With the heat of the summer beginning to cool down, and the return to school in the fall becoming a reality for all students everywhere, game companies are back to work planning conventions in the fall to promote their games. The most famous of these late summer/early fall conventions is of course the Tokyo Game Show.

Set to begin on September 22 and run for 3 days, the Tokyo Game Show boasts 63 different developers. Of particular interest to rpgamers everywhere are a few of the distinguished guests. Sony of Legend of Dragoon fame will be hauling new goods, Game Arts, makers of Grandia will be there, as should Enix, and Sega. For those who wish to have a showing at TGS themselves sometime, ASCII, creators of RPG Maker, will be there with their latest products.

For the observant reader, this poses two questions: where is Nintendo, and where is Squaresoft? Neither is going to be there. Nintendo is running a show of their own, called Spaceworld. Beginning on August 25 they will be showcasing all their latest games. One can expect a slew of PokŽmon related titles. There is more to Nintendo than PokŽmon, as they will be promoting 15 N64 games, 60 Game Boy Color games, and will have playable demos for the Game Boy Advance.

Two nagging details remain about the show: which titles will be shown for Game Boy Advance, and will there be an RPG amongst them? And what about the Dolphin, the next gen Nintendo system? There is speculation that the Dolphin will be shown, but if it is, Nintendo is being very careful not to let the surprise slip out before the big day. Game Boy Advance titles are bound to make an appearance on the scene, and RPGamer will be there to find out all the details as they emerge.

But what about Square? With two new Final Fantasies on the horizon for the Playstation 2, many are surprised by their non-appearance at the show. According to Square, they do not want to showcase their latest installments in the Final Fantasy series, and have nothing to show that will be released around the time of the conference. It looks as if the fall is going to be a time for rpgamers to catch up on all the summer games they had no time to play. In the meantime, we can look forward to Chrono Cross and FF9 to sate our desire for Square games for a while.