March 9th, 2002

As best as anyone can tell, it's now official. Square and Nintendo have settled their differences, pigs are flying, and Hell is feeling a little chilly. A new development house, helmed by former Square employees, will be developing Final Fantasy branded games for the GameCube and GameBoy Advance. This new company will be an affiliate of Square, so there is every likelihood that the main Final Fantasy series will not be coming to the GameCube. This is further backed up by the fact that Sony recently purchased a sizeable chunk of Square's stock, and has a decidedly large amount of mass to throw around to keep that from happening.

What is likely, however, is that we will see the wonderful remakes of Final Fantasy I though VI that were planned for the WonderSwan Color make their way to the GameBoy Advance. I have Final Fantasy I for the WonderSwan Color, and I would gleefully soil myself to get my hands on an English version for the GameBoy Advance. What also seems to be in the works is a game called Final Fantasy Extreme. This game, which thankfully is "Extreme" and not "Xtreme" and therefore has nothing to do with skateboarders, would be based on the Anime series of the same name. Apparently the show follows the story of a husband and wife research team that get sucked into another world and their kids have to save them. Let's pray it's not like Digimon. There will probably be both GameCube and GameBoy Advance versions of the game that will interact with each other via the GameCube to GameBoy Advance link cable. Hopefully, this will be a cool feature and not just to exploit another crappy Final Fantasy minigame.

Some of you may be saying, "Oh goodie! Final Fantasy XI for the GameCube!" Well don't hold your breath, Sparky. Nintendo still hasn't announced their online plans, and I personally don't think they have any. Since Final Fantasy XI is more than a little pointless without the ability to get online, it's a safe bet it won't be making its way to GameCube any time soon.

If anything else comes up, I'll keep you posted.

-K'Tok