In this section I keep you all posted on what's happening in the gaming world. So, keep coming here at least once a week if you consider yourself a hardcore gamer, and want to be informed!

In addition to all the main-stream Next Gen. Consoles, I.E. Playstation 2, Dolphin, Dreamcast, X-Box...There are two you've probably not heard of. Nuon, and Indreama. Nuon, from VM Labs, is a DVD specification add-on. "WHOA! What the hell does that mean?" you ask. That means you hook it up to your DVD Player, basicly. The other, Indreama, which is a Linux-based console system. FINALLY! Something that doesn't use Microsoft!!!

Square's Millennium Collection of re-released games is getting 3 new titles: Chrono Cross, Xenogears and Parasite Eve 2. There are no details as of yet for Chrono Cross and Parasite Eve's addition and what goodies they will include. However, it is known that Xenogears will have 2 different versions, Fei and Elly editions. There are no details on the differences in each version, but we'll keep you up-to-date on the latest info as they surface.

Finally, I've got an import of FFIX and have just started the game. Here are my first impressions of the game as well as how it compares to other Final Fantasy titles and some of the game's initial plot.

This is just a brief synopsis of the beginning of the game, and there's sure to be more action, drama, and surprises and you venture further along your quest. This game picks up elements most notably from FFIV (the crystal, wizards, and mages), FFVI (battle theme, moogles), FFVII (chocobo raising, super-deformed characters), and FFVIII (Triple-Triad-like card game, upgrading weapons) to name a few. And this is just early on in the game, who knows, there might be more references as the game progresses. However, by the looks of it, this is sure to be a Square masterpiece and that is no understatement. Just the fact alone that it carries elements from the previous installments that made the series so successful is sure to be an indication of its attraction and overall "fun factor". I'll have more impressions as I progress through the game as well as some movies and music files straight from the game later on.

Not since 1995 with the release of the Secret of Evermore soundtrack in the US, have we been lucky enough to receive another Square soundtrack in the states. However, now with Square's recent alliance with TokyoPOP and Mixx Entertainment, you'll be seeing FFIX and other Square game soundtracks here in the US. This agreement allows for the release of FFIX and Parasite Eve 2 when they are released in the states this fall. The slogan is "Fall 2000 - A New World of Music", and rightly so. In the past, gamers had to import soundtracks from Japan at extra costs in order to listen to their favorite tunes and remixes from Square games. The new partnership will mean less costly soundtracks and opens up a new audience of consumers who didn't have the chance to buy these soundtracks before. Look for more info here when we get more details on the release dates and any special features the US release might have different than its Japanese counterparts.

Square has just announced that 3 more titles will be added to its special Millenium collection of re-released games. The 3 titles announced are: Front Mission 2, Legend of Mana, and Ergheiz. These titles will join the other titles in the collection: Final Fantasy Tactics, Brave Fencer Musashi, and Saga Frontier 1 & 2.

Each title that has been added and that are already in the collection will be include extra goodies that add to the overall package. Each title retails for about 3800 yen, yet there are still no plans to release these re-released titles in the US or elsewhere.

As many of you know, FFIX was released in Japan on July 7th and since then, a lot of new info on the game has surfaced. Here are some impressions on the game thus far.

The game takes place in a more medieval and fantasy-like setting than FFVII and VIII, returning to its roots of FFI-VI. This is evident in the opening cinema of a ship going through the storm with scenes of a majestic castle and a colorful surrounding town. The music also has got many tunes that have a nostalgic effect shown in the battle and victory themes. Overall, the music seems to be on par with FFVII and VIII in terms of originality and freshness, so players shouldn't worry that much about the music being poorly composed or similar remixes of existing themes. The graphics aren't vastly improved over previous installments, but there is a noticeable difference with the more vibrant colors and faster framrate.

Square's keen attention to detail makes this game stand out from the rest with little things like the bouncing of VIVI's hat when walking and the different poses the characters can strike. There is also much more to explore with the addition of an item-find feature which is basically finding hidden items around the world. When you go up to something and an "!" comes up, there is usually a hidden item there and causes the player to spend more time getting aquinted with the territory. Weapons are much like FFVIII in the sense that you can upgrade them with certain items, but sometimes this can be a difficult and tedious task, so you can still buy weapons at special shops. The mini-game this time around is almost identical to Triple Triad but is called Quad Mist and offers a lot more features than its counterpart. During battle, one automatically notices the familiar battle music of FFVI with some variations and you can now use 4 players at a time. Many complained of FFVIII's magic system in which player's had to draw magic before being able to use them like items. This caused a burden on the player making them have to keep drawing them from enemies and draw points before having enough to use in battle. FFIX eliminates this returning to the good 'ole MP system where you use up magic points and which can be refilled if need be. The FMV's are awesome and in some cases are superior to FFVIII's in the sense of it's grandeur and fantasy that is even more eye-catching then FFVIII's more "realistic" scenes.

CHV.net, will be capturing movies from FFIX as soon as it's released in Japan on July 7th. They've been generous enough to allow us to use their movies so be ready for some awesome FFIX in-game movies courtesy of CHV. Check back around July 7th for the movies!

The highly anticipated FFIX is to be released in Japan on July 7, 2000, and right now, it seems Japanese fans can't get enough of it. As of June 17th, 1,002,227 units of FFIX have been preordered in Japan, and another 16,107 units have been preordered from playstation.com as of June 14th. We can be sure that there will be more preorders from now till the July 7th release date, and even more from July 7th onward. It seems that Square will easily sell the 2.5 million initial units that they have planned to sell at release. We can be sure that this game will sell an astronomical number of units when it reaches North American shelves in Winter 2000.

The PlayStation-only version of Weekly Famitsu Magazine in Japan known as Famitsu PS, rated Square's latest installment of the FF series, Final Fantasy IX. The 4-disc epic adventure was given scores of 10, 9, 10, and 9... missing a perfect score of 40 by only 2 marks. While Famitsu PS scores are not as widely known as Weekly Famitsu scores are, a 38 in Famitsu PS, is not to be taken lightly at all. These ratings should put to rest any worries gamers may have that the game's lack of advertising make it not a worthwhile game. Final Fantasy IX hits Japanese stores on July 7th, and Weekly Famitsu's opinion of the game will be revealed in next Friday's issue and we'll post the scores when they come out.

Are you bored? Don't be. This summer is indeed the summer of Square. Square EA is shipping three unique RPGs this summer, and they are: Legend of Mana (June 7th), Threads of Fate (July 18th) and Chrono Cross (August 15th). And the excitement doesn't end there! Parasite Eve 2 is set to be released on September 12th. What should you do for the time being? Play Vagrant Story, or Front Mission 3, both games released very recently by Square EA. With all the hype of Final Fantasy IX and upcoming FF's on the PS2, there's no way you can be bored!

The portable is no more. Why is SNK pulling out? What will SNK do with all that inventory?

Wander into a Babbage's or Electronics Boutique starting today and you'll most likely not find a trace of any NeoGeo Pocket Color system or game. The memo went out yesterday from the home offices to return all stock of the system and software back to HQ, where they'll be shipped off to SNK and then back to Japan. As of today, the ride is over for the NeoGeo Pocket Color. According to an official release from SNK, "In a move to regroup and reevaluate its worldwide marketing strategy, SNK Entertainment has decided to cease distribution of NeoGeo Pocket Color hardware and software in the US and Canada, effective immediately," said the statement.

The company will continue to market and distribute the NeoGeop Pocket Color hardware and software in Japan – and if you're an owner of the system, the Japanese games will work on the US portables. But as of this moment, no new English-territory NeoGeo Pocket Color games will be programmed, manufactured or sold. Games that were all ready to ship -- Last Blade, Dynamite Slugger, and Faselei -- will not be released in the US. Last Blade and Faselei were released in Europe weeks ago.

We spoke with Ben Herman, vice president of sales at SNK Entertainment USA. The main question on our minds was simply, why? Why is SNK closing its doors? "When Aruze purchased SNK a few months back, they obviously didn't have any intention of closing the US offices," said Herman. Aruze is a very successful company in Japan, and felt that the overall sales in the US just wasn't justification enough to keep the unit going – especially without the quantity of software to sustain it. Some mistakes were made, including not preparing third party developers properly early in the life of the system's release. Other problems sprout from Japan -- when the purchase was in place, several developers felt that the creative control at SNK was lost, and left the company. Some games, like Match of the Millennium 2, were in the works, but without a developer to helm the project those games were lost.

