M U L T I

- Square's producer Yasumi Matsuno has revealed new details on the GameBoy Advance port of Final Fantasy Tactics. The GBA version is being developed by the original staffs from Quest who prodcued the Ogre Battle series, the game will feature several enhancements and tweaks specifically for handheld machine, such as Quick Save, shorter length for each battle. Final Fantasy Tactics for GBA is currently 30% completed.

- In additional, Yasumi Matsuno mentioned that Square has acquired the rights to Quest's entire Ogre Battle series, which Matsuno began develop on Super Famicom. Square will be producing and publish the future Ogre Battle titles. In addition, Matsuno mentioned that Final Fantasy XII for PS2 is scheduled for release in sometimes in 2003.

- Sammy will release the Naomi GD-ROM arcade game Guilty Gear XX in arcade on May 9. The complete system (Naomi arcade board, GD-ROM system and the GD-ROM) will retail for 388,000 yen, and GD-ROM only version will retail for 198,000 yen.

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- J.Wing announced Saiyuki: Fantasy Devil Story ~ Far West for PlayStation, an adventure game based on the ultra popular Japanese anime series Saiyugei. The game features 7 courses, you have choose one character from your team to battle with each enemy you encounter in each course. When you get lost, you will enter a mini game, you have to finish the mini game before you can proceed forward.

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- Enix announced a new PlayStation 2 dramatic soccer game called Shosaidaihyou (translates to "Let's Become a Japanese Representative Player"), in this game you become a new figure player who was elected as the Japanese national team player, your goal is to become the champion of the World Soccer 2002. The game features a standard Single Player, Versus, World Cup mode and a Dramatic Story Mode, in which you can experience the excitement, pleasure and suffering as a national team player. Shosaidaihyou is scheduled for release in Japan on May 23, for 6800 yen.

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- Here are some new screens of Enterbrain's PS2 psychic action adventure game Galerians: Ash, scheduled to release in Japan on April 25, for 6800 yen. There are a total of 6 worlds in the game, in the game you play as Lyon, who grew up in the boundary of the 6 worlds. The story begins with the destruction of the mother computer Doroshi, which controls the 6 world.  During the quest you need to use your ESP (psychic power) to attack the enemies and defense yourself. An OVA called Galerians: Lyon will be released on April 24, for 3980 yen.

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- PCCW announced a new PlayStation 2 action RPG called Raging Bless, the game takes place in a traditional sword and sorcery world, up to 4 players can play the game simultaneously. The story is about the revival of the evil god and the 7 dark races from hell. The 4 main characters in the game are Glay, Buz, Ray and Tina. Raging Bless is scheduled to release in Japan on June 6.

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- Enix has announced a new release date of their PlayStation RPG Dragon Quest Monsters 1 & 2, the game is now re-scheduled for release in Japan on May 30, for 6800 yen.

A R C A D E   /   M U L T I

- Here are some screen shots of Sega Rosso's Naomi 2 arcade racing Initial D: Arcade Stage.

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H A N D H E L D S

- Sega and THQ announced several high profile titles for GameBoy Advance, they will be bringing Phantasy Star Collection, Super Monkey Ball, Virtua Tennis and Crazy Taxi to GameBoy Advance. Phantasy Star Collection will feature Phantasy Star 1-3 in a single game, all the titles are scheduled for an early 2003 release in US.

- Success Corp. will release a new GameBoy Advance card battle RPG title called V Master in Japan on May 31, for 5800 yen. During the card battles you summon 3 monsters to fight with the opponent's monsters, you can also use Combo cards to give your monsters the ability to use special attacks. There will be over 350 kinds of card in total.

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- Namco will release Family Tennis Advance for GameBoy Advance in Japan on June 14, for 4800 yen. This is the latest installment of Namco's classic Family Tennis series, support up to 4 players simultaneously. The game features Exhibition Mode, Tournament Mode, Training Mode, and Challenge Mode. In the Challenge Mode, you have to use your tennis ball to destroy the obstacle in each stage, such as a car placed in the middle of the tennis court!

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G A M E C U B E

- Nintendo of America announced they will release the GameCube flagship title Mario Sunshine in North America on August 28. The concept of the game is to control Mario in the Sunshine island to clean up all the graffiti on the wall using the water from water pump on Mario's back, while avoiding enemies on the path.

- Sega announced that they will be announcing a new GameBoy Advance - GameCube linking game title at the upcoming game show GameJam 2 in Tokyo International Forum on March 30 - 31.

X B O X

- Sega and Cool Net Entertainment announced a joint development plan to port a series of classic Mega Drive (Genesis), Saturn and Dreamcast titles to XBox. The XBox port of these classic titles will be enhanced to take advantages of XBox's powerful hardware. The Sega remake series will begin to show up on XBox starting this summer.

O T H E R

- The Console Software and Hardware Sale Charts are updated.