http://wii.ign.com/articles/957/957943p1.html

I'm sure many of you might remember hearing about Final Fantasy IV: The After - the sequel to Final Fantasy IV that was being released as a mobile game in Japan.  It was released as monthly episodic content and has so far been very successful in Japan both critically and in sales.  For a while there was talk about porting it over to the DS, but it wasn't clear how the episodic content would work out.  But now it looks like it will be brought over as WiiWare.  It should be interesting to see if it will be episodic still or if they will bunch numerous episodes together.

The game looks identical to the original Final Fantasy IV, but the gameplay has has evolved quite a bit.  

It features a lunar cycle, similar to how the Mana series used the days of the week to determine which magics were stronger and which monsters appeared.  Additionally combat has been altered to include "the band system" which is similar to Chrono Trigger's dual and triple techs.  So from this early description it already kind of sounds like Squaresoft's greatest hits from the 16 bit era.  The cast includes a number of new characters (many of which are children of the original cast) as well as some of the original characters.

You can read more details about the game here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_IV_the_After:_Tsuki_no_Kikan

Anyway I am a huge fan of FF IV.  It is my favorite of the series.  To this day it has my favorite soundtrack (to the point where I bought 2 variations of the soundtrack).  It's still one of those games that I can just pop in and start play almost from start to finish.  So needless to say I couldn't be happier.  I was swore up a storm when I first heard this was only going to be on Japanese mobile phones.  Really hope this gets fast-tracked to the West.

gamingeek said:

I heard it was listed for XBLA arcade too. And iPhone?

I never got the DS one or played the original so I'm really not that into it. I still have two DS FF games to finish off, Ring of Fates and Revenant wings.

There's a rumor that it's coming out on XBLA, but it's a pretty weak rumor at this point.  That was started a month ago, before this official announcement was made.  It's possible, but I don't see it entirely likely.  Nintendo doesn't really like to share the content it gets, and while ultimately it's not up to Nintendo I'm sure they had some say in the matter. After all, Nintendo refused to cooperate with Rare and MS to let GoldenEye come out on the VC and XBLA.  I don't think they'd change their stance here.

Plus it doesn't make a ton of sense for the game to show up on XBLA.  PSN I could see since there are plenty of FF fans with PS3's, but not so much with the Xbox.  

I didn't touch FF4 on the DS.  I've put it on a few of my wishlists at Amazon and places like that but it's not the kind of game I'll ever buy. I like the original a lot, and picked up the GBA remake of it from a few years back.  But frankly 3-D or not, there's just not enough to interest me in buying yet another copy of it.