Square Enters Coin-Op Market

Square Co. Ltd., the maker of the Final Fantasy game series, announced Tuesday that it is developing software for play using Namco's System 12 coin-op hardware. Square hopes to release the game into arcades by the end of the year, utilizing the 3-D capabilities of Namco's hardware. The exact title of the game has yet to be announced, but will likely be unveiled at September's Japanese Amusement Show.

Since the System 12 board is much like that of an enhanced PlayStation with more RAM, it can be assumed that the games can be ported to Sony's home system easily. Namco's Tekken 3 was the first game to use the System 12 board. Although Namco has announced that it is porting Tekken 3 to the PlayStation, it is not known whether the game will have to have sacrifice graphics quality to play on the system or whether an upgrade will be made available.