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Done on 5/17/98

Picture Courtesy of RPGamer Final Fantasy VIII Revealed At Press Conference, Release Scheduled for Winter in Japan The Following article has been compiled from multiple sources and is not a direct article done by the Madman's Cafe. On May 15 1998 3:00PM, a press conference was hosted at the Laforre Museum in Roppongi Tokyo by Square. At the conference, Square announced their greatest release for this year, Final Fantasy VIII. The theme for FFVIII is said to be "Love". During the conference, a promotional Videotape of FFVIII was shown. The video included CG sequences showing the press the detailed and superb graphics from buildings to maps. The characters are said to be more anime-like than they are realistic, such as in the case of a character's hair blowing in the wind, it moves by the strand instead of individually. The main character seems to be a 17 year old boy named Squall Leonhart.

Picture Courtesy of Game Busters According to Next-generation online, all of the characters are now texture mapped allowing more detail in battle scenes and on the map screens. On the map screens all of the characters in the party trail along behind a lead character (instead of just one character). The style of character design was decidedly more Western than previous Square titles. This may have to do with the fact that much of the artwork was done at Square's Hawaiian offices. The general theme of the game is far more ‘futuristic’ than those of past titles. Square's Vice President Sakaguchi (who is also the producer of the FF series) commented that "Not only the CG will astound users, but the interactivity of the game will too with a new system." Similar to Final Fantasy 7, the image illustrations are done by Yoshitaka Amano while the characters have been designed by Tetsuya Nomura. Square plans to include a demo of the game with Brave Fencer Mushashiden (on sale July 16). Final Fantasy VIII is scheduled for release in japan during this winter, and hopes to sell over 7,000,000 copies exceeding their sales from FFVII. The number of disks and retail price has not been decided yet. The English version should not take as long to be released.