The cute little Chocobo has really warked his way into the spotlight: after Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales on the DS, Square Enix was inspired to revive the Chocobo's Dungeon series on Wii ... and then, this summer, Square Enix announced one of each for the DS, as a follow-up to the success of Chocobo Tales. That's one busy little bird.
New details and screenshots are available at last on Chocobo's foray into the land of Final Fantasy Fables. Chocobo to Mahou no Ehon: Majiyo to Otome to Gojin no Yuusha (Chocobo and the Magic Storybook: The Witch, The Maiden, and the Five Heroes) follows the fat chocobo as he ventures, this time, into a story book drawn by Cid. Both of Square Enix's new Chocobo games focus heavily on Cid, so we're not surprised to see the franchise staple putting pen to page in this game. Players will tackle more than 40 mini-games when the title is released in Japan this December.
The latest information about Chrono Trigger's new DS-specific features originates from a pretty unusual place: the port's Japanese Toys R Us product page. At least, that's according to NeoGAF's duckroll, who wouldn't seem to have any reason to lie. However, the information does not appear on the product page now, which means that it was probably removed.
Duckroll reports that the game allowed you to breed and train around 50 monsters in the game's previously unspecified "Arena Mode," with the goal of battling them and winning rare items. You can even fight your friends via (probably local) wireless.
From more mysterious sources come details of two new dungeons: "Dimensional Distortion," in which players must travel through time, changing The End of Time as they complete segments, and "Dragon's Sanctuary," in which players must complete a number of quests within the dungeon and across different time periods.
When we were going to pick the winner of our latest giveaway, we completely realized that we forgot to announce the winner for our previous giveaway. Also, we received quite a few emails from you all. So, without further delay, here's our winners:
We've been trying to unload a copy of Square Enix's Final Fantasy IV on you folks for a whole week now and this is your last reminder: the giveaway ends tonight. If you weren't in the know regarding this latest giveaway, then we suggest you read DS Fanboy more. But, hey, you still have a few hours left, so head on over to the original contest post and read up on how to enter. Good luck!
We were just talking yesterday about the ridiculous amount of RPG love the DS has gotten in the past and is getting in the future and wanted to ask you all if you thought the genre was being overused on the DS. Do you think the DS has way too many RPGs? Is there a genre of games you want to see more of on the DS?
So what do you all think? Too much of a good thing? Or do you love the RPG love the DS has received so far?
After talking yesterday about Dragon Quest and the coming (again) of part IV, we thought it might be interesting to backpeddle to a more basic, visceral question: do you prefer Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest? It's Square versus Enix in an RPG franchise fight to the death!
Next week, Dragon Quest IV hits, bringing with it the possibility of the massive franchise finally taking off for real in the US in a way it hasn't since the original Dragon Warrior. Here, Final Fantasy is bigger, but in Japan, this is the real IV.
Have you been following Chapters of the Chosen? Are you interested in playing along with the adventures of Torneko Taloon and the rest of the cast? If so, will this be the first Dragon Quest for you? How about the first Dragon Quest IV? Did you get it back on the NES?
Square Enix's recent remake of RPG classic Final Fantasy IV turned a lot of heads. Most found the title to be quite enjoyable. Having done our part and reviewed the game, it's now time we perform the most painful part of our job: give it away to one lucky reader. What must you do to get your hands on this copy of Final Fantasy IV (retails for $40)? Simply leave a comment telling us if you've played the original game or not between now and Wednesday, September 17th at 11:59PM ET, after which we'll choose one lucky winner via random drawing. Entrants may leave one comment per day.
There are a few things you should know before entering. Entrants must be current and legal residents of the United States or Canada (excluding Quebec) and at least 18 years of age or older. Read up on the rest of the official rules right here. Good luck!
For fans of Chrono Trigger, the news that the game would be ported to the DS was like finding an extra toy in your box of cereal. Or, actually, it was probably a bigger deal than that. Like, a lot bigger. But, what about those purists that don't like touch-screen controls changing up the game?
Well, Square Enix will be including a single-screen mode, which you can see to the right of this text. The bottom screen will display health information for the enemies you're currently engaging, so it still plays a role in the game. Are touch-screen controls really that big of an issue, though?
It's one of the DS-related mysteries that keeps us up at night: what is the dealio with Dragon Quest IX? Square Enix claimed the game was "almost finished" back on February 1st, developer Level 5 has long been targeting a 2008 release, and the game's official page still has the title down for a launch this year.
Despite this, Spencer at Siliconera points out that there has been no recent press coverage of the game, never mind a concrete release date from Square Enix, who plan to make an unholy amount of wonga from the game. Maybe we'll find out more at the Tokyo Game Show next month, though just to confuse matters further, the game won't be playable there. It's all very bizarre.
Source: Dragon Quest IX might make 2008 ...
Source: ... but it won't be playable at TGS.
Square Enix has delayed the Japanese launch of Valkyrie Profile: The Accused One by four weeks, citing a need to improve the game (in ... four weeks?!); the title has now been shifted to October 30th.
While we immediately began to fret over the implications of this development, Square Enix skilfully took advantage of our famously short attention spans and chucked a new video our way, one that left us gurgling with pleasure at some of the ridiculously over-the-top attacks that will be available. Honestly, give us some bright colors and fast-moving images, and you've got our undivided attention.
Posted Aug 29th 2008 12:00PM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
We spent most of this year enthralled by the prospect of Space Invaders Extreme and Arkanoid DS. Now that they've shipped, we've transferred our Taito game anticipation to the two upcoming gamesThe Legend of Kage 2 and Exit DS.
Jeremy Parish interviewed the producers of each game, learning interesting factoids about both. For example, Lancarse, part ofthe Etrian Odyssey development team, is responsible for Kage 2. And for the first time that we've seen, a Taito developer acknowledges the NES Demon Sword as a Kage series game -- before dismissing it. We had been wondering about that! And despite being a Taito side-view game with a lot of elevators (and, yes, some action), Exit was not inspired by Elevator Action.
Have you noticed that Chrono Trigger looks awfully familiar? Okay, you have, and most of you don't care (because it's Chrono Trigger we're talking about here, after all) ... but that begs the question of whether or not we want to watch Chrono Trigger videos.
The answer? Of course we do. It's Chrono Trigger we're talking about here, and it's coming to the DS! Bring on the videos! We have the three latest right here. Not enough for you? If you're really desperate for new-old content and can't wait for the game's release, then we recommend watching a speed run and reading the game's script.
Wow, we sure called this one. Like the rest of the game, the boxart for the DS version of Chrono Trigger is very similar to the original. Of course, in some cases, less (effort) is more, and this just may be one of them. Was there any way Square Enix could have improved on Chrono Trigger's boxart?
So there are those certain types of games that deserve an immediateimport -- the language barrier isn't too steep, and the gameplay is universally appealing. A lot of titles, however, require a good ability in Japanese to navigate. But a part of the appeal of this column is not simply being an "importer's guide" on what's easy and import-able, but also to expand upon our readers knowledge of upcoming games out of Japan that may or may not see an overseas release. Said games may be the triplest of A's; or in other cases, it could be an ultra quirk-fest of a game that has no chance of sailing across to the Western shores.
With that in mind, today's Items of Import looks at Sigma Harmonics, a "mystery RPG" developed in-house at Square Enix. Having just released in Japan, this is a title that deserves more of our attention since an original IP from the publisher has been a long time coming. The official website for the game is loaded with content right now, and we can learn much from reading and translating it.
The cute little Chocobo has really warked his way into the spotlight: after Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales on the DS, Square Enix was inspired to revive the Chocobo's Dungeon series on Wii ... and then, this summer, Square Enix announced one of each for the DS, as a follow-up to the success of Chocobo Tales. That's one busy little bird.
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We spent most of this year enthralled by the prospect of Space Invaders Extreme and Arkanoid DS. Now that they've shipped, we've transferred our Taito game anticipation to the two 
