Slashdot Mirror
Square Enix Considers FFIII On GBA?
Daetrin writes "Originally reported on The Magic Box and relayed (and edited) at Games Are Fun: 'Square Enix is currently pondering the possibility of porting their [unreleased] Wonderswan remake of Final Fantasy III to Nintendo's Gameboy Advance.' This is the only FF that hasn't been released in the US yet." However, this rumor last surfaced 10 months ago, so should probably be viewed warily - but the WonderSwan remakes of FF1 and FF2 were ported and enhanced further for Final Fantasy Origins on Playstation, so if FF3 is done, it might make sense for it to be re-appropriated as well.
Then why wasn't it released with FF1 and FF2 for the Playstation? Honestly, Alot of people I know were hoping to collect all of them on cd, especially with the PS2s backward compatability. All of the FF series playable on a single console...
Now that Square Enix is one company, why doesn't it release Dragon Warrior for GBA? I know DW 1-3 has already been done on the GBC, so how about a new original one? By the way, I would rather see FF6 ported to the GBA instead of FF3.
I sent a letter to igncube about this very question. Their responce was that 1. Square wants to test the waters first with FF Tactics and Sword of Mana. and 2. They might have an agreement with Sony that they can not release those games on the GBA until a specified date. Probably so it doesnt cut into the sales of FF Origins on the PSX.
Heres hoping Square ports as many FF games as they can to the GBA.
On another note, if Enix is looking to make some major bank, port DQ5 and 6 to the GBA and release it in America. I dont care what anyone says about Dragon Quest not being popular in the states, release one of these and see what happens $$
I hate saying it, but I think someone should probably bring up this up.
:)
When Final Fantasy V and VI were released for PSX I was really excited. A friend of mine had a copy and I immediately set out to play FFVI for the first time. (Yeah, I missed the FF SNES boat) I thought it was totally great for a while, until I started to hate waiting for the CD to load a random battle. This is especially bad when you get into one every 2-3 steps. Then waiting 4 seconds to load the menu started to completely drive me crazy. What you sloppy programmers couldn't give the emu enough RAM to store the menu?
I ended up downloading some roms (which is illegal, yes I'm not saying it isn't) and playing FFVI on my computer. What a difference. It was like night and day. Absoluately no loading time and the music is about 100% better than the horrible mess that the PSX version would output.
As far as I am concerned Squaresoft has made their money over and over again on these classics and I've bought countless PSX and a few SNES games from them over the years. FF1 was probably one of my all time favorite NES games, and I pissed my pants on a beautiful Christmas day when I opened that box. (What can I say? Nintendo Power had me all hyped up....somethings never change)
You guys should play these classics the way they were supposed to be, in their original form. You can really see how much they have improved the series since ints first game. I don't understand the need for new graphics or anything and it really takes some of the magic out when everything is rehashed or upgraded. FMVs to start FFVI with? They should have spent more time just making the game truer to its original form.
Nobody else mentioned the GP32 either....and I think everyone should check this little marvel out. I would imagine that with time and patience some really good SNES emus will come out for it over the next year or so. I think there is one so far (or maybe two) and it is really showing a lot of promise, but needs some help in the speed area. A 128mb flash card would easily hold every single FF game up until VI and would have room for a few other square classics. (Maybe the whole SNES collection)
It should also be mentioned that fan translations have brought countless classics to our language that would never ever have been otherwise. So if all this emulation stuff is such a bad thing, consider that such gems as Live-A-Live, Bahumut Lagoon, Seiken Denetsu III, and so many others would never have been enjoyed by the non japanese.
I usually don't advocate piracy, but there are so many games you can't really find anymore on cartridge. Chrono Trigger routinely gets $75-$100 on e-bay for the cart, and Sqaresoft doesn't see one dime of this anyways. I think it would be a lot wiser for companies to take all their old roms and sell them for like $10 a piece or something. It would certainly make tracking them down a hell of a lot easier at least.
zosxavius photography