The game that changed it all back then was Ocarina of time. It made more money than the blockbuster movie Armageddon. the movie cost something like 300 million to make and market. Ocarina of time 8-12 million. The next year at E3 all the big movie studios had mega booths.
Same for final fantasy x. Going from text to voice acting was an incredible jump in quality. 7 and 10 are masterpieces imho. And the 7 remakes are also 10/10 for my money
I bought Final Fantasy VII in September 1997 or about two weeks after the U.S. release. I had no clue how to play an RPG back then. Then I remember being so engaged to the story. I once played it for 12 hours straight and with no meals except peanuts 🥜 on a table of the room. That’s how invested I was. I was still a junior in high school. I remember talking to other anime/RPG gamer nerds who had played other PS1 RPGs like Suikoden and Wild Arms. I remember I talked FF7 for months with them. It remains my favorite game of all-time. I’m aware the graphics are outdated. Characters look like they have hooves and no noses. But if you played this in 1997, the pre-rendered graphics and the CGI cutscenes were incredible. Especially that scene when they exited the Shinra building. I still love FF7 to this day. I beat it again in 2002, 2011, and 2020. I’m glad the OG is getting it’s flowers and Rebirth is getting more hyped because the Remake was unfortunately released during the pandemic when it felt like it didn’t get the marketing it deserved back then. In 1996, Nintendo 64 had Super Mario 64. But PS1 had Final Fantasy VII by 1997, the game that won the console war for Sony. Nintendo tried answering with Ocarina of Time but it was too little, too late. FF7 already decided the outcome. Then Tekken 3, Gran Turismo, and Metal Gear Solid solidified the PS1’s lead over the N64 even further the following year. FF7 changed the game forever with more cinematic experiences.
I was there for the release, all the way back in 1997. FF7 was my introduction to RPG's and it literally changed my life. Before that, I was playing 2D games on the NES/SNES. Imagine how crazy it was to witness the jump to 3D on home consoles in real time. Crazy times indeed.
I remember playing a full 3D adventure title for the first time during its launch, Ocarina of Time, and that eye opening experience stuck with me. And I only played about 20 minutes of the 'lawnmower' stage
I literally cried when Aerith died. This was my 5th RPG though, but the first I was following before launch. Phantasy Star IV was first and this was an awesome introduction to RPG's. 3 planets, 2 space stations, a floating castle, vehicles, and some pretty cool comic book style pixel art cutscenes. FF Mystic Quest, Wild Arms, FF VI (I jumped back to snes for this one), and then FF VII followed in that order.
Wish I was there. I was only 1 year old at the time lol I did play FF7 on a PS1 emulator like 6 or 7 years ago to see what the big deal was. I was not disappointed despite the outdated graphics
I never played a jrpg until FF7, I remember being at my dads and he bought a playstation and final fantasy 7, and we went home and hooked it up and I watched him play until the end of the first reactor explosion and then he saved and turned it off, but that was it, I was hooked. a few years later my grandma worked at a second hand store, and someone donated their playstation and my grandma brought it home for me for my birthday and my family all pitched and they got me a small TV and my mom got me a copy of FF7 and the rest was history, actually the best birthday present I ever got in my life. It's still to this day top 3 favourite games of all time.
I remember being in high school in 97. It didn't matter what group you were in. Everyone talked to each other about it. The Jocks went to the Nerds for help. The popular kids talked to the outcasts. It wasn't until 99 when I played it. Before FFVII, I hadn't played RPGs. I played everything else. Really didn't play games growing up. Though I spent my fair share in the Arcades. FFVII changed that. Such a great game!
FF7 was the first game I ever played with a story and it blew my 8 year old mind; I'm pretty sure it helped me learn how to read as well as I always have. It's the game that took video games from the "toy" category to the "movie, book, film" category in my brain & I will forever love it for that.
FF7 is the most sold game on PS1 in Japan. And second of all time. It is the reason Sony beat Nintendo in the late 90s. I remember it so clearly. If you love Sony. You have final fantasy to thank for that. Major factor if not the main in its success.
I remember Gamefan's article for it post Japan launch. The game sold an unheard of amount of copies in a short time, like over 2 million copies in 3 days iirc. The article struggled to find something comparable and couldn't. Gamefan was one of the few US magazines that seemed to know what the Japanese market was up to at the time and I remember leading up to that how poor an image the console had over there due to the lack of RPGs. Sony enticing Square over saved the system in Japan.
