Wada talks DS

[Wizard]

At a time where the Xbox 360 has been stealing all the limelight with the X05 event, no one would've thought that Nintendo would step up and take the spotlight back...but they did! Today, Nintendo held a "NINTENDO DS Conference!2005, Fall" event in Japan to talk a bit about some new titles coming up. Here are some further details on the Square Enix announcements.

 

The conference opened with Square Enix president Youichi Wada talking about Square Enix's stance on the DS, starting with an announcement of Mario Basket 3 on 3, which Square Enix will be developing and Nintendo will be publishing. "When we were planning games that would fit the DS, we thought we should do something that would transmit the feel of touching," says Wada, "And so in our pile of ideas we thought about doing a basketball game set in the Mario world and approached Nintendo about it". From here, Wada went on to say that the game will feature Mario, Luigi, Peach, and many other recognizable Mario characters. Courts will all be sporting the Mario Motif and an example he gave was that one court is Boo's Castle and during the match your opponents might get changed into coins. In closing, he commented that the 'feel' aspect will be passed through the touch pad where you'll be able to recreate the feel of dribbling with the unique controls of the game.

 

Wada then went on to talk about Final Fantasy III for the DS. Planned for a winter 2006 release, the characters, field, and other objects will all be rendered in complete 3D polygons rather than the sprites of the original. The team is hard at work on making sure the game has a fresh appearance but at the same time, they want to be careful not to ruin the appeal of the original.

 

Before he left the stage, Wada mentioned that after the release of the upcoming Final Fantasy IV for GBA, FFV and FFVI will be following the tradition and appearing on the GBA. He promised that FF games will never just be straight ports, but rather will always contain new elements. We're definitely interested in seeing how these FF games are coming along and how Square Enix's first basketball game turns out...so hopefully there will be a media update soon.

>>1up

 

Weee, offically translated FF3 game coming to DS(FF3j folks), and being pretty!