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We wouldn't normally tell you about something like this, but we are genuinely interested in this book and it should be a top-seller later this year. Titled GAME ON! FROM PONG TO OBLIVION: THE GREATEST GAMES OF ALL TIME, the book will be released during the autumn of 2006. It is written and compiled by Simon Byron and Ste Curran who are both indsutry veterans and really know their stuff, so it should be a really good read. A few quotes for you in the meantime... James Horobin - Headline's UK Sales Director says: "It stands to reason that Headline should be the first to recognise the yawning gap in the market and to cater to the needs of the fastest growing division in the entertainment industry." Piers Blofeld - Senior Commissioning Editor at Headline and the man responsible for starting up their New Generation list says: "GAME ON! is perfect - not only have we had considerable TV interest in doing a list show based around the concept, but it is an ideal indicator of what this list is all about: developing new markets with imaginative, contemporary and original titles." We might just have a review of the book closer to its release, so keep an eye out for that.

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Koei to Release Disgaea 2
Koei has announced plans to release Disgaea 2 on PS2 this autumn. If it's humour, depth, tactics and classic RPGing you want, then look no further than Disgaea 2. Developed by Nippon Ichi, the original Disgaea was voted by RPGfan.com as one of the top 3 games of the year when it was released. It also won the Strategy Game of the Year award on gamespy.com. This sequel retains all of the original game's "Do anything and try everything" heritage while also making some radical innovations. Fans of Disgaea have also been listened to with their feedback and ideas incorporated into a number of the game's new features.
Disgaea's wickedly dark sense of humour has always been one of its most popular features and this has been taken to a whole new level of evil enjoyment with the new Dark Court system. Now the player is positively encouraged to be bad with the game rewarding your darkest most devious actions. But be careful, there are positive and negative results for everything you do within the game. Think you're badder than you really are and you might just get summoned to court and suffer the shame of being found innocent.
As a direct response to calls from fans of the original, Disgaea 2 will now take place within a brand new 3D environment with animated sprites and anime cut scenes. Players will also be able to stack their characters on top of each other in order to combine their powers and unleash special combos and attacks.
Disgaea 2 is the latest RPG spectacular from Nippon Ichi and follows in the footsteps of the hugely popular titles Makai Kingdom, Phantom Brave, La Pucelle: tactics and of course the massive original Disgaea. With a whole new cast of characters along with many of the gang fondly remembered from the first game all turning up to do battle, Disgaea 2 is already looking like being one of the RPG events of the year.

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This highly anticipated sequel not only gives players an entirely new cast of characters to get to know, but also offers two different worlds to explore, where the actions in one can have a massive effect on the other. Players take on the roles of two orphans in a desperate struggle to save their land, Eden from destruction. In order to save Eden though, one of them needs to travel to the world of Belkhyde to uncover the reasons behind the fate of their land, while the other must stay behind on Eden to try to delay its impending doom. With unique abilities specific to each character, players must cleverly switch between the two to aid each other’s cause. Atelier Iris 2 is developed by the renowned Japanese software company Gust, who have created a brand new “Active Time Battle System” which now gives players the chance to see who is going to strike first. It also enables characters to enter “break mode”, which magnifies hits and allows attacks to be strung together to unleash some serious damage. Take a blow from your enemy however, and you could be knocked into the “break zone”, making you vulnerable to chained attacks and much bigger damage. Charge attacks also enable characters to pull off truly spectacular attacks, depending upon the skills that individual has developed. The UK release of Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny will also benefit from the inclusion of more powerful monsters, allowing for even more thrilling battles. With tougher enemies, players will be forced to approach battles more strategically (deciding whether to try and end the battle quickly or take it slowly and heal party members), as opposed to relying on sheer brute force to get through the encounters. With innovative new features and so many items to collect, alchemy mixtures to experiment with, new abilities to learn, characters to meet, battles to win and lands to explore, Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny looks set to be just as engrossing and rewarding as the hugely popular original, Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana. The European release of Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny is scheduled for September 2006.

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Square Enix recently confirmed that Final Fantasy XII will hit North American shelves on October 31st. The game's standard version will retail for $49.99 US, while the limited collector's edition will go on sale for $59.99 US. The latter will ship with a bonus DVD including a promotional trailer, developer interviews, artwork and more. Final Fantasy XII was released in Japan on March 16th. Square Enix has so far shipped 2.3 million copies in Japan.