The original ff7 still feels like a huge deal. I know it changed my taste in gaming completely when i played it back in 2010, and that was 13 years after it came out. I cant even imagine what it was like playing on release back in 97.
Yea I played it when I was 12 years old in 1997. Seeing the 3D cutscenes was absolutely mind blowing. Just instantly made anything that was considered "good graphics" before it obsolete. Best way I can describe it is that it felt like you were playing the future. The loading times were fairly long back then on the original PS1, but hearing the sounds from the console while the disc started spinning faster and the disc reader was moving back and forth felt surprisingly cool. It wasn't just an incredible game, but it felt like a technological powerhouse to a pre-teen kid.
Take if from someone who lived through the Fourth Console Generation: I went through that generation pretty much *NEVER* seeing a JRPG in the wild on a video game console. All the dozen plus personal friends and friends-of-the-family I visited who owned one or more consoles (inevitably either a Super Nintendo, Genesis, or NES, rarely two or all three of them) always had action games of some kind. Mario and Sonic were pretty much inevitable sights, representing the side-scrolling platformer genre well. I strongly remember beat 'em ups like Golden Axe (though they were far more represented in the arcades), run-and-gun platformers like Earthworm Jim, and a couple racing games. I saw quite a lot of combat simulation games curiously enough like Super Strike Eagle and Super Battletank, but good luck finding a JRPG in that time period. For me and most of the kids I knew, our introduction to JRPGs was specifically through Pokémon (which arrived a year after FFVII). FFVII was huge (particularly in how pervasive its marketing was), but I think it was the one-two punch of FFVII and Pokémon that really shot the JRPG into the public consciousness in the Fifth Console Generation in the States.
I remember when FF7 came out. Playstation 1 went from something I had rarely heard about to the most in-demand console amongst my friend group. Prior to this, RPGs were those weird things that your one friend's strange older brother was into (we all had a friend like that), but afterwards, I remember them being much more accepted. I also remember how wild the early forums and message boards went over FF7. No one would stop talking about it for almost a decade afterwards and forums were full of people with FF7 (and FF8) usernames or profile pics.
I played FF7 for the first time on a friend's PS1 and I was instantly hooked. I begged him to let me borrow the system to finish the game and I'm glad he did 😁 Been a FF/ JRPG fan ever since 🙌
I bought FF7 in 1997. Wasn't sure what to expect but gave it a shot. I was hooked until... Materia Keeper. The bane of my existence back then. I couldn't beat that boss, no matter how hard I tried, so I decided to sell (?!) my copy of FF7, but... I couldn't get the game out of my head. So... I bought the game again, started from the very beginning (I had deleted my save game), and then grinded on levels until I got to level 60 (or something) and FINALLY beat Materia Keeper. I'm so happy that I eventually got back into the game and beat it. FF7 has had a massive effect on my personally and love to see how many people have the same feeling about it.
So, I was a Sega kid. I saved up for months in 1998 to buy my own playstation because I'd heard how good final fantasy 7 was at pokemon gym meets at my local booksamillion, where we all showed up to trade pokemon on our pokemon blue and red games, use each other's gamesharks to get mew (or in my case, I was the only kid who had a gameshark and kept getting $5/pop for mew from other kids), and do pokemon card battles for gym badges, which were just fun little pins you got from the cashier. FFVII blew my mind. I'm 37 (turning 38) now and, while I had a Dreamcast, everything else I've bought since I got that original Playstation has been a Playstation. Or, in the case of Nintendo, I do own a Switch. And I only bought Playstations because I wanted games like Final Fantasy X and the Kingdom Hearts games. Without FFVII, I do really wonder what gaming would look like today with regard to the console wars. I wonder if the Dreamcast would have had more of a chance, too.
I remember buying a N64 just for FF7 assuming Squaresoft would stay with Nintendo. RPGs were my favorite genre back in those days, didn't realize I was in the minority. FF6 was and still is my favorite followed closely by 7.
Final Fantasy 7 and Metal Gear Solid are the two games that got me to leave the N64 to the PS1. I've been a Sony consumer since. I still have Nintendo consoles, but most of my software are for the Playstation brand.
