Thanks to boobless for posting this in the Gamers Hangout forum. I"m reading it but can hardly believe it. Regardless, I figured this deserved to be posted!
Remember Yamauchi"s fund to support development? Square"s getting some of that money to make Final Fantasy games for GameCube and GBA. No, this is not a joke.
According to the Saturday morning (in Japan) edition of the popular Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper, Square and Nintendo are getting back together to bring Final Fantasy back to Nintendo fans on both GameCube and Game Boy Advance! Here"s an excerpt from Nikkei"s website.
OSAKA (Nikkei)--Nintendo Co. (7974) has agreed to resume procuring the popular "Final Fantasy" video game software for its game consoles from Square Co. (9620) after a five-year hiatus, The Nihon Keizai Shimbun learned Friday.
Under the agreement, Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi will provide funds to a Square-affiliated game production company to help it develop software in the "Final Fantasy" series for Nintendo machines.
The money will come from Fund Q, a fund Yamauchi set up in January to help finance software development. The affiliate is due to be founded by Square and Akitoshi Kawazu, one of the game"s developers, by the end of March.
The deal calls on the Square affiliate to produce software allowing users of two Nintendo consoles -- the GameCube and Game Boy Advance -- to play together by the end of the year.
Square will continue to provide "Final Fantasy" games to Sony, even while offering a version for Nintendo.