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Recently Square-Enix released a new batch of images for their upcoming DS remake of Final Fantasy 3 - among these images, the official box art. The box art shown to the public is (currently) only the JP official box art; still no word on whether US and European regions will be getting this box art or the traditional logo-on-white. As for the artwork itself, it's a new piece by Final Fantasy veteran Yoshitaka Amano featuring the four main characters of the game in a setting that may be familiar to players of the original version of the game. The new images on the other hand reveal very little, at least to English speakers - unfortunately they are all in Japanese, so if anyone can translate some of the text it would be much appreciated. Final Fantasy 3 DS is set to release in August in Japan and September 12 in North America.

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Final Fantasy XIII director Motomu Toriyama says he wants the fight scenes in Square-Enix's PlayStation 3 RPG to look like the ones in computer-generated film Final Fantasy VII Advent Children. "FFXIII attempts to see how far it's possible to make FFVII Advent Children's battles into a game," he told Dengeki Online. "FFVII Advent Children is a video production, and it showed us battles that have not been achievable in FF so far. With FFXIII, we're focusing on how far we can realise the video." Ambitious Mr. Toriyama (not to be confused with Akira Toriyama of Chrono Trigger fame, obviously, although happily confused with the Toriyama who made FFX-2 since that was this one) also said the developer is aiming to have a playable demo ready for next year's E3 - tellingly not mentioning either 2006 Game Convention or the Tokyo Game Show. Final Fantasy XIII, announced at this year's E3, is actually being developed as a series - the first time a Final Fantasy game has been done this way from the outset - with Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII (handled by the Kingdom Hearts team - the "Versus" referring to a change of direction rather than specifying multiplayer) on their way for PS3 and Final Fantasy Agito XIII in development for mobiles. Other games are said to be on the way. Shown off in video form during Sony's E3 conference, FFXIII boasted typically grand CG battle scenes and environments, and also gave us a glimpse of the battle system - looking vastly more attractive than any of the firm's PlayStation 2 titles, as you'd expect. It wasn't up to Advent Children's standards by any measure, but it was a dramatic improvement - and if Toriyama's comments are anything to go by Square-Enix hasn't finished playing with the graphics just yet. Indeed, Square-Enix are probably one of the developers best set to capitalise on the next-gen arms race - having employed huge departments to work on cinema-quality graphics for several years, they're ideally placed to simply turn their attentions to doing things in real time. We shall see. More on FFXIII soon.

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Final Fantasy III’s big online feature is...a messaging service? That’s what the latest Jump magazine says. The Japanese publication indicates that players will be able to send messages back and forth over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. These messages and replies will trigger certain events within the game. So far, this is the only Wi-Fi feature that’s confirmed for the game, but more could be revealed before the title’s September 12 release.

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Final Fantasy XII is just one short week away from release in Japan, and today, the first review scores became public as early copies of this week's issue of Weekly Famitsu, Japan's most well-known gaming magazine, went on sale. The verdict? A perfect score of 40 out of 40. Although Famitsu isn't especially known for its conservative scores, the multiple reviewer aspect of the cross reviews makes it difficult for games to score perfectly. Only five titles have attained such elite status before: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, for Nintendo 64, Soul Calibur, for Dreamcast, Vagrant Story, for PlayStation, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, for GameCube and Nintendogs, for Nintendo DS. Japanese forum-goers have observed that only one perfect review has been given out for each platform to date, and for the past couple of years, many have been predicting that Final Fantasy XII would be "the one." Each of the four reviewers praised the graphics, scenario and game system extensively, in particular the freshness that the latest entry has brought to the Final Fantasy series. Interestingly enough, this is the second time a Yasumi Matsuno game received a perfect score from Famitsu; he was also the director of the critically-acclaimed PlayStation epic, Vagrant Story. Although he's no longer being credited as the man in charge of Final Fantasy XII, his influence is still very obviously prevalent throughout the game.

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Screenshot of the latest Metal Slug, currently being beta tested in various locations. This shot was taken at this years IRON Interazar 2003 in Spain.

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Sony and Toyota have revealed a special edition of Gran Turismo 4 called Gran Turismo 4 Prius Toyota Version, which will be available at the Toyota dealer shops across Japan between October 20 to November. The game will be setup in the shops for people to test out the latest 2004 Toyota vehicles, and you can also test play Logicool's GT Force Pro steering wheel controller at the game booth.

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