The game that changed it all back then was Ocarina of time. It made more money than the blockbuster movie Armageddon. the movie cost something like 300 million to make and market. Ocarina of time 8-12 million. The next year at E3 all the big movie studios had mega booths.
not sure about the jun iwasaki quote about Playstation not hitting 1 million yet. by September 1996 Resident Evil crossed the 1 million mark in the US alone. FFVII released a whole year after that in the US. not sure when he was brought on to square to head the US marketing department, but at least on US launch, several games (also Tomb Raider) had crossed that 1 million line.
I as a kid in the 90's, didn't BUY Chrono Trigger or FF6...I rented them, repeatedly, I imagine a lot of us did, hence the love we have without the sales numbers.
It was the game that introduced me to JRPG's and taught me that gaming wasn't just about having fun, but that they could also tell an amazing, thrilling story. It was also the first game that made me shed tears.... when Sephiroth did the thing. The impact of this game is legendary and deserves to be on lists that include Mario, Zelda, Resident Evil 4 and other groundbreaking titles that shifted the industry.
I remember loving Final Fantasy four and six. I knew seven changed the game, but it kind of blows my mind to hear how bad the other two did. I always wondered why they never brought over two, three, and five. I guess now I know.
if you really think about it, rpg, great and vast story, lineraity and open world at the same time, amazing combat system, a ton of mini games, a ton of side quest before they were even called side quest as we know them, they were just secret things, like making a golden chocobo, only way to know this was checking online, the weapon extra fights, vincent and yuffie, the underwater materia, cloud dress at corneos, secret materia and materia combination, fort condor mini game, among many other stuff. Amazing graphics for the time, I could play the game today and would enjoy it (I played several times when I was a kid, a teen and a grown up). Also the music holds well until this day. It really put the bar high, and shows that is not a matter of tech or graphics but more of actually making a good product
I was a Nintendo fanboy, and had also been playing FF games since the first one dropped. I loved those games, as well as Chrono Trigger. The sales numbers on those games are absolutely shocking to me - I would've figured they were FAR-more popular than that, especially considering all the nostalgia I've seen on the internet about them in the past 20+ years. It's legit crazy to me. As for VII... VII was the reason this Nintendo fanboy bought a PlayStation. I HAD to have it - the advertising campaign was amazing effective, not to mention my own curiosity. One of the best decisions I've ever made.
Maybe FUCKNG FINALLY RELEASING A FINAL FANTASY GAME IN EUROPE made a difference, yeah? Add to that it was on PS1, while 3D was the thing that attracted people not initially inclined to fall into video games, and there you go. Oh GOSH, people would ACTUALLY buy games if only WE RELEASED THEM on their continent! Whoa, who would've known! That reason alone is why emulation and piracy were and still are such a hit and why it's unlikely to EVER stop.
This, and the massive marketing campaign for FF7, explains a lot of the huge sales numbers. People often point to those as evidence that it's better than any previous JRPG, or that it was the first one with a real story, but neither of those things is true. That said, FF7 is a very good game. I've struggled for a long time to separate that from the excessive amount of hype around it, but it is both excellent and overrated at the same time.
You could also say that FF7's success was due to its setting. Many JRPGs had a medieval swords and sorcery setting that felt derivative of the nerdy pastime of D&D. (Understand, this was before the Lord of the Rings films, Stranger Things, and Critical Roll made D&D and medieval swords and sorcery popular again.) In FF7, you had freedom fighters in a high tech world trying to stop an amoral high tech corporation from destroying the world for their own profit. The main character is not shy to remind his freedom fighter colleagues that he is just in this for a paycheck. But I think the elephant in the room for the popularity of JRPGs in the West is EMULATORS. In the mid 90s, computers were fast enough to start running 8 and 16-bit console emulators at full speed and with good compatibility. A lot of gamers used emulators to play these JRPGs they overlooked. In addition, emulators helped rip up the veil separating foreign markets, as we saw the dozens of RPGs that never left Japan (Square straight up hid half of the Final Fantasy games!) Many gamers turned ROM hackers teamed up with amateur Japanese translators to make fan translations of many JRPGs. While the fan translations may have taken liberties with the scripts, it was (and for some games, still is) the only way to play them in a non-Japanese language.
FF7 was popular because it just looked so much better than anything before it. Go look at PS1 games from around 1995-97. The pinnacle of graphics was uh wipeout back then. It wasn't emulators, people bought and tried more games because all of a sudden you could one for $40 and not $70-85 (inflation adj that's like $120) like they were in the SNES days.
