Final Fantasy VII

Fan attempts to remake Final Fantasy VII with the Unreal Engine.

But not on consoles or handhelds. With 'On the Way to a Smile' we can look forward to a collection of seven short stories written by Kazushige Nojima the scenario writer for the RPG Final Fantasy VII and its spin-off movie Advent Children. Each story takes a look at how the characters have been doing in the two year gap between the end of the original FFVII story and the beginning of the movie Advent Children. On the Way to a Smile releasing shortly on July 19th in Europe.

Square Enix has had versions of Final Fantasy VII and VIII uploaded to Steam's online service for months but they are yet to and likely never will be released to the public, RPG Site can reveal. The PC versions of the game are based off the PC ports released by Eidos back in 1998 and 2000. Eidos were of course later purchased by Square Enix, which presumably meant this code fell back into their hands. Most interesting of all, the PC version of Final Fantasy VIII appears to have been edited from its original version in an attempt to force the game to run better (or at all) on modern operating systems.

On its Japanese launch day, then-teenage Ryoei Mikage just happened to be wandering around a game shop, looking for something to pop into his dads new PlayStation something that wasnt Myst. This being his first time actually in such a store, he asked what the clerk thought would be good, and was thus introduced to Final Fantasy VII. -PSLS

What is apparently an email from Square Enix to potential translators for an NGP remake of Final Fantasy VII is doing the rounds. Read it and weep. Before you get too excited, the reaction we just got from an SE PR rep on the phone suggests, to put it mildly, that this may not be legit.

PC World: We've already shown you the top 25 all-time favorite video game characters as picked by gamers in conjunction with the Guinness Book of World Records. Now we're back with another segment of 25 who made the list. Are any of your old friends here?

Square Enix Music Online reports: At SEMO, we can exclusively reveal that Square Enix has voted to disband their music team. The company made the decision at the end of 2009 for budget reasons. Their decision lies behind a number of well-publicised departures from the company in recent months. Among those that are affected are the six composers at the team, namely: Masashi Hamauzu (Final Fantasy XIII, Dirge of Cerberus, SaGa Frontier II) Junya Nakano (Final Fantasy X, Threads of Fate, Musashi: Samurai Legend) Tsuyoshi Sekito (The Last Remnant, Dawn of Mana, Founder of The Black Mages) Naoshi Mizuta (Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy Gaiden, Founder of The Star Onions) Kumi Tanioka (Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Chocobo Series, Code Age Commanders) Takeharu Ishimoto (The World Ends With You, Dissidia, Compilation of Final Fantasy VII)

411mania talks about this week's game releases. Highlights include Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Mana Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy, Metroid Prime Trilogy, Cursed Mountain, and Harvest Moon: Magical Melody.

A group of teenagers from Texas called The Speed Gamers are attempting to complete the entire Final Fantasy series in only a week, while taking donations for ACT Today, an organization to help support families affected by Autism. (From their front page) TheSpeedGamers have been streaming video game marathons for over a year to raise money for various charities. In total they have raised over $32,000 dollars and played 11 marathons. TheSpeedGamers are based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas, but have members from around the world.

Call of Duty 4 has topped a Radio 1 poll to find its listener's favourite game. Football Manager 2009 came second, with Final Fantasy VII taking third. The vote was actually from a list compiled by a list of journos from the UK media, including Eurogamer's Johnny Minkley and CVG's Gavin Ogden.