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If your Squenix fantasies revolve around a mash-up of popular characters duking it out in some bizarre interdimensional struggle between good and (yawn) evil, the recent announcement of Dissidia's upcoming mid-2009 release is the culmination of your crossover cravings. Dissidia is Squenix's latest swipe at the fighting game genre, last attempted with Ergheiz on the original PlayStation and The Bouncer on the PS2, in which the player will have the power to choose between good and evil and stuff and, presumably, play through the story as everyone from Sephiroth to Zidane (complete with that ridiculous tail) to either save the world (because we're good guys) or destroy it (because we just can't help ourselves and, plus, we got thwarted last time we tried, except for Kefka, who, by my count, is still in the lead) as agents of either Cosmos (good god) or Chaos (figure it out) in an epic excuse to pit your favorite Squenix characters against each other in a battle to the most points (or something). Also, there will be summons. (Surprise!)

Source: Google, NPWNFAA*

*News Posters With News Forum Allergies Anonymous

Maestro Arnie Roth, the music director for the "Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds" concert series, has announced dates and locations for performances of the show for roughly the first half of 2009. However, you're still out of luck if you're not in or near one of only four American destinations on this tour.

In April, those who are just thawing out in Minneapolis and Grand Rapids, Michigan each get a show; about four weeks later, there's a single performance in Baltimore. After that, the show swings across the Pacific to Singapore for a pair of shows, and then it's back to the American West Coast in July for two shows in Seattle and another pair in San Francisco. Of course, more dates may be added as time wears on, but I wouldn't count on seeing too many; only two shows were played in the States in the whole of 2008.

The setlist for these concerts appears to be pretty static, though of course it is subject to change in terms of both sequence and overall setlist. Some highlights, however, include full orchestral arrangements of the Final Fantasy Main Theme, Final Fantasy IV's "Theme of Love," portions of Final Fantasy VI's Opera score, and Final Fantasy X's "To Zanarkand."

To find out more about the schedule, setlist, or to buy tickets if you're in the area of one of the shows (prices appear to range from about $30.00 to $100.00 a seat, depending on which city you look), visit the official Distant Worlds site.

Europeans can look forward to their first official taste of Chrono Trigger on February 6th, 2009. That's right, Europe's never had an official release for Chrono Trigger, ever, so this is the first chance many Europeans will have to enjoy the game legally.

If it's any consolation, Europe, Americans never got English versions of Terranigma or VibRibbon. Well, maybe that isn't much of a consolation. But hey, congratulations!

Source: Kotaku

The title says it all. Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii recently revealed that the tenth entry in the popular Dragon Quest series will be on the Wii. There is no background storyline information available, nor do we know anything about the game's visuals, basic gameplay mechanics, or motion controls. There is also no word on connectivity between the DS's Dragon Quest IX and Dragon Quest X.

Horii also confirmed Dragon Quest IX's release date, which is March 28th in Japan.

Source: Joystiq

Well, the Fanfic contest has closed, the result are in, and it's true to say that we didn't get many entries, but it's also true to say everyone who did enter has at least won something. Thanks to those who entered and a reminder for the next time to anyone else that the fact 100% of entrants won something is a good reason to enter future fic contests. Keep your eyes peeled (or even sign up to the RSS gizmo) in the future for any we do run.

The quality of the entrants made up for apparent lack of quantity, and the judges had a tough time in scoring the four quality fics entered into the contest by the three participants. We did not get any entries into the comedy section, for reasons unknown. Possibly the Large Hadron Collider providing us more than enough comedy by failing to work, or possibly just general credit crunch misery, but either way, there was no funny. We did get four entries from three people, and though sadly we can't give you a nice picture to look at like with the fanart, perhaps we can reverse the equation and have a thousand words equal a picture.

In descending order, our fourth place entry but third placed entrant, A Bards' Fallen Love earning a third place prize. The only non-FF6 entrant to the contest and the shortest, it is by no means a bad fic even if it was technically last placed, but Tesco was unfortunate to face very tough competition and only narrowly missed out on a higher placing.

The third and second places in terms of points went to The Shadow and About Being King. The latter story also won the General category, meaning that Lockpick wound up winning three prizes from the contest.

The winner overall in first place as well as the winner of the scene selection category however was Mirrors into Windows by MeaPortia, earning the overall first place prize in addition to the prize for the category win.

Congratulations to our winners, and thanks to them for entering. For those of you who are now reading the winners and maybe also browsing the rest of our fanfic library, perhaps you might feel inspired by what you read to submit your own fanfics to us or tell a friend who writes to do the same. In fact, watch this space. There might be something along to write fanfics about.

Final Fantasy XIII may remain a far off dream, but the distant echoes of series spin-off Crystal Chronicles are quickly approaching. "Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time" has been given an official release date of January 29 in Japan, and is expected to hit the North American market sometime this Spring.

Like the rest of the Crystal Chronicles series, the gameplay of Echoes will heavily rely on action-RPG aspects and puzzles, rather than the traditional turn-based combat of the main Final Fantasy series. Echoes will be available on both the Wii and the Nintendo DS, and the game will take advantage of the two systems' interconnectivity to allow online multiplayer. Additionally, Nintendo seems to have realized that we're tired of letting those dozens of Miis we made on launch day languish without a purpose in life; players of the Wii version will be able to import their favorite Miis into the game.