@@rook1196 True, PSX games didn't hit their stride graphics wise until the latter half of the 90s. If we focus only on FF7 and the PSX, its only competition for 3-D graphical showcases prior to its release were Wipeout, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, and Tekken 2. I personally never thought FF7 looked that good, but that is due to the fact that I played its PC release in 1998. By 1998, Unreal, Quake 2, and Half Life had set the 3-D graphical showcase bar pretty high. Though I do believe FF7's pre-rendered cutscenes were excellent. And yes, PSX games were cheaper than their cartridge based brethren, and Sony's permissive licensing and extensive marketing worked to great effect. But emulators were free. 😉
After FF7 I was hyped for FF8, but was so disappointed when I got it. Weirdly, kids who were new to FF at the time and played FF8 as their first FF game loved FF8.
I played FF7 late, around 2005. I'd already played FF8-10 and KH1 beforehand, but I still ended up loving it. It completely lived up to all the hype and praise that I kept seeing people giving it online at the time.
I got the green label in 1998 at Christmas thinking it was a similar game to Zelda lol this game lived rent free in my mind through my teen years and 20s and I thought I was done with video games
You should do a video about exactly what took place as to WHY the Playstation came to be and why Nintendo shot themselves in the foot for backstabbing Sony by talking to Phillips to develop the CD technology for their new console. If Nintendo had not done what they did to Sony and working with Sony with honesty, the gaming world would be completely different than what it is today. I remember how it was back then. I agree, there were some amazing RPGS for the SNES. Squaresoft and Enix made some great games and competed very well.
I was such a fan of RPGS, I bought the PS1 when FF7 was released. The rest is history. I have a huge amount RPGS for the console. Not to mention many other good games as well. I still bought all the Nintendo and Playstation consoles thereafter.
Western audiences weren't interested in JRPGs in large numbers because western gaming audience was still too young to understand or appreciate them. 1988-90 were peak birth years for multiple generations in the west. Most kids were still getting to grips with reading, yet alone simple math skills at the time. It's not a surprise RPGs started picking up steam once gamers had basic reading comprehension and understood things like multiplication and percentages.
I used to read the dictionary as a kid. My first game was FFVII... don't know which Christmas it was... probably 1998 or 1997 or 1999... I also got Tekken 2. The other cool thing I experienced as a kid, was our PC. Our PC had classic Blizzard titles, and CRPGs like Baldur's Gate (watched my Dad play these), so I experienced RTS games... but another thing. For some reason, my family gave away our SNES to distant relatives in another country, but my father was a computer geek and we had Nesticle and ZSNES along with GENS emulators... I learned to appreciate gaming all the way back to the NES, due to emulators. I even experienced early Arcade emulation. My younger years were addicted to screens much like iPad kids of today, but it was actually quality screen time.... My gaming tenure as a child ended with the Xbox 360, after experiencing Gears of War, but yea... It was crazy experiencing everything... literally. from PC to console to Arcade.
I think I was 7 or 8 when I first played FF7. I remember likening the battle system to the Pokémon game. I’ve always wondered if Pokémon actually helped western audiences take a liking to JRPGs and their battle systems
Back when I was going to choose my first console, I was 100% sure I was going to get an N64, I knew all the games I would want for it, from having played them at my friends' houses. I tried 30 mins of FF7 at another friend's house, knowing absolutely nothing about the game or series aside from the odd TV ads I saw for it. I decided on the spot that I'd be getting a PS1 instead of the N64, and I got FF7 and Gran Turismo for it. The rest, as they say, is history.
There's 2 things bugging me in the video description: 1) it's Jenova, not Genova and 2) you forgot Red XIII as one of the protagonists. Awesome and interesting video!
literally the first RPG that i played back in the day. i still remember when me and my brothers would need to readjust the color of our tv because if the scene is too dark we can only see cloud 😂😂😂 and when Remake was released man it was such a joy to play the characters again
Loving this video, but I am curious of where we can see the sales stats for particular games, like are shown here in the first few minutes. I'd love to see those numbers, and look up other games. For instance, I'm curious what Super Mario RPG did.
FF6 was my first, but 7 is my favorite by a landslide. It transcended everything else released prior to it while everything that followed for years tried and failed to match its impact.
