News

Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of Marvelous Interactive's popular Harvest Moon series, prompting a celebratory announcement of three new installments.

First off, Shintarou Mashima, president of Arte Piazza and the development team behind Innocent Life - Shin Bokujou Monogatari for the PSP, stated that the game will feature concepts of both "big adventure" and "slow life of the future". In addition to the flagship series' normal role-playing and farming and life simulations, the controlled character will have to solve a number of riddles relating to a legend spoken within the town. Innocent Life is looking at a Spring, 2006 release date in Japan.

Meanwhile, Rune Factory - Shin Bokujou Monogatari, slated for release on the Nintendo DS, will attempt to steer the series in a slightly different direction: In previous Harvest Moon titles, players were able to tend to crops and livestock on farmland devoid of any notable dangers, save the occasional rainstorm or hurricane. Rune Factory, however, will add monsters into the mix, allowing players to either capture them or fight them off in an RPG battle fashion. The game will be available in Japan sometime next year.

Finally, Bokujou Monogatari Online (Harvest Moon Online) has yet to receive a concrete announcement regarding the platform for its release, although Marvelous Interactive has said that a PC version is possible. No launch date has currently been set.

Source: RPGFan

Since I've been away from a PC for almost twenty-four hours now, I assume that most of you have already seen all this. I know a lot of you have seen the new avatars, as I myself and several of you have already taken advantage of them.

Thanks to Teta, we now have a new large gallery of stylized FFT portrait avatars - as stated, my current Ramza comes directly from them. Thanks a lot, Teta, for making them for us! Additionally, I decided to add just a couple more FF6 avatars from the PSX port, mostly of Squall being abused and Onion Kid looking chubby and goofy.

And, thanks to our new fanart team (this time, it was Mimic and Kappa the Imp), we've got a big chunk of new fanart too. This update features art from Kame, Galsic, Rujuken, Ronin, Bum's Rush, BratKitty, Silverfork, and Perigryn, and it includes some new stuff from every single game we cover! Thanks a lot to all for the submissions and work.

By now most gamers in the US are familiar with the recent bill passed in California intended to further restrict the sales of graphically violent video games to minors. This has seemingly acted as a cue for other states to follow its lead, beginning with Florida senator Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who introduced a similar bill this week.

Diaz de la Portilla's bill, more specifically, is nearly identical to the bill approved by California governer Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both provide corresponding examples of what constitutes a violent video game, and the limit on fines for breaking this law as well as the required 2-inch-by-2-inch label reading "18" on the covers of adult-themed games are virtually the same. Apparently the only difference between the two bills is that, under Diaz de la Portilla's legislation, anyone under the age of 18 will be forbidden to access violent games within arcades in addition to stores.

Video game legislation is becoming quite a hot topic among state leaders. Tighter laws regarding violent games have garnered heavy support on both sides of the political spectrum in recent years, and further debates aren't expected to cause a division along party lines.

Source: GameSpot

The 100,000th post came courtesy of new staffer Caesar, posting in the fabulous A Perfect FFVI World: Change it or leave it thread!

That, of course, concludes our contest as well. And, as my own personal luck would have it, we have two winners. Nobody guessed the exact day, but both DarkPaladin and Zodiac should be thanking Caesar for making them the closest guessers. They will now have first crack at a special mousepad or mug, available only to them. Of course, should they decide they don't want those special edition prizes, they can also have their pick of any other mousepad or mug from CoNStore.

What are these prizes, you might ask? Well, they'll have special customized items featuring the new CoN logo, debuting right now for this occasion:



Congratulations to our two winners, who can expect to hear from me soon, and thank you to everyone who brought us our first one hundred thousand posts!

Until Halloween, everyone can get a discount on all CoNStore items purchased through CafePress. I know that we don't sell a lot there because items are a bit pricey, but for the next week you can get $10 off any $25 order. Just fill your cart and use code DES1 at checkout to get the discount.

I wonder if I can use that to buy the prize for the 100K Post Contest...

We're looking for volunteers to join SilverFork on the news team.

Your task as a newsposter would be to locate news stories relating to Final Fantasy and Square-Enix, and of general interest to RPG fans, and report on them for CoN's front page news.

We're after people with the following qualities:

• Enthusiasm about games to the point of enjoying searching out news about them;
• A good grasp on proper usage of English, including spelling and grammar;
• Prepared to spend time to ensure their news reports are of the highest quality possible.

You would be required to make a certain number of news posts per month - that number will depend on the number of staff we take on to the position.

If you're interested, please e-mail climhazzard@cavesofnarshe.com to let us know. Please provide a sample news article in the e-mail, exactly as you would post it to our news forum if you had the job. Feel free to ask any questions either by replying to this post or sending e-mail as detailed above (though if it is a general question with an answer that could well benefit other potential applicants, the former would be preferred).

We look forward to hearing from you!