Dissidia: Final Fantasy

Famed (infamous?) Japanese voice actress Aya Hirano (Final Fantasy: Dissidia) took to Twitter to complain about something bothering her: A lewd photo. <br /> <br /> On Twitter, Hirano asked disgruntled fans to stop sending her lewd and offensive links. &quot;I&#39;m too afraid to open then,&quot; she wrote. <br /> <br /> Her fears are very real. This past summer, a man accused of threatening Hirano&#39;s life via Twitter was arrested.

Square Enix Japan have released over half an hour's worth of footage from Dissidia 012 [duodecim] Final Fantasy via their website, releasing footage of ten different battles from the game. The footage shows off new characters like Gilgamesh, Yuna, Tifa, Kain, Laguna, Vaan, Prishe and Lightning as well as alternate costumes and changes to old characters including Zidane, Garland, Bartz and others.

Here's some new Japanese magazine scans of Dissidia 012 [duodecim] Final Fantasy, showing off Laguna interacting with other members of the cast. The scans also show off some new artwork, Laguna's second costume - his Galbadian Army uniform - and the new world map feature that replaces the chess-styled Destiny Odyssey section from the first game.

While most websites online will be focusing on the fact that Final Fantasy VIII's absent father, army man and kinda-sorta hero Laguna Loire will be joining the fight in Dissidia Duodecim Final Fantasy, a closer look at the scan from this week's Jump reveals something new and interesting: a world map. Below the introduction to Laguna in the magazine there's a box which says Some sort of world map has appeared?! - it shows screenshots of a traditional FF-looking world map and of Lightning, Kain and Tifa walking around the map. The text tells us that the game will have a PS1-era style world map in full 3D where players can run around with a party of three characters of their choice, old-school style. There's no word in the magazine on how the world map feature will factor into the story. Closer inspection reveals that it's the world map from Final Fantasy I in its entirety, though it's unlikely that it'll feature Final Fantasy I locations you can enter.

Final Fantasy fans across the globe couldn't help but drool when Dissidia Final Fantasy, which allowed them to compete in brawls with all of their favorite Final Fantasy characters, hit the PSP...

Here are the RPG releases hitting Japan this month.

Square Enix will be re-releasing its hit fighting mash up game, Dissidia: Final Fantasy, this Fall in both retail and downloadable formats under the Ultimate Hits label - that means lower prices! It's not too surprising that it's taken Dissidia this long to attain Ultimate Hits status, what with its battle against the pirates and five million illegal downloads. Both the original Dissidia as well as Universal Tuning will be made available in Square Enix's budget line up come September 16 and are set at a lovely &yen;2940. Their online counterparts are slightly cheaper, coming in at &yen;2100. Apparently there are slight changes between the two versions such as the voice acting. The addition of Dissidia to the Ultimate Hits label is, according to Square Enix, to commemorate the label crossing its three million shipped mark. Whether this makes it across the Pacific remains to be seen, hopefully it does.

The top 25 best-selling used games in Japan for last year, according to Famitsu/Enterbrain.

Earlier in the week, we covered a report by the Computer Entertainment Suppliers Association in Japan, that revealed piracy figures for certain DS and PSP games. Topping the DS piracy chart was Pok&eacute;mon Platinum, while Dissidia: Final Fantasy was what most PSP pirates gravitated toward. While the figures for illegal downloads were pretty alarming in both cases, they arent very helpful unless you have a sales figure to compare them to. And so, using the latest data from the financial reports of their respective publishers, weve compiled sales vs. piracy charts for four games as an example.

CESA, short for Computer Entertainment Suppliers Association, has been tracking illegal downloads of top selling handheld games. Out of all the titles DS and PSP Dissidia: Final Fantasy was downloaded the most. According to their data, the PSP game was downloaded 5,281,223 times. CESA estimates a loss of 30,631,093,400 yen ($335 million) in sales. The dollar amount is questionable due to used game sales, price drops, and people who would never have purchased Dissidia anyway. In spite of those factors that number is still staggering. [More PSP piracy figures at the link]