News

Two days ago, Working Designs president Victor Ireland announced through the company's message board that Working Designs has gone the way of Ted Woolsey - a legendary localizer no longer in the business of video games.

Working Designs was a US-based game localizer that took many Japanese games - predominantly RPGs - and brought them to American shores. The small publisher gained a dedicated following and critical acclaim in publishing the English versions of Lunar: Silver Star Story and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue, in addition to Alundra, Dragon Force, Growlanser Generations, and many other small-time cult favorites. This "journalist" is particularly disheartened at the company's demise, for he has been praying for a Lunar anthology-style re-release for several years and also counts Dragon Force among his favorite Saturn games.

WD was rather notorious, however, for inflated prices and long delays for their titles, and a dwindling fanbase and increasingly poor sales for their games (notably the recent Growlanser Generations and Arc the Lad Collection) served as the final nails in their coffin. However, Victor Ireland has recently been in contact with Microsoft Game Studios in the interest of a Working Designs revival of sorts. Ireland is currently encouraging fans to write MGS directly telling them which Japanese older games they would like to see ported to the 360. It is difficult to tell if this Microsoft-Working Designs union will ever happen, however, so it's too early to rejoice (or despair, for you XBox haters out there).

Source: 1up

It looks as though Namco is next in line for bringing a flagship RPG series to the Nintendo DS, this time with the continuation to the developer's groundbreaking Tales saga, entitled Tales of the Tempest, unspecifically planned to release in Japan sometime in 2006. Namco has also provided fans with the newly launched Tales of the Tempest website, although it's exclusively in Japanese for the time being.

Tales of the Tempest places the player in the shoes of fifteen-year-old Caius Qualls from the village of Alleula. Sadly, he discovers one day that the man he looked upon as his adoptive father is not exactly human, but instead a beastman - a fact revealed in the midst of an attack on the village. The residents of Alleula quickly become wary of Caius and his father, thus refusing to aid the two in escaping from the chaos. Caius, however, succeeds in evading the enemy along with his friend Lupia, then sets out on his own quest to track down his real parents. According to Namco, the handheld title is sure to be packed with unique action-based gameplay, much like all the Tales games before it, thereby ensuring frequent use of the DS's touch screen.

As many gamers are aware, Tales of the Tempest was only one of four titles trademarked by Namco earlier this month; the three that remain shrouded in mystery are Tales of Doom Sign, Tales of Two Faiths, and Tales of Howling. Currently there's no further information available regarding these three proposed games.

Source: RPGFan

Grandia III, the long-awaited and quick-to-become-a-hit RPG following its launch in Japan this past August, only recently received a massive hint through the ESRB in late October at a North American release, helping end months of dispute over whether or not the game would ever get here - although most figured it would. Yesterday evening, in response, Square-Enix USA finally put the finishing touches on the game's official domestic website, opening it to the hoards of eager fans inhabiting the partial western world. If anything, it serves as undeniable proof that Grandia III is currently in the localization process.

In actuality, the Flash based site doesn't display too much in the way of features at the moment, consisting of little more than the Grandia III tagline ("Claim the power of the gods... before your enemies do") along with the promise of a brand new trailer on December 22nd. In the meantime, the latest gameplay trailer - now in English - has been let loose, yet appears to be somewhat sparing in terms of new material.

Grandia III is expected to cross North American shores around the first part of March, 2006. It's unknown if the reported timeframe is set in stone, therefore delays remain likely. Thus far no word on a potential European release has been made, but considering past installments it's probably only a matter of time.

Sources:
IGN
RPGamer

BioWare, the folks behind several hit online roleplaying games such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the upcoming XBox 360 title, Mass Effect, is holding a contest that could land you a job as a professional writer for the popular game company. How so? As part of their search for fresh and creative ideas to help inspire their future releases, BioWare is asking anyone interested in having their work noticed on a far grander scale to come up with unique concepts for a new Neverwinter Nights module using the Aurora NWN Toolset and Dialogue Editor. If your written work is chosen, you could soon find yourself as a part of the biz!

