After an age in development, the Nintendo DS adventure The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass has an official release date (in Japan at least), according to Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu. The videogaming publication reports that Phantom Hourglass will hit Japanese shelves on June 29 of this year.

However, the popular magazine also writes that any release outside of the territory will not arrive until at least Christmas 2007, due to translation and localisation issues we'd imagine. No fixed date for North America and other regions is really what we already knew, after Nintendo announced at last month’s Game Developer’s Conference that the much-anticipated title would be released in the USA during Christmas 2007.

According to Nintendo design guru Shigeru Miyamoto, the main reason for Phantom Hourglass' setback is due to the fact that he was concentrating so much time and effort on the Nintendo Wii's The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

Miyamoto has explained that he was not able to put his time into the stylus-controlled handheld title, officially confirmed as the sequel to the Nintendo GameCube's The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. He apparently begged Nintendo president Satoru Iwata to delay the game so that he could become creatively involved in its development.

Phantom Hourglass features a top-down perspective reminiscent of the pre-Nintendo 64 Zelda titles, but utilises the beautiful 3D cel-shaded aesthetics of Wind Waker. Still not a whole lot is known about the title, but some key characteristics include using the Touch Screen to scribble adventure-based notes, pain-free sea-faring journeys, and a two-player Wi-Fi compatible multiplayer mode in a Zelda title for only the second time in the series' history.