Introduction

Developer: SquareSoft
Publisher: Square Electronic Arts L.L.C.
FF8 official page: http://www.squaresoft.com/web/games/index.html
Expected Release: September 7, 1999 (Playstation) ; November 1999 (PC)

The Saga Continues

Editor's note: We've just received the US version of Final Fantasy VIII (PSX) from Squaresoft! Our Final Fantasy fanatic, Wayne "soso" Chiang, is already hard at work on the review. We'll be releasing dozens of screenshots each day from now until the Playstation release. Keep coming back to this page for the latest updates, and the newest shots!

Final Fantasy 8 will be hitting the stores September 2nd. However miraculously, God has blessed the ring and delivered us screenshots of the game as well as photos from the development team. Right now, I'll be playing the game and will launch a full review in a couple days, but for now, you all can enjoy these screenshots of the hottest console game (if not the hottest video game) of the year...

The outer cover

I have been playing the game, and it's literally amazing. The CG sequences that were put in mpgs on the internet don't do the real article justice. The graphics of the actual game play leaves Parasite Eve in the dust, and well, I'm willing to get fired over the game!

The first most noticeable differences between Final Fantasy 7 and 8 are in the game play. Many inconveniences from Final Fantasy 7 were solved such as automatic running and a confusion as to which path is the right path to take early on. The first 30 or so minutes is an in depth and helpful tutorial of Final Fantasy 8 which allows the player to get used to the new game play. Amazingly enough, Squaresoft has integrated the tutorial into the story line to limit the "boring" part of having to read the instruction booklet. The result? 30 minutes of tutorial fly by like 2 minutes.

One of the actual CDs

For those of you that want to get a head start on the game, here are some tips.

Things are a bit changed from Final Fantasy 7 where confirm was O, cancel was X and menu was triangle. In Final Fantasy 8, X is okay, Triangle is cancel and O is menu.

First thing you should probably do is bump up the battle speed and the text speed in the options, so the parts that you'd like to whiz by actually whiz by while you can take your time on the parts where you want to slow things down.