Final Fantasy VII Heading to Nintendo DS #1 at Nintendo Cubed3

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Hope you enjoyed the fabricated story today, folks. Thanks for being good sports and taking it in the right spirit! Enjoy the Easter holiday...
April Fool's Day Story: Following years of speculation about a remake, Square Enix has now finally confirmed a DS port of the much-loved seventh iteration of the multi-million selling Final Fantasy role-playing series. After recent comments from Motomu Toriyama, Director of Final Fantasy XIII, about how the entry he would most like to see remade is Final Fantasy VII, the game fans have been eagerly awaiting has at last been confirmed, with early images released by popular Japanese website, Famitsu. However, whilst many believed a PS3 version was inevitable, the reality is that the DS has the largest userbase in the world right now, and development costs to transfer the upgraded PSone code across to the Nintendo DS is far lower than on a High Definition console.

President of Square Enix himself pointed towards why a PS3 version was unlikely, stating recently that a PlayStation remake would be too costly and that:

"Right now we don’t have a clear direction, but many fans have requested we remake Final Fantasy VII. We’re going to explore the possibility - whether or not we’re going to do it, if we’re going to do it, and the platform."

This comment was made at the launch of Final Fantasy XIII, clearly avoiding the topic of Final Fantasy VII DS to prevent the limelight being taken away from the high profile launch of FFXIII on both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It has also been confirmed that Square Enix will be following in the footsteps of both Konami and Level-5 by making Final Fantasy VII DS one of the very first 4-Gbit DS releases and will include a new Wi-Fi option for players to battle against each other in order to gain extra experience points and special items for use in the main game.

The game is set for release in Japan on 11th November, 2010, with a tentative Christmas launch for the rest of the world. Whether or not there will be support incorporated for the upcoming 3DS platform, though, is currently unknown.

Be sure to check out the first screenshots of Final Fantasy VII DS in the media folder below.

Are you pleased Final Fantasy VII is finally returning in its original form? Would you have preferred a home console version?