Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles:The Young King and the Promised Land

[Crossblades]

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Nintendo Japan called the Japanese press together today to outline its upcoming strategy for the Japanese market. Playing a big role in that strategy is, it seems, network-based gaming.

At the center of Nintendo's network plans is the Wii Ware service. The download service, which, unlike its counterpart Virtual Console service, consists of new games, will see some major support from the likes of Square Enix, Namco, and Nintendo itself.

From Square Enix comes Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Chiisa na Ousama to Yakusoku no Kuni (The Young King and the Promised Land). Exclusively available for Wii Ware, the point of this game is to build up your own country. Service will begin in March over in Japan.

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Following today's announcement of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles for Nintendo's Wii Ware download service, Square Enix has opened up an official webpage for the game, fully titled Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Chiisa na Ousama to Yakusoku no Kuni (Little King and the Promised Country).

The page is in teaser form at the moment and provides only a few pieces of artwork and story details. The game will tell the story of what happened after the original Crystal Chronicles. The Little King of the subtitle, who lost his kingdom due to the events of the first game, gains from the crystals the power to build things. He uses this to revive his fallen kingdom. The game's genre is "Country Building RPG."

Also revealed at the page is release information for the game. Crystal Chronicles will be available for download at a cost of 1,500 Wii Points. It will be available, in Japan, simultaneously with the start of the Wii Ware service, which is expected in March 2008.

This may be a mini project, but it has a series staff list. Serving as director is Kenichiro Yuji, who previously worked on Front Mission Online. Motome Toriyama, of Final Fantasy XII and X-2 fame, is directing the game's scenario. You'll recognize Toshiyuki Itahana, art supervisor, and Kumi Tanioka, composer, from past Crystal Chronicles games.

[Nifleheim7]

The concept of building your own country sounds interesting!
I'm looking forward for more news and screens.

[Sam250]

How on earth will this fit on my Wiis internal memory?

I guess that it would fit on an SD card, but surley SE wouldn't make a game purley for those with SD cards?

I'm not saying that not may people have SD cards, its just that.... well, it would be a tad silly to make a game that is twice as large as the memory of the console it is for, yes?

Still, it looks totally awesome, nice to see some origanal content on the Wiis downloadable services.

[Roto13]

Am I going to have to delete all of my VC games? :P I'm looking forward to seeing even more Wii Ware, though. One cool thing about the Xbox Live Arcade is the actual new games. I'm glad the Wii is getting some, too.