The Universal Cool Japan initiative is Universal Studios Japan's collaborative effort to promote Japanese entertainment and pop culture around the world with attractions that allow you to experience them in overwhelming scale. Just recently, fans of Final Fantasy and Sailor Moon started marking their calendars when it was revealed that the 2018 event would introduce attractions to the theme park based off of the worlds of those two mega-popular series.

While the theme park, located in Osaka, has featured cafes and virtual reality experiences before, details about how the Final Fantasy series would be incorporated remained murky. Now USJ has announced that they will be offering a virtual reality roller coaster that takes you through the worlds of the Final Fantasy series.

The roller coaster and VR hybrid is called the Final Fantasy XR Ride. The experience consists of park guests boarding a Final Fantasy airship-modeled roller coaster and donning VR headsets. From there, the ride will warp you across the different universes of the Final Fantasy series, where you will encounter heroes, foes, and unpredictable adventures displayed with immersive state of the art technology. USJ says it will be a full 360 degrees experience that brings the the worlds of Final Fantasy to life.

Guessing by the characters featured in the promotional image, at the very least, the worlds of FFIV, FFVI, FFVII, FFVII, FFIX, FFX, and FFXIII will be featured, with perhaps more along the way.

Famed Final Fantasy series illustrator and character desinger Yoshitaka Amano has provided an original logo artwork to promote the attraction, which definitely lends it a lot of charm and credibility.

The Final Fantasy XR Ride is currently scheduled to open at USJ on January 19th, 2018, along with attractions based on Detective Conan and Monster Hunter, with a Sailor Moon attraction set to join the festivities in the Spring.


By - grape Japan editorial staff.