Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. With every Final Fantasy game there exists great (and not so great) teams of heroes bent on saving the world from some sort of evil force. While we could take a look at those heroes, let’s instead take a look at the evils that motivate these heroes to do what they do. ...
Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. With every Final Fantasy game there exists great (and not so great) teams of heroes bent on saving the world from some sort of evil force. While we could take a look at those heroes, let’s instead take a look at the evils that motivate these heroes to do what they do. ...
Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. In an effort to diversify their holdings, Square Enix submit a peaceful takeover bid for Tecmo, the very troubled developer of many beloved series like Tecmo Bowl, Ninja Gaiden, and Dead or Alive. What did Squeenix get for asking nicely? A big, fat NO. Turns out Tecmo rather likes being independent, but not as much as they let on at first, despite their building problems with employees and the law. It all started not too long ago with the very public, very ugly departure of Tomonubu Itagaki, basically the brains behind all those classics like DoA and Ninja Gaiden. He claimed he didn’t receive the bonuses promised him for completion of his games. Not too long after the employees of Tecmo began suing for unpaid wages for forced overtime. Things were looking bleak for Tecmo. ...
It’s probably too early to start calling me Nostradamus (we’ll have to wait until the regular season of baseball ends to know just how good I am), but if you remember this post I mentioned that Mario RPG’s launch on the VC in PAL territories would spearhead a US release. Lo and behold, Mario RPG, one of the greatest Mario games, SNES games, and RPGs in gaming history. It’s too bad that Square Enix won’t be releasing any of its other landmark SNES RPGs on VC, preferring to milk tons of money out of players with remakes ( which we like) and ports ( which we find a bit annoying, but kind of like anyway). Go out and buy Mario RPG and let’s hope that Earthbound hits the system soon. ...
Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. As you all know by now, I love Chrono Trigger. The prospect of this new port of the SNES classic to the DS has me positively salivating at the thought. It all sounds super cool that I’ll be able to own another cart of this fantastic game and that it will have those nifty little improvements made to it. ...
Yoshinori Kitase has huge shoes to fill. As the producer of Final Fantasy XIII he’s looking at doing a job last held by Horonobu Sakaguchi in Final Fantasy X. Ok, Sakachuchi was technically the executive producer of that game, but with no other producers announced for XIII, I’m gonna come out and call him the EP. Kitase had this to say ( in this IGN article) about the new game and directions they’re taking: ...
It’s one of the most anticipated trailers of the year, the Japanese trailer of FF XIII. Note that the blog category is Sony and doesn’t include M$, but this is because this is the Japanese trailer, a region where FF XIII will not see a 360 release. Behold the trailer of the game Square Enix is calling flashier than than the Final Fantasy games that preceded it. It starts out in typical Final Fantasy fashion, but definitely flashes it up when the combat starts to show up. I’m definitely excited about the new direction and new protagonist. ...
Many a developer has come out saying that console exclusives just don’t make any sense in this new, expensive game development environment. That being said, I’m pretty sure no one on earth outside of Square Enix could possibly have predicted that Final Fantasy XIII will be simultaneously launching on both the Xbox 360 and PS3 in North America and Europe (whenever the game launches). To help give this mind-blowing announcement some perspective, the last main series Final Fantasy game (that wasn’t a remake or port) to be released on a non-Sony platform was Final Fantasy VI for the SNES back in 1994. ...
SPOILER ALERT: This review may contain story spoilers. Read at your own risk! Sakaguchi’s new company Mistwalker has had its share of problems. For very perplexing reasons they chose to chiefly develop for the Xbox 360 with side development on the Nintendo DS. As a result, nothing they make for the home console, no matter how good, will ever sell all that well in their home country. His first 360 game, Blue Dragon, sold 200,000 copies in Japan, which may sound good at first, but when you look at Final Fantasy XII’s two million sales in Japan, a whole order of magnitude more, it suddenly doesn’t seem like Sakaguchi is getting a fair shake. In fact, both Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey are no better or worse than a typical Square Enix game, but their sales are typically much lower, with Lost Odyssey only selling around 100,000 in the Land of the Rising Sun. ...
Our continuing examination of the best games of the post 16-bit, pre-current gen, we will be looking at two PS2 RPGs that I particularly enjoyed. Our first game was a groundbreaking collaboration between two entirely unrelated, gigantic companies that were leaders in their industry. What resulted was a great game that wasn’t quite simple or clean, but was surprisingly interesting and fun despite its flaws. That’s right, the game is the multi-million-selling Squaresoft and Disney collaboration, Kingdom Hearts. ...