12 years later, and Final Fantasy IX is the top topic at a random Japanese video game site.

Japan had "Labor Thanksgiving Day" on Tuesday. This lead to an overall slow week for new announcements. Even Famitsu and Dengeki were pretty boring.

The big headline was Imageepoch's press conference where it declared its intentions as a publisher and announced a number of new JRPGs. This resembled a Level-5 press conference in many ways, from the live musical number to the announcement of media mix strategies for many of the games.

The only difference was in the interest level amongst English speaking gamers. Level-5 press conferences get far more traffic, at least at this site. This, of course, should be expected given the high profile titles Level-5 has worked on. If Imageepoch's first self-published titles are successful, expect greater interest at next year's press conference.

MOST VIEWED ARTICLES: 11/21 to 11/27

10. 3DS Demo Event Named Nintendo World 2011

Nintendo originally announced its 3DS demo event through a video message from CEO Satoru Iwata. This week, it gave the event a name and official site. A list of playable titles will hopefully follow soon.

9. Namco Bandai Holding Invite Only Tales Event at Jump

This Jump stage event should offer some details on the new PlayStation 3 Tales game.

8. New Dragon Ball Kai Set for DS

The first of two Dragon Ball games in this week's headlines, this one is for the DS.

7. A Few Bits about Final Fantasy Agito XIII Via The 3rd Birthday Twitter

See our Final Fantasy Agito XIII database page for all our (Twitter-heavy) coverage of the PSP entry in the Fabula Noval Crystallis series.

6. Fan Excitement Over Catherine Made Red Bull Come Out of Director's Nose

See also this story for the latest Catherine official site update info, and this story for some leaked Catherine Achievements. We'll start hearing gameplay details from here on out, according to the development blog.

5. First Look: Dragon Ball Zenkai Battle Royal

Dragon Ball gets some slick looks thanks to PlayStation 3 hardware in this new arcade title.

4. Now Covering: Kinect's Japanese Launch

This story had some live blog-style coverage of Kinect's Saturday launch. For a more formal report, see this story. For a look at Kinect's initial sales performance, see this story.

3. Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy: Vaan, EX Revenge and Breaks

See also FF Dissidia: Basics of Assist and FF Dissidia:Official Site Updated with Vaan.

2. Imageepoch Press Conference Live Blog

This was a live blog of the press conference. For a more formal writeup, see this story.

1. Hironobu Sakaguchi Opens Up the Vault on Final Fantasy IX

Some early script work for Final Fantasy IX. Now you can view it in English.

Two Dragon Ball games in the top 10 this week.

OTHER STORIES

• Cave Readying DoDonPachi Black Label Package and Download Release
• Muchi Muchi Pork & Pink Sweets Dated
• Ace Attorney Investigations Development Blog Update
• Close Look at Colonel Sanders in Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity
• Retailer Make Top Picks For the Holidays
• Sony's Western Games Label
• Motomu Toriyama's Thoughts on The 3rd Birthday

Cave shared its latest Xbox 360 shooter plans.

WEEKLY COLUMNS

• Media Create Sales
• This Week's Flying Get: F Style
• Weekly Ranking: Hardcore Edition
• This Week's Flying Get: D Style
• Week in Review

Black Ops was big in the hardcore and general gaming charts. A Japanese language dubbed version is due for release in mid December.