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Following an agreement made with Wayport, a wireless Internet provider, Nintendo announced yesterday their plan for allowing easy and free access to wireless online play on their DS handheld: 6,000 McDonald's restuarants across the US will soon become Wi-Fi Connection hosts, permitting gamers to play Internet-enabled DS games against people all around the Net while in the comfortable vicinity of fast food.

Yes, you read that correctly.

As stated by Nintendo, players need only start up an online compatible DS game at one of the participating McDonald's to play, sans any fees or extra hardware - it's guaranteed to be simple and cost-free. The timing of this announcement comes as little surprise given the upcoming releases of the first two online games for the Nintendo DS, Mario Kart DS and Tony Hawk's American Sk8land, both due to ship to North American stores on November 14th. Other future titles, including Metroid Prime Hunters and Animal Crossing: Wild World will also make ample use of Wi-Fi Connection.

McDonald's is only the most recent corporation to catch the DS fever. Other businesses, such as Starbucks and a growing league of game shops, will also participate in hosting wireless Internet for public gaming.

Source: GameSpot

Since its Japanese release on September 14th, Square-Enix's Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, the movie continuation to the critically acclaimed RPG, has sold over 700,000 copies. In addition, it's been reported by the company that the limited edition DVD Box and first print limited edition have all been sold out, and the UMD version is also selling very strongly, although its offical sales numbers were not announced.

This overwhelming popularity has served to encourage Square-Enix to surpass this success in the future, according to the CG movie's producer Shinji Hashimoto, who added that expectations for the North American and European releases are extremely high.

Source: RPGFan

As I mentioned in my previous news post, announcing the new moderation team, we are picking up some helpers also to pitch in on other tasks around the site. In a completely unfair slight against them, it's taken me forever to actually mention them and give them the recognition they deserve. So allow me to remedy that by doing so now:

• Silverfork, who as some have already noticed is anchoring down the news posts these days.


• Kappa the Imp, who'll be working with Neal and me on the visual aspects of Fanart production as well as site data maintenance.


• Mimic, who will also be working with Neal and me on the database aspect of Fanart; as well, he too will be working on general data maintenance for the site.


• Del S, who will be assisting Mr Thou with Fanfiction production.

My apologies for taking so long, guys. We appreciate having you a lot more than the delay in this post would lead you to believe.

Yoichi Wada, the current president of Square-Enix, made what many fans would consider an exciting announcement yesterday at Japan's Nintendo DS Conference: Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI are now in the process of being re-released on the Game Boy Advance. Much like Final Fantasy IV Advance, the games will receive extra content unfamiliar to both their Super Nintendo and PlayStation versions. Both titles are scheduled to be released sometime next year.

On an interesting note, Wada added that the Final Fantasy III remake for Nintendo DS is indeed well into development. The reason for the slower than anticipated progress? The graphics, specifically those of the characters and fields, are now being made up with polygons, giving the game an authentic 3D look.

(Big thanks to SSJ_Cloud for providing the link)

Source: Games Are Fun

The developer of familiar hits including Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the Baldur's Gate series, BioWare, has announced a brand new action-RPG entitled Mass Effect for the upcoming Xbox 360.

Set centuries into the future, Mass Effect tells of an intergalactic society made up of advanced humans and alien races. Players will explore and battle their way across undiscovered alien worlds as they control an agent bent on halting a great evil threatening this coexistence.

No release date has been set, but a gameplay trailer can be viewed at BioWare's official website.

Source: RPGamer

As reported by a recent article in Shonen Jump magazine regarding the Game Boy Advance port of Final Fantasy IV, the game will indeed, for the most part, remain largely unchanged from its original Super Nintendo form. As indicated by early images of the game, graphical improvements have been made as well as the addition of character portraits inside dialogue boxes.

Nintendo and Square Enix reportedly display interest in porting more Final Fantasy titles to the Game Boy Advance in the near future as part of their "Final Fantasy Series Port Project", although no official announcements have been made.

Final Fantasy IV for the GBA will be in North American stores on December 12th, 2005. Japan has yet to receive a specific release date, but sources confirm it will be available sometime in Winter 2005.

Source: RPGamer