What if FF7 was made for the Nintendo 64?

[RCmodeler]

How would it be different from the FF7 we actually got? I thought of a couple things that would be left out:

 

- full-motion videos/pre-recorded movies (not enough room on N64 cart)

- the backgrounds would probably be flat, dull polygons like Mario64 or RPG rather than the hand-drawn art backgrounds (again, not enough room on N64 cart)

- Anything else?

 

I wonder if Square would have used the N64's memory expansion for hi-res 640x480 mode? Probably not.

[Xevious]

That's why Square moved to PlayStation. They wanted to fill out discs with FMV and music, and the N64's carts wouldn't allow it.

[MegaManFan]

If N64 had ever brought their disk drive from Japan over here.. but by then it would already have been too late because Square was long gone.

[Lost Monkey]

NOTE: This thread originally started here:  

http://www.psxnation.com/Forum/cgi-bin/iko...ct=ST;f=1;t=473  

 

 

 

(1) The story was so sparse as to be boring.  

 

(2) The characters had no personality... they were flatter than the old Super Nintendo sprites.  

 

(3) The materia system sucked, because it allowed any character to be anything. I had Barrett as my healer. Does that make any sense??? Of course not, but the game is so seriously flawed that it allows anyone to cast any spell... thereby erasing any character variety.  

 

(4) I played the entire game with only three characters: Cloud, Barrett, Tifa. What were the other characters for??? They might as well have not existed.  

 

(5) The game was *way* too easy. I beat the last 3 bosses with virtually no effort (call 8 summons, then ultima/fire3 to finish off the bad guy). Why play a game that is so ridiculously un-challenging?  

 

I'll probably dump my copy of FF7 on ebay. I don't plan to waste any more time on it. Nor do I understand why everyone drools over such an astonishingly, poorly designed rpg when much superior rpgs (chrono trigger, ff6, ff9) exist.  

 

 

 

In contrast, I've already played FF9 twice and FF10 thrice. Those are well-designed games. To quote a FF9 reviewer on gamespot.com, "The game play was much more innovative and better thought out than the previous materia and dreaded Junction systems of battle. The old style of having characters with certain abilities and responsibilities, such as healing and protecting or attacking, is much more tactical and intuitive than having the ability to make anyone what you want him to be."

 

 

Last edited by theaveng on Sat Sep 14, 2002 10:01 pm, edited 1 time in total  

 

_________________

TROY'S GAMING HISTORY  

1977- Atari 2600 (primitive)  

1985- Commodore=128 (8-bit)  

1989- Amiga 500 (16-bit)  

1991- zzzzzzzzzzz :scatter:  

2002- Playstation 2 (128-bit)  

 

 

If you don't even like the game, why are you making thread after thread about it, a YEAR after promising you wouldn't waste any more time with it.

[Ze_ro]

- full-motion videos/pre-recorded movies (not enough room on N64 cart)

 

They could have easily used game-engine scripted events... FMV is the lazy way out for developers in my opinion. Might be hard fitting a lot of speech into the game though (although Conker's Bad Fur Day managed quite a bit, that was quite a bit later into the N64's life).

 

- the backgrounds would probably be flat, dull polygons like Mario64 or RPG rather than the hand-drawn art backgrounds (again, not enough room on N64 cart)

 

Your opinion of course... Ocarina of Time managed a pretty amazing polygon background in my opinion, I see no reason why FF7 couldn't have done the same.

 

- Anything else?

 

Well, there's the whole possibility that without FF7, the PSX might never have become very popular. If FF7 had been on the N64 instead, it's possible Nintendo would have come out on top for that generation. This is complete speculation of course.

 

I wonder if Square would have used the N64's memory expansion for hi-res 640x480 mode?  Probably not.

 

I'm pretty sure the expansion wasn't out at the time that FF7 would have been released, so no, they wouldn't have used it. Frankly, I don't think the higher resolution makes much of a difference in N64 games anyways.

