the latest in FFXI fashion

With every FFXI fan festival in Japan or America, we see a new item to be given out to attendees.  This time, the lucky attendees of Vanafest and winners in the official Vanafest twitter contest received a Chocobo Beret.  Details of what the cap does have been hard to find.

In the latest issue of Dengeki PlayStation, they revealed the secret behind this cute piece of equipment.  First, when you activate the cap, it will turn all of your party members into Chocobo Eggs!  You can’t move around while in this state though.  If you deactivate the costume effect, you’ll be turned into an randomly colored Adolescent Chocobo.  In chocobo raising, this is the stage that comes after the chick stage.

While in the Adolescent Chocobo costume, your movement speed increases.  The longer you stay in the egg state, the faster you’ll be as an Adolescent Chocobo.  The maximum amount of time you need to wait is 30 seconds.

I’m so envious of people that get to wear this adorable hat!  Winners of the twitter contest are being contacted soon but they’ll have to wait until the next version update (supposedly scheduled for March 23rd in Japan) to claim their prize.

Once again, it is time to chronicle an epic journey across the Land of the Rising Sun, as we head to Tokyo’s Seinenkan Hall for VanaFest 2010!
Elmer (the Pointy) will be joined by Corinth (the Kitty) and together they will deliver comments, pictures and other fun miscellany as the weekend unfolds. And hopefully, we’ll make it back with a prize or two in tow for loyal readers!
You can check out all the coverage here on JPButton, and over at ZAM. The Twitter accounts being used are @EF_Elmer & @EF_Corinth if you want to send a message along, and if you’d like to follow us, our personal accounts are @BretMayer & @CorinthCat.

Don’t forget to check out the NA Community Teams’ Twitter & Facebook pages for the latest information direct from the event!

Enjoy the coverage!

The blog appears to be going into “Auto-Standby” since we are using Twitter feeds and not the actual service. If you hit the play button, it still shows everything and updates like normal.

*This blog uses an iframe, so if you can’t see it, you may have to adjust your settings.

Square Enix has launched a music page featuring a collection of 60 different CDs they plan to have on sale at the Tokyo Game Show. The collected song list spans more than a few Final Fantasy titles, some Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, and several other Square Enix franchises.

Customers will also receive a special “Sampler CD” with songs from upcoming titles such as Final Fantasy XIII and The 4 Warriors of Light: Final Fantasy Gaiden as well as golden oldies like the TGS2007 trailer for Final Fantasy XI Wings of the Goddess.

Square Enix has obliged gamers looking to go green with a free Square Enix Music “Eco Bag” in which to place your merchandise. In Japan, it is common to shop with a reusable tote bag called an “Eco Bag” instead of continually getting paper or plastic bags from the supermarket. It comes from the English word “ecology,” but is pronounced like the echo in “Echo Drops.”

You can visit the newly opened site here and see all they have to offer. By the way, let me tell you from personal experience that CD #26 is a trap. Next time you want to make a remix CD Square, call up DJ Plaeskool.

平和

Many anime and manga lovers out there are probably familiar with Comic Market, a huge fan-drawn comics event held in Tokyo twice a year. There you can find comics and crafts of almost anything you can imagine and probably a few things you wish other people hadn’t. That is not the only fan-drawn comic event in Japan though. Every month, numerous fan-drawn comic events are held across Japan. Most of the smaller ones are geared towards a particular theme. For example, a popular manga artist or an anime series. There are also ones for gamers. These events are organized by the fans for the fans.

For FFXI, there is Merit Point. It was held for the first time last year and this year will be held on February 28th in Tokyo. According to the website, over 130 groups (called circles) will be selling comics, books, or other fan-created FFXI goods. There will also be some groups selling CDs they’ve made and that music will be playing in the background of the event as well. While there is no admission fee for the event, they are requiring that everyone purchase a catalog for 500 yen. The catalog at events like these usually lists all the groups that are responsible for organizing the event, the groups participating in the event, and information on what will be available from each group.

More information (in Japanese) on the event and directions to the center it will be held at can be found on the Merit Point 2 homepage linked above.

There have been a few updates over the last couple weeks on the Creator’s Voice Z blog.

12/18 Dissidia Goes On Sale Today!
Dissidia Final Fantasy, which gathers characters from decades of Final Fantasy games, has finally gone on sale today! Professor Shantotto from FFXI has also joined the fray, so please, by all means, set her “Breakdown” into motion!

We hear it’s rather difficult to meet Professor Shantotto so please work hard to get her and her special abilities. You have to hear her devilish O~hohohoho laugh live! I can’t stop feeling excited knowing you can go all out to beat up the enemies with Shantotto’s magic and staff.

Shantotto’s so active, she’s even got her name in the title of one of the new add-on scenarios coming up. Looks like Shantotto’s going to be wild and active and violent(?!) in the coming year as well!

Pictures from FanFest
They’ve also added a few more pictures from FanFest

Arrival, Interviews, and Rehearsal

Registration and Trying Out Stuff

On the Stage

Yesterday I finally had a chance to download the update and plug in my code for the Stuffed Chocobo. For those that didn’t see it before, back when Elmer and I went to VanaFest, they had a chocobo race on the screens as one of the events. When you first walked into the building, you had to choose which color chocobo you wanted to cheer on. If you followed the liveblog, you saw that Elmer chose green and that I had a hard time deciding. I ended up picking red and…. red won! The prize was an in-game item designed by Mocchi: Stuffed Chocobo.

So far this item hasn’t been made available to players outside of those that attended VanaFest. I honestly was hoping it would show up for people to win at FanFest too but that doesn’t seem to be the case. As such, I may be the only non-Japanese player with one for awhile. Although, if anybody else got one at VanaFest and wants to join the Stuffed Chocobo Club, let me know!

My Cutey Chocobo

Pet Food Alpha and FFXIClopedia have teamed up this year to bring the biscuits on Fan Festival as they happen. You can check out the Live Blog, to which members from both sites will be continuously writing, by visiting either site.

If iFrames aren’t your thing, you can head into VanaChat and discuss the event in IRC chat. Aikar, (gonna plug his Windower program here), has manipulated binaries and hexadecimals and crafted a system where the contents of the Live Blog will stream into the channel in glorious green text.

Plenty of ways to keep up on the action, so don’t miss it.

UPDATE:

Only 9 JPButton-brand AV buttons were actually purchased, yet this much awesomeness were created as a result. Much thanks to PolishTamales for the design!

UPDATE 2: rofl

With at least 2 Live Blogs, an IRC chat, a Twitter and countless forum posts absolutely deluging us fans with up-to-the-nano-second coverage of the event… I think I’ll just follow the lesser-known story. That of the little button that could, as it makes it way from chest to chest of various Square Enix dignitaries.

SE has released their third and most likely final video from VanaFest 2008.

You can view it here or by directly visiting the VanaFest 2008 site.

The video covers some of the special parts of the show including the opening segment, Swarm!, the Chocobo race, and the Star Onions concert. People heading to FanFest this weekend might want to check out the video just to prepare themselves a bit incase the special battle field is available at FanFest as well.

Wrapping up our VanaFest coverage, we invite you to take a look inside Corinth’s Notebook. It was picked up at a nearby 7-11 before entering the event, and a few hours later madcap scribblings were strewn across every page. Please note that this is meant as an amusing look into what it was like covering the event, and that any information within may have changed or been corrected.

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