Ah, you said "autumn" instead of "fall". (No biggie, just a personal preference) Hats off to you!
As for that list of games...
I was really looking forward to Final Fantasy III, it being a remake of one of my favourite games in the series. It was going to be the only game I really wanted, but now I'm conflicted. Having read about Contact, I think I may change my mind.
Big fan of Earthbound, (and although I'm not seeing as many similarities as everyone else between the two games), Contact looks really fun. While I could get Final Fantasy III, it'll probably just be a prettier version of a game I've played before, rather than a whole new game with interesting new gameplay. It seems to use the touch screen a lot more which I enjoy. I know games released under Atlas usually have a limited run, unlike Squarenix games, so even if I decide it wasn't that good, I could probably put it up on EBay and use the funds to get the other. Final Fantasy III will always be for sale, but will Contact?
Went on a camping trip during the long weekend, and the only DS game I brought was Castlevania DoS, so you can imagine I'm excited for Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin as well. Only reason why I'm not anticipating it as much is because of the dual-character system, which seems like it may be more trouble than it's worth. Don't like relying on bad AI to help me out of binds. We'll see.
I wish they were making a new Cavas Curse style Kirby instead of a regular platformer. Children of Mana, from the reviews I've read, doesn't live up to the original games, and is more just a neutered Mana dungeon crawler. Megaman XZ looks okay, but I've been let down by Megaman games recently. Rocket Slime, now that looks like it could be fun and quirky, but I'd rather have a real Dragon Quest game. If I wanted quirky, I'd stick with Contact
I won't deny that this is an excellent selection of games, but I'll be waiting for some reviews.