Sony also really wow'ed developers back when the PS1 was coming in. Sony itself was a house hold brand that people trusted. Developers back then flocked to it not only for the increased size but CD's were also super cheap and games could be in print in days rather then months compared to cartridge. That played a huge part as well in helping FF come over to Sony.
Yeah for being so beloved it goes to show how much marketing matters for big sales. I stumbled across FF9 at a Blockbuster lol, no idea it had come out, and haggled to buy it off them and go home right then and there.
I guess I’m kind of an oddball, having played my first RPGs on Genesis with Shining Force2, Phantasy Star 4, and also Chrono Trigger from my friend, but FF7 was just different. When I saw that the bad guys were suited up business executives, with a flow chart of the company and Cloud riding out the window of the Shinra building during the promos, I knew I had to buy a PS1 for this game!😅
I recently discovered that my original Shining force Sega GameGear. which still has its box and book and most of it's shrink wrap is worth ALLOT of money. I still have all my SEGA stuff will never sell any of it
Yeah buddy! While Genesis didn't have a lot of RPGs, the ones it did have were excellent. Glad I got to experience both Genesis and SNES RPGs as a kid.
Although several exceptional JRPGs were available in NA prior to the release of FFVII - you ignored the exemplary Phantasy Star II and Phantasy Star IV, btw - it's undeniable that FFVII popularized the genre in the west. It was a combination of changing time and changing tastes - kids that had grown up on the SNES and NES were ready for deeper games with more complex plots and themes. Which is a large reason why the Playstation began to succeed at the same time FFVII released - it wasn't just FFVII, but games like Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, and though it seems cheesy now, Tomb Raider. Ironically, with the exception of Tomb Raider (1996) I would consider the 1997 release of FFVII the least playable today of all of the games I've just mentioned. It really needed that modernized update.
I tried playing FF7 in the early 2000s when my only experience with turn-based RPGs was Pokemon and I really didn’t get it. Never even made it through the first disk. Now I’m 32 and I still haven’t gotten through it. I’ve honestly been enjoying my first playthrough of FF6 more than every other time I’ve attempted FF7. Can someone please help me see what I’m missing??
Like 2402 said. Midgar, the first time around, can seem slow. But keep playing and it really hooks you. You start learning crazy tricks w/ materia. Some really fun sidequests open up. The story becomes a roller coaster. One of the few games that gets better as it moves on.
Final Fantasy 7 made weapons, magic, and skills customizable while being easy to understand and use. FF8 got rid of MP points to having spells stocked like items. The spells could also be allocated to increase stats, add elemental or status attacks, or defense. They added more granular control over what spell to allocate but it was a lot more complex and requires a lot of grinding to draw the spells from enemies. FF9 scrapped all the changes to Final Fantasy and basically went back to the classic Final Fantasy prior to FF7 , just with the best 3D graphics and CGI yet for Final Fantasy series on PS1. FF10 looks like Square wanted to make JRPGs more accessible got rid of active time battles in favor of time freeze during your turn. It’s the first Final Fantasy Game with no Over world map screen. The rest is history.
6 is the best by far, and 4 still holds up pretty well. Just played the pixel remasters of both and had a great time. I love the new arranged soundtracks. Haven't played 10 yet, but it's on my list.
Hope this doesn't spark outrage but I doubt the comments made by Square about the N64 vs PS1. CD had far more capacity than carts but to imply that N64 couldn't handle a PS1 game is suspect. N64 was the most powerful console of that generation by a wide margin. I think Square saw more revenue potential with Sony.
I bought the PS because of FF7, and my whole world changed. I never knew that ANY game could pull me in so much. The emotion, the concept and storyline!!! And the biggest Spoiler since Darth Vader being Luke's father. This was the gutsiest game ever for its time and now I feel that SquareEnix is trying to recapture that same magic in a bottle.
Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG never had a real chance to sell as well as it could've if it didn't release by the time the PlayStation and Saturn were already out. Especially Mario RPG, it had been the most-rented game in the United States for 14 weeks straight around it's north american release
Yes. Everyone at my school played Pokemon, I hadn't even heard of Final Fantasy until I saw a commercial for FF8 on TV a couple years later. RPGs weren't popular in the west because the gaming audience was very young. 88-90 were a peak birth years for several generations in the US, so in the mid 90s kids were barely 5-6 years old when the SNES was in full swing. Of course they weren't buying RPGs, they could barely read! Yet alone understand the some of the basic math that RPGs use like percentages and multiplication are things older people take for granted and are beyond what any kids knows before 3rd or 4th grade at best.
