Dr. Aki Ross diverts her attention from the bomb that was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

 September 18th, 2001 - There's been a ton of Final Fantasy-related news over the past several months whilst FF:WA has been away. So without further ado, it's time to dive right into things:

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was released to the North American audience on July 11th, 2001 to poor critic reviews and even poorer box office earnings. Featuring Ming-Na as the voice of Dr. Aki Ross, it was a revolution in CG cinematics, but has only managed to garner a little over $32m in North America. Considering it cost over $100m to make, that's quite a shortfall. There are three sources of redemption, though: first of all, the overseas totals will help boost the $32m up a little (especially in Japan); secondly, the video and DVD releases, packed with tons of extras, can easily sell like hotcakes; and lastly, the Final Fantasy movie creates more public awareness of the Final Fantasy series of video games, which can easily help boost the sales of the FF series. So in the end, it's truly a win-win situation for Square, as their odds of breaking even, and even turning a profit, seem fairly decent at the moment.

Final Fantasy Chronicles
Final Fantasy Chronicles, a re-release of the classic FFIV (previously FFII in the US) and Chrono Trigger, received massive success in the US, for several reasons. For one thing, FFIV and CT are considered two of Squaresoft's greatest classic RPGs; furthermore, while the original US release of FFIV (FFII for the SNES) was ruined by a horrible translation and was the "easy-type" version (compared to the original Japanese "hard-type"), the FFC version fixed these errors. The script was re-translated in greater detail, and the game was given the "hard-type" treatment, creating a challenge for FF fans of any ages. As well, the Chrono Trigger disc in FFC came jam-packed with tons of new features, new endings, and anime cutscenes. Despite pesky loading times at the starts of battles, and various complaints of disc errors, it's truly an excellent re-packaging of old classics and a must-have for any Final Fantasy fan.

North America's Squaresoft fix over the summer came from Final Fantasy Chronicles, released in late June...	...and the budget rerelease of the highly sought-after Final Fantasy Tactics, following in late July

Final Fantasy Tactics
Final Fantasy Tactics, the incredibly hard-to-find strategy game for the PlayStation, was released under Squaresoft's "Greatest Hits" range, for a nice low price of $24.99. I know that myself, and hundreds of thousands of other people were looking forward to buying it. Unfortunately, almost the entire initial shipment of CDs wasn't formatted properly, and couldn't be played on any PSones, amongst other glitches. Which is amusing... you'd think someone would put a copy into a PlayStation and notice the problem before mass-marketing and releasing it. But anyways, the problem is being rectified and, hopefully, a new, fully-functioning batch of FFT CDs will be re-released, and we can all be happy campers.

Square's got a reason to smile - FFX is yet another smash hit in Japan

Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X, the latest installment in the Final Fantasy series, was released in Japan on July 19th. Surely enough, it was swallowed up by the voracious appetites of the Japanese gaming community, selling 70% of its initial shipment on the first shipping day, and quickly cracked the 2 million sales barrier. The translation process is underway for the North American release, with the release date currently set at January 2002.