News

As the battle for the handheld market begins to shape up between Sony and Nintendo, the latter's latest entry in the market is selling like hotcakes --- and it has not even been released yet.

Many major video game retailers, including Gamestop, are ceasing from taking further preorders for the Nintendo DS as they have already sold out of their launch day allotment of the device. It is beginning to appear that it may be difficult (just as it has been with recent past hardware releases, the Nintendo 64 and Playstation 2 coming specifically to mind) to get the handheld on its November 21 launch date.

The titles (as of right now) that are expected to be in store by launch date are: Asphalt Urban GT (Ubisoft), Madden NFL 2005 (Electronic Arts), Urbz: Sims in the City (EA), Feel the Magic XY/XX (Sega), and Spider-Man 2 (Activision), and, of course, Super Mario 64 DS.

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Someone want to be my Rich Uncle Pennybags? With its backward compatibility with the GBA, I would love to have one of these things. I can neither afford nor justify spending 150 dollars on one at the moment, however.

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.

It appears that Square Enix's love affair with FFVII spin-offs is not yet over. Courtesy of RPGamer, the latest FFVII spin off is to be called Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. Aside from this, there are three other known spinoffs; Advent Children, Before Crisis, and Dirge of Cerberus.

This title will be released in 2006, and is said to be an action RPG, unlike the original FFVII. The character designer will be Tetsuya Nomura, and Yoshinori Kitase and Hajime Tahata will also be involved with the project. There is also a website already set up for this game, which will be made for Sony's handheld PlayStation Portable.

Further information can be found at RPGamer.com

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Another spin-off. I'm not really sure what to say, I'd like to see more information on this. An action RPG might be interesting. Unfortunately, there's no time period so far.

In the continuing saga of our "you get what you pay for" hosting, a lot of e-mails sent by the forum (and me) are just bouncing straight back at the moment.

Obviously, this makes it difficult to register. If you've registered for the forum recently and your confirmation doesn't arrive, please e-mail Rangers51 (see the staff page for contact info) and ask him nicely to forward it to you manually. Obviously, for security reasons, we can only forward the e-mail to the address you used to register - if you need it sent to another address, please log in and change your registered address there first.

For all current users, and everyone who's already had a manual confirmation sent, please don't try to change your forum e-mail address until this is resolved, as your account will be deactivated pending response to an e-mail you'll never receive. It'd also be helpful if you could temporarily unsubscribe from any active topics to lighten the bounce load on our mailbox -- it's not like you'd have received notification anyway.

Sorry about that. We'll let you know once this has been resolved, which we really hope is sooner rather than later.

Update 28 Oct 2004: Our host has solved the problem of our mailbox filling up with bounces by preventing any e-mail from reaching us at all. So there's little point e-mailing us now... we won't have your bounced mail, and we won't get your request to forward it, either. Sorry, loves. And a tip: if your webhost ever changes management, leave immediately.

The latest addition to the Caves of Narshe FF6 fanfiction section is an interesting fanfic by forum-member L. Cully.

"Lost Daughter" is a short-fic about one of the female characters from FFVI, and the fate of a lone, very human soldier. Written in an interesting fashion, and thought-provoking. (Author can be contacted by email at nistelle [at] hotmail.com, or through the forums, for comment).

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.