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   With the new Final Fantasy XIII universe revealed at this year's E3, the recently announced Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings for the Nintendo DS, and of course Final Fantasy XII - which has yet to be released in the US and Europe - Square Enix was bound to draw a huge amount of attention at the ongoing Tokyo Game Show. And so they did, despite heavy competition from the likes of Konami and, I dare say, some very impressive Xbox 360 RPGs targeted at the Japanese market.

   The big news for us Europeans is that Final Fantasy XII will only arrive in PAL territories in early 2007, almost one full year after its Japanese debut. This makes for a rather disappointing holiday season, but I guess that's traditional by now. In North America, FF12 is still set for release on October 31 of this year. I wonder how they'll welcome the new "Active Dimension Battle" (ADB) system implemented in the game. It supposedly "gives players the freedom to move seamlessly between exploration and combat", while also eliminating random battles, but so far it stirred quite a controversy between older and younger fans of the series. You can get a glimpse of the new system in these new FF XII screenshots.

   Moving on to Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, it was revealed that this new DS incarnation of the series will follow a different timeline that the PS2 version of Final Fantasy XII. The main characters in Revenant Wings are Vaan and Penelo, but the action takes place when they are 18 and 17 years old respectively. According to N-Europe, features will include a stylus-controlled battle system, more airships than the PS2 original, plenty of dancing (apparently) from Penelo and a focus on the two characters being air pirates, and their relationship with each other. We got the first FF XII: Revenant Wings images (not screenshots unfortunately) in our local gallery, and Square Enix have already opened an official website for the game. Worth a look.

   And finally, also "worth a look" is our new batch of Final Fantasy XIII screenshots released at the Tokyo Game Show. There are only three of them, but boy, do they look yummy! I'm starting to feel like it's almost worth buying a PlayStation 3 for this game... Almost.