10/18/2005

It was welcome news to many Final Fantasy series fans that Square was back on good terms with Nintendo, and though they’re still primarily on Sony consoles, we’ve had a slew of announcements lately about games for the DS and GBA…more specifically, ported games which are being rehauled for their new releases, some of them after lying ten years dormant.

The most widely publicized (again) is Final Fantasy III for the DS, a game which was originally on the Famicom and has never seen a remake or been published outside of Japan. North Americans will get their first legal English shot at playing this one. Japanese gamers will enjoy the updated graphics (according to IGN, they will be 3-D) and music.

III (or any other Famicom release) never saw quite the popularity the Super Famicom titles did, which is why it doesn’t really come as a surprise that another upcoming release, for the GBA this time, will be Final Fantasy IV. It is likely that the version ported will be the original Hardtype version, which was also the version used for the Final Fantasy Chronicles Playstation release. (Whether or not another game will be on the cart is yet unknown.) SquareEnix has launched a splash page for the upcoming Final Fantasy IV for ADVANCE website complete with images of the custom faceplate that will be available for the GBA Micro, and brand-new artwork from original FF illustrator Yoshitaka Amano. A micro + FFIV bundle will be available for preorder.

Finally, as though III and IV weren’t big enough news, SquareEnix has also confirmed their plans to release Final Fantasies V and VI (the latter of which is arguably the most popular title of the sprited games), as a set, also on the GBA. They will be released following IV, and all three Super Famicom titles will be “updated” - whether this means new video animation (the FMVs from the Playstation releases are pretty much useless on a 16-bit console) or other features is unclear at this time, but we do know that new towns and bosses at least will be featured.

The street date for IV in North America is December 12, and December 15th in Japan. The other games do not yet have solid release plans.

Source: IGN
And you can get a preview of some of the game images by heading over to The Magic Box!