Essentially, Aruze wants to pull out of the US market as a temporary retreat. Herman is confident that though SNK USA is out for now, it will return in the future – and he is doing his best to make sure that the SNK name isn't tarnished before it makes it's comeback.

So SNK is recalling all product effective immediately, offering a full reimbursement for any unsold merchandise. Some companies won't be as quick to pull stock, like Walmart or Toys 'r Us. Ben Herman told us that he hopes to have all floating merchandise back in SNK headquarters by the last week in July.

"We're not completely closing up shop, turning off our phones in the middle of the night and leaving town," said Herman. According to him, the company will stick around for at least three months to fulfill any necessary warrantee agreements (games have a 30 day policy, and systems have 180 day). The months ahead will be spent acquiring merchandise, sending off checks to retailers, and shipping product back to Japan.

But what about the games? Surely SNK is taking a bath on all the English-language cartridges that won't sell in Japan. Not so, says Herman. All NeoGeo Pocket Color games are written on Flash ROM cartridges. When SNK Japan gets ahold of the English cartridges, they'll recycle them – erase the game and rewrite them with another game for the Japanese market. Systems are equally recyclable – SNK could essentially strip the US and European systems for their parts and remanufacture them as the smaller, Japanese portables.

The name SNK will still hold some water in the US – the company plans on licensing its properties to US publishers. But the NeoGeo Pocket Color will cease to exist in the US. The only thing gamers can do now is import Japanese games (which will indeed work in US systems).

As of Tuesday, it's all over for SNK and its NeoGeo Pocket Color, at least in the US and Europe.

The curtain falls for the NeoGeo Pocket Color this Tuesday. SNK will make the announcement on June 13th that it will officially pull out of the US and European markets effective immediately.An SNK spokesperson informed us that the first official word will happen on Monday when the company will reveal to retailers its plans for recalling all in-stock hardware and software. On Tuesday, SNK will issue the official statement to the public. Better get your NeoGeo Pocket games this weekend – in a short four days you won't be able to find a trace of the system on shelves anywhere, and the only way to get games will be to import them.

What's worse is, all games that were announced for release at E3 last month – Cotton, Dynamite Slugger, Cool Cool Jam, Evolution, Ogre Battle…even the MP3 player – will not be released outside of Japan.

SNK will still continue to operate in Japan and produce games and systems for that market, but effective next week, the Game Boy Color will be the only handheld game in town. SNK will also be pulling out of the PlayStation and Dreamcast publishing market in the US as well -- it's not just the NeoGeo that's suffering the horrible fate.

It's obvious the decision was sudden – SNK just signed a five-year lease for a new facility in the Los Angeles area, and just moved in during E3. And while SNK's presence at the E3Expo was less than stellar, they were at least making the effort, by replacing the former SNK USA director of operations Daryl Williams, as well as showing off a hearty end-of-2000 game lineup for the NeoGeo Pocket Color.

But let's face it: a lack of marketing and sales combined to show that SNK USA just couldn't get their stuff together to go up against the dominating Game Boy Color market. The company had the games, it just didn't know what to do with them.

For more info, check back Tuesday.

SCEI today officially revealed its newly styled PlayStation, called the "PS one".

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. today revealed its newly styled PlayStation that will be released in Japan and North America. In Japan, the company is positioning the system for the mobile network age. Called the "PS one" (see IGNPSX article titled Call It The PS One for our first information on the title of the system), the system is expected to lead the PlayStation format into the mobile networking era. The company also plans to release a special adapter cable this winter in Japan that will enable the entire PlayStation platform family (PlayStation, PS one and the PlayStation 2) to be connected to mobile phones. This will create a massive new audience for network digital services, offering new forms of entertainment beyond traditional packaged content. Sony believes that this will bring about a new era of networked entertainment.

By using this mobile phone network connection, users of PlayStation, PS one, or PlayStation 2, will be able to download information, entertainment content and software programs in addition to exchanging date with other users in a variety of ways.

The design of PS one is the result of radical size-reduction of the original PlayStation to position it for the mobile network era. As we had previously reported, the unit will be about 1/3 of the size of the regular PlayStation, about the size of a portable CD player.

In what came as a surprise to us, the unit will be compatible with a specifically designed PS one LCD monitor that is planned to be available next spring in both Japan and the United States. The four-inch color TFT LCD will make it possible to take the PlayStation with you from room to room, house to house and out and about in a car. Sony has not yet given specific details about the exact release date or price point of the monitor.

