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Could this be the start of a trend? First Japanese cellphone-exclusives The Third Birthday and Final Fantasy Agito XIII receive PSP ports, and now we have a WiiWare port for the cellphone-exclusive Final Fantasy IV The After: Tsuki no Kikan.

This sequel to Final Fantasy IV is planned to be released in monthly installments over Japanese cellphones. Virtually all of the surviving characters from Final Fantasy IV make appearances, with a few of their offspring as playable characters (Cecil's son Theodor and Yang's daughter Ursula). Kain makes a key appearance as one of the game's major antagonists. The game uses a traditional SNES-era Final Fantasy interface, with 2D sprites, the ATB system, and random battles. The stats of players and appearances of monsters vary on lunar phases, which can be changed by spending the night at an inn. In addition, players can execute powerful "band" attacks that require any two players taking action, similar to Twin attacks in Final Fantasy IV DS or Dual Techs in Chrono Trigger.

The ESRB (North America's rating organization for videogames, the equivalent of Europe's PEGI or Japan's CERO) has published ratings for Final Fantasy IV: The After Years as a WiiWare game dated for 2009. This is all the information we have on a non-Japanese release, and hopefully we'll have more information soon.

Source: Kotaku

Final Fantasy XIII may remain a far off dream, but the distant echoes of series spin-off Crystal Chronicles are quickly approaching. "Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time" has been given an official release date of January 29 in Japan, and is expected to hit the North American market sometime this Spring.

Like the rest of the Crystal Chronicles series, the gameplay of Echoes will heavily rely on action-RPG aspects and puzzles, rather than the traditional turn-based combat of the main Final Fantasy series. Echoes will be available on both the Wii and the Nintendo DS, and the game will take advantage of the two systems' interconnectivity to allow online multiplayer. Additionally, Nintendo seems to have realized that we're tired of letting those dozens of Miis we made on launch day languish without a purpose in life; players of the Wii version will be able to import their favorite Miis into the game.

Source: GameSpot

I've never been a fan of the Crystal Chronicles series, but even I'm tempted by this. The short blurb about the story in the above link sounds like it could be interesting... as long as we don't find out that the heroine is sick because she ate dragon grass not once, but twice. Stupid princesses who eat dragon grass two--count 'em, TWO--times deserve what they get. Really, the Crystal Chronicles line always seemed to me like a kiddie version of the (occasionally) more mature main series storylines. These saccharine tales of precocious fourteen-year-olds aren't quite as cute now that I'm not fourteen, yanno?

Chrono Trigger DS is coming to the United States on November 25, 2008, just in time to give North American games another thing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, but unfortunately also just in time for laszlow to pick up a new distraction from semester exams. Earlier information indicated a release in early December, but a new press release from Square-Enix gives us a new, definite time.

In other regions, the release date is still uncertain, with a "Winter 2008" release in Japan and an "Early 2009" release in Europe and Australia.

Source: Kotaku

After too much waiting for a game that doesn't require any real localization at all, Amazon.co.uk now has a release date for Final Fantasy IV DS; it's September 5, 2008. Of course, that's coming up in just over three weeks, which really makes sense given that there wasn't any real localization necessary. As usual, AmaCoN tries hard to get all preorders to you on the actual release date of the game, so you won't have to wait: order now.

The other new release dates for the day are for the new Harvest Moon games, for the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii, subtitled "Island of Happiness" and "Tree of Tranquility" respectively. While the Harvest Moon series has always been a bit niche, even for a series that has been going on for over a decade, I know there are quite a few fans who might be looking to pick these games up; if you're one of them, you can preorder now for a DS release on August 26 and a Wii release on September 16. Not only that, Amazon preorders for these games pack in farm animal plushies as bonuses. So, uh, get your farm... animals?

In a surprise announcement, Square Enix president Yoichi Wada confirmed during Microsoft's E3 press conference today that Final Fantasy XIII is to be released on the Xbox 360, contrary to previous expectation that the title would be released exclusively for PlayStation 3. Wada spoke of his belief that this would broaden the game's availability to North American and European players, though neither he nor Microsoft's press release made any mention of a Japanese 360 release, leading to widespread speculation that the game may remain PS3-exclusive in that territory — news which no doubt has all six Japanese Xbox owners up in arms.

A Square-Enix press conference followed, during which producer Yoshinori Kitase and executive Shinji Hashimoto discussed further details:

• There may be differences between the versions due to the capacity difference between Blu-Ray and DVD. However, the current plan is to keep the content identical. One might speculate, therefore, that the 360 version may come on multiple DVDs.
• 360-specific development is set to begin following completion of the Japanese PS3 version, along with English translation.
• This is a relatively recent decision, largely based on the 360's wide installation base outside Japan. This seems to fit with the notion that the 360 version may not hit Japan.
• Uncategorised additional appendage FFXIII:VS will not be multiplatform. (Presumably just like FFXIII itself wasn't. Just saying.)

No release date has yet been announced, but Microsoft's press release indicates that the game will be available to 360 owners "at launch" in NA and the EU, which is presumably a quirky, press-release sort of way of saying it'll be out the same day for both consoles.

It's a good thing nobody bought an expensive, launch-era PS3 just for the promise of a Final Fantasy exclusive. Nobody did that, right?

Sauces:
Microsoft Press Release
Gamespot Story
Kotaku Liveblog (whatever that means) of the SE press conference
Tomato

So we know that it's been discussed a bit already, but this is news big enough that it simply must be brought onto our front page: Chrono Trigger is coming to the Nintendo DS.

Of course, the new version is going to be somewhat different, very likely in terms of a new dungeon, since that tends to be the stock addition to all of the Square-Enix remakes coming out these days. However, I'd also expect it to contain all of the additional data tables found in the PSX version, and of course the animated cut scenes. Finally, since this is coming out for the DS, there's no reason not to expect a great deal of interactivity between top and bottom screens. Heck, they even say that in the press release.

The final big news for today is that we now have an English-titles trailer; it's nothing amazing, but it does show that the gameplay and in-game graphics won't be changing, and it does give a launch window of Winter 2008, surely meant to imply that it will be launching just before Christmas. We will have, of course, links for you to preorder the game as we get them.

Source: Square-Enix North America