 

--Zero

[eldunko]

Just reminded of one of my old gaming magazines in which square had a 2 page visual spread for ff7 with a comical answer to this along the bottom. "If Final Fantasy 7 was released on cartridge it would retail for over $3000. FF7, only on Sony Playstation" Something along those lines, if i was at home i could get a scan or the actual quote, but im at school.

[chrisbid]

cutscenes could be done in real time rather than FMV.

 

the actual "game" on FFVII fit easily on one CD, FMVs are the only reason the game required 3CDs. If you dont believe me, swap out discs during the middle of a game. everything will play fine, but you'll get incorrect FMVs.

 

but why speculate, it didnt go that way, square was bought off by sony, it wasnt just "nintendo didnt give us what we needed" that Square claims/markets. but whatever, FFVII made turned the Playstation legit.

[Classic Pac]

I remember reading an article about this very topic in a copy of Game Pro, I still might have it. If I recall they said it would be a wholly different game. Much, much shorter in fact you may of never left Midgar. But there was so much they wanted to do, they just could not fit it all on a cart. The game is 1300 megs in size. It's hard to shrink that down to just 32 megs.

Which the article said was the max the carts hold.

[King Atari]

full-motion videos/pre-recorded movies (not enough room on N64 cart)

 

The N64 version of Resident Evil 2 had it's FMVs, an FF7 cart would've been fricken' huge, but maybe could've pulled at least those off.

[RCmodeler]

Your opinion of course... Ocarina of Time managed a pretty amazing polygon background in my opinion, I see no reason why FF7 couldn't have done the same.

 

OOT was also a late-release game (32 megabytes). At the time FF7 was released the largest cart was only 8 megabytes. FF7 would probably end up looking like Mario64 or RPG: A relatively large world, but not a lot of detail. Just lots of multi-colored blocks.

 

FF6 was an 8 megabyte cart. It's safe to assume FF7 would look like FF6... but with polygons instead of sprites.

 

 

 

As for Resident Evil, it managed to squeeze all of the PS1 videos into a 64 megabyte cart. However, those videos looked like CRAP. And again, this was a late-released game. I'm sure Square would choose not to include FMVs rather than give us grainy 160x100 resolution vids.

 

 

 

Also, the battle engines would not be hi-res (640x480) like the PS1 version was (just thought of this today).

 

IMHO.

[Xot]

Your opinion of course... Ocarina of Time managed a pretty amazing polygon background in my opinion, I see no reason why FF7 couldn't have done the same.

 

OOT was also a late-release game (32 megabytes). At the time FF7 was released the largest cart was only 8 megabytes. FF7 would probably end up looking like Mario64 or RPG: A relatively large world, but not a lot of detail. Just lots of multi-colored blocks.

 

FF6 was an 8 megabyte cart. It's safe to assume FF7 would look like FF6... but with polygons instead of sprites.

 

 

IMHO.

 

Are you sure you aren't confusing your bits and bytes? I didn't think SNES carts ever made it to 64 megabits (8 megabytes). I thought SFA2 was the largest at 40 megabits (5 megabytes).

[Xot]

Your opinion of course... Ocarina of Time managed a pretty amazing polygon background in my opinion, I see no reason why FF7 couldn't have done the same.

 

OOT was also a late-release game (32 megabytes). At the time FF7 was released the largest cart was only 8 megabytes. FF7 would probably end up looking like Mario64 or RPG: A relatively large world, but not a lot of detail. Just lots of multi-colored blocks.

 

FF6 was an 8 megabyte cart. It's safe to assume FF7 would look like FF6... but with polygons instead of sprites.

 

 

IMHO.

 

Are you sure you aren't confusing your bits and bytes? I didn't think SNES carts ever made it to 64 megabits (8 megabytes). I thought SFA2 was the largest at 40 megabits (5 megabytes).

[RCmodeler]

REVISED: [FF6 was a 4 megabyte cart. It's safe to assume FF7 would look like FF6... but with polygon people instead of sprite people.]

