Square Enix Theater

[Demon_Skeith]

At Square Enix's booth here at the Tokyo Game Show an enormous screen is playing back-to-back trailers for almost all the games in the company's lineup. The TGS ninja would pelt us with throwing stars whenever we tried to get photos of the screen, but our photographic memories will recreate the scene for you.

Front and center was Dragon Quest IX for the DS. The trailer began with an animated scene of a large object falling to earth. Cut to the lead character and his friends battling a large dragon in a cave. Our hero's companions each took turns powering him up as he ran towards the beast. Then the character customization tools were demonstrated. Clothing and items can be dragged onto your characters with the stylus, and there appears to be a wide variety of options. More animation followed of the friends hanging out at a bar. Then the slimes popped up and the game's battle system was displayed. Nothing shocking here: it's turn-based and many recognizable DQ monsters were shown. At one point the player's party was shown with wings, taking off into the sky. The story seems to revolve around a tree atop a towering city. As the trailer ended, the tree was shown blossoming and a floating train was circling it. Weird.

Snoopy is quite popular in Japan, and Square Enix is prepping Snoopy DS: Let's Go Meet Snoopy and his Friends. The trailer showed how players begin by customizing their own Charlie Brown lookalike -- basically Charlie with different clothes and hair. Then they're off to wander around town, meeting familiar characters and playing mini-games. Some of the games shown were surfing and card games. Famous scenarios such as The Great Pumpkin are apparently included. The in-game graphics are very similar to the cartoon, and of course the famous Charlie Brown piano theme is included.

Next was another casual mini-game collection for the DS called Pingu's Wonderful Carnival. Based on a family of four penguins, players choose a character and wander around completing simple objectives like making popcorn.

The Wii game Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon is being ported to the DS. The trailer showed many of the same cut scenes from the home version, but some extra content has been added. We can now play as Chocobo's sidekick Cid, who was an NPC the first time around. If you're unfamiliar with the game, Chocobo's Dungeon is a roguelike, turn-based dungeon crawler where players have to retrieve the lost memories of a mysterious town's citizens.

Continuing the Chocobo theme, a trailer for the sequel to Chocobo Tales was shown. Subtitled The Witch, the Girl, and the Five Heroes, the footage showed a village of different types of the birds hanging out. Eventually our hero enters a storybook and interacts with humans, including a young girl who looks like one of the main characters from Chocobo's Dungeon. We saw lots of dialogue and mini-games.

Next a trailer for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time was shown. The game is coming to both Wii and DS and will apparently use some sort of connectivity between the two systems. It looks like four players will be able to go on co-op missions together. Several boss fights were shown, and although the enemies were large they were still presented in a cute art style. The Wii version will support your Miis. This action RPG is set for a late January 2009 release in Japan.

The Valkyrie Profile series is making its DS debut this month. The trailer opened with a CGI scene of a deserted battlefield. Snow appeared to be slowly falling, but eventually you can tell it is actually feathers. An angelic woman appears standing over a fallen soldier, and then she disappears. The game appears to play as a turn-based strategy title but its combat system has a few tricks up its sleeve.

That concluded the open mega theater, but there is also the closed mega theater that should be showing trailers for Final Fantasy XIII.

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[Demon_Skeith]

Kingdom Hearts
On Kingdom Hearts Coded, Nomura notes that the videos so far have focused on detailing the type of gameplay experience offered by the game. This time, since Coded is playable in the NTT DoCoMo booth, the trailer was more story-focused.

For 358/2 Days, the big news was the announcement of a February 2009 release.

For Birth By Sleep, Nomura points out that this is the first time we've seen a battle scene involving Aqua. He suggests that viewers concentrate as they view the trailer, as the movement is so fast that it's easy to miss some areas.

The Third Birthday
The latest trailer for this Parasite Eve sequel placed the focus on event scenes. Nomura notes that the new trailer starts to get into specifics on the game, compared to the more abstract offering of the previous wedding scene trailer.

The trailer offers a mix of real time and pre-rendered scenes, although even the pre-rendered scenes are close to what we'll get in the final game.

This trailer was made in the hope of letting people see the "Twisted" enemy. The trailer also includes characters from past Parasite Eve titles.

Dissidia Final Fantasy
Nomura makes note of the fact that this is the first time we're seeing controllable 3D versions of characters from FFV and VI. He also says that his own illustrations will be used in the game's character select screen.

Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete
The big news was the announcement of a third SKU. In addition to the PS3 bundle and the first run version that includes the Final Fantasy XIII demo, Square Enix will release a standard version with no bonus item.

Final Fantasy XIII Series
The latest FFXIII trailer includes, for the first time, character voices. All voiced scenes in the trailer are realtime and not pre-rendered, Nomura confirms.

While not sharing the actual voice actor names, Nomura does reveal that the voice of Lightening is being handled by someone with close ties to Square Enix's titles, although the character is quite different from past works.

Nomura also tells the site that the name of the male character with the bandanna will be revealed shortly through Japanese video game magazines. As a hint, he says the character's name is weather-based (we're pretty sure he's said this in the past).

For Versus XIII, the big reveal this time was the name of the hero and heroine to be Noctus and Stella. Noctus is usually referred to as just Noct during the game (and amongst the development staff as well), but because the trailer features him encountering Stella for the first time, Stella refers to him by his full name.

As with the last trailer, this one is split between pre-rendered and real time footage, with the last half of the trailer, including all event scenes with subtitles, being real time.

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