The game that changed it all back then was Ocarina of time. It made more money than the blockbuster movie Armageddon. the movie cost something like 300 million to make and market. Ocarina of time 8-12 million. The next year at E3 all the big movie studios had mega booths.
My first rpg ever was Suikoden, than Alundra, Breath of Fire.. and than Final Fantasy came into my life. ❤ I didnt care much for FF's after FF9. FF 7 rebirth is like coming home really.
Crazy how mystic quest sold ~400k copies abroad, more than Chrono Trigger and on par with FF6. I dont know a single person who has played thay game and I remember it being in the discount bin at KB Toy not too long after it came out.
FFVI didn’t come out to Europe until 1999. Apparently (I’m looking this up now) Chrono Trigger didn’t release to EU until 2008 for the Nintendo DS. So, I think it’s likely in the US, FFVI and Chrono Trigger were more popular - where-as Mystic Quest had ~400k in both regions.
@@DaveControlLivegood point, although I'm still guessing MQ probably sold more than half the "abroad" numbers in the US given the install base. The FF6 numbers get fudged a bit with the multiple re-releases as well possibly adding to the total.
I never gave the time to play FF7 when it came out. Jrpg games made me feel sluggish in their turn based combat and having so much unvoiced dialogue to read made me sleepy. But I really wanted to play it for its magnificent story. So I bought FFVII Remake Intergrade to finally start the series.
He forgot to say another reason why Chrono Trigger sold so bad in the US. The game was also close to $90 brand new. Even used back then it was $75. That didn't help at all.
I don't think they were wrong about not marketing FF7 as an RPG. My parents didn't allow my brothers and I to play RPGs. They didn't want us to "turn weird". But then my dad actually started to see the FF7 marketing material, the screen shots, the trailers...FF7 was one of our big games Christmas '97.
In my childhood, coming from the SNES generation I was checking the magazines whats next. More precisely I was looking where the new JRPGs were. I saw a lot of cool stuff for the Playstation. What did I see for N64? "Quest 64".... -_- That was my goodbye from nintendo back then - the decision was easy: Playstation was the future. Nowadays I have a PS5 and Nintendo Switch, favouring my Switch a bit to be honest.
Despite EVERY news outlet all posting the same videos constantly, I love hearing about how much FF VII changed the landscape the world over
The game that changed it all back then was Ocarina of time. It made more money than the blockbuster movie Armageddon. the movie cost something like 300 million to make and market. Ocarina of time 8-12 million. The next year at E3 all the big movie studios had mega booths.
Agreed. Final Fantasy VII is arguably the greatest game ever made.
You and me both!
Same for final fantasy x. Going from text to voice acting was an incredible jump in quality. 7 and 10 are masterpieces imho. And the 7 remakes are also 10/10 for my money
And can't forget to mention ff9 the last of the ps1 titles is CRIMINALLY underrated it's a fantastic charming little game and soooo overlooked
I bought Final Fantasy VII in September 1997 or about two weeks after the U.S. release. I had no clue how to play an RPG back then. Then I remember being so engaged to the story. I once played it for 12 hours straight and with no meals except peanuts 🥜 on a table of the room. That’s how invested I was.
I was still a junior in high school. I remember talking to other anime/RPG gamer nerds who had played other PS1 RPGs like Suikoden and Wild Arms. I remember I talked FF7 for months with them. It remains my favorite game of all-time. I’m aware the graphics are outdated. Characters look like they have hooves and no noses. But if you played this in 1997, the pre-rendered graphics and the CGI cutscenes were incredible. Especially that scene when they exited the Shinra building.
I still love FF7 to this day. I beat it again in 2002, 2011, and 2020. I’m glad the OG is getting it’s flowers and Rebirth is getting more hyped because the Remake was unfortunately released during the pandemic when it felt like it didn’t get the marketing it deserved back then.
In 1996, Nintendo 64 had Super Mario 64. But PS1 had Final Fantasy VII by 1997, the game that won the console war for Sony. Nintendo tried answering with Ocarina of Time but it was too little, too late. FF7 already decided the outcome. Then Tekken 3, Gran Turismo, and Metal Gear Solid solidified the PS1’s lead over the N64 even further the following year. FF7 changed the game forever with more cinematic experiences.