Source: GameSpot

I've never been a fan of the Crystal Chronicles series, but even I'm tempted by this. The short blurb about the story in the above link sounds like it could be interesting... as long as we don't find out that the heroine is sick because she ate dragon grass not once, but twice. Stupid princesses who eat dragon grass two--count 'em, TWO--times deserve what they get. Really, the Crystal Chronicles line always seemed to me like a kiddie version of the (occasionally) more mature main series storylines. These saccharine tales of precocious fourteen-year-olds aren't quite as cute now that I'm not fourteen, yanno?

Since I wasn't able to close the contest on time, I figured at least I could spend part of my Saturday making sure the winners were on time!

Thanks to all those who entered, all those who told their friends to enter, and even those who just wanted to enter but never got around to it; the CoN Summer Fanart contest is now over as I announce these two winners. We're not sure when we'll run another contest, but as long as you keep an eye out here (perhaps subscribing to our RSS feed might help), you will be sure you'll be among the first to know next time.

Now, on to the winners. We only got enough entries, sadly, to offer up two prizes; one goes to the overall top scorer among our judges' responses, and the other goes to the entry that we judged to be the most creative in concept out of them all.

First, let's discuss our victor of the most creative prize, a ten-dollar gift card to AmaCoN. Our artist's work for this prize caught us off guard. It's deceptively simple at first glance, but as you start to take it all in, you start to appreciate the different levels at which it's clever. We really quite enjoyed the way that the photo cutouts present different characters than the actual subjects of the piece, and the little detail of Umaro ripping his cutout right off the deck instead of stooping over gave us a genuine laugh when we noticed it. So, congratulations to Galsic, taking home the prize for most creative submission! You can view his new art in our gallery right now, or view the thumbnail right here!



And, our only other prize to be given out today, the grand prize of this contest, a forty-dollar AmaCoN gift card, goes to an artist who has been around CoN forever. His entry was also very clever, so much so that he nearly overtook Galsic to capture both prizes. The format he used allowed him to tell a full story and while it doesn't necessarily have the bold color and sharp detail of some of our other entries, the story both fit our "Vacationing Heroes" theme, and showed a significant amount of effort in laying out each panel. Not only that, we found it darkly humorous to boot, with a payoff at the end that you might not see coming. Once you see the piece in our gallery, you'll know right away that it could have come from only one guy here at CoN: congratulations to Narratorway for taking home top honors this time around. Surely you now want to see his winning fanart entry, so don't let us stop you once our thumbnail below sinks in a bit!



Again, congratulations to our winners, and thank you very much to everyone who supported our new fanart system with an entry. We appreciate every one of you and if I could afford to give you all a prize I happily would. Please keep submitting and keep bringing your friends to not only submit to our galleries, but also to see the great work we already have in place. Hope to see you all again here soon!

Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride and Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume both received release dates for the United States: February 17th for Dragon Quest and March 17th for Valkyrie Profile, both in 2009.

Dragon Quest V is a DS remake of a SNES game that was previously remade for the Playstation 2. It chronicles the story of a nameless hero journeying to rid the world of an evil demon's influence while searching for the truth behind his heritage and finding love in the process. Covenant of the Plume is the third game in the cult hit Valkyrie Profile series made by longtime Enix collaborator Tri-Ace. The story is of a young warrior whose father died in battle and was subsequently taken by Lenneth (the protagonist of of the first Valkyrie Profile) to be one of Odin's Einherjar. The son strikes a deal with the queen of the damned, determined to exact revenge upon Lenneth.

Both of these games will give DS-owning American fans of Square-Enix something to spend their hard-earned money on before spring begins.

Source: Kotaku

BioWare announced today the project many people assumed they were working on: a Star Wars MMO (that isn't Galaxies). Essentially, it's going to take the setting, style, and basic principles from BioWare's popular Knights of the Old Republic duo of games and make it massively multiplayer. At a press conference in San Francisco earlier today, a BioWare representative labeled TOR (should we start calling it that?) as "Knights of the Old Republic 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12-plus." So far all they have is some concept art and a couple screens.



Source: GameSpot

Some of you might be wondering why there hasn't been any announcements of the fanart contest as yet. If you're not wondering, with hope you are now. The reason is twofold, and neither is terribly impressive. I'll get to those later, though, and put the important info up here:

We're extending the art submission deadline for eleven full more days (plus a few hours) - you now need to have your art in on October 31, Halloween.

Now for the reasons, should you want to know:

1) I, fortunately for me but unfortunately for CoN, had to change jobs right before the contest was set to close. Up until right now, I've barely been around while I did all the things necessary for me to leave my old job and get settled in my new one, and that precluded me from doing anything for the site that required much effort besides clicking.
2) We honestly, frankly, are low on entries. This works out poorly for me, as I really did want to give out lots of prizes and see the new fanart system become a fast success thanks to all you folks submitting. However, this can work out really well for you, as if you've submitted, you have a pretty good chance of getting some prize!

So, with those two things in mind, you have my mea culpa on reason number one. However, I do expect that you artists out there will kick in some more art in the very near future to make up for reason number two. Get started, I want to give away prizes.