Final Fantasy III for DS reaches 450,000 pre-orders in Japan

3 August 2006

Posted by:Josh

We’ve been covering the awesome upcoming DS game Final Fantasy III extensively in the past weeks. And now it looks like pre-sales of the game have reached 450,000 in the Land of the Rising Sun! Nearly half a million and the game still has a few weeks before release! This is great news for both Nintendo and Square Enix and a testament to the power of the Final Fantasy brand and the Japanese love of RPGs.

For those that don’t know, Final Fantasy III (3) is the only game in the best-selling franchise to never get a release outside of Japan. The game was only released on the Japanese Famicon (NES) in 1990, thus it has never even been officially released in English (the other older titles were first translated into English on the Playstation, via FF Origins, Chronicles and Anthology) and was the first title to feature the highly praised job system, which would later be used in games such as Final Fantasy Tactics, FFV, FFXI and FFX-2.

moogles
Not just a port, FFIII has been re-built from the ground up in 3D and comes complete with beautiful FMV movie scenes (all on that little DS cart). Touch-screen navigation for menus has also been added in addition to Mognet mailing (featuring the cute little Moogle characters), a la FFIX, which can be followed to unlock new side-quests if the player chooses to (via sending and recieving letters with in-game characters). Square is also considering adding online wi-fi support for the game via Mognet, where you could send letters to real people over the net.

FFIII will be getting first release in Europe (after it releases in Japan this month on the 24th) in September, and the US in November, 2006 (although September 12 was hinted at before).

View the trailer for the game: