News

Asteroids, the 1979 arcade and Atari 2600 classic, is receiving an adaptation on the big screen. Universal allegedly won out over three other film studios for the film rights to Asteroids, and the project will be written by Matthew Lopez and produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura (a co-producer of Transformers 2: Rise of the Fallen).

Now, a screen adaptation of Asteroids is particularly intriguing, since the game is completely devoid of storyline, dialog, or even visuals beyond black and white lines and curves. Check out some Asteroids gameplay here: thanks, YouTube! Universal also has film rights to the classic board games Candy Land and Battleship, which are similarly lacking in narrative.

So what will come of this? No director has been named and the screenwriting process has only just begun, so we know next to nothing about the project thus far.

Source: Gamespot, The Hollywood Reporter

It's only 2 months until Dissidia: Final Fantasy is released in Europe, so put September 4th in your calendar. Also, only for us glorious Europeans (at least, those who own the PSP), a limited edition will be available with all sorts of extras, which include a unique packaging, a book of the game's artwork, the strategy guide, an OST, and more. Standard copy is £25, and supposedly the limited edition is the same price, but we've yet to see an official difference in pre-order anywhere.

In addition, for anyone who still hasn't a clue what Dissidia is or is about (and where have you been?), the official site is now open.

Dissidia: Final Fantasy

Source: RPGamer

The identity of the game in the countdown clock some of you are still hypothesising about has already been announced. Some of you just can't read, so to make it easy, i'll post it in big letters on the main page, to see if that helps.

We don't have much info yet (unless you can read Japanese), but it is not FFI or FFV, so stop with the guessing games.

Source: Kotaku
Source: 5 Days Ago

http://www.square-enix.co.jp/0706/

It's Square-Enix up to their usual shenanigans of giving us a mysterious page with a countdown clock and supposedly relevant info to the new game at hand. Sources suspect a remake of the original Final Fantasy, possibly on the Nintendo DS. This news poster is not so convinced. Unless they're introducing new music, the song that plays over the countdown page is not from any Final Fantasy so far (Unless it's from XI, in which case, nobody cares). The obvious reality? They're preparing to unveil Final Fantasy XV.

...What? You never know. Square-Enix also copyrighted "The Four Warriors of Light" (Well, the Japanese phrase, anyway), so believe what you will. It's fair to say that this is going to be Final Fantasy related, regardless of what it actually is. Only 220 hours to go.

Source: Kotaku
Source: Siliconera

The ESRB appears to be regaling us with further previews of future PSN games, this time Wild ARMs 2. The Wild ARMs series was quite popular for the first couple iterations of Playstation, most recently in 2007 with Wild ARMs 5 for the Playstation 2. The particular iteration described here is nearly a decade old, and was the second and final from the series to debut on the original Playstation.

I myself only ever played the demo of WA2, but I seem to recall it being pretty solid fun, featuring the series' unique hook of being set in a fantasy/western setting. Even beyond that, though, it's really great to see that Sony is looking towards RPGs that, while not really obscure, aren't necessarily part of the Square collection that built their empire in the last fifteen years.

Source: RPGamer

For those of you wanting to see yet more pretty pictures of the pretty...prettiness of Final Fantasy XIII, you will be please to hear that thirteen new screenshots have recently been released on the net. This fitting number of screens serve to showcase more of the exteriors in which players will presumably fight monsters and the Helghast/Jin-Roh-looking soldiers seen in previous screens and clips.

The new images show off some spell effects as well as a variety of environments. What seems to be an inner city battle at night (it's at least similar to what we have seen before in many early trailers), a snowy mountainside, some barren rocky grasslands, and the obligatory lush forests and dark caves.

With these new screens, Square-Enix's dedication to making it all look very pretty continues, for as is plain to see the world of FF13 certainly looks like a nice place to go sightseeing if you don't mind the occasional angry monster or space nazi jumping out at you.

Source: Final Fantasy Insider