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At yesterday's Nintendo Direct, Nintendo were very careful to warn users that there would be no discussion of the upcoming Switch successor. However, there were a lot of pretty great games announced and/or shown, and among them were a set of four games coming from Square Enix that will appeal to CoN readers today.

The first announcement came not just from Square Enix, but from Mistwalker, the current home of Final Fantasy progenitor Hironobu Sakaguchi. Squenix will publish a console release of Mistwalker's Apple Arcade game, Fantasian, sometime this coming winter. The original release of the game was three years ago; the new release will be for all current consoles and also PCs on Steam.

For Squenix themselves, the company showed a new trailer for the HD-2D remake of Dragon Quest III, as well as announcing a release date of November 14. It will also be released for all current consoles and PC. It looks and sounds as good as you'd expect from seeing previous HD-2D games from Square Enix and Artdink.

Dragon Quest III is the earliest game in terms of narrative in the original three games, though, so you might be wondering, what of the earlier-released games of the series? Turns out that Squenix sneaked another announcement into the new trailer; HD-2D releases of Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest II are also in production, and will be released sometime in 2025.

The final game from yesterday’s Direct was the announcement of another remake, this time Romancing SaGa 2. It's a fully-3D remake of the original 1993 Super Famicom game, complete with voice acting, and will be released October 24 of this year. This one won't come to Microsoft consoles but will still be released on other consoles and Steam.

Rumors had been bouncing around for the last couple days that a remaster or remake of the classic Squaresoft/Nintendo collaboration for SNES would appear at today's Direct, and so it was.The original game released in 1996 and the original was packaged up for Virtual Console on Wii and Wii U, but never for Switch, and perhaps now we know why. The game's been redone with a very nice new engine, even with the slightly-squished look of the original isometric visuals intact.

The new version of the game will release on November 17, 2023. Digital preorders are available now; I assume there will be a physical release of the game as well, but those details are not yet available.

Source: Nintendo of America YouTube

Bright and early this morning in the West, Konami dropped an announcement trailer for a remaster of the first two games in the Suikoden series. Originally released in the mid and late 1990s for the first PlayStation, the new remastered versions were announced with a vague "2023" release date. The two games will drop as a single bundle for PlayStation 4, XBox One, Switch, and Steam, but pricing information has yet to be released. At the very least, it should be considerably less than it would cost you to get an original copy of Suikoden II in this day and age! Check out the lovely visuals below.

The first three games in Square's long-running SaGa series were announced today for Switch in today's miniature Nintendo Direct. American gamers may still remember them on Game Boy under their American release name, "Final Fantasy Legend;" the first three games were all handheld and were originally released in the West in 1990, 1991, and 1993 respectively.

The new release is digital-only and is coming December 15, and is available for pre-order at $19.99. The games will have some additions such as fast-forward mode and cloud saves, as well as the ability to do some level of customization on the display wrappers around the old aspect ratio of the game display. In handheld mode, emulated on-screen controls will allow you to play the game either horizontally or vertically (to, I guess, emulate the feel of holding the Game Boy in your hands). The games will also be playable in TV or tabletop modes for the standard Switch.

Source: Nintendo

Back in April, Sega (apparently, I clearly missed it) announced some re-releases of some very old games as digital downloads for Switch. Among them are the first Sonic the Hedgehog game, but more interestingly for RPG players, the first Phantasy Star game is coming too. It's a heavily-upgraded version for Switch, as well; the game is adding automapping for its dungeons, a bestiary, a full list of equipment from the game's menus, and a reduced-difficulty mode.

It's coming out in Japan next month and will be 925 yen, a little over eight dollars. The game's been announced for the West, too, but with no release date or confirmed price point (though you can probably expect about ten dollars). I never got to play any of the Phantasy Star series growing up, and I don't yet have a Switch, but this looks like a pretty nice package. Good for Sega for freshening things up!

Source: Kotaku, Sega Ages | Phantasy Star

After many years and countless hours spent in Skyrim, Bethesda last night finally announced the development of Elder Scrolls VI at their pre-E3 presentation. The announcement trailer was nothing more than thirty seconds of very pretty landscape followed by a logo, but Elder Scrolls fans can understandably be pretty excited nonetheless. Gematsu reports that the game is for "the next-generation," which might not be a great sign for when it will be released - or perhaps they simply mean a new generation of fans, as it's already been seven years and counting since the release of Skyrim.

Source: Gematsu