And here is the image of VIVI that Square graced E3 with for Final Fantasy IX. Disappointing.

 May 18th, 2000 - The annual Electronics Entertainment Expedition (E³) has been and gone for another year, this time at Los Angeles' Convention Center. Of course, Square was present, but would they be pretty much a no-show like the Spring Tokyo Game Show? In short, yes.

Final Fantasy IX
SquareSoft's booth was relatively small when we think of the might of Square, but yet it was pleasing to the eye and stood out from the neighbouring displays. Many of the E³ attendees that visited Square's booth expected to see some brand new footage of the already-impressive Final Fantasy IX, but all they got was a couple of seconds of new CG footage and a 20 second still of VIVI (image above) with a brief description - all sandwiched in between presentations of Square's other newest releases.

Obviously, Square think that they don't have to invest too heavily in promoting Final Fantasy IX because they know it's going to sell, but surely they could have made more of an effort for the world's biggest computer games show? Anyway, here are some pictures of SquareSoft's booth:

SquareSoft's E3 Booth Small but neat: the purple structure is Square's small theatre where they showcased their titles. Square's new PlayStation2 title The Bouncer got some good reports... ...even though it crashed a lot. Incidentally, that lady in blue from Square wouldn't let pictures be taken of The Bouncer. ^_^ A look onto the Expedition from Square's corner. Apparently, Sega stole the show with their Dreamcast stand.

Thanks to Game Fiber.

PlayOnline - The Future Of Final Fantasy
The future of Final Fantasy, as with most things nowadays, seems to lie with the online world. Square were keen to promote this with their up-and-coming PlayOnline broadband network at this year's E³ - more-so than any other of their products.

Again featured in the booth seen in the first photo above, visitors were presented with a five minute long feature on Square's PlayOnline network. It begins with a women in America, Ellie, kicking her brother off of the computer so she can log onto PlayOnline. Once she is online, she sends a message to an English friend in London, Nate, and they begin to play online (no pun intended).

As a logo later shows, the game that they play is depicting Final Fantasy XI to give us an idea of how it will actually work; the 'game' displayed are just some backgrounds from Final Fantasy VIII with some mock-up characters shown on-screen. Anyway, their characters make their way up the streets and to the entrance of 'Sirius Caves' where they encounter a monster that is too strong for them to handle alone, so they message 'Turo' for help. Turo is in some sort of cyber cafe and logs into PlayOnline when he receives their plea for help, and comes to the rescue.

The five-minute presentation gave us a nice insight into how an online Final Fantasy will actually work. Excited? Call us old-fashioned, but we remain a bit sceptical about a online-only Final Fantasy (Final Fantasy XI), but we're sure that Square will come up with the goods...

Final Fantasy XI is scheduled for a late 2001 release world-wide on PlayStation2, but look out for a Final Fantasy X demo this coming winter that Square will use to test PlayOnline.

PlayOnline Presentation Keeping inline with the cyber-like image PlayOnline will have, the start-up sure looks like an episode of Star Wars. Here's Nate's place in London, England. Here's the 'Turo' bloke who comes to the help of Nate and Ellie. Outside Sirius' Cave, Ellie assures Nate that Turo's on his way. Nice little emoticon there. :) These are the statistics for Nate, Ellie and Turo - note they all have a level, HP and MP. A free drink to anyone that knows what this is. ^_^ Turo finally arrives to the aid of Nate and Ellie - in the meantime the pair did other things on the network, like downloading music. The triplet look on and prepare to battle the monster...