SCEI also plans to deploy servers to handle the large scale of this new network-based PlayStation audience (with over 17 million in Japan alone), as well as aggressively promoting the business opportunities and technology to 3rd Party software developers to create applications. All of this should help bring about a new entertainment lifestyle for the network-era.

The PS one is 193 mm wide, 38 mm in height and 144 mm in depth and it weighs in at a meager 550g. The system will be priced at 15,000 yen ($141) and will be released on July 7, 2000 in Japan. PS one will be released in September 2000 in the United States to commemorate the anniversary of the original North American launch of the system.

In related news, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. also made a special hardware announcement for its PlayStation 2 console.

It seems that the Japanese just can't get enough of the upcoming installment of the Final Fantasy series. According to Digicube representatives, there have been an estimated 540,000 copies of Final Fantasy IX already preordered in 4 days!

And that, is just the tip of the iceberg. Sony Japan hasn't begun taken preorders for FFIX. They begin taking preorders on the 10th of June, so you can expect there to be an astronomical number of preorders after. It seems that Square will easily sell it's initial 2.5 million units of this epic RPG.

The latest issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly has details on a new card game found in the upcoming FFIX. Much like the Triple Triad card game found in FFVIII, players alternate placing five cards on a square board (some of the spaces on the board are blocked randomly making them out of bounds). The aforementioned statement might not be familiar to you because it is a deviation of the Triple Triad game, however, these next few tidbits should remind you of it: each card has an icon and various statistics. A new addition added in this new minigame is a varying number of arrows that line each card's edges. For the most part, the more powerful cards have more arrows and vice versa. You lay your card so one of its arrows points to an opponent's card. If the enemy card doesn't have an arrow pointing back, you gain control of his card. If the card does have an arrow, the two cards must battle it out and the one with the higher statistics is the winner. Of course, the side with more cards its color at the end wins. As with Triple Triad, nearly everyone in the game is a fan of this card game and all you have to do is go up to them and ask if they want to play. More details on this new minigame as well as FFIX gameplay details as they surface.

The US Playstation 2 will not be like its Japanese counterpart— it's better! Yes, you heard right. Better. Sony has added a few improvements to the American PS2 that the Japanese one is lacking (a consolation for our waiting). Although the front the two PS2s are identical, the back has been totally redesigned. First and foremost, the PCMCIA slots on teh back of the Japanese PS2 have been replaced with an expansion bay. This is made for a future expansion pack, which contains a 20-30 gigabyte hard drive and a network card. Also, the DVD playback functions are now built into the system, so you don't need a memory card for playback.

Recently, Microsoft tried to buy out Square with a whopping $2,000,000,000... That's a lot of money! Well, more recently, Square turned them down. It seems that Square trusts their affiliation with Sony a lot more than being part of Microsoft (wouldn't you?). Shortly after their rejection, Microsoft tried to buy Sony, Namco, and Sega. The offers were all in the billion-dollar range. Of course, Microsoft was swiftly turned down by these companies as well. If this trend continues, Microsoft's X-Box will have a rocky start and plenty of competition. We speculate that now Microsoft is aiming to buy the other software giants, such as Capcom and Konami. Will Microsoft succeed? Maybe, but probably not, but I'll be sure to let you know what happens. Stay tuned. This story can be interesting.

• Vagrant Story-US

WOW! Sorry I haven't updated this in awhile, I've been hella busy with school. School sucks. Anyway, on to the news. First, Square has announced that Final Fantasy IX (that's nine, for you guys that don't know Roman Numerals) will be released in Japan in July...that's two months from now. However, no release date has been set for the US. Also, with the coming of 9, 10 has been pushed back to fall of 2001.

I also found a cool commercial. It's a Coke commercial from Japan, featuring the Final Fantasy IX cast. Check it out at Final Fantasy Alpha.

When Vagrant Story hits stores this May, Square announced a bonus demo disc which will have both interactive (playable) and non-interactive (nonplayable) demos of some of its released games as well as upcoming ones. Playable demos include Threads of Fate (formerly Dew Prism), Front Mission 3, and Chocobo Racing. There are also video clips from the upcoming Legend of Mana and Chrono Cross as well as from already released games such as SaGa Frontier 2 and Chocobo's Dungeon 2.

That's all for today. I'll be updating more often now. Sorry about the long wait!