It's hard to believe it's already been 20 years since Final Fantasy VII was released in Japan on PSX. 20 Years... that's a long time. 20 years is the kind of time it takes to turn a newborn baby into a full grown
man child. Does that put the passage of time into perspective? I still can't believe it!
It feels like just the other day that I was playing this back during Freshman year of High School. That's right! I would come home from school and play for hours on end only to take a break to watch Toonami or rush my homework. The next day in school, I would be discussing the game with classmates, bragging about how fast I was plowing through the game, or just sitting there daydreaming about getting home to play the game with my younger brother. Sweet, sweet nostalgia.
Final Fantasy VII, at launch, was a special game. If you played Final Fantasy VII when it first was released then you know what I'm talking about. The game seemed so new and fresh, even to those that had already played the previous Final Fantasy titles. Everything about the game was so polished for the time. The pre-rendered 3d backgrounds were gorgeous and remain so even to this day. The FMV in the game, while looking extremely dated today, was an
OMG-i'm-going-to-pee-my-pants-in-excitement feeling every time you anticipated one when the screen faded black and the Playstation started loading the disc in that certain way. The soundtrack was brilliant thanks to Nobuo Uematsu being at the pinnacle of his composing career. The 3d polygonal characters at the time were so cool - the simplified SD characters and the full size 3d battle characters were state of the art for the time. And then there are the characters of Final Fantasy VII. I don't know if it was because I was in my early teens or what, but I had never cared for or connected with the cast of an RPG like I had done with FF7. All of these things made the game superb to already experienced JRPG fans and drew in an entire new crowd of gamers that didn't like the genre prior. After finishing, I lent the game to a friend that wasn't a fan of the genre and before you knew it he was locking himself in the house binge playing it!
While the JRPG genre has been stagnating in the US the last 10 or so years, it only stands to make the old days of the genre seem that much more bittersweet. I don't see anything, short of virtual reality, revolutionizing the genre as much as Final Fantasy VII did any time soon. Here's looking forward to that remake and the hopeful resurrection of the genre!
