Cross Treasures, New Frontier, and More

[Koby]

Cross Treasures
Square Enix was busy this past week. For one thing, the company announced a Nintendo DS action-RPG called Cross Treasures. It's a co-production involving V Jump, a monthly Shueisha anthology that keeps young Japanese readers supplied with the latest Yu-Gi-Oh! series, Dragon Quest spin-offs, and other juvenile manga. Cross Treasures has a similarly cute look courtesy of manga artist Shin'ya Suzuki, and it features squat adventurers tearing through colorful fantasy worlds. Those worlds figure notably into multiplayer mode, since you can design your own settings and draw in up to three other online players.

It's New Frontier
Always in the habit of making cell-phone games that may never come to America, Square Enix also launched It's New Frontier. The mobile-based game has you establish a medieval-fantasy colony by foraging for magical supplies and basic necessities. Townspeople are at your command, and each of them uses a specific magical ability. It's New Frontier resembles Harvest Moon by way of the Square RPG house, and the character designs should look quite familiar to anyone who played Final Fantasy Tactics (or any other Final Fantasy game where summoners wear pointy headbands). We probably won't see this on Western phones, but there's always the chance that, as with Parasite Eve: The 3rd Birthday, Square Enix will port it to another system.

Dissida: Final Fantasy Univeral Tuning
Also in Square Enix's future is Dissidia: Final Fantasy Universal Tuning, the Japanese version of the slightly enhanced English-language Dissidia that we'll be playing in North America this week. There's also word of the company releasing Thexder Neo on the PlayStation Network in Japan. Thexder Neo is an old Game Arts mecha shooter that hit numerous PCs and consoles in the 1980s, though Thexder Neo's nature is unknown at this writing.