An interesting development in the video game world as our RPG giants Square Enix have put in a bid for a friendly takeover of Tecmo, the company mostly recognised as the developers of the Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive series (much like their takeover of Taito a few years ago).

Tecmo has recently been undergoing severe company problems, with the head of their "Team Ninja" development team leaving the firm and sueing them for unpaid bonuses and emotional stress, as well as two further lawsuits from people representing the entire staff for certain unpaid wages.

Square Enix's proposal (which must be responded to by September 4th or else they're withdrawing) is to buy a controlling share of Tecmo (so 51% or more) at a cost of 920 yen per share, 30% more than the 706 yen they're worth. Like with their takeover of Taito, Square Enix would keep Tecmo's name and company staff, but would have the final say in what they can and can't do, and the company would more than likely be allowed to continue developing the games as it currently does (Taito, for example, still concentrates on arcade-style games).

The takeover bid essentially seems to be a great offer for Tecmo, as it would appear that the company is undergoing monetary issues, and this would certainly drag them out of it.

Source: Square Enix

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As you probably gathered from the last week of inactivity on Final Fantasy Insight, I took a mini-break from posting news, and as you probably summised following my last post, I'm back in business, at least for today. And now I bring you a nice bit of Dissidia -Final Fantasy- related news.

First of all, the Japanese website for the game updated on Friday to update with another gameplay video, taking place between Tidus and Jecht on the Sin-Zanarkand battleground from Final Fantasy X. As always I've extracted the video and uploaded it to YouTube for you all to have an easier time at seeing it, but if you want to see it in its original location and quality, you can check it out at the official Japanese website (click on Movie).

Watch: YouTube

Another update today revealed is that a release date for the game has been decided upon, and unsurprisingly they've decided to make the game available in Japan on the day of the very first Final Fantasy's 21st birthday, essentially using Dissidia to end the celebrations of the 20th Anniversary of Final Fantasy. The game is therefore to be released on December 18th, 2008 at the price of 6090 yen (roughly $50), and once again Sony and Square Enix will partner up in order to provide gamers with a new limited edition Sony PlayStation Portable (taken from the new PSP-3000 range due out in October) bundled in with Dissidia, the cost for this will be 25890 yen (roughly $240). No pictures of the game's cover or limited edition bundles are currently available.

Source: Square Enix

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An extremely short news post here to say that in a rather shock announcement, Square Enix have revealed that North American stores will receive Chrono Trigger DS before Japanese stores, albeit only two days.

This comes as the result of a recent update to the official Japanese Chrono Trigger DS website where the company stated the Japanese release date is November 27th, an entire two days (I want to make a joke about how short a time after the North American release this is but I will refrain) after the North American date of November 25th. There is still no news as to the release date of the game in Europe and PAL Territories.

Source: Square Enix

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So I'm four days late with this news, but I'm hoping you forgive me. You know how it is, you intend to do something, you put it off to do something else, and then next thing you know its totally gone off your radar and you only remember when you accidentally come across something to do with it again.

On August 22nd, Square Enix Members (North America) updated their blog to provide us with two nice little bits of new regarding the upcoming release of Chrono Trigger DS as a way to celebrate its thirteenth birthday (the original Super Nintendo Entertainment System [SNES] version was released in North America on August 22nd 1995). The first is that Chrono Trigger DS will be released in North American stores on November 25th, which makes it the first date announced for the game (unusual since we'd usually expect a Japanese date announced first). The second bit of news is the release of the North American front cover for the game, which in honour of the SNES game, uses the exact same cover, only adapted for the different box-shape of Nintendo DS games.


Chrono Trigger DS is planned for release in Japan before the end of the year, with a North American release set for November 25th, and nothing more precise than "Early 2009" for Europe and PAL Territories.

Source: Square Enix

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So Famitsu's promised report on the Square Enix DKΣ3713 Summer Party 2008 has been published, and that means we've now experienced a minor avalanche of information and new pictures to talk about. I think I'll start by providing you with a batch of scans and digital photographs taken from the Fabula Nova Crystallis -Final Fantasy XIII- coverage (most of these are of dubious quality, but never fear because further in this post are bigger and much better quality versions of the screenshots that I found on Final Fantasy World (no source posted there)), as well as the report's official cover which had actually been released over a week ago, but what with one thing and another I never got around to posting here.


So lets start with Final Fantasy XIII. First of all, it seems that the game demo intended for release alongside Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete in March will actually be on a seperate disc (which means that even if the movie is region-locked, you should be able to play the game), and the team estimate that the demo will actually be playable for LONGER than the duration of the movie (which now clocks in at over two hours) and features the entire beginning to the game. The battle system will be returning to the old Final Fantasy style of being able to control all members of the party, and is apparently distancing itself from the feel of the Final Fantasy XII system (a statement one would think is aimed at those people saying that the system will be based on the Final Fantasy XII one). It seems that the story for the game will not be seen just through the eyes of just one person, but instead narration of the events will switch from character to character in order to each bring their own individual focus to the overall plot. This same switching from character to character is apparently also intended in battle, though the game's battle system is still being mysteriously kept secret from us all.

