 3D screen.

But more than that, there's some Square Enix news tied in: Square Enix is one of the twenty third-party developers who are already working on 3DS titles, and Nintendo showed a Kingdom Hearts logo on screen during the presentation. We have no other details as yet - will it be a remixed version of an existing KH game? A brand new game in the continuum? Maybe Squenix will dribble out some details this week.

Wasn't the only RPG news that Nintendo covered, though, and from a CoN perspective, that alone blows away anything Microsoft had to offer. Dragon Quest IX is coming in 26 days, and while Reggie Fils-Aime didn't throw out any real information that we didn't already know, but to see the release get as much love as it did was impressive on Nintendo's part for a Squenix fan. The other RPG that got good face time was the Golden Sun sequel, also on DS. There was a good, solid minute of staged gameplay video on hand there.


Quote of the session, since I can't use one of my own, has to go to Gabe, who said "I hope [the G4 anchors] ask Reggie why there's not Mother 3 in America." Good question, no? It should be noted that Gabe also continued with a string of profanity about Reggie that we shouldn't reprint here.

And here's a tweet from the CoN Twitter to wrap up, why not?

Yeah, there was a lot of stuff at the Microsoft E3 press conference that will appeal to a LOT of people. I know this. Gears 3, Halo: Reach, Metal Gear, Crytek's new game... those are going to move a lot of copies. More power to all of you who want those games. For the core CoN audience, though, well, there wasn't all that much. The things I saw that were closest to RPGs were Fable III and possibly the Star Wars Kinect game if they include some good Knights of the Old Republic bits in there. (Don't forget, it was announced last night that Kinect is the real name for Natal.)

Other than that, though, not much for the Square-Enix fan to get excited over, I don't think. I think the best we could have hoped for was that Final Fantasy Versus XIII would break exclusivity the way that Final Fantasy XIII did, but there was no hide nor hair of Squenix anywhere to be seen. Not shocking, but still disappointing, no?

So, that said, feel free to discuss your favorite and least favorite bits of that conference. I'll circle back with mine in a moment since that's hardly front page news.

Nearly forgot, the best CoN user quote from this press conference has to go to Olly from chat. I had to clean it up a bit, because after all, it was from chat, but here's the paraphrase: "It's only a matter of time before there's an achievement for fondling yourself on Kinect for five or more people." Kudos, Olly, I guess.

After another brief dry spell in good Square Enix news, we're back with the Friday Tidbits again. I feel pretty confident that we're only a couple weeks away from a new blast of delicious news, though, as E3 is nearly upon us; the official conference starts on June 14, which is problematic given that this is also the first full week of the World Cup. Jerks. In this issue, we have news about how Squenix is a very healthy company, new info about the Western release of Birth By Sleep, some screenshots from the Final Fantasy XIV alpha release, a Squenix world record, some news not news about Final Fantasy Versus XIII (which still exists!), and a few other scattered release dates.

First off, if you might have been worried about Square Enix staying afloat with the mixed reviews of their in-house games, well, don't be. At the rate they're going, they'll have money to produce Final Fantasies up through XCVI, at least. Their top five games of their last fiscal year all sold over a million copies each for their year ending in April 2010, with three of them selling over three million apiece worldwide. That's not a low number of games, kids, and only one of them was not a Squenix IP.

Birth By Sleep, the newest Kingdom Hearts game is still coming, and now it's dated. It's coming September 7 (September 10 in Europe), and it is going to pack some high profile voice work, including Leonard Nimoy and Mark Hamill. If those two names don't pique your interest, how about James Woods? At the very least, that should appeal to hardcore Family Guy fans, right? If you're a KH fan without a PSP, Sony's even going to give you a $200 silver PSP bundle with the game, a nice big Memory Stick, and an unnamed movie. And it's not a PSP Go, so there's nothing to lose!

Everyone who got into the Final Fantasy XIV alpha is under a non-disclosure agreement. That means you're probably not going to get much info unless you know someone who really, really trusts you - however, Square Enix themselves released some screenshots this week. Might not be the most interesting information to come out about the game, but it's what you're going to get probably until at least E3.

Finally, you might have heard that our buddy Yoichi Wada stick his foot into it a bit this week, saying that the PlayStation 3-exclusive Final Fantasy Versus XIII might be on the table for a multiplatform release. Of course, since then, there's been some (probably Sony-suggested) spin that the initial statement doesn't necessarily mean anything at all. Since there's no release date for the game yet, it's hard to say right now one way or another. I doubt anything will come from it at E3, but Tokyo Game Show is a possibility.

Wrapping up, enjoy a couple more release dates. Siliconera has some release info you might have missed: the Japanese megahit Dragon Quest IX will be in North America on July 11th, with DLC to follow; The Four Heroes of Light, meanwhile, has been rated in Australia which means an English-language release is pending, and will almost certainly be popping up in Europe and North America sooner rather than later.

Source: Kotaku, SiliconEra, AndriaSang

As of this Monday, the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) agreed to hear a case related to video games arising in California. Instead of sending the law back to the 9th Circuit Court of California (which struck down the video game law), SCOTUS will review the decision some time after their next session begins October 4.

The law, authored by California State Senator Leland Yee, made it illegal to rent or sell violent video games to minors with a $1,000 penalty against the retailers. The video game violence bill was passed through the Californian legislature in 2005, and since then has passed through the U.S. District Court and the 9th Circuit Court. Each court has struck down the law, arguing that the legislation violated the First Amendment, citing video games as protected speech, just as movies and music have been. The lower courts have also denied certain studies relating video games to violence, stating that as of the moment no studies conclusively find that video games directly cause violence.

The name of the case will be as follows:

SCHWARZENEGGER, GOV. OF CA V. ENTERTAINMENT MERCHANTS, ET AL.

Now, despite the comedic irony that the Terminator is sponsoring anti-video game legislation, this is a serious case. The question will be whether the Supreme Court will grant the same protections to video games as they and the lower courts have music and movies. And this is very likely to ignite a debate about video games and violence again.

Source: GamePolitics, SupremeCourt.gov