As some of you might have noticed due to the absence of news post, I’m away on holidays, with almostn o acces to a computer. Right now I am in Italy, and I’ll leave to France Thursday. i will be back Saturday  ( not the next but the one after).  ill then turn to Savior of the Damned (forums) for any issues you encounter

Our good friends over at Forever-Fantasty managed to get their hands on the first trailer for the Nintendo DS remake of Chrono Trigger. It just seems to introduce the characters, and it shows some battle screens. The graphics don’t seem to have improved much, and I haven’t seen use of the second DS screen yet. View it by clicking Here! or just look at it down here:

It began as a rumor and was confirmed along the way: The dream of many Square Enix fans has finally come true. The company has just announced that a Chrono Trigger remake will be coming to the Nintendo DS. The remake is to be released sometime during Winter, 2008.

» View small scan
» Go to: Official Chrono Trigger DS website

Source:Forever-Fantasy.

Square Enix announced that Chocobo Dungeon, a game exclusivly for the Wii, will be released in Europe and PAL countries this autumn. This is once again later (as usual) then the North American release date, which is July 8th, which is next week already.

John Yamamoto, president and chief executive officer of Square Enix Ltd. comments:

“Chocobo has been a firm favourite with FINAL FANTASY fans for years, and players will be able to see him take centre stage and come to life in his very own adventure.

FINAL FANTASY FABLES: Chocobo’s Dungeon will appeal to fans of the FINAL FANTASY series along with younger Nintendo Wii owners looking for an engrossing adventure.”

Source: Forever Fantasy.

Our friends over at Forever-Fantasy decided to host a contest. I’m not in the organisation of the contest, but for the sake of friendship I’m advertising it all to you guys. You guys should definatly join and compete, because there are great prices to win.

Quote taken from Forever-Fantasy:

We are pleased to announce our very first competition, called the Final Fantasy XIII Doodling Competition. I personally wanted to fire it up on our new layout, but here’s to hoping our next one really will!

Our very first competition is a collaboration between us and our friends over at Final Fantasy XIII.Net and FF-illumina.Net. Together we’ve come up with what we feel are worthy prizes for the winners:

GRAND PRIZE: $60.00 Amazon Gift Certificate
OR $60.00 for Square Enix Online Store
1ST RUNNER UP: $30.00 Amazon Gift Certificate
2ND RUNNER UP: $10.00 Amazon Gift Certificate

Now, lets go on to what you actually do to win the competition. If you recall, young people used to read the newspaper, and with it, they would draw and doodle all over them. Eye patches, mustaches, cigars, all sorts of things they would draw on the pictures in newspapers. What you have to do, is doodle on a Final Fantasy XIII magazine scan just like that. The 3 top competitors with the funniest/most entertaining doodled scans will be selected as the winners!

[Don’t quite understand what we mean? check our example!]

To enter the competition simply select one magazine scan from our Final Fantasy XIII or Final Fantasy Versus XIII galleries, and Doodle all over it using any computer program such as Photoshop, Painter, MS Paint, etc.

Once you are done, send your entry to submit@finalfantasyxiii.net, and include your first and last name.

RULES:

· Only one (1) entry is allowed per person. Updating your entry is allowed.
· Using typed text is NOT ALLOWED. Words are allowed, but must be written by hand.
· Importing or adding images to the original scan is NOT ALLOWED.
· All entries must be appropriate for a PG-13 audience. Any entries displaying expletive or otherwise inappropriate imagery/language will be disqualified.
· All entries must be in JPG (.jpg or .jpeg) or PNG (.png) format. All entries will be judged by the combined staff of FFi, Final Fantasy XIII.Net and us. A winner will be announced on Sunday, July 13th

This week’s Dengeki PlayStation issue featured an interview with the development team of Dissidia: Final Fantasy; Producer Tetsuya Nomura, senior director Takeshi Arakawa and planning director Mitsunori Takahashi. Thanks to Mistwalker you can read it for the first time in English. The interview reveals a lot of new details about Dissidia, so if you are following the development of the title we recommend you to read our translation.

All credit goes to Forever-Fantasy!

Takahashi: We’ve currently revealed about 20% of Dissidia as a whole. Aside from the battle system, there are a lot of elements that haven’t been shown. I think fans who have played the Final Fantasy series will be comfortable with them.

Takahashi: The original games are RPGs, so conceptually we’re aiming for “Action-RPG plus competitive fighting,” with the balance being half action and half RPG.

Takahashi: Regarding the battle portion, we’re pretty much finished making the main characters themselves. Now we’ve got to spend a lot of time fine-tuning the combat balance.

Why Jecht over Seymour?

Nomura: Jecht may not have been the final boss (with Seymour being the mid-boss), but going with Sin would obviously not work. (laughs) I thought if we chose Seymour it would be hard to show a proper connection between him and Tidus, and we’d end up having to put Yuna in too. We decided the best choice with a solid relation to Tidus would be Jecht.