I was there for the release, all the way back in 1997. FF7 was my introduction to RPG's and it literally changed my life. Before that, I was playing 2D games on the NES/SNES. Imagine how crazy it was to witness the jump to 3D on home consoles in real time. Crazy times indeed.
Me too man, went from Donkey Kong and Mario, to suddenly realize games could tell great stories too.
I remember playing a full 3D adventure title for the first time during its launch, Ocarina of Time, and that eye opening experience stuck with me. And I only played about 20 minutes of the 'lawnmower' stage
Lucky you. My introduction to RPGs was Swords and Serpents on NES.
I literally cried when Aerith died. This was my 5th RPG though, but the first I was following before launch. Phantasy Star IV was first and this was an awesome introduction to RPG's. 3 planets, 2 space stations, a floating castle, vehicles, and some pretty cool comic book style pixel art cutscenes. FF Mystic Quest, Wild Arms, FF VI (I jumped back to snes for this one), and then FF VII followed in that order.
Wish I was there. I was only 1 year old at the time lol
I did play FF7 on a PS1 emulator like 6 or 7 years ago to see what the big deal was. I was not disappointed despite the outdated graphics
I never played a jrpg until FF7, I remember being at my dads and he bought a playstation and final fantasy 7, and we went home and hooked it up and I watched him play until the end of the first reactor explosion and then he saved and turned it off, but that was it, I was hooked. a few years later my grandma worked at a second hand store, and someone donated their playstation and my grandma brought it home for me for my birthday and my family all pitched and they got me a small TV and my mom got me a copy of FF7 and the rest was history, actually the best birthday present I ever got in my life. It's still to this day top 3 favourite games of all time.
I remember being in high school in 97. It didn't matter what group you were in. Everyone talked to each other about it. The Jocks went to the Nerds for help. The popular kids talked to the outcasts.
It wasn't until 99 when I played it. Before FFVII, I hadn't played RPGs. I played everything else. Really didn't play games growing up. Though I spent my fair share in the Arcades. FFVII changed that. Such a great game!
Agreed. Same thing with Metal Gear Solid.
FF7 was the first game I ever played with a story and it blew my 8 year old mind; I'm pretty sure it helped me learn how to read as well as I always have. It's the game that took video games from the "toy" category to the "movie, book, film" category in my brain & I will forever love it for that.
FF7 is the most sold game on PS1 in Japan. And second of all time. It is the reason Sony beat Nintendo in the late 90s. I remember it so clearly. If you love Sony. You have final fantasy to thank for that. Major factor if not the main in its success.
I remember Gamefan's article for it post Japan launch. The game sold an unheard of amount of copies in a short time, like over 2 million copies in 3 days iirc. The article struggled to find something comparable and couldn't. Gamefan was one of the few US magazines that seemed to know what the Japanese market was up to at the time and I remember leading up to that how poor an image the console had over there due to the lack of RPGs. Sony enticing Square over saved the system in Japan.
Ps1 won for me because of ff7 and grand turismo. Ps2 won because it was a dvd player.😂
And MGS, even if didn't sell as much as these 2.@@brucey5585
The original ff7 still feels like a huge deal. I know it changed my taste in gaming completely when i played it back in 2010, and that was 13 years after it came out. I cant even imagine what it was like playing on release back in 97.
Yea I played it when I was 12 years old in 1997. Seeing the 3D cutscenes was absolutely mind blowing. Just instantly made anything that was considered "good graphics" before it obsolete. Best way I can describe it is that it felt like you were playing the future. The loading times were fairly long back then on the original PS1, but hearing the sounds from the console while the disc started spinning faster and the disc reader was moving back and forth felt surprisingly cool. It wasn't just an incredible game, but it felt like a technological powerhouse to a pre-teen kid.
I'll never understand sleeveless hoodies. Are you cold or not?
U wouldnt say that if he had huge arms 😏
Its for when its cold but you still want to show off your arm day result
@@samuelesquivel6202 Atleast if someone HAS muscles they have an excuse to wear it. 😂
I’ve never seen one until now lol
It’s simple - I like it.
Take if from someone who lived through the Fourth Console Generation: I went through that generation pretty much *NEVER* seeing a JRPG in the wild on a video game console. All the dozen plus personal friends and friends-of-the-family I visited who owned one or more consoles (inevitably either a Super Nintendo