“On January 31st, 1997, Final Fantasy VII was released to the Japanese public. This single game both revolutionized and raised the bar of Japanese style console role playing games. It success was so staggering, it placed Squaresoft firmly on top the the the genre, displacing the Dragon Quest series created by the rival Enix company. The story of how this game came to be has a story more expansive than the game itself. It starts, as most stories do, with it’s prequel.” An insanely detailed – although missing certain parts, here and there – look at Final Fantasy VII’s engine. As in, 211 pages detailed. You might want to grab a coffee.
Really wish FFVII would get an HD remake.
you and me both, they have teased it a few times.
I have a feeling if they were to attempt it, they wouldn’t do a straight port and may try to “improve” things and end up completely destroying the game.
In case anyone is put off by the page count, it’s really only about 6 pages of back story and then followed by 200+ pages of technical manuals which are really only interesting to anyone thinking of getting into game development or have a particular geeky curiosity in such things (weirdly, there’s also the odd Lorem Ipsum floating about where they’ve overlooked a topic).
I think the first few pages are definitely worth a read though, even if you’re not interested in this game specifically, because there’s some history about the politics between the different companies at that time:
I knew the reason why Sony created their own console but up until now I always thought Nintendo chose the cartridge system over CD. However if this is true and Sony deliberately sabotaged Nintendo’s attempts at gaining a deal with another 3rd party – forcing Nintendo to release a substandard product, then this just makes me hate Sony even more than I do already.
Edited 2013-02-04 12:15 UTC
http://innovationzen.com/blog/2006/10/18/the-playstation-true-story…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNES-CD
The CD-i add on was a flop, Nintendo broke its deal with Sony and jumped into bed with Phillips, but some how Sony was to blame…
If Nintendo hadn’t done what it did, there wouldn’t have been a playstation so I am kind of glad they broke the deal / pissed off Sony.
Nintendo selected the cartridge as it thought it superior / more rugged. Nintendo tends to aim its consoles at the younger market.
look at the wii with its gimped dvd’s, I guess Sony were to blame for them selecting that format as well.
What about the current wii-u again Sony blocking them from adding a bluray player ?
Edited 2013-02-04 12:40 UTC
Plu-h’ease ! I do not recount how many times I had to give the NES connector a blow job before getting it hard and steady for a round…
Kochise
My GC games were ok, they required the odd occasional BJ, up until around 5 years ago they were still working. I gave the whole lot away so cant confirm if they still work.
Goldeneye still remains one of my most favourite games of all time. Zelda ocarina of time was also damn good and mario kart on the N64. Loved the N64, brings back so many fond memories.
I can’t tell if you’re joking and just wanted to make a silly comment or if you actually don’t know the history / details about NES cartridge design.
I’ll summarize it super quickly for any who doesn’t know: Blowing into NES cartridges hardly ever had any effect. The reason the NES would blink is because of a bad connection, which was due the NES having a front loading design as opposed to the much superior top loading design of [every other console with cartridges]. The front loading design was necessary for business reasons due to the then recent video game crash.
Cartridges are more rugged, have much faster loading times than optical discs, and require no moving parts, whereas optical discs can hold much more data and are far cheaper to produce.
Edited 2013-02-04 14:55 UTC
Did you actually read any of the bit I quoted or the article it came from?
It categorically states why Nintendo ended up with cartridges on the N64 and they Nintendo broke their deal with Sony (see article for that explanation).
Laurence, is there any proof to back up that statement ? Do they actually have any proof about Sony blocking Nintendo from using a cd drive ?
According to Wikipedia Nintendo chose it and I remember at the time when I got my n64 reading Nintendo wanted to use Cartridges, this is why it all seems a bit bullshit to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64DD — optical drive addon for wii. –> also dont forget this little gem which was Japan only.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64
“Nintendo cited several advantages for making the N64 cartridge-based.[40] Primarily cited was the ROM cartridges’ very fast load times in comparison to disc-based games, as contemporary CD-ROM drives rarely had speeds above 4×” … Read that section and look at the references for corroboration.
http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/SNES_CD-ROM — the snes cdrom flop.
Sony might have blocked it, but I doubt philips or matsushita or any of the other companies would give a damn what sony said and would supply Nintendo, it just sounds very bullshit to me.
* The SNES CDROM was never released (only prototyped).
* The CDi is a completely different type of kit entirely (I know, I’ve used one).
* And the N64DD addon isn’t even a CD – it’s a magnetic disk.
Presumably developing the magnetic disk took longer than Nintendo could hang on (for risk of missing the next generation of console launches). So they had to fall back on tried and tested technologies first.
Which is why I said “if this is true”
So you’d trust an article which could have been written by anyone and based on here’say over one that was written by developers who had a contract with Nintendo?
I don’t want to sound to down on your opinions as there’s a chance you might be right, but it does read a little like you’ve already made your mind up and are now looking for the facts to prove your point.
You do realise how marketing works, right? IF Sony did block Nintendo, then Nintendo are hardly going to announce “Our consoles are going to be crippled compared to the other games consoles being released.” that would just be retarded. So of course they’d spin it to argue that they’d chosen a cartridge based system and to list of it’s advantages – even if they didn’t believe that crap themselves.
This is marketing 101.
You maybe right, but I’m not sure I’d trust your gut instinct more than I trust developers who were writing games for Nintendo’s various consoles at that time.
Edited 2013-02-04 16:24 UTC
Laurence, you could be completely right but then again what if the devs that wrote the article were very heavily biased for Nintendo ? You cant be certain and it does happen.
Either way, the facts we know for certain are what Nintendo stated, i.e. they elected to go with the cartridge over the CD, even if that was a marketing cover up. I know wikipedia can be full of rubbish, but check the sources, the sources the wikipedia body refers to usually is a gold mine.
I loved my N64, it was a great console.
Wikipedia also talks about how Nintendo stitched Phillips up over the SNES CD[1] (which is why the CDi had licences for some Nintendo characters). So it’s not inconceivable that Nintendo largely brought this on themselves by burning enough bridges that the other patent holders were reluctant to work with the Japanese games company.
I guess at least then, it would appear to some that Sony engineered the attack and to others, that Nintendo chose to avoid such technology altogether.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-i_games_from_The_Legend_of_Zelda_se…
Yeah I think that is the best way of putting it.
The irony of Final Fantasy games is that they don’t seem to be actually “final”.
Last Ninja 3.
if they keep ‘improving’ the series like they did so far ( 13, 13-2, 14 ), they will get the ‘final’ part with ease.
Don’t forget 8. And X. And X-2.
Here’s hoping. Maybe then we’ll start seeing RPGs that are actually RPGs again, instead of just interactive spank material for creepy anime nerds.
It’s, like, a Neverending Story.
only the Neverending Story actually ended.