The Final Fantasy XIII demo will allow you to take control of both Lightning and Mr. 33cm, with a promise that we'll actually learn the latter's real name between now and then. Speaking of Mr. 33cm, you may notice that he sports a tattoo on his forearm. In reality this is apparently not a tattoo but a marking shared by l'Cie (of which all three of our currently seen heroes are apparent members). For those who forgot, the l'Cie are elected by the fal'Cie in order to perform certain missions (though the nature of these missions have not been revealed yet). It seems that the fal'Cie communicate orders to the l'Cie via visions that the l'Cie must interpret. Finally, it seems that the "frozen" location we'd seen lately is actually a cristalised area located at the lowest part of Cocoon. The following is a higher quality version of some of the pictures shown in the above magazine pictures.


Next up is the discussion for Final Fantasy Versus XIII. First of all, it seems that all the pictures shown in the Famitsu report are produced on the in-game engine, and are not in pre-rendered graphics and director Tetsuya Nomura felt the need to point out that the game's development team morale is currently very high. It seems that the inhabitants of the world of Versus XIII worship a Death Goddess, reflected by the painting (by famed artist Yoshitaka Amano, which shares an uncanny resemblance to the female in the Fabula Nova Crystallis logo) in the room where the Prince and Skirt Girl (who at the moment looks a  lot like Yuna with a different hair style) first meet. Nomura once again reminds us that all costumes, hair styles, and vehicles so far have been of temporary design, and will be modified before we get the final game. Speaking of changes, you may have also noticed that the Prince's eyes have gone from red to blue, this is apparently a semi-permanent change - it would seem that the Prince's eyes are naturally blue, but shift colour under certain circumstances.

Speaking of eyes, Nomura went on to explain that the development team are trying to keep the in-game graphics as close as possible to pre-rendered sequences, but are experiencing some slight trouble, especially with eyes, as the pre-rendered eyes allow for the expression of a lot more emotion than the in-game models. Nomura also talked about how they were planning on announcing the names of the Prince and the Skirt Girl at the recent Summer Party, however, they were not at the stage required to do this announcement, but he went on to promise that their names would finally be revealed during the Tokyo Game Show in October. The core development team for the game has also finally been revealed, and whilst we were already aware of some of these names, and could hazard a guess at the rest of them (*cough*KingdomHeartsTeam*cough*).

Producers: Shinji Hashimoto, Yoshinori Kitase
Director, Character Design: Tetsuya Nomura
Illustrations: Yoshitaka Amano
Machine Design: Takayuki Takeya (Final Fantasy VII Advent Children)
Clothing Design: Hiromu Takahara (of Roen)
Scenario: Kazushige Nojima (of Stellavista)
Music: Yôko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts series, Parasite Eve, Legend of Mana)
Principal Programming: Hiroshi Harata, Kentaro Yasui (FFVII, VIII, KH series)
Planning Directors:
- Principal: Yuichi Kanemori (KH series), Takayoshi Nakazato (FFX, X-2)
- World: Takeshi Endo (KH series)
- Events: Jun Akiyama (Vagrant Story, KH, FFXII)
Graphical Direction:
- Characters: Tomohiro Kayano (FFVII, VIII, KH)
- Animation: Tatsuya Kando (FFVII, VIII, IX, KH series, The World Ends With You)
- Map: Masahide Tanaka (FFVIII, IX, KH series)
- Visual Effects: Syuichi Sato (KH series)
- Menu: Takeshi Arakawa (FFVIII, IX, KH series, TWEWY)
Artistic Direction:
- Characters: Tomohiro Hasegawa (FFVIII, X, KH series, TWEWY)
- Map: Takayuki Ohdachi (FFVII, KH series, TWEWY)
Cinematic Director: Takeshi Nozue (FFVII AC, KH series)


As for Final Fantasy Agito XIII, the development team are insisting that the game had always been planned for a Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) release, but that they could no longer wait for the technology of mobile phones to catch up with what they wanted in order to delay the release of the PSP version (I really don't know how many people Square Enix expect to actually buy this supposed fact). Agito XIII director Hajime Tabata reveals the the game's battle system is based primarily on that of his previously-directed Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII-, though the addition of multiple party members as well as more turn-based systems will make it much more of an evolution to the system it's based on.

Multiplayer for the game has been confirmed, with a three-player infrastructure mode having been designed. Ad-hoc internet multiplayer so far is not implemented into the game, but considering the fact that the game had originally been planned for potential network play on a mobile phone, we could expect it to happen. You may also notice the presence of summon Odin in the background of one of the pictures, it'd seem that summons form the basis of the characters' development system in Agito XIII (possibly something like Final Fantasy VIII's Guardian Force system), and can also be controlled once summoned. Finally, Tabata decided to elaborate a bit on the game's story (extremely briefly) by stating that the countries of the world in Agito XIII have all signed a Pax Codex (peace treaty in Latin) which the leader of one of the world's countries, Cid, has violated by invading another country with an army of l'Cie. Final Fantasy Versus XIII director Tetsuya Nomura then explained that certain terms like l'Cie are part of the mythos tying together all titles of the Fabula Nova Crystallis, and as such will the l'Cie will also turn up in Versus XIII (like the Crystals).

And before I finally leave you, Famitsu Online have posted some non-scan versions of the pictures shown in the above magazine scans, only in relatively small sizes. Since I've posted them above in generally better versions, I've only taken the watermarked Agito XIII ones, since we didn't already have them in higher quality. If you want to see the others, you can check out the links below the images.


Final Fantasy XIII Screenshots.
Final Fantasy Versus XIII Screenshots.
Final Fantasy Agito XIII Screenshots.

Source: FF7AC Reunion, Final Fantasy World

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