[JB]

That's why Square moved to PlayStation.  They wanted to fill out discs with FMV and music, and the N64's carts wouldn't allow it.

I thought it was because they didn't want to keep developing for hte SNES and losing market share to other companies while Nintendo delayed their new hardware more.

 

Remember, FF7 came out before the "Ultra 64"(as it was known at the time) launched. Many companies abandoned ship knowing that if they didn't jump on a next-gen system NOW, they would've lost their fans to other companies by the time Nintendo's next system launched.

 

 

 

Not to mention Square wasn't exactly best friends with Nintendo to begin with.

 

As I understand it, they'd been burned badly by Nintendo several times in the past.

Examples: refusal to license FF2,3,5 for US release.

Refusing to let them use a larger cart for FF6 because they wanted to let Enix premiere it with the next Dragon Quest.

Canning the SNESCD with no advance warning after Square had already sunk untold hours in the development of Seiken Densetsu 2, AKA Secret of Mana, forcing them to stuff what they could into a ROM cartridge so the development costs weren't a TOTAL loss.

 

Basically, Square was GLAD to be rid of Nintendo.

[Ze_ro]

The game is 1300 megs in size. It's hard to shrink that down to just 32 megs.

Which the article said was the max the carts hold.

 

Yeah, but the vast majority of that 1300 megs is just FMV... probably like, 95% of it. if it were converted into scripted conversations, I'm sure it would be a lot smaller. Probably not down to 32 megs, but certainly possible to fit on a cartridge. Just because no game had exceeded 32 megs at the time doesn't mean that FF7 couldn't have been the first.

 

--Zero

[JB]

The game is 1300 megs in size. It's hard to shrink that down to just 32 megs.

Which the article said was the max the carts hold.

 

Yeah, but the vast majority of that 1300 megs is just FMV... probably like, 95% of it. if it were converted into scripted conversations, I'm sure it would be a lot smaller. Probably not down to 32 megs, but certainly possible to fit on a cartridge. Just because no game had exceeded 32 megs at the time doesn't mean that FF7 couldn't have been the first.

 

--Zero

Actually, I'd bet the majority of that space is duplicated data.

Remember, all 3 disks work for gameplay in any part of the world.

 

Everything but cut-scene FMVs is duplicated on all 3 disks.

[RCmodeler]

Probably not down to 32 megs, but certainly possible to fit on a cartridge. Just because no game had exceeded 32 megs at the time doesn't mean that FF7 couldn't have been the first.

 

 

True.

 

For a $100 pricetag. Remember, 32 megabytes of ROM was not cheap in 1996. Like I said before, the largest cart was still only 8 MB.

 

Are there any other FF-style RPGs that we can use for comparison (on the N64)? Someone already said Ocarina, but that's no where near as large as FF7 was. Ocarina's like a short story. FF7 is like a thick novel.

 

 

 

Also, I can't imagine FF7 without videos. For example, you wouldn't have that awesome cut-scene with Aeris & Cloud in the gondola. Or any of the other awe-inspring cutscenes.

 

Also, all of the beautiful background art would have to eliminated. If you add up all those still pictures, I'm sure they take a huge chunk of space on the discs.

[King Atari]

As for Resident Evil, it managed to squeeze all of the PS1 videos into a 64 megabyte cart.  However, those videos looked like CRAP.

 

They were fuzzy, but by no means crap. Besides, FMV in an N64 cart is no small feat.

 

But then, I haven't played FF7, so I can't comment on how those would've turned out, only that the N64 could pull off FMVs.

[Video]

Compact Discs encouraged developers to do one thing, and one thing only. Become lazy.

 

Don't believe me?

What are FMV's? Laziness. Instead of using ingame engines to produce a story, (which takes far less memory BTW) they slap a non interactive/non alterable FMV onto the game instead.

What is most 'CDquality' music in games? Most is simply tracks ripped from existing CD's. Example, most peole know Tony Hawk, and one of it's greatest features is music.....music lazily jacked from other artists rather than being designed for the game.....well, legally purchased, but you should know what I mean.

What happened to gameplay? Most is undermined by lazines due to being able to make a steaming pile of crap look good, and unfortunately, most people are primitave enough that's all they care about.

 

Final fantasy 7's long, sure. But it's 90% FMV. I don't mean 90% of the time you spend on it is cutscenes. I mean 90% of the code is cutscenes. What are FMV? Video footage because the programmers were to lazy to script the events using the ingame engine (which would have taken way less room) It also shows that the developers weren't satisfied withe the in game engine, didn't think it's graphics were good enough. Truthfully, you want a movie, get a movie.

 

N64 could do graphics ever bit as good as PSX, and anti alising made many like games look far superior on 64. Sound made for the N64, instead of ripped from preexisting CD's sounded just as good as anything PSX could do. Look at THPS2 on N64 with it's poor quality CD sound tracks, then look at Nintendo made games programmed from the ground up to be a 64 game, such as well, Mario 64 even sounds better. As for speach, Starfox had boatloads of speach in it for a game of it's time. Look at Conker, it's a great game with loads of speach too. Again, because it was programmed ground up to run on a cart rather than just having someone sit infront of a mike to do the voice and recording that to the game. (actually, I think in conker, they did have voice actors, but won't swear to that)

 

As for FMV, your stuck with what you got. While ingame engines can be altered. What do I mean?

You play Final Fantasy 7 through once, that's it, if you've seen all the cutscenes, there's nothing more to bring you back beyond gameplay. Why? The cut scene will be exactly the same each time it's played.

Now look at what you can do with a game like Halo for instance, which uses an ingame engine to produce the cut scenes, rather than FMV. You can, for example, take the warthog, and drive it to the bottome floor of 'The silent cartographer' and into the room with the holo pannel you need to push. Get out, push the pannel and the cut scene starts. You see the warthog siting in the room with you in that case. As well as all the bullet holes in the walls, blood splatter, dead bodies, etc. Very dificult - impossible to do with FMV.

Yes, yes, I know some people will bitch about that comparrison just cause I'm comparing a PSX game to an X-box game. So here's another FMV game, for X-Box this time for all those pickey whiners.

Matrix. This games cut scenes are FMV based. In fact the game is almost entirely FMV. The sad thing is, programmers relied on pretty graphics and FMV to get the game out, rather than gameplay. The result is boring moments of gameplay, between some admitedly great cutscenes. Again, once you've played it, there's nothing new to see so the cutscesnes at that point are irrelevant. In this case, unlike Final Fantasy, there is nothing to bring you back once it's finished.

 

 

That's not all. How about coding itself? Irrelevant to you and me, as we never see any of it, we just see the finished product. But coding on Carts had lots of space saving tricks done so the game would fit. Useualy with no compromise to gameplay. But with a CD, you all of a sudden got 150+ times the space of even the biggest carts, even today, so why tie up loose ends? Why worry that a code trick you did isn't the most streemlined space conservative technique you could have used. You still got 500 megs of space so youd don't care.

 

You'll be surprised what can fit on a cart....if the coders try And you won't be surprised what won't fit on one if the coders don't try. Hell, if data compression and streamlined programming weren't done, Super Mario World would have never existed untill the Nintendo 64 come out. In fact, most games out there wouldn't have existed untill the next incarnation of a console come out.

 

Check out Golden Sun. It's ever bit as long as any 2D final fantasy (unless you cont transfering your save to Golden Sun 2, then it's closer to 3 times as long) But the coders really compressed the data in there, and made use of most, if not all the GBA's hardware capabilities. So you get a game that blows all the 2D final fantasys out of the water. And truthfully, gives 7 a run for the money.