Arakawa: The scenes with Tidus and Jecht should be quite an interesting expansion. In the main FF10 story the two only got a chance to talk together in the final scene. This time we’re telling the parts of that story that couldn’t be seen before.

Are you saying we’ll be able to see events that weren’t shown in the main stories?

Arakawa: There will be quite a few. But what we’re doing is fine tuning the original story details behind the characters’ births, relationships, interactions. Tidus has a connection with the heroes, while Jecht is tangled with the characters on the Chaos side.

But there wasn’t exactly much dialogue between the Light Warriors and Garland…?

Arakawa: To an extent there are understandable characterisitcs in FF1 and FF3. We really think it’s important to give players a taste of our works, but basically if the story takes place in Dissidia we don’t see [various series’] characters participating as strange at all. Smile and don’t think too much about knowing the original stories.

When you say RPG, do you mean controlling characters as they wander around areas?

Arakawa: The main focus is more on character building, with customization as a key point. This game is to show our appreciation to players who’ve enjoyed previous Final Fantasy titles, so with their interest in mind even gamers who aren’t into action gaming can enjoy [Dissidia].

This isn’t like Kingdom Hearts, where you walk around locations and find yourself in combat. This also isn’t that same mechanic of action-based fighting in continuous encounters. It’s more like “Should I take this guy on next? Nah, maybe I’d better go with this one instead…”

Arakawa: Like a level 80 Squall fighting a level 20 Light Warrior, even if there’s a difference in levels it’s possible to pull an upset on the opponent.
Nomura: Choice” is very important.

Arakawa: We’re also thinking about a community around Dissidia. Going forward we’re looking more and more to incorporate a lot of original ideas into a Dissidia-suited communication system. Things like battle strength/ranking will be included, but basically we want to include a system where countless users can participate in one imagined “Battling Community”, a world not about wins and losses but simply being connected to others trying to discover their own merits. Players who got together and can be excited about Final Fantasy.

Takahashi: Where you can learn to pull off really difficult challenges, and feel like “Getting to level 100 is where things just get started! (laughs)

Arakawa: Stories have their ends, but that’s not necessarily true when you’ve played a game. After finishing one you can think “It’s not over yet!”, there’s still this part of the game to do, still that to do…

Arakawa: Mr. Nomura has been at all the voice recordings, and the script is double the length of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII.

Nomura: We have a release time in mind, so now we’ve just got to work hard on the development. I’m positive it’s not far off, so please keep an eye out in anticipation. We plan on giving a solid release date at an event in August.

Square Enix has launched the official website of Dissidia: Final Fantasy. The Story, Characters and Info pages are up - New screenshots have been added, and a new video as well. The video contains battle scenes, but is for Square Enix Members (Japan) only, so once we get a hold of it we’ll re-upload it.

» View screenshots << Not on this website. I’ ll upload them soon.
» Official Dissidia: FF website

Source: Forever-Fantasy.

EDIT: Soul from Forever Fantasy uploaded the trailer to youtube. Heads up for him:

Het there my lovely guests!

Today I’ m introducing you a new staff member, knowingly Misty. Misty will be our new graphical and content contributor, and already worked hard on a new layout. I’ve uploaded this layout and it to be seen and downloaded Here! . It’s called Street Cred and features the main characters from The World Ends With You.

Futhermore we might have a suprise for you by the end of the holidays. Yes by the end of the holidays!, because right now I’ m having exams and tests, and then I’ m going to Italy and France. I don’ t want to ruin your fun so I’ m NOT telling you what it is!

Oh and happy birthday to me(a)

Yes! The day has finally arrived. Friday 20-06-2008! Crisis Core is released in PAL countries. Those of you who haven’t heard of Crisis Core: Kill yourself! It’s the prequel to Final Fantasy VII, and follows Zack, as he progresses trough his life as SOLDIER, meeting many familiar faces, including Yuffie, Cloud, Sephiroth etc.

I got my copy yesterday, a day early. I wish you all a hell lot of gaming fun!

THere have been rumours circeling the internet that Final Fantasy Versus XIII is on hold, and the entire team of Versus is helping to create the regular XIII. Square denied this:

“Reports that development for Final Fantasy Versus XIII is on hold are false. The truth of the situation is that when free, some staff from the Versus team have been helping with the XIII team on development of Final Fantasy XIII. Development for both titles is continuing as originally scheduled.”

There are some good news about the Fabula Nova Crystallis compilation, though: Gaming website videogaming247 has reported earlier today that a Square Enix rep confirmed that Final Fantasy XIII will be shown at E3:

“There’s going to be more things happening for XIII at E3, That’s all I can say at the moment. And throughout the year there’s more things planned as well, which should shed more light on the release timings.”

Source: Forever-Fantasy.