You think we're making this up.  You're sitting there wondering why we're running our April Fool's joke so early in the year.  Well, this IS NO JOKE.  The Saturday morning edition of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (a Japanese newspaper that has broke a number of video game stories) has reported that Squaresoft and Nintendo have reached an agreement whereby Square games will be developed for both the Nintendo GameCube and the Game Boy Advance.  Even more exciting is that Final Fantasy games were SPECIFICALLY mentioned in the story, and this was later confirmed by a spokesperson at Nintendo of America.  The kicker?  Hiroshi Yamauchi himself is funding the venture through Fund Q, the fund set aside a while back to help GameCube developers.

The development will come in the form of a spin-off company started by Square and Akitoshi Kawazu (a FF developer) that will be up and running by the end of March.  The first games in the agreement are expected by the end of 2002 in Japan.

So why types of games can we expect?  Well we already know that Final Fantasy XI was probably headed to the console, so that seems like a sure thing.  Square also commented in the past that it'd like to bring Final Fantasy IV - VI to the GBA, so those are almost assured given their low cost of development.  A port of Final Fantasy X has also been rumored.  It's unknown at this time what other series are included in the deal, although one would speculate that Square will want to bring everything that stands to make a decent profit to the GBA and GameCube.

One other thing to consider is this quote from the story: 

The deal calls on the Square affiliate to produce software allowing users of two Nintendo consoles -- the GameCube and Game Boy Advance -- to play together by the end of the year.  

Does this hint at games utilizing the link cable to communicate between the GBA and GameCube?  Of was something simply lost in the translation?

Nintendo and Squaresoft have officially kissed and made up.  Unbelievable.