 

Could Final Fantasy 7 have been done on 64? Yes. Could it have been just as good as the PSX version? Yes....provisionally (providing coding compression and ingame cutscenes, etc, etc, etc were used instead of cheap lazy meathods) Could it's graphics been as good? GamePlay yes. Cutscenes No. Then again, if all you care about are graphics, aren't you in the wrong line of entertainment? If you're looking for the latest and best graphics, the latest blockbuster movie destroys anything a console can generate.

[Ze_ro]

Well said, I whole-heartedly agree.

 

Calling any FMV sequence "awe-inspiring" is an exaggeration in my opinion. I don't think I've seen any FMV in any game that I would ever really be that impressed about. Hell, even when Dragon's Lair came out, even as a kid I realized it was basically just a cartoon, and it seemed like "cheating" to me as far as graphics are concerned.

 

Ocarina had some great scripted cutscenes that were very nicely done. I very much doubt that there are any cutscenes in FF7 that couldn't be redone using in-game graphics, and end up looking better in the process.

 

--Zero

[MegaManFan]

Better is debateable, but considering the game characters outside the cutscenes are polygonal anyway, cut-aways with equally polygonal characters wouldn't have been such a shock. With care they could even have been done very convincingly.

 

What you absolutely could not take away from FF7 in my opinion:

* The music. Powerful, haunting, beautiful, and essentially FF7.

* The menu system. Map the PSX keys to the N64 C pad if you must.

* The events. Leave not a single cut-away in the three disc one out.

 

Other than that, sure, I don't see why it couldn't have been crammed into a big N64 cart using lots of compression and rendered cut scenes as opposed to FMV. Might be tricky, might even be one clunker of a cart, but you could do it.

 

Now on the other hand, I've argued for a long time that FF7 itself, minus all of the cut scenes, could easily be done small enough to be on a GBA cart. And I almost think it would be worth it provided they left everything else in tact.

[JB]

 

As for FMV, your stuck with what you got.  While ingame engines can be altered.  What do I mean?  

You play Final Fantasy 7 through once, that's it, if you've seen all the cutscenes, there's nothing more to bring you back beyond gameplay.  Why?  The cut scene will be exactly the same each time it's played.    

Now look at what you can do with a game like Halo for instance, which uses an ingame engine to produce the cut scenes, rather than FMV.  You can, for example, take the warthog, and drive it to the bottome floor of 'The silent cartographer' and into the room with the holo pannel you need to push.  Get out, push the pannel and the cut scene starts.  You see the warthog siting in the room with you in that case.  As well as all the bullet holes in the walls, blood splatter, dead bodies, etc.  Very dificult - impossible to do with FMV.

Better example... Parasite Eve 2. With the existing FMV, the character's weapon inexplicably changes to a pistol every time the FMV starts, regardless of what she's actually using.

In-game cutscenes, while less pretty, show her carrying the RIGHT gun.

...

We also likely wouldn't have had a needless shower scene without FMV, as the game engine wasn't up to a decent graphical quality for the task.

[RCmodeler]

Shower scene?

 

 

I was going to skip PE2, but now I may have to reconsider!

[Ze_ro]

Now on the other hand, I've argued for a long time that FF7 itself, minus all of the cut scenes, could easily be done small enough to be on a GBA cart.  And I almost think it would be worth it provided they left everything else in tact.

 

Boy, that would be a tough job... if all the cut-scenes were reduced to in-game conversations (like the ones in Golden Sun), I could see it happening. I wonder why Square hasn't remade any of these games on the GBA... Even an FF6 remake on the GBA would probably sell millions, and they wouldn't even have to do much work on it.

 

--Zero

[JB]

Shower scene?

 

 

 

I was going to skip PE2, but now I may have to reconsider!

Preceded by a VERY disappointing FMV of Aya in bed in a nightshirt, only massively disproportioned.

 

Personally, I like the game, but I think that particular cutscene could've been left out. It really added nothing to the game, and that disproportioned shot annoys me to no end.