Final Fantasy VII went on to sell an astonishing ten million units worldwide - more than three times its predecessor. Though it would eventually circle back to the genre’s favourite trope of a big, magical baddie trying to rule and/or destroy the world, Final Fantasy VII kicks off with a group of ecoterrorists called AVALANCHE facing off against an antagonist familiar to anyone crushed by capitalism and climate change: the planet-destroying Shinra Electric Power Company.
FINAL FANTASY III SERIES
Previous games in the series set the player up against evil knights and fascist empires, but Final Fantasy VII offered a new villain: capitalism. “It was a Tokyo blockbuster, and it would inject a megadose of Japanese sensibilities into the American mainstream: big-eyed, bushy-haired anime characters and their manga-style melodrama androgynous heroes the very idea that video games could be meditative explorations as well as thrill rides.” Even more groundbreaking, it dared to presume something new: that a video game could have the dramatic pull of a Hollywood blockbuster.”īut it wasn’t a Hollywood product at all, he continued. “Though blocky and primitive by current standards, it was fully rendered in three dimensions - a major technological feat for the era. “When it debuted in 1997, the world had never seen anything like it,” wrote Matt Alt in his book Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World. This little Nintendo fanboy was now a PlayStation fan. We left with our very own PlayStation and a beautiful, shrink-wrapped copy of Final Fantasy VII - the allure of Square on PlayStation was irresistible. I had been a Nintendo die-hard my whole life, but later that morning, blurry eyed and sleep-deprived, I somehow convinced my dad to take a multi-hour trip by ferry and car to the Sony Store and lay down a few hundred bucks. It changed not just the kids in my friend’s basement, but the entire genre its predecessors had helped establish a decade and a half earlier, crossing the threshold of a new era of JRPGs without looking back. Such was the impact of Square’s Final Fantasy VII. When they stepped out into daylight the next morning, Midgar’s Sector 7 was burning at their backs, and they set forth into a new era of JRPGs. That night lasted forever and was over in the blink of an eye.
Drenched in the glow of a CRT, a group of friends explored the slums of Midgar and knew, with absolute certainty, that things would never be the same again. That they’re taking a step forward in history. There are moments in a person’s life when they know with certainty that things have changed and a new era has begun. Image: Running Press Chapter 14 JRPGs Break Out: Final Fantasy VII This excerpt from my Fight, Magic, Items explores Final Fantasy VII’s risky origins, its unique visions, and, ultimately, examines why it did what so many other games couldn’t: popularise Japanese RPGs with Western gamers.” They were immediate hits in their home country of Japan, but no game managed to find similar success in Europe or the Americas. Its release is looked upon as the moment when Japanese RPGs went from niche eccentricity to mainstream darling, a meteoric rise in popularity that even its bullish creators didn’t see coming.įrom its early 8-bit days with Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy on the Nintendo Entertainment System to its first Golden Age on the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, the genres brightest minds - from Hironobu Sakguchi to Reiko Kodama, Soraya Saga to Yuji Horii - searched for the creative and technical limits of a genre obsessed inviting players into sprawling worlds, dangerous quests, and finicky gameplay systems. That game, Square’s legendary Final Fantasy VII, lies at the heart of my new book, Fight, Magic, Items: The History of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the Rise of Japanese RPGs in the West. “Twenty-five years ago this week, Japanese RPGs exploded in North America thanks to the latest release in a long-running series. Gizmodo is pleased to share an exclusive excerpt from Fight, Magic, Items: The History of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the Rise of Japanese RPGs in the West, including a special introduction by the author. This week marked the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy VII’s North American release - and a new book by Aidan Moher, out October 4, examines the game’s scope of influence, not just on its legions of fans, but on the realm of Western pop culture itself.
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