News

Front Mission Mobile joined Square Enix's line of cellphone games for the Japanese NTT Docomo service on March 7. Front Mission is the third major Square Enix console series to be ported to Docomo's cellphone platform, following last year's releases of Dragon Quest i and Final Fantasy titles.

Much like Final Fantasy VII: Before Crisis, the new Front Mission game has been designed such that Square Enix may periodically release future installments of the game, which are to be downloaded from their website with compatible phones. Access to the game and its new installments requires a monthly premium of about US $5, added directly to the user's phone bill.

Screenshots of the first installment, "Front Mission 2089," may be found at the game's official website.

Do you live in Illinois? If so, come Feb 19th, you may be able to go to the Final Fantasy Symphony Concert, featuring music by the ever-popular Nobuo Uematsu. (Source:RPGamer.com)

"The two-hour program will be produced by Uematsu, and conducted by Grammy award winning Arnie Roth, who is the music director and principal conductor of the Chicagoland Pops. Scenes and scores from the games will be seen on massive screens.

Other tour locations or which scores from the games have not been confirmed at this time."

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I think this is very exciting. There's a link on this page that gives details about purchasing tickets.

Although it's mentioned in RPGamer's news report that he may come back in the future, for the moment, Nobuo Uematsu is unfortunately leaving Square Enix.

The reason for his leaving is for greener pastures, although at the time it is not clear which pastures he feels are greener, and why. It is mentioned, however, that he has quite a busy schedule, especially with his band The Black Mages.

After working with Square Enix for 20 years, Uematsu noted that his most memorable composition is Eyes on Me, the main theme from FFVIII, and that his favourite game compositions were from FFVI, FFVII and FFVIII.

EDIT: Sometime after my posting this, RPGamer ammended their news post to say that this is a RUMOUR. So while it's possible, as of now, this piece of news has not been completely verified.

EDIT #2: It has now been confirmed that the above is true. Uematsu will be joining a company called "Smile Please" in November, and does not wish to call his leaving quitting, as that term is too extreme.

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I was a little taken aback when I saw this piece of news, though the man has put in 20 years already with Squeenix. He did do the music for FFXII, so we'll have that at least.

Courtesy of: RPGamer

Following the recent trend of releasing old Final Fantasy games (or, in this case, in releasing FF games that did not make it outside of Japan) Square Enix is now planning on releasing FFIII, which was first released in 1990 in Japan. The game will be on the Nintendo DS, and it's said that it will have the same quality as the FFI and II releases.

It is not yet known when it will be released, however, in either Japan or the rest of the world.

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While I would like to play this game, I'd rather it not be coming out on a little handheld that I don't even own. Anyone else notice a trend with this? FF games for handhelds, and cell phones (like that one FFVII spinoff).

On a positive note, it's good to see previously unreleased games coming out on this side of the Pacific.

As a teaser of sorts, Square Enix has added three songs from FFXII to the game's official website.

The songs are the work of FFXII main composer Hitoshi Sakimoto. This will be the first Final Fantasy in which Nobuo Uematsu does not hold that title. As of right now, the titles of the first and third songs are unknown. Song two, however, is believed to be "Ashe's Theme."

The tracks are streamed from the website and cannot be directly downloaded without a hassle. However, one can download them in MP3 form from ffxiionline.com's Music page.

Source: Gamesarefun.com

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I've only listened to the first two tracks, but I've liked what I've heard thus far. It's a shame that Nobuo Uematsu isn't the main composer for the game, but I'm sure he probably wanted a break after working on all those other Final Fantasy games. Hitoshi Sakimoto was a good choice, in my opinion, to replace him though.

As the title states, Square Enix has released new screenshots of the latest installment of the company's flagship franchise. The unique character art features the work of designer Akira Toriyama. The screenshot feature some new characters, but it is unclear as of yet how many of these will be playable.

In other Dragon Quest VIII news, there is still no word on a North American release date. Japanese gamers are not much better off, however, with a vague release date of Winter 2005.

Source: Games Are Fun

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Say whatever negative things one wants about Akira Toriyama's Dragonball and Dragonball Z anime series (and I'll most likely agree), but I have loved his video game character design work (for those who did not know, he was the man responsible for Chrono Trigger's art). Hopefully, the localization for the title will not take Square Enix nearly has long as it has taken them for Star Ocean 3.