After seeing a lot of success in Japan, SquareEnix announced via Facebook yesterday that Theatrhythm Final Fantasy would be released in North America, Europe, and PAL territories this summer. A more specific release date has not been announced.


Theatrhythm is a rhythm game for 3DS featuring music and characters from all of the Final Fantasy games. It was the third highest selling game in Japan the week it was released, and has been praised by famous game composer Nobuo Uematsu.

Meanwhile, Japan just released its third set of DLC for the game. Here's the trailer:

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Online retailers are now listing The Last Story's North American release date as June 19th, 2012. You can pre-order the game today for $49.99! Get it here from Amazon or here from GameStop.

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Final Fantasy III has been available on iPhone for quite a while now, but now it looks like the updated title is finally coming to Android! Well, in Japan.


Originally played out by 8-bit sprites on the NES, the updated version features a lot more cuteness. Check out the launch trailer from the iPhone version!

Check out the launch trailer for the iPhone version if you want to be murdered by cuteness.


Not a word has been uttered about when or even if an English version of the title will be released.

Still, one can hope.

Source: SquareEnix Market ...

SquareEnix may have given us something pretty to look at with Serah's "beachwear" outfit, but sometimes you just need to see a girl with a nice pair of big, round eyeglasses. That's right, on March 13th you'll be able to add Jihl Nabaat to your party for just the price of three tacos! Or six tacos, depending on where you get your tacos.


You can also get new weapons for 99 cents each: a Catastrophe Blade and Muramasa for Noel, along with a Seraphic Wing and Genji Bow for Serah. You can see pictures of those here.

Now when we asked our members what DLC they most wanted to see, just about everyone cried out for more story! Apparently those who want Serah in a Pikachu suit are in the minority, but that's fine, because SquareEnix has announced that they'll be releasing the "Lightning's Story: Requiem of the Goddess" DLC in mid-May. Little is known about the content other than what we can deduce from the title, nor has a price been announced, but there it is--more story. And more Lightning, ...

Just last week we reported on what Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series, has been up to. He's got his own studio now, Mistwalker, and they've produced a handful of games that people seem to enjoy quite a bit.

The company recently had its first Wii release, The Last Story, and it's been getting rave reviews in Japan! The game is set to release in Europe and Australia this week, leaving North American gamers all kinds of envious and sulky. Until today! California-based company XSEED Games has announced that they will be bringing the game to North America sometime this summer!

In addition to creating the Final Fantasy series, Hironobu Sakaguchi worked on such favorites as Chrono Trigger and Vagrant Story, and also every Final Fantasy game until X, at which point he broke out on his own and created the Mistwalker corporation. Everyone's favorite JRPG composer, Nobuo Uematsu, also composed the music for The Last Story.

At this point it's pretty likely that it doesn't even matter what the game's about, but here's the synopsis provided by XSEED ...

You may have heard whispers several years ago that supposedly an action genre sequel was being made for Final Fantasy XII, and in Sweden of all places, produced by a company called GRIN and to be published by SquareEnix. Well, SquareEnix wasn't happy, GRIN went bankrupt, and it was at that point that fans first started hearing about the game that never was. And that was the last we'd heard of the game--codenamed Fortress--until January 2010, when a tech demo was leaked, and then again at E3 2011, when Motomu Toriyama supposedly whispered secretly that the game would never be released. Whether that last bit is true or not is still up for debate. Kind of. Maybe not, but some people still seem to have their fingers crossed.

Lately, though, gaming sites have been buzzing with previously unreleased media from the game, from concept art to bits of the sound track, leaving many fans either pouting over the loss or clenching with renewed hope and enthusiasm. Mostly the former.

You can browse the concept art at the Final Fantasy Wiki here.

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Even though he's been busy lately promoting his latest game throughout Europe, Final Fantasy's papa Hironobu Sakaguchi took the time today to respond to a question from Japanese tweeter ikeda1986:


Roughly, ikeda1986 says "What's up, homie?" to which Sakagushi replies "Working on three new iOS games," which prompts ikeda1986 to say "Looking forward to it." A touching exchange indeed.

Sakaguchi resigned as executive vice president of Square in 2004, about a year after the company merged with Enix. He went on to create the Mistwalker game development corporation. You can see a list of games he's developed--often along with Final Fantasy fan favorite Nobuo Uematsu--on the corporations Wikipedia page here. Their most recent game, The Last Story (Wii), is set to release in Australia and Europe on the 23rd and 24th, respectively, and it looks fabulous.

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A new game in the Final Fantasy series released in Japan today: Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, a music and rhythm game for 3DS. It features all of our favorite characters from the series as totally cute chibis in a plot similar to Dissidia Final Fantasy, except this game is played by hitting musical notes with the 3DS stylus.


The retail version of the game includes 70 songs from the Final Fantasy series, and as of launch day Square Enix has made eight songs available for purchase via the 3DS store at a reduced price of 100¥ (regularly 150¥).

Everyone's favorite Final Fantasy songsmith Nobuo Uematsu tweeted about the game yesterday, saying that it made him tear up as he remembered his twenty years of working with these games, and that Final Fantasy fans won't want to miss it.

Unfortunately, a lot of us may have to miss it because it has not as of yet been scheduled to release outside of Japan.

[via NintendoWorldReport, AnimeNewsNetwork] ...

As soon as it was revealed that Final Fantasy XIII-2 would herald the return of chocobo racing, people got a lot more excited for the game. People love that fluff, myself included. Now, perhaps you've tried to run a few races. Maybe you've done well for yourself, maybe not. Either way you might be looking to improve, and, if that's the case, Reddit user Kheten's method seems pretty solid.

You'll be able to do this once you can get the silver chocobo out of the big projection of Cocoon in Academia 4XX. This requires Advanced Mog Throw.

Items Needed:

• 34x Potent Orb Buccaboo, Buccaboo Ace (30%)
• 46x Potent Essence Hedge Frog (15%), Mud Frog (15%), Swampmonk (20%), Caterchipillar (5%)
• 23x Potent Crystals Microchu (30%)

Monsters Needed:

• Silver Chocobo
• Pulse Gladiator (Archylte Steppe - Cloudy)
• Cactuar (Archylte Steppe - Sunny, rare)
• Microchu (Western Archylte Steppe - Rainy, Sunny)

Method:

Get your Silver Chocobo to max level.

1. Infuse the Silver Chocobo with the Pulse Gladiator at level one.

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Del Murder chose a name out of what I'm sure was a very suave hat, and that name was DMKA, one of our long-time and sometimes even well-liked members! Congratulations DMKA!

During the contest, we encouraged people to submit their favorite Final Fantasy game in the form of haiku, which lead to a lot of brilliant entries. It also lead to a lot of people revealing that they either don't know what a haiku is or they have no idea how to count syllables. Regardless, here are my top ten favorites!







In addition, Renmiri and krissy submitted poetry that are too lovely not to mention.

Final Fantasy X by Renmiri
Sins of the Father, gone
Son's tears, finding love and losing it
Father's ...

My complete lack of self-control lead me to hint about this a couple of times, but last month Eyes on Final Fantasy was invited to head over to Square Enix's US office to preview Final Fantasy XIII-2. Other than the occasional comment intended to titillate, we were banned from speaking of the event... until now!

We decided that the two sexiest staff members should go, so, despite Psychotics insistence that it was Opposite Day, Del Murder and I went. They put us up in a swanky city-folk hotel, and, to keep this part of the story short, we jumped on the bed, ate candy, and made rainbows. Not sexually. Necronopticous and Marshall Banana actually work right by the Square Enix building, so they picked us up for tacos and strawberry-tasting milkstuffs. I enjoyed an octopus tostada.

The next day, after having more candy for breakfast, we brought our asses and our coffee house beverages down the the lobby, where the rest of our Final Fantasy nerd group was far too easy to spot. I think there were representatives for... six other sites there. Some of them had stayed up way too late because they had never seen an ocean before; it was cute.

After collecting ...

Oh man, Final Fantasy XIV. We all know that, despite being super pretty, stability and performance issues at launch lead to two extensions of the game's trial period, costing the company what we can assume would be oodles in subscription fees, and one can imagine how many other potential customers were put off from buying the game entirely. Maybe it's stating the obvious a little, but Square Enix's CEO, Yoichi Wada, when asked about the title today at a press conference in Tokyo, responded with "The Final Fantasy brand has been greatly damaged." [source]

And my heart breaks a little. I know many Americans get a little frowny at the mention the MMORPG Final Fantasy titles, not because they're bad games, but because they resent them for not being another one of the standalone games that they already love (and because most of them are already wrapped up in World of Warcraft, ugh), so to hear one of those rouge Final Fantasys may be doing damage to our beloved series is quite the bummer.

They're ...