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It's already been pointed out that he composed the music for the E3 trailer for the game, and that he certainly did not do everything for Square.

I will also add that he has not retired. He just quit Square-Enix and is now freelance. He still does some music for them, but under freelance contracts. His band The Black Mages also came out with a new album not too long ago, and he's done music for recent games like Blue Dragon. He still has an offcial web site hosted by Square-Enix: http://www.square-enix.co.jp/music/sem/page/uemats u/index.html

I wonder if there's any truth to the hypothesis that whichever console gets Square-Enix's primary franchises first (Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest), wins the market share for that generation. I believe it's always been true (maybe not with the SNES/Genesis, since that race was pretty close I believe).

If so, Sony better be worried and lock up those franchises tightly, and not give Squeenix any wiggle room. We already know they're working on the 360 (with the old Final Fantasy XI and Project Slypheed), so it's not out of the question that some flavor of the next FF or DQ game would be released on the 360. Also, if Blue Dragon really does well, Squeenix may not want Mistwalker Studios to "own" the J-RPG genre for the 360.

Alright point taken. But these are the big huge exclusive franchises to the system. GTA was always PS2 first, XBox + PC later. The fact of the matter is this: if you wanted to play MGS, FF, GTA, Jak & Dexter, Ratchet & Clank, etc. you wanted a PS2. The big issue is going to be how many exclusive titles is the PS3 going to have to carry it along, especially the bigger names. It's pretty obvious at this point that Square-Enix is putting a lot of power behind Nintendo and are about to release another game using Mario soon (Itsast Special with Mario: http://www.square-enix.co.jp/itastds/ ), not to mention the amount of support they're showing for the GBA, DS and Wii. My guess is that if the PS3 doesn't shape up to be the selling system that is expected, Sony stands to lose some noticeable 3rd party support.

My japanese isn't nearly good enough to read this, but: World of Mana sounds like it might be an MMORPG.

This game is basically Monopoly, but more advanced and certainly prettier. All of the characters are the same - that is that no one character is any better than any other character. This puts to rest all of those "Cloud would kill Kefka" fanboy-ism that is going on.

The game stands out on it's own merrits, that is that it involves a lot of strategy and requires that you be shrewd with your opponents in order. There are the standard chance and community chest type cards (which portray scenes from 2D FF and DQ games) which you pick from a 10x10 grid. If you get a combo (5 or more cards in a row without your opponent blocking) you start getting money multiplier bonuses.

At the end of the day, this game is still just Monopoly, where your 3d animated character throws the dice around, moves around the game board (in this case Ghost Train level of FF6), pays rent to the property owner, and waits for his next turn.

You can check out the webpage at http://www.square-enix.co.jp/games/ps2/itastsp/ where they have mini-games to this effect.

In short, this is nothing to get your hopes up for unless you're like me and actually enjoy Japanesse Monopoly with a dificulty level of hard, HARD, and HARDEST.

I'd been playing games in the home since 1980 when I got my Philips Videopac G7000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philips_G7000 but nothing grabbed me as much as Final Fantasy VII http://www.ffonline.com/ff7/ did. Before I had spent a few days on a game before getting bored, I played FF7 for over 7 months before I finished it.

Just waiting for the movie to come out on DVD - http://www.square-enix.co.jp/dvd/ff7ac/

By the way, does anyone remember Super Robot on OpenVMS? I spent hours at lunchtime at this game at work, not graphically great by any means but great fun when all you have is a VT220 :) - There's a Windows version at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.kelly4/robot.ht m

Jonathan

http://www.justgofaster.com/

Final Fantasy 4 on the DS is great. Being able to play GBA games on a lighted screen without the buttons being scrunched is always a Good Thing (tm).

Of course, FF4 GBA has tons of bugs. Berserk is buggy, slowing down your character to the point of uselessness. The airship flying is choppy (which is dumb because the GBA has better mode 7 than the SNES did). The "darkness" debuff does nothing. Worst of all, do things in the wrong order on the menu screen and your saves will be erased. (Yes that bug is in the American release too.)

Melissa

As usual, Square's JP site is so much better.

http://www.square-enix.co.jp/dvd/ff7ac/

I'm surprised no one's given a link to his (English) homepage yet. He's popular enough that Square-Enix's homepage contains it as one of nine navigational links on the top of their page! (His Japanese site is, not surprisingly, far more up to date.)

His site includes an English webpage for the Black Mages with more information, including two official samples (requires Flash).

If you're interested in purchasing the disc, I would highly suggest using Froogle. You can get it for quite a bit cheaper than the $20 people have been linking to.

Now for my brief review:

If you aren't into Final Fantasy and Nobuo Uematsu's music, the disc is nothing special. It sounds like "80's synth" music. Most of the music has no meaning unless you can tie it in with the game when it played, so if you haven't played the games that go along with the music it's nothing special. If you are into Final Fantasy music, though, this disc is excellent.

If you have the complete Final Fantasy soundtrack for every Final Fantasy from I to XI (guilty, excluding X-2), then you should go get this disc. It's worth the money, and you'll enjoy every track. (Except, possibly, Dancing Mad. It's long and practically straight from the game.)

If not - then it's probably not worth it.

(Also, there are previews for the second disc on his Japanese site. Thankfully the site is half-English. :) Note that they're webpage doesn't return proper MIME types for the Windows Media files if you're using Firefox.)

I'm surprised no one's given a link to his (English) homepage yet. He's popular enough that Square-Enix's homepage contains it as one of nine navigational links on the top of their page! (His Japanese site is, not surprisingly, far more up to date.)

His site includes an English webpage for the Black Mages with more information, including two official samples (requires Flash).

If you're interested in purchasing the disc, I would highly suggest using Froogle. You can get it for quite a bit cheaper than the $20 people have been linking to.

Now for my brief review:

If you aren't into Final Fantasy and Nobuo Uematsu's music, the disc is nothing special. It sounds like "80's synth" music. Most of the music has no meaning unless you can tie it in with the game when it played, so if you haven't played the games that go along with the music it's nothing special. If you are into Final Fantasy music, though, this disc is excellent.

If you have the complete Final Fantasy soundtrack for every Final Fantasy from I to XI (guilty, excluding X-2), then you should go get this disc. It's worth the money, and you'll enjoy every track. (Except, possibly, Dancing Mad. It's long and practically straight from the game.)

If not - then it's probably not worth it.

(Also, there are previews for the second disc on his Japanese site. Thankfully the site is half-English. :) Note that they're webpage doesn't return proper MIME types for the Windows Media files if you're using Firefox.)

• Official Square Enix website
• IMDB entry
• ff7ac.net (fansite)
• ff7-2.com (fansite)

"It's too bad SquareSoft screwed up so badly with the Final Fantasy movie. I'd have liked to see them be the third big player in this field. Their visuals were absolutely stunning, but the plot left a lot to be desired."

You should look here. (I should warn you that they abuse Flash pretty heavily here, but give the trailer video a chance...)

Square Enix already has Kingdom Hearts 2, KH: Chain of Memories, and FF7: Advent Children merchandise available! Sick, ain't it?

Although, rpgamer.com says that composer Nobuo Uematsu talks Final Fantasy XII in his online journal - but it's not in a language that I can read. Can anyone translate this?