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Shonen Jump, each December, puts on the Jump Festa expo for anime, manga and games. Japan, being fully futuristic as shown in most anime documentaries, naturally calls this year's iteration "Jump Festa 2016." This year, Square Enix will take the stage on December 19 and 20 for several presentations to be broadcast on YouTube. Here's the schedule, with all times listed as UTC and EST.

Day 1:

• December 19, 1:30AM UTC / December 18, 8:30PM EST: Star Ocean: Integrity & Faithlessness Stage interview with voice talent
• December 19, 3:30AM UTC / December 18, 10:30PM EST: Dragon Quest Builders Stage interview with the producers
• December 19, 5:30AM UTC / 12:30AM EST: Dragon Quest of the Stars Stage interview with the producers

Day 2:

• December 20, 4:00AM UTC / December 19, 11:00PM EST: Dragon Quest Monsters: Battle Scanner Stage introduction to a new Dragon Quest arcade game with the producers and voice talent
• December 20, 5:20AM UTC / 12:20AM EST: World of Final Fantasy Stage interview with the director and voice talent

The full list of games to be represented off the stage at Jump Festa are as follows:

• Dragon Quest Builders (Trailer, Playable Demo)
• Dragon Quest Monsters: Battle Scanner (Trailer)
• Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3 (Trailer, Playable Demo)
• Dragon Quest of the Stars (Stage Only)
• Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius (Trailer)
• The Sorrow of Sacrifice and Snow (Trailer)
• Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8: Final Chapter Prologue (Trailer)
• Star Ocean: Integrity & Faithlessness (Trailer)
• World of Final Fantasy (Trailer)

In related news, it was also announced today that the release date for the new Star Ocean has been pushed back to March 31 in Japan from its original date of February 25 to "increase the game's quality." Looking back on previous news here at CoN, one might imagine that graphics quality might be on that list.


Source: Gematsu

I've been utterly awful at keeping up with fanart this year - perhaps there's a volunteer opportunity for one of you readers out there - but thanks to a burst of energy, the CoNvent Calendar is returning for its second year! Every day from now until Christmas, we'll have a new fanart published to our calendar page. If you're a CoN member, you can visit each one and rate it; if you've rated all of the pieces by the end of the year, you'll get a limited-edition CoN award for your account! Start here, with the first day's art, from new CoN artist thirteenthangel.

To follow along, check the calendar page every day, watch the Fanart Commentary forum, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter! Happy Holidays!

Following the pattern of the Active Time Event series for Final Fantasy XV, the producers of the Star Ocean series aired on Thursday. For those of us spoiled by the subtitled XV events, it's worth noting that Star Ocean did not follow suit and was fully in Japanese. That said, there might not be a lot of information that we can pull out for you directly, but here are some highlights:

• While the fifth game in the series, Integrity and Faithlessness is the fourth game in the Star Ocean universe timeline, falling about halfway between "The Second Story" and "Till the End of Time."
• The entire party, up to seven, travels together during exploration.
• Each piece of equipment has custom illustrations representing it in menus. It appears that some of these items may be purchasable via Japanese storefronts in the real world.
• With so many party members, the battles are frenetic to say the least. The player controls just one at a time in an action-RPG system, while the others work on autopilot.
• A special edition has already been announced for Japan with at least some of the standard pack-ins, like an art book with content from the entire series and figurines.
• The music comes from the same source as Valkyrie Profile, and the Ultimate Box includes also a five-disc set of music from the Star Ocean and Valkyrie games.
• The game still doesn't look nearly as visually impressive as I would expect a PS4 RPG to at this point in the console's lifecycle. It's possible that the company is showing mostly the PS3 version so that the upgraded version dazzles at launch.

The game releases on February 25 in Japan, and in the west later in 2016. Gematsu has the full broadcast.

Source: Gematsu

Get turnt, CoN, because the impossible is coming true: Cloud Strife, of Final Fantasy VII fame, will be a playable fighter in the next Super Smash Bros., available on both Wii U and 3DS. The announcement came at the end of yesterday's Nintendo Direct, along with the promise of a "Super Smash Bros. Special Broadcast." The fact that Cloud was announced as an appetizer for this later event seems sufficient reason to get excited about what else -- perhaps even more of the Square Enix persuasion? -- might be in store.

We also learned from the same Squenix Nintendo Direct that two Dragon Quest games, VII and VIII, will finally be getting Western localizations on the 3DS in the second half of 2016. This confirms the rumors we heard last summer; the titles have not previously been released in the West due to concern at Square Enix as to whether they would be able to sell enough copies.

Source: Siliconera, Siliconera

We had news just the other day about how - O! If only we mortals could try! - we could be seeing Moogles in Final Fantasy XV. And, now, just a few days later, it seems that the cries of humanity have seen response, and the darling little mascots will indeed appear in the final game. Apparently, as per Tabata, there won't be much of a role for them due to the late stage of the process, but in the game they shall be.

Why, one might think that this was their plan all along, and perhaps the call to action was merely an attempt to get a brief bump in social media virality for the upcoming flagship game. One might think that, indeed, or instead, one might simply decide that there is a higher power out there looking out for the enjoyment of all Final Fantasy gamers. Blessed deity, hear the pleas of we sinners who all too often overlooked thy blessings of Final Fantasy XIII, and deliver unto us our furry, antennae'd batcats.

Man. That was one strange newspost.


Source: Siliconera

In an interview with the French videogame website Jeuxvideo, Nobuo Uematsu said that he would not be working on the remake of Final Fantasy 7 "at all."

It's hard to know exactly how to feel about this. FF7 boasts, after all, one of the best-liked of Uematsu's soundtracks; it seems odd to not have the legendary composer involved, even in a supervising or purely symbolic/honorary role. On the other hand, the remake may well not actually require any new composition, in which case Square Enix have already proved themselves perfectly capable of remastering and re-recording soundtracks without the oversight of original composers.

Uematsu's last major composition project for Square Enix was the soundtrack for Final Fantasy XIV back in 2010 (though he has also been involved in music for its expansions); since then he has headed up several soundtracks for Sakaguchi's Mistwalker studio, and he is currently listed as lead composer for the Kickstarter-funded Project Phoenix.

Source: Siliconera