GDC: Two Final Fantasy WiiWare games
Plus early FF games heading to VC.
Nintendo has confirmed reports that Final Fantasy IV: The After Years is coming to WiiWare this year, and it will be joined by a sequel to My Life as a King, called Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord.
During a Square-related splurge in his GDC keynote address, Satoru Iwata revealed that both games would be released this year. The After Years is presumably a spin-off from the episodic mobile series.
Square Enix's subsequent press release confirms this, pointing out that the mobile phone game has enjoyed three million paid downloads in Japan as of this time last month. The game "focuses primarily on Ceodore, son of Final Fantasy IV heroes Cecil and Rosa". There's one screenshot to be getting on with.
As for My Life as a Darklord, it "puts players in the highly fashionable shoes of the Darklord's daughter, a malevolent little Miss, charged with dispatching intruding do-gooders by strategically placing traps and monsters around the tower she calls home".
It sounds like a tower defence game, with players using "ever more diabolical traps and abominable monsters to stop those pesky adventurers from making it to the Dark Crystal at the top of the tower". Check out the first two screenshots for more.
Official websites for both are now up. Check out the Darklord and After Years destinations for slightly more information.
Iwata also said that the early Final Fantasy games would be released for Virtual Console soon, with the first one arriving in May in Japan and elsewhere "in 2009" according to Square Enix's press release.