According to the contest parameters, the module description must contain a maximum of 3500 words or less, including all settings and dialogue in the story; the time period itself must be set within a medieval era, yet possess a fantasyesque atmosphere. Also, no more than four characters are allowed to be present in the module, with only one of which being playable. Additional requirements, guidelines and links to the downloadable tools needed to create a module are listed on the official site's contest page.

A panel of judges on behalf of BioWare will select three of the best submissions as winners, and five more winners will be selected by the Neverwinter Nights community at NWVault. These final eight entries will then be reviewed by Kevin Barrett and James Ohlen - both of the development company's senior staff - with the ultimate prizes in mind: Rewarding the very best writers with an assortment of BioWare merchandise as well as the possibility of hiring the most talented participants as official writers for the company. "BioWare needs good writers to make the best games we can and we are asking all of you to tell us a story."

The contest's submission deadline is January 30th, 2006.

A long time overdue addition, we now have a few more game reviews on the site.

You can check our new additions in our Final Fantasy Review section.

Dark Paladin was kind enough to provide reviews for both Final Fantasy 1 and Final Fantasy 4, while Djibriel did the same for Final Fantasy 6.

If you feel like adding your own opinion on the subject, feel free to post your own review for any game we cover in the Site Submission Forum. If you do, please remember to follow our guidelines on the subject, so that they'll be entered properly. Thank you all in advance.

I hate to burden all of you with two news updates in a single morning, but this news tidbit was too juicy to ignore. 1up.com has released a final preview of Final Fantasy IV Advance, detailing the new dungeons and returning characters. I'll cover their preview to the best of my ability, saving you all the trouble of reading the 1up article yourselves.

To refresh your memory, FF IV Advance provides improved graphical textures, new menu portraits, and a refined translation compared to any previous version of the game, plus adds two new optional dungeons and a means for replacing characters in and out of your party. The game's difficulty is the same as it was in the original Japanese "Hardtype." For better or for worse, several spell names have changed, using the ara and aga suffixes rather than the oldschool numerals and changing Meteo to Meteor (I personally find that last edit disgraceful).

After defeating the Giant of Babil, you can replace Kain, Rosa, Rydia, or Edge with Palom, Porom, Cid, Edward, or Yang, each of whom was in your party sometime earlier in the story. Each of the five returning characters have had adjusted stats to make them useful in the new lategame. Cid "is a total hoss", featuring superior HP and Defense compared to other characters and Edward, while as frail as ever, is adept at inflicting status effects with his harps (far more so now than on the SNES). After re-recruiting these five characters, your party can return to Mount Ordeals for a short but intense 8-floor dungeon whose end features five new powerful weapons, one for each of your returning characters. Yang's weapon is the holy-elemental Hand of the Gods, Cid's is the randomly-Thundaga-casting Thor's Hammer, Edward's is called Apollo's Harp, Palom's the Triton's Dagger, and Porom's the Seraphim Mace.

If that wasn't enough for you, there is still another optional endgame dungeon, The Lunar Ruins found on the Moon. Once you've beaten the game, this new dungeon is unlocked, featuring nine special sealed gates, one corresponding to each character, with Palom and Porom sharing the same gate. In each gate, you'll first need to endure a brutal dungeon that makes the Path to the Core "look like a cakewalk." The early levels of the Lunar Ruins feature monsters that we're already familliar with, like Behemoths, Minds, and Wicked Faces from the final dungeon, but the lower levels include new monsters that are more difficult than any random encounter in the game. At the end of each of the sealed gate dungeons, you'll need to take the associated character along for a special trial - these trials range from Yang taking on dozens of powerful Monks to an airship-flying minigame for Cid. At the end of each set of trials we fight a beefed-up Lunar version of one of Rydia's summons, with HP ranging from 90,000 to more than 120,000. Beating each Lunar Summon will net you a new powerful piece of equipment and a special item called a Grimoire. Getting all nine Grimoires will unlock the game's ultimate challenge - "an unbelievably difficult fight that should make aficionados of FFIV trivia particularly happy."

So that's the game. This seems to be very similar and at the same time very different from the Dawn of Souls remake - there are a great deal of new features but instead of dumbing down the gameplay experience, it's more hardcore than ever. All of the information I've provided is derived from Gamespot's screenshots archive and 1up's detailed preview linked in the first paragraph. Final Fantasy IV Advance is released December 12th, 2005 in the US.