Editorial: Over and Under - FFVII

[Viper]

NintendoNow (http://nintendonow.e-mpire.com/index.php?categoryid=6&m_articles_articleid=4749)

Adrian Santiago's return to the editorialist desk of NNow.

[Lucent Beam]

Amusing enough article, but I think the over-rating of FF7 is a topic that has already been beaten into the ground so despite it being amusing, it felt a little like "Ah, a rant about FF7 again..".

Although I do think it was a poor choice to leave in the section about modded your PS and burning discs, despite the half-hearted "No, no, now don't do it" comment added in.

Titled as by you, Viper. Is there a way to change that for proper credit or what?

I think the best part of it was this:

It was very sneaky, but you practically played through “Final Fantasy Freethrow”, “Final Fantasy Street Racer”, “Final Fantasy Extreme Snowboarding”, “Final Fantasy Chocobo Rancher”, and indeed, with the amount of pre-rendered full motion video sequences, “Final Fantasy The Movie”.

[Viper]

I believe Chris can edit that on the server side but I can't in the CMS itself. I've unfortunately had to do this with a few recent reviews as well.

[Adrian Santiago]

Although I do think it was a poor choice to leave in the section about modded your PS and burning discs, despite the half-hearted "No, no, now don't do it" comment added in.

Normally I would be on your side with this, except Square's not asking for $90 for their decade-old RPG... ordinary people are. Unless Square stepped forward and offered a simple "HD Resolution" version of Final Fantasy 7 for sale for $20 for the Playstation 3, I'd go so far as to suggest that "they don't care" if you download the discs from a torrent site.

For god's sake, there's a Final Fantasy 7 + 8 box set on amazon listed right now at $169.99... do you think Square's to see any of that? Unlikely. In fact, I'd bet that the person who put this combo pack together picked up both games at a flea market for $6 a pop: And that's really what you SHOULD do with a game that has sold over 10,000,000 copies... drop a couple of bucks on them since they don't exactly qualify as "rare".

It's just... wrong on a collector standpoint, and wrong from a gamer standpoint. Super Mario Brothers 3 on the NES, an even older system, sold 17,000,000 copies or so during it's reign and you can find those carts for $5-$12 each. Final Fantasy 7, and in fact, all Playstation games shouldn't have such a high price tag since the PSX, PS2 and even the current generation Playstation 3 can play all legacy titles: Effectively making the point of "going back" and buying outdated hardware for Sony's consoles futile at worst, merely collectible "just to have it" at best.

In other words, rarity, obscurity, value and so on: There's no reason why this game is worth even half of what it's selling for out there... unless people are just under the false impression that on September 11th, 2001 when the World Trade Center fell, a deadly cloud of radioactive gas flowed over the earth mutilating all but 200 copies of the original game.

[err_ok]

I'm just staggered that Pikmin 2 goes for £40...

However I love FFVII, I remember when I first played it.. I couldn't go home one weekend from school so I persuaded my Grandma to pick me up... lol

[Xer0]

I remember when i picked up my PS2 I went and bought this and Xenogears from Gamestop for $20 a pop. FFVII could not keep me from constantly thinking about the terrible graphics and production values, Xenogears on the other hand blew me away. The love affair with FFVII that some people have I think is completely unfounded.

[Pro A.]

I love FFVII. I always have, in large part, because of the story. I like the characters and I found myself engaged in their plight. Is it a perfect game? No, of course not. The visuals haven't aged well and some of the character motivations are more than a bit spotty at times, but whenever I play I find myself being enraptured by the experience all over again. The only RPG, for me, that did a better job was VII's predecessor.

[Mr. Coww]

Personaly i kinda disliked VII, it just didnt do it for me. I really never enjoyed 8 -12 either. The DS remakes of 3 and 4 did how ever make me happy.
Its kinda odd they havent ported 7 to the DS yet seeing the card size is plenty big for properly compressed videos.

[dork]

final fantasy 7 was such an incredible experience when it was first released in '97 but i don't think anyone playing it now for the first time would be impressed. personally, it's still my favorite rpg of all time.

[Adrian Santiago]

Personaly i kinda disliked VII, it just didnt do it for me. I really never enjoyed 8 -12 either. The DS remakes of 3 and 4 did how ever make me happy.

Same here, actually... I had the FFIII Remake on the DS and absolutely loved it... it fit more along the lines of what Final Fantasy used to be, and that's fantasy. FF6 lightly had some technology, but by FF8? I was so sick of hyper futuristic technology and the idea that "magic is still relevant" somehow... that's part of why my interest saw a revival in Final Fantasy X: By sending whats-his-name into an alternate reality, Square effectively shit-canned all the Future sci-fi crap and send the game "back in time" where it belonged.

[Viper]

Personaly i kinda disliked VII, it just didnt do it for me. I really never enjoyed 8 -12 either. The DS remakes of 3 and 4 did how ever make me happy.
Its kinda odd they havent ported 7 to the DS yet seeing the card size is plenty big for properly compressed videos.

FFVII - 1.4 MB with no texture compression.

DS has 4:1 texture compression and 256 MB cartridges.

If half of the game were texture data, it would still take up 175 MB's of data but with the DS's slightly smaller resolution that file size would be reduced further. The better movie and audio compression schemes on the DS could squish things down pretty good but I don't know if it would fit in the remaining 81 MB's of space or not.

I suppose it would be possible though if given some serious effort.

[Adrian Santiago]

I'm sure you mean GB not MB. ^^

[Viper]

Blargh...that G and M key are so close together.

Yeah, that's it. :shifty: