News

As part of the celebration for the Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary, Square Enix brought in a wide array of artists to create an album celebrating the music of the series up to now. This is not exactly new news, though I believe we missed it in tidbits around the time that it was announced in October. The album was released last week, though, and to promote it a bit more, Square Enix Music posted this medley video to YouTube earlier this week, with samples of a large number of the tracks.

There's a lot of variety on show in this video, and it really makes for some fresh takes on some of the Final Fantasy music that we've heard for many, many years. It's piqued my interest, so I took some time to try to find some English-language shops that sell the double disc; while AmaCoN looked a bit pricey, I found that another of our shop affiliates, Play Asia, has the set for $35.00 including free shipping. If the video makes you want this for Christmas or... New Year's (?), hit that link right away.

Source: Square Enix YouTube, Destructoid

The site leak from a couple weeks back was confirmed today as Square Enix officially announced the existence of the Final Fantasy VII re-release on PC via its official site and social media.

The site is either really poorly optimized or is getting absolutely hammered right now (probably a bit of both, in fact), so you might not be able to reach it. It's pretty general information, and most of it is stuff that was reported before from the leak. One thing certainly worth noting is that the site says the game will be available exclusively from the Square Enix store, which would imply that the achievements and cloud saving features will be unique to this game and will not use technology like Steamworks. Additionally, the exclusivity might mean that a Steam (or Origin, if you're a masochist) release may not be in the cards at all.

Will it still be worth the rumored twelve-dollar entry fee without Steam? I'm no longer sure it is for me, but I'll have to see how it looks and runs, first. That information isn't yet available, nor is any kind of real release date.

Source: Final Fantasy VII PC

Square Enix CEO, Yoichi Wada, has told shareholders that the company won't be remaking Final Fantasy VII until such time as the franchise produces a new installment which surpasses the fan favourite. This statement was made hand-in-hand with the admission that recent Final Fantasy games have been inferior and that a remake at this point would imply that the franchise is finished. It's open to debate whether or not any Final Fantasy game has passed this benchmark to date, but it appears Wada certainly doesn't think so.

It remains to be seen whether this strengthens or weakens the recent rumours of a PC re-release, as reported previously, but one thing is for certain - we won't be seeing a full remake any time soon.


Source: Den of Geek, Andriasang

Website NowGamer reports today that a Square Enix-owned Final Fantasy VII PC website implies that a new Final Fantasy VII release for PC might be coming soon.

The page, which was taken down and now exists only in Google cache (keep clicking "cancel" to eventually see the content), implies that this new game has some new features. Achievements will be added, and the game will also include the ability to save games to the cloud - or is that Cloud? Finally, if you want to enjoy the game again without having to grind through it, it appears that this version of the game will even include a "character booster" that will allow you to edit your savegame to make grinding unnecessary.

Is this a real thing? We don't know yet, unfortunately. If it is, though, for the low price listed ($7.99 US!), I'd be up for owning a new version of this game.

Source: NowGamer

You might recall laszlow's post from a couple months back, in which we, the gamers, were invited to vote upon which games should be included in their retrospective. Time has flown, and now the results have been made public - well, people who voted got the results an hour ago, but now they're actually public.

So, how did your favorite games do? If you're thinking specifically of Square Enix games, they did pretty okay. For the PlayStation, three of the four games came from the old Squaresoft: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Einhander. Beyond that, though, not so hot; Final Fantasy lost to Zelda, Chrono Trigger also lost to Zelda, and Actraiser whiffed against the first Sim City on SNES.

I think a fair number of the results were pretty predictable, but that's probably because a lot of the games are either truly impressive, had lax competition in their categories, or both. I happily greeted the news that Bioshock and Portal both got in, personally, and was quite amused to see Minecraft topple the Starcraft II juggernaut. To form your own opinions, just hit the source link below.

Source: Smithsonian Institute

In 2050, I'll be seventy years old. At the rate I'm going, far too arthritic to even pick up a gamepad, let alone play Final Fantasy VII with it. Certainly too old to use PlayStation Move, I'm sure. However, that's the latest on the ongoing not-really-news saga of a FF7 remake; Wada-san claimed that it would take at least ten times longer in development as Final Fantasy XIII. That's probably a joke. But it certainly is another indicator that it just isn't going to happen.

Not-news aside, it's another fairly quiet week leading up to E3, and, more importantly, the World Cup. (Seriously, the WC is only every four years. You get E3 every summer.) The biggest news is probably that a large number of Final Fantasy XI accounts were compromised recently. Not a good time, either, since Squenix will no doubt be looking to convert a great many of their current user base to Final Fantasy XIV later this year.

For those looking for Final Fantasy XIII Versus, SiliconEra reports that it's in the queue behind new localizations (like the just-released Korean version) of Final Fantasy XIII and the release of Final Fantasy XIV. It appears that since Final Fantasy XIV is due out in 2010, Versus will be sometime in 2011 now. Does anyone else find it odd that the spinoff will come out after the sequel?

The DLC news of the week is around the new WiiWare game, "Kumanage," dropping in Japan next week. It's two games in one, a puzzle game and a active-battle game, both using the Wiimote for core gameplay mechanics. It is also filed under the category "cute," which I know will shock the readership, with it being a WiiWare game and all. No word yet on exactly when it might come across the ocean, but it has been rated already by both the US and the European ratings commissions, so something later this summer is not entirely unlikely.

Finally, the unneeded accessory of the week award goes to this external speaker and DS stand, shaped like a Slime. I'm all for big Slimes - let's be honest, the Slime is probably the most iconic monster design in RPGs. This just seems like a huge, useless pain in the butt, though, does it not?

Source: Kotaku, SiliconEra, AndriaSang