This is the second entry in an ongoing series of articles on The Lifestream, called The Seven. The first, in case you missed it, was the Seven Best Lines of Dialogue in Final Fantasy VII. In each article, we turn the spotlight on seven of the best (or worst) aspects of the games of the Final Fantasy series. The selections are made with the help of our community. Continue reading
In this week’s roundup: Final Fantasy VIII will be released on the PC again; Cloud’s Buster Sword recreated in real life; Final Fantasy III OUYA gameplay; plus lots from our forum. Continue reading
In this week’s roundup: Steam achievements hint at Final Fantasy VIII arrival; Square Enix to move away from social and mobile games; Yoshitaka Amano’s “The Sky” art book reviewed; plus lots from our forum. Continue reading
Vita owners, rejoice! With update 1.80, the Vita is finally able to play PSOne classics, including all the Playstation era Final Fantasies. Currently only Final Fantasy VII is available in North America, but all titles are available in Europe.
The update was released on 28th August, and the system must be updated before a title can be downloaded. Customers who have bought a PSOne classic on either the PS3 or PSP will be able to download the title for free on Vita. The controller can be set to analogue mode to make use of the Vita’s two sticks, and the left and right side of the rear touchpad can serve as an alternative to the “Start” and “Select” buttons.
Currently there are only 9 titles available for download in North America, Final Fantasy VII among them. There are 139 titles available in Europe, starting at as little as £0.99. For a full list of the titles and to discuss, see this thread on our forums.
Final Fantasy VIII: Ultimecia’s Castle
The villainous sorceress that has really only been alluded to and seeks to wipe everything out of existence is your target. But she lives in the future, how will you get to her? Well she’s kind enough to facilitate that for you by compressing time into a singular point. So…stop her?
Of all the dungeons this probably has the least buildup as you don’t even know where you’re going when you arrive there. The anticipation is all established very soon before going there with a sweet scene depicting the initial Time Compression. It’s a spooky scene that really makes you think about what would actually happen if this occurred while simultaneously forcing you to take note of the power of your enemy.
Sorry for the delay in new translations related to Final Fantasy VIII. I’ve had quite a lot going on, and what translating I have been doing has mostly been about other stuff.
Anyway, I’m happy to report that I have some more translations to post. Not all of it’s from the FFVIII Ultimania, though.
Among what I have here are Ellone, Edea, Ultimecia and Adel’s profiles from the Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary Ultimania File 1: Character guide. They’re not exactly the most interesting profiles ever, but they do confirm a couple of things that fans have long suspected, and it’s a cool novelty to at last have some kind of profile for Ultimecia — even if it only contains stuff we already knew.
A big thanks, by the way, to forum member Celes Chere for providing me with the scans from this book that I translated.
This post also includes the “A Day of Instruction at Garden” epilogue to FFVIII from the back of FFVIII’s Ultimania. Written by Kazushige Nojima, FFVIII’s writer, this is a short story depicting a classroom discussion at Garden about Hyne and witches. It’s pretty interesting, but not exactly riveting. Tells us a few things we didn’t know at any rate, including the name of the scholar who first coined the term “witches.”
By the way — if it reads kind of strangely, it’s in part because I didn’t go to any great, painful lengths to smooth out the language, and probably also because we’re only privy to the teacher’s words. The students’ input isn’t in the text, and can only be guessed based on what the teacher says in response.
Hope you enjoy!
Continue reading
Continuing our series of translations from the FFVIII Ultimania, here are all the profiles for the game’s towns and countries. These translations are of pages 34 through 40 of the book.
The entry on Balamb was translated by hitoshura (though I changed his use of “force field” to “energy field” to match what I’d done previously with the G.F. section in the Keyword translations; likewise with “the world’s three greatest delicacies” to “3 Great Delicacies of the World”), while the rest were translated by me.
Note, by the way, that for this article, the pictures included at the beginning of each entry were deliberately selected to match those at the beginning of each entry from the Ultimania.
Be aware also that this still isn’t the end of our translation series for this Ultimania. Still to come are the profiles for all the characters (main characters and supporting cast). So, stay tuned!
Oh, and kudos to those who got the reference in the article’s title. Now, click on “Read the rest of this entry” below and enjoy!
Previously in this series:
Translations from the FFVIII Ultimania Keyword section – Part 1
Translations from the FFVIII Ultimania Keyword section – Part 2
A follow-up to our first article featuring translations from the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania from a little over a week ago, here’s the rest of the Keyword section from the guide book — only ever available in Japanese until now!
The last of the three pages of the Keyword section are featured below, found on pages 43 through 45 of the Ultimania. All of the entries below were translated by me except for the Gunblade entry, which was translated at my request by DarkAngel several years ago for inclusion in the Time/Ultimecia Plot FAQ I co-authored.
That said, to give credit where credit is due, Ryushikaze — another staff member here at TheLifestream.net — assisted me with a couple of lines I had some issues with.
Without further ado, enjoy!
With the December 17th release of Final Fantasy VIII on the Playstation Network, TLS felt now was the best times to look back on one of the most iconic Final Fantasies of the PSX era. It is with great pleasure that we begin hosting our translations of the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania, done by Squall_of_SeeD. The “Sorceresses” and “Magic” entries however, were translated several years ago by ACF member DarkAngel, which were then only available until now in the Time/Ultimecia Plot FAQ SoS helped write a while ago.
The following translations below are from the first two pages of the five-page keyword section of the Ultimania, found on pages 41 to 45. Be sure to check back to see the rest in our series of FFVIII Ultimania Translations. A big thanks to SoS for all his hard work on getting us this information. With that, enjoy!