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Chocobo no Fushigi na Dungeon: Toki-wasure no Meikyuu (Wii)

According to Kawazu, this year marks the 10 year anniversary of the first time Chocobo got its own game, the original Chocobo's Dungeon on the PS1. To celebrate, Square Enix is announcing a Chocobo's Dungeon for Wii. While the presentation didn't offer an official English title for the game, the Japanese title is: Chocobo no Fushigi na Dungeon: Toki-wasure no Meikyuu. That roughly translates to: Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon: The Labyrinth Time Forgot.

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The announcement was followed by a lengthy gameplay video for the game.It's full 3D, with good graphics - for a Wii game. The video started with Chocobo enjoying a relaxing time in town - talking to a white mage girl, sleeping next to a river, walking through forest, and then the town, with machinery built into buildings and cute stores. This climaxed, unbelievably, with Chocobo sitting at an outdoor café and enjoying a cup of tea. Not super exciting.

That all changed when Chocobo was sucked into a black hole and disappeared, at which point the video changed to footage of the yellow bird exploring a large lava dungeon and fighting enemies. Anyone who's played one of the (somewhat obscure) Mysterious Dungeon games before would recognize the gameplay: it's fully turn-based and grid-based, and as you take a step the enemies do too. The video showed Chocobo attacking enemies, and them attacking him. It clearly fit into the dungeon-crawl mode of the series, which also means it probably only has one town as well.

After the dungeon bit, the climax of the video showed Chocobo talking to a vaguely Kingdom Hearts-ish girl in town. From the text dialogue it was clear she'd forgotten something but remembered it, as a pulsating black crystal heart hung in the sky. Once she exclaimed her memories, it flew upwards and shattered into crystal snowflakes. Because of this, the factory she was standing outside became active again: gears turning, chimneys puffing smoke. Kinda mysterious, but if you've played Japanese RPGs before, this kinda stuff is pretty common.

Producer Yuki Yokoyama took the stage to discuss the game. "We will include a wide array of elements Final Fantasy fans are familiar with, on top of the dungeon systems. Everyone in the city has lost some of their memories. It is almost as if time has stopped moving. These sparkling objects represent the lost memories." According to Yokoyama, the developers are including a bonus for fans of the recently-released Chocobo Tales but he didn't say what that was. This new title is "not just a dungeon game" according to Yokoyama, but it is being developed to a "wide and diverse spectrum of players." How it fits with the Wii is also unclear as yet.

He closed by promising "lots of" Chocobo titles in the future.