Dissidia: Final Fantasy, the Final Fantasy fighting game featuring characters from most of the esteemed franchise's titles in a crazy fan-service crossover, is finally getting a U.S. release.
Square Enix has disclosed the title will be coming to the U.S. sometime in the middle of 2009. Dissidia has recently been released in Japan, and is getting largely positive reviews, earning a 36/40 in Famitsu, the country's largest video game magazine.
While Dissidia has more real-time combat than other Final Fantasy games, it differs from games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Fighters Megamix in that it stays true to its RPG roots with a character level up system and a complex narrative. You can read more about the game in our Dissidia preview.
The cast list for Dissidia is below, provided by Wikia Final Fantasy.
Final Fantasy
-- Warrior of Light: A warrior chosen by the Crystals who fights with magic and swordplay. -- Garland: A fallen knight bearing a two-handed greatsword that can transform into a variety of weapons.
Final Fantasy II
-- Firion: A young man from Fynn , who joined the rebels of the Wild Rose to fight for freedom and justice.
-- The Emperor: A man who wields terrible magic and manipulates powerful arcane forces to conquer the world.
Final Fantasy III
-- Onion Knight: A young boy, chosen by the crystals, who possesses the title of Onion Knight.
-- Cloud of Darkness: A being who exists to return all to nothing in order to reset the balance between light and dark.
Final Fantasy IV
-- Cecil Harvey: Once the commander of the Red Wings, he decided to fight against his king and finally against his own brother.
-- Golbez: A man clad in black armor, he is the new Captain of the Red Wings, Cecil's elder brother, and a master of dark magic.
Final Fantasy V
-- Bartz Klauser: An orphan from Lix who, on his father's final wish, decided to wander across the world.
-- Exdeath: An evil warlock born of a tree from the Great Forest of Moore, who wishes to absorb the world into the Void.
Final Fantasy VI
-- Terra Branford: The child of an Esper and a human, Terra was instrumental in the Gestahlian Empire's development of Magitek.
-- Kefka Palazzo: A failed Magitek experiment turned into the psychotic and sadistic Court Mage of the Gestahlian Empire, his sole aim is the destruction of everything.
Final Fantasy VII
-- Cloud Strife: A young man with false memories and great strength, he wields the enormous Buster Sword and believes himself a former SOLDIER.
-- Sephiroth: Once the strongest SOLDIER alive, he has now been driven mad by what he believes is his birthright to reign over humanity.
Final Fantasy VIII
-- Squall Leonhart: A young SeeD mercenary armed with a specially designed Gunblade, he is a loner and is focused on protecting the Crystals.
-- Ultimecia: A Sorceress said to have the power to manipulate time itself, she believes that Cosmos' act as a Goddess of Harmony is a farce.
Final Fantasy IX
-- Zidane Tribal: A 16-year-old thief with a deep sense of justice and a weakness for girls, he is unaware of his title as a manufactured Angel of Death.
-- Kuja: A manufacturer of destructive magical weapons with a preference for literature and poetry, he is Zidane's predecessor and the first Angel of Death.
Final Fantasy X
-- Tidus: The ace player from the Blitzball team, the Zanarkand Abes, he traveled with the summoner Yuna to stop the monster Sin.
-- Jecht: Tidus' father who served as the star player on Zanarkand's Blitzball team and sacrificed his life to appease Sin ten years prior.
Final Fantasy XI
-- Shantotto: An outspoken Tarutaru professor of magic, and one of the heroes of the Great War.
Final Fantasy XII
-- Judge Gabranth: An Archadian Judge Magister born from the Republic of Landis, which was invaded by the Archadian Empire when he was young. He is the twin brother of Basch.
The Associated Press poked around Nielsen SoundScan and found that the songs listed above as well as others released on Guitar Hero III and Rock Band in late 2007 experienced upswings in download sales that ranged anywhere from 15% to 843%.
While sales of physical CDs continue to slump, NPD reported last Thursday that music video game sales doubled in 2008, clocking in at around $1.9 billion. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, an expansion to the series released this summer packing 41 of the band's songs, saw first week sales that more than tripled first week sales of its last studio album, Honkin' on Bobo."Year-to-date through November, the music and dance genre was the best-selling genre in video games, representing 16 percent of total software sales for the year," reports NPD Group analyst Anita Frazier.
22 percent of music buyers and 35 percent aged 35 and under report playing a music-based video game in the last three months, according to NPD, adding that "many of these music gamers reported that the gaming experience had a positive outcome, such as creating music discovery or triggering a digital-music or CD purchase."
Am I the only one smiling a hair less enthusiastically along with this year's top 10 lists? Know what I'm talking about? Scan the news sites and see for yourself. The feeds are bleeding numbers. "Top 10 Games of 2008," reads one. "Top 10 Controversies," teases another. Oh look, it's Braid! And there's LittleBigPlanet, cute and clumsy as a dangling button. Fallout 3, of course, full of ballistically bloody holiday cheer. And don't forget World of Goo, a startlingly clever little time-waster you probably haven't played but should.
Keep looking and you'll spot Metal Gear Solid 4 full of brain-tangling "ologies" and "isms," or Chrono Trigger DS, Square Enix's latest mercy reanimation to assuage its obsessively nostalgic base. Ironclad's majestic Sins of a Solar Empire made other real-time strategy games look puny and inconsequential, while Far Cry 2 seemed like the year's most promising roam-if-you-want-to shooter before committing gameplay suicide with its brain-dead checkpoint re-spawns.
And so on.
I know. "Top 10" is perennial and occasionally unreliable, just like egg nog, punditry, and David Letterman. It's what "the kids" are doing. It's a hit-getter. It's easy I/O. Have some World of Warcraft, a helping of Grand Theft Auto IV, a dollop of Fable 2. Check, check, and check.
Why not portion out my picks for 2008's cream?
Because that's what we always do. Because after a year as generally all-around terrific as 2008, I'm not sure how I feel about raising my blinged-out journalistic scepter and bestowing upon either safely populist or "boldly" counterculture picks such arbitrary honorifics as "Best Shooter" or "Top Indie Download" (or if I'm feeling especially trendy, tedious finger-flippers like "Game That Only 90% Sucked").
It`s now possible to run the QUAKE III Arena on your Nokia smartphone. And that`s not all - you can also use a Bluetooth keyboard or mouse for playing. The only condition is to have a S60 3rd Edition smartphone equipped with a TI OMAP 2420 processor (Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia N82 and Nokia E90). Developer of the first ever QUAKE III Arena port is Olli Hinkka who is also the developer of some of the best previous QUAKE ports for Symbian phones. This time he decided to enable a full Bluetooth keyboard and mouse support to achieve a better gameplay, which is otherwise unreachable due to the rather uncomfortable phone controls. There`s also a possibility to run a game server on the mobile phone to enable multiplayer gaming. Compatible with the QUAKE III Arena port are the S60 3rd Edition phones powered by a TI OMAP 2420 processor. Those include the Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia N82 and Nokia E90. Despite having the same chipset, the now elderly Nokia N95 isn`t among the compatible models as it has less RAM than the N95 8GB (half the amount, actually). Ok, Ranger, go draw some blood - QUAKE 3 style! Tags: Nokia
