News

It would be more convenient for everyone if they would just add all their dates at once, don't you think? The Distant Worlds team left some gaps in the 2011 schedule when we last heard from them, but it's now time to start filling a few in.

First up is the first time that Distant Worlds will hit the five boroughs of New York City: 1 and 2 April 2011. Uematsu will attend, as will FFXIV vocalist Susan Calloway for these Friday and Saturday night shows. It appears that these shows will be the first Distant Worlds shows to play Final Fantasy XIII and XIV music in North America.

Between New York and Chicago, Atlanta is getting two shows too, on 6 and 7 May. There's no further information as yet as to who might attend those shows as a celebrity guest, but since they're not saying, that doesn't look good. Still, if you're in the South, it's probably a much easier concert to see than New York!

And, if you just can't get to any of these shows, you're not alone. But on April 1, you'll be able to get a live performance DVD on AmaCoN for both North America and Europe. They're not up for preorder yet, but we'll provide the links just as soon as we have them!

Source: Distant Worlds

A cool week for Square Enix News Tidbits, by and large, but two upcoming PSP games from long-running Squenix franchises got North American release dates this week.

For those who haven't been turned off by the series' lack of desire to maintain a consistent game genre or play style, The 3rd Birthday got a release date as well as a lead voice actress for fan favorite Aya Brea. The game will be available to North American players on 29 March 2011 (which just happens to be this humble author's birthday, so hint, hint); if you pick the game up, you'll hear Aya voiced by Yvonne Strahovski. You might well recognize her name from her work both as a voice actress in Mass Effect 2, as Miranda, as well as her leading role in NBC's "Chuck." If you'd like to get your preorder in for this game via AmaCoN, look no further.

Another game getting a release date this week is the PSP remake of Final Fantasy IV. This one will be dropping on 19 April 2011; if you haven't seen the news, you can note that this remake will be a rollup of Final Fantasy IV with previously-Wii-only The After Years. We know that the game will get a bit of visual polish and new CG, and will probably look a bit like previous Final Fantasy remakes on the handheld, but other than that we're not quite sure which Final Fantasy IV we're getting, exactly. Picking up the game? Let us know, and do it from AmaCoN.

This is shaping up to be a massive year for Squenix on the PSP. Beyond these two games, don't forget that owners of the now-first-generation Sony handheld will be getting Tactics Ogre and the Dissidia sequel, all before the end of Spring. Keeping up will be painful.

Source: IGN, Kotaku

That's right folks; Nomura has confirmed that Versus will not be making an appearance in 2011. Wait, why does everyone seem so unsurprised?

According to information he shared with a Japanese magazine, however, the wait should be worthwhile. The team is apparently intent on focusing primarily on quality, and that they intend to take the time necessary to fulfill this goal. You know, unlike FFXIV. In addition to the brief information from Nomura, the trailer mentioned in our news post last week is now available for everyone to watch (via the Gametrailers link at the bottom).

Based on comments from Nomura, the player will have access to a large number of vehicles in the game: airships, cars, chocobos and military vehicles / war machines. The team is also striving to achieve a high level of environment detail- there will be a day/night cycle on the world map, and environment events will carry out seamlessly while playing. This last bit, designed to be a fully real-time event system, is apparently what's holding the team up. You can see examples of this in the trailer, as certain events are triggered by Noctis' movement and then carried out in real time.

Battle appears to often have many enemies. The player can alternate control in battle between three characters. Nomura added that the three characters seen in previous trailers accompanying Noctis will all be playable, but that there will be several additional playable characters as well. Each of these characters will have their own unique weapon types and magic arsenals, though Noctis will be able to use any weapons or magic.

A few plot-related elements have been revealed as well. First of all, the woman in the evening gown is Stella, a heroine. The woman at the end of the trailer, however, is a completely different woman -a dragon warrior, Nomura clarified- and an enemy at that.

Much more interesting is the man speaking from the throne. This is Noctis' father, and at one point in his dialogue he says, "You cannot be king." This is not directed at Noctis, however. It is also worth noting that the father-king is featured in the later scene in the forest, where the camera appears to be from the perspective of a child. This suggests that the father-son relationship will be relatively important- remind anyone of FFX? A scene towards the very end of the trailer seems to foreshadow the fate of the father. The events concerning the father are clearly very much intertwined with the political turmoil that appears to be central to the plot of the game.

The next time we'll hear from Versus XIII, according to Nomura, won't be until E3, so we'll just have to keep waiting. He did say that the wait won't be entirely uneventful, though: apparently FFXIII-2, the confirmation of which was covered in this news post, will be due out sometime this year.

Source: IGN, Gametrailers

If you've been at the forums recently, you not only know about the Square Enix 1st Production Department Premier, and you've probably also read some bits and pieces about the contents of the mini-exposition, too. For your convenience, though, we'll roll it up a bit for you here in the news section. Where we ask people to post new news and such!

Anyway, here's the big stuff. As just about everyone knows by now, there's going to be a Final Fantasy XIII-2, and it has a trailer already. This game's still not Versus. That's still its own game, and it has a new trailer too. And after all this time, that's still all it has. If that doesn't get you excited for its prospects, well, there's not much more I can do for you.

In other Final Fantasy XIII news, the game that we always knew as Agito is Agito no longer; the newly mentioned Type-0 is the new name. The other Final Fantasy XIII news is that Type-0 won't actually be a Final Fantasy game any more, but instead is the starting point for a new series.

Square Enix also showed Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep Final Mix, which is an extended version of the Birth By Sleep game released last year. Previous Final Mix releases in the series have been Japan-only, and have mostly been Japanese releases of the American version, with a bit of bonus content.

The newest Kingdom Hearts will be coming out for Nintendo's new 3DS, and at this meeting, it got a name: Dream Drop Distance. You see what they did there? There are three "D"s in that name. It's on a 3-D system. Et cetera. Sora and Riku both will star.

Duodecim got some significant play as well, with new characters announced, including Gilgamesh. There's going to be a paid demo in Japan, and folks who buy the demo can get Aeris as an assist character in the full game. No word yet on whether that will be a possibility elsewhere, of course. The American release date was announced separately, too - the game will hit stores here on 22 March, for thirty bucks, and it's ready for pre-order on AmaCoN now, as is The 3rd Birthday, which happens to come out a week later.

Yeah, that's a lot of stuff for a meeting that only happened for about three hours. Not knowing Japanese, hey, I might have missed some stuff, too. Feel free to let me know in the comments.


Source: Kotaku, andriasang, Kingdom Hearts Insider

In case you don't already own one of the many, many PSP bundles released in Japan already (and, come on, who doesn't have at least two?), you might be interested to know that there's yet another one coming, this time for everyone's favorite Final Fantasy universe fighting game. Well, the sequel to everyone's favorite, at least. I expect that it will need to be at least released before it's everyone's favorite in general.

Anyway, it looks as if this bundle, in a striking black and white, features artwork by Yoshitaka Amano on the front and the Dissidia 012 [duodecim] logo on the back battery case. Naturally, it's the PSP-3000 model. This is the first bundle to be designed with Amano artwork, and only the second specially-designed bundle for a Final Fantasy game (the first being for Crisis Core) and third for Square-Enix (Star Ocean got one too).

No word yet on whether this one will make it to the West. Keep your fingers crossed, Dissidia fans, or pony up the 23,000 yen!

Source: Kotaku

The Playstation Network, or PSN, is getting a release that many people here may find interesting. Square-Enix, to celebrate the fact that their Twitter acheived 20,000 followers, is releasing Chrono Cross on the PSN. Here's the catch - it's only in Japan. There's been no confirmed release Stateside, but they probably won't be able to keep that away for too long. Chrono Cross, the sequel to Chrono Trigger (which CoN covers!), was last released on the PSX in 2000, and now is available mostly to old game collectors and emulators. This should open what many agree is a great game to the public again.

And, hey, this is perfect for me. I just finished Chrono Trigger (much to the amusement of CoNchat, until recently I'd only ever played FF7. I'm looking at you, DP). I've also heard some really good things about Chrono Cross, but also that you either love it or you hate it. So, when CC does eventually get released in the States, I imagine anyone who played Chrono Trigger on the DS will be snapping this one up too. You heard it here first!

Source: RPGamer, US Playstation Network