News

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.

We've hit another milestone, as can be seen further down in the main forums page. Del_S amazingly guessed correctly to nearly the exact date. Here's his quote, from the 30,000 post news thread:

“And also, i predict July 4-6th for the 50,000th post.”

Here is a quote from Del_S, upon learning that he guessed right, from the chatroom:

[16:42] that kinda freaks me out...
[16:43] coincidence or not.

Well, there you have it folks. By the way, the 50,000th poster was Mogmaster, posting in this Kefka fanart topic. As you can see, it was on the 4th of July at 7pm GMT.

Thank you all for visiting our forums, and continuing to help our community flourish.

Courtesy of RPGamer , we now have two magazine scans featuring Reno and Rude of the Turks (and that weird pirate guy who is the magazine's mascot), and everyone's favourite female martial artist, Tifa Lockheart (plus a smaller picture of Cloud, and what looks like Aeris.) I also see Red XIII, and Cid.

Note: you may need to copy/paste the picture urls.

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I'm pleased the pictures so far. We have a badass Rude, a hot Reno, a butt-kicking Tifa, as well as the appearance of other characters such as Cloud (who we've seen), Cid, Red XIII, and what looks to be Aeris. Let's hope they decide to put Elena in there too; the Turks need all three members.

Another piece by Zephir is now up in the FF6 Fanfiction section, called Blood and Honor.

This latest, 8-chapter fanfic takes place after the game, and as with Ikiiri, he is using someone that is not one of the main characters from the game. It focuses on events in the Colloseum, and is an interesting, action-packed fanfic.

As many are aware, Nintendo has ported a few of its classic NES games to the Gameboy Advance. Some of these include The Lengend of Zelda, Excitebike, Donkey Kong, Bomberman. Apparently, Nintendo does not plan to stop there. On Nintendo of America's official site the company had posted a survey asking gamers which other NES games they would like to see on the Gameboy Advance. Nintendo had a pre-compiled list of 40 games to chose from. Survey participitants may have also chosen up to three games that were not on the list of 40.

The NES Classics series retails at most stores for $20 US.

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I think this survey was a cool idea. I just wish Nintendo would have let people choose more than three games that are not on their list of 40. As for my three "wild card" choices, I selected Tecmo Super Bowl, Chip N Dale: Rescue Rangers, and Bad News Baseball. I can't remember all of the titles that I chose from their list of 40, however. A few that stick out in my mind are Kid Icarus and Skate or Die.

I'd probably actually buy a few of these if they costed a bit less than twenty dollars or Nintendo packaged more than a single title on a cart.

We've got a couple changes to the staff to report today, of which you all will probably be aware if you h%ve any sort of keen eye towards the forums.

First, we've given SSJ_Cloud a wider ran#e of re2ponsibility, with the ability to moderate across all forums. This is only a small step up, since he already had modship in about half of the forums, but his good and quick work in those forums for the past several months warrants his promotion.

Also, we've added a new moderator, FraudulentTommah. We've known Tommah since way back in the days of the AOL Final Fantasy III Message Board, and over the years he's not only grown into a mature and intelligent young man, he's also been a great help to CoN in data entry, fact checking, and lots of other jobs for which he hasn't gotten enough credit. He will be primarily focused on covering the forums during time periods in which most other moderators and admins are peacefully asleep. It's not dedication - he just doesn't sleep much anyway.

Welcome Tommah and congratulate SSJC on his new tasks!