Final Fantasy VIII hits Japan PSN

Like Final Fantasy VII at E3 before it, another PlayStation Final Fantasy was announced and made available during the press conference at Tokyo Game Show. It's Final Fantasy VIII's turn this time around, and by downloading the title from the store you can play it on your PlayStation 3 or transfer it to your PSP for mobile play. No word yet on when it will come to US and European PSN, but I'm more than willing to bet that it will eventually.

New 4WoL details

• Can be completed in 40 hours (originally 30 hours during development)
• Each character can only carry fifteen items
• Items don't stack (think Earthbound)
• Auto-targeting will make battles go by more quickly
• Lots and lots of optional sidequests not part of the main story
• Also like Earthbound, you can swap out items you're carrying with items from a previous inventory using hiding places

SOURCES: NeoGAF via GoNintendo (Dengeki Magazine)

TGS '09: Events as they unfold...

So at this point, I'll keep a little "liveblog" of stuff that comes out of E3. Keep refreshing and I'll post what I find as it happens.

9:31pm : Montage of games in Sony keynote, FFXIII present.
10:01pm : Final Fantasy IV: The After Years trailer.
10:10pm : New Crystal Bearers trailer, click the Multimedia section.
10:21pm : New Final Fantasy XIII floor footage.
10:26pm : Snow, Sazh, and Vanille battle in a the temple, Shiva is summoned.
11:01pm : FFXIII, summoning Odin and driving mode.
11:22pm : FFXIV TGS trailer.
12:01am : FFXIII special edition "Lightning" PS3 announced. It is pink and white with 250GB hard drive.
12:34am : FFXI expansion A Shantotto Ascension trailer.

Side note, we have six new in-game shots of FFXIII:
◆ #1: Lightning riding Sleipnir in Driving Mode.
◆ #2: Lightning and Odin in battle.
◆ #3: Snow and Serah.
◆ #4: A close-up.
◆ #5: Serah being engulfed.
◆ #6: Snow reaches out to Serah.

1:15am : Lightning and Hope battle underground.
1:20am : The official site will have the FFXIII TGS trailer in about 3 days, countdown was added.
2:20am : Snow party, first look at the menu system.
7:44am : Crystal Defenders heading to PSP.
12:23pm : Final Fantasy Versus XIII makes a secret appearance.
12:31pm : Hands on with Four Warriors of Light.
5:05pm : More footage from last night, Vanille is monsterbait. And the ensuing battle.
10:14pm : More escapades with Lightning.
1:03am : Snow nipplage. This is from the trailer that's coming out in a few days. (Hope for a leak.)
5:28am : Snow's party, seven minutes of gameplay and airship chase. Beautiful.
3:38am : The new "tattoo-girl" character?

Pre-TGS festivities: Vanille and Serah scan

In leading up to Tokyo Game Show 2009 (which starts later tonight) we have a new scan of Vanille and Serah in an in-game cutscene (below). Hopefully, the new trailer we'll see at the event will be online for viewings relatively quickly. But stay tuned for updates!

◆ Scan

SOURCES: 2ch

Fortress not dead in the water after all?

Since Swedish developer GRIN kicked the bucket, a flood of development artwork has surfaced on the Linkedin profiles of the developers associated with the project. However, the game codenamed Fortress, has been picked up again by Square-Enix. This was actually done roughly six months in the past as GamesIndustry.biz reports. Square-Enix had some concerns about the quality of the project, and financial woes finally caught up with GRIN due to Swedish legislation that imposes penalties on companies "that go into debt", which I take for a bankruptcy.

So it looks like behind closed doors at Square-Enix, Fortress is still alive. However there are still many questions left unanswered. Will Square-Enix still have a western developer work on this project? Will newly acquired Eidos be a good candidate for such a title? Will it still have the same themes we have seen in the artwork?

SOURCES: GamesIndustry.biz, Thanks SuperEclipse for the heads up.