Final Fantasy 7: An oral history

January 9, 2017 1:58 PM

At that time, Square was really close to Nintendo [...] So when [the Nintendo 64] was in development, we gave them lots of advice, like, “You’re going to need a CD-ROM drive for it,” “You don’t have enough bandwidth to do what we’re trying to do,” and, “With what you have now, we’re not going to be able to make an RPG.” We gave them lots of advice. But [Nintendo president] Yamauchi-san at Nintendo basically refused to listen to any of it. And that’s when Sakaguchi-san and the management team at Square decided, “OK, we’re going to go with Sony now.”

An oral history of Final Fantasy 7.
posted by Sokka shot first (23 comments total)

A lot of folk I know contributed to this monster of an article. Seems a very worthy deep dive read if you perhaps want to know more about one of gaming's late nineties touchstones and the fine craftsfolk responsible. I'll be taking my time and enjoying this read with perhaps the same relaxed pace I mostly take these games at.
posted by chainlinkspiral at 2:12 PM on January 9, 2017 [6 favorites]

The undercurrent of this story - how Nintendo screwed up big time with the N64 - is as fascinating as the rest of the piece.
posted by thecjm at 3:41 PM on January 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

This article makes me nostalgic for the hundreds of hours I spent inside FF4, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, and double makes me wish I had the money to drop on a PS4 and FF15 and 50 free hours to play it.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 3:53 PM on January 9, 2017 [5 favorites]

The Nintendo Playstation.
posted by adept256 at 4:18 PM on January 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

That looks really interesting but boy do I not like that formatting.
posted by RolandOfEld at 4:19 PM on January 9, 2017

This is all kinds of great. It is fascinating to remember that the "breakup" and move to Sony happened right on the heels of the Square-Nintendo super collab, Mario RPG.
posted by byanyothername at 4:38 PM on January 9, 2017

I'm now digging into the US marketing plan linked in the article. '97 was probably the last point where a huge game could come out in Japan and the US arm would get 9 months to prep for release without have an internet full of screenshots and spoilers. Despite being out in Japan for such a long time, how many US gamers knew about Aerith going in?
posted by thecjm at 4:52 PM on January 9, 2017

Previously and prior to that.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 5:15 PM on January 9, 2017

That pullquote reminds me of the story of Epic and the Xbox 360. Epic pushed Microsoft hard to get 512 MB of RAM in the their new console, up from the 256 that Microsoft had planned. Supposedly they showed them what Gears of War would look like with each, which convinced Microsoft to double their RAM and probably in turn helped them win a generation.
posted by graventy at 5:30 PM on January 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

This is all kinds of great. It is fascinating to remember that the "breakup" and move to Sony happened right on the heels of the Square-Nintendo super collab, Mario RPG.

Nevertheless, Paper Mario on the N64 turned out pretty great. (And I was greatly amused coming from FF games, where you'd build up characters to having attacks that would do thousands of points of damage. Then Paper Mario would jump on an enemy and do 1pt damage (or maybe 2!) and a boss would have 10 hp.)
posted by straight at 8:47 PM on January 9, 2017

Nintendo seems to have struck RPG gold with Fire Emblem, which I imagine will be a major title on the new system.
posted by Brocktoon at 10:39 PM on January 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Nintendo has also struck some sort of TPG gold with the Paper Mario games. I got Color Splash for Christmas and it is terrific. Card-based combat and weirdly off-color humor for a Nintendo game.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 1:26 AM on January 10, 2017

This article makes me nostalgic for the hundreds of hours I spent inside FF4, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, and double makes me wish I had the money to drop on a PS4 and FF15 and 50 free hours to play it.

BuddhaInABucket,

I DID in fact drop the money on a PS4 just so I could play FF15 (And eventually the FF7 remake!!), and I have to say, so far I am underwhelmed. I haven't gotten too far into the story, but so far it has been product placement after product placement. Which is more amusing than anything else, as I'm in my 30's and totally call it out when I see it. But it's so pervasive that it would actually make me hesitant to let a younger kid play it. I will say though, that Squenix did take the criticism of FF13 seriously, and this game has much less of the "story on rails" feeling.
posted by sharp pointy objects at 5:58 AM on January 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

I bought FF IX during the last Steam sale and I've been happily plugging away. Sharing in case anyone wants an FF f(ix).
posted by ersatz at 6:32 AM on January 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

Are there any decent FF-esque games for the iPhone?
posted by Night_owl at 7:30 AM on January 10, 2017

I mean, there's FFIV for the iPhone, based off the Nintendo DS port from a few years back.

Can confirm that the music still gives me the feels, but only the enemies and settings have translated well. I am one of those weirdos who thinks that the simpler a player character is represented, the more fun one can have being that character, which is why I prefer to play FFIV in emulation or on the GBA.
posted by infinitewindow at 8:04 AM on January 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

When they talked about the marketing, I remembered this ad: "Someone please get the guys who make cartridge games a cigarette and a blindfold." I eventually got to play it on the PC about 3 years later, but I wanted a PlayStation so badly just for that game when I saw the ad.

I'm refusing to buy a console this generation and am instead just going PC. But I may accidentally borrow a friend's for a while when the remake comes out.
posted by Hactar at 9:33 AM on January 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

sharp pointy objects: can I borrow your system when you're done with it? I'd go rent one at blockbuster buuuuut....
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 10:07 AM on January 10, 2017

Yeah, I'm a little worried that FFVII Remake is going to be an end-of-generation game, because I haven't bought a system in this generation yet, and I have sort of resisted the siren call so far? I'd have to buy a system for one game, y'know? Feh.

I need to finish off my current iOS replay of 7 so I can play 8 again and see if it makes a lick of sense this time or if it's just as insanely timey-wimey as it was back then.
posted by Kyol at 10:13 AM on January 10, 2017

I bought FF IX during the last Steam sale and I've been happily plugging away.

The FF9 soundtrack has so much great music. So many great tunes. And such a wide variety.
posted by straight at 12:37 PM on January 10, 2017 [2 favorites]

I have a teenage daughter who plays this on the piano all the time now because we played FF9 together 10 years ago.
posted by straight at 12:41 PM on January 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

My wife refused to read this article because she's still mad about Aerith. Maybe in another 10 years.
posted by Blue Meanie at 1:51 PM on January 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

Thank you so much for sharing this. The FF games, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana...those games defined my childhood. I have such fond memories of playing through them time and time again. I'd play them with my childhood best friend and we'd each take turns at the controller. I can still remember how we tried to find all the various Chrono Trigger endings, and while I don't recall if we were successful, I know how thrilling it was to try. We were 12 when FFVII came out and it was magical. We'd been obsessed with FF3/FF6j (still are, really).

(There's an FFVII port for the iPad for anyone who might not know. While the controls are a bit clunky, it's got a neat feature for those of us who loved the story but no longer have the hours to level grind - you push a button and you're instantly max leveled. Yes, I had the same pearl-clutching oh-I-would-NEVER! reaction you're having now, but then I realized - I put hundreds of hours into this game. I've paid my dues. If I wanna spend a few hours reminiscing instead of level grinding...yeah, I'm gonna do it.)
posted by pecanpies at 7:34 AM on January 13, 2017 [1 favorite]