News / 2003 / July / day01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

17 articles

• Eidos' Tomb Raider marketing campaign brings Lara into showers
  In an insidious marketing ploy you'd almost expect to be authored by Activision, Eidos will be hanging up life-size Lara Crofts in swimsuits throughout showers in fitness halls and gyms. So now you can shower while a CG chick made up of 18 polygons stares at you with her breasts. Naturally, most gaming nerds frequent gyms, so this must be the most elaborate and effective campaign ever! Gamefront
  02 July 2003 by Rahul ↑ 48 ↓ discusss permalink
• Squenix to reveal new game!
  At an upcoming media conference, Square Enix will be announcing a new, previously unannounced title, that is sure to "make fans very pleased". So... Front Mission History? Dragon Quest Pocket Monsters GBA 7? Or... Chrono Break?
  04 July 2003 by Rahul ↑ 20 ↓ discusss permalink
• Square Enix to promote violent behaviour with sword for controller
  Screw button-pressing gameplay, says Squenix, we're stripping off the extras and showing you what gaming is really about! Or are we?
  05 July 2003 by Rahul ↑ 14 ↓ discusss permalink
• Final Fantasy III Game Boy port apparently still under consideration
  According to The Magic Box, Square is still considering a Game Boy Advance port of the Wonderswan version of Final Fantasy III, despite ten months of consideration.
  08 July 2003 by Matt ↑ 25 ↓ discusss permalink
• Squenix confirmed for TGS 2003; "beating" Nintendo at sales
  The CESA recently released a list of developers that will be at the TGS in September; among those is Square Enix (obviously). Sales numbers for the first half year in Japan have also been released, putting Square Enix at 4.28 million sales in software (mostly due to the 2 million they clocked up from Final Fantasy X-2) vs runner-up Nintendo, who sold 3.15 million units (but that doesn't include 1.44M of Pokemon sales).
  10 July 2003 by Rahul ↑ 27 ↓ discusss permalink
• Business conference sees Square Enix among biggest publishers within 3 years; this year's games confirmed; other details
  "My penis is very large," Wada proudly brought up during the conference, "Very much larger than Mr. Miyamoto's; in fact, I believe I may have the longest, most durable penis in the gamesindustry." Full Article
  11 July 2003 by Rahul ↑ 69 ↓ discusss permalink
• Drakengard interview sheds new light on upcoming title
  An exclusive interview held by Gamebunker with two members of the Drakengard development team, Takamasa Shiba and Yasuhito Watanabe, added a little depth to the fairly meagre impressions seen so far of the game that tells of the pact between a Knight and a Dragon. The official website also includes a look at some of the game's battle scenes with some interesting classical music and a promotional movie. Gamebunker
  12 July 2003 by Rahul ↑ 45 ↓ discusss permalink
• Crystal Chronicles music downloads and PAL release dates
  With the utter lack of interesting information pertaining to anything currently flowing from Japan, it would seem Nintendo of Europe had to clean the bottleneck, confirming Crystal Chronicles for a December release, and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for October in PAL territories. Additionally, acompanying the upcoming launch of Crystal Chronicles in Japan, a preview of the gameplay and the maxi single by Yae have been released at PonyCanyon (what a name). Gamefront
  15 July 2003 by Rahul ↑ 52 ↓ discusss permalink
• New Dragon Quest VIII imagery surfaces
  The not-yet-released weekend edition of Japanese gaming magazine V-Jump will have a new page of information on Squenix's Dragon Quest VIII which, if not particularly interesting to your average Final Fantasy fanatic, is at the very least different in its attempt to bring the archaic series into 3d finally. The screens portray some basic activity in the game, such as battling, which looks a lot like Chrono Cross for some reason. The celshaded, cartoony look appears to bring Toriyama's designs to life quite nicely, too. UPDATE: more here and here (07/17) Gamefront
  16 July 2003 by Rahul ↑ 18 ↓ discusss permalink
• Dengeki GC gets hands on Crystal Chronicles; Nintendo reveals first shipment details
  Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles received 7 / 8 / 9 / 9 (33/40) from japanese Gamecube specialist mag Dengeki GC, indicating that it should be pretty good as we expected, but not exactly perfect (as expected). At least it's better than Joshua Yadron thought it would be, that blasted naysayer. Nintendo mentioned that the first shipment of the title in Japan would consist of 100.000 units, which seems on the low side - so perhaps they don't expect the game to do really that well, or is the Gamecube market really that tiny? Gamefront
  17 July 2003 by Rahul ↑ 47 ↓ discusss permalink
• Hopes for Chrono Break broken as Masato Kato surfaces outside of Squenix
  If you've been paying attention to the industry this last week, you'll have noticed the announcements regarding Xenosaga II and Baten Kaitos from Namco. Now it would seem that Masato Kato, the scenario designer and story planner for Chono Cross and Chrono Trigger respectively, and therefore the actual mastermind behind the story, is doing the scenario for Baten Kaitos, indicating that he presumably wouldn't be involved too closely with any major projects at Square Enix. So much for that one, then? Gamefront
  21 July 2003 by Rahul ↑ 51 ↓ discusss permalink
• Hot Final Fantasy X-2 voice actors pose for free to keep the hype machine running
  Recent release of Final Fantasy X-2 Vocal Collection, a single containing tracks spoken by Yuna, Rikku and Paine's voice actresses (Mayuko Aoki, Marika Matsumoto und Megumi Toyoguchi respectively) has garnered enough attention to be accompanied by an actual launch party at Akihabara involving the three maidens. The single comes with a DVD containing an interview, trailer, and song. Gamefront
  21 July 2003 by Rahul ↑ 130 ↓ discusss permalink
• Crystal Chronicles '03 release bites the bucket
  Nintendo announced the release dates for several of its upcoming games today, and Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles was listed with February 9th, indicating that it had been pushed back from its previous November 11 due date. As it turns out, Europe will now be getting the game before North America, as its December release date over there (here) still holds true. Squenix's return to Nintendo will be out on August 29th in Japan, so you'll just have to wait, or invite your 3 Japanese chums over to play your leet imported copy. Nintendo
  22 July 2003 by Rahul ↑ 52 ↓ discusss permalink
• Dengeki slams Crystal Chronicles in first Japanese review
  Mr. Joshua Yadron may have been right in his predictions that Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles isn't as great as it seems, because Dengeki certainly agrees with him, scoring it a 6 out of 10 average from three reviewers. Find out why inside!
  23 July 2003 by Rahul ↑ 99 ↓ discusss permalink
• Sword of Mana to get Deluxe Pack with cute battery-powered Li'l Cactus and other useless stuff
  Out of nowhere, some random Japanese company "Meikyosha" announced the Shinyaku Seiken Densetsu Deluxe Pack, which will be released alongside Sword of Mana and contain a battery-powered figure of Li'l Cactus which can, get this, rock back and forth. It also comes with a sock puppet Rabite and a calendar. For those of you insane enough to waste money on importing this, it'll come at ?7800 (?57/US$66). Gamefront
  27 July 2003 by Rahul ↑ 43 ↓ discusss permalink
• Final Fantasy XII approaches
  Square Enix's Yasumi Matsuno has confirmed that Final Fantasy XII will be on display at the Tokyo Game Show next month in preparation of its spring 2004 launch in Japan.
  29 July 2003 by Rahul ↑ 43 ↓ discusss permalink
• Hollywood blames Eidos for shitty box office weekend
  Paramount execs, and indeed all denziens of Hollywood included, placed a collective blame on Eidos and the apparent shittiness of Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. \"The only thing we can attribute [poor ticket sales] to is that the gamers were not happy with the latest version of the \'Tomb Raider\' video game, which is our core audience,\" Paramount distribution president Wayne Lewellen said. \"Now I can\'t fucking get that new yacht.\" Yahoo! News
  29 July 2003 by Matt ↑ 19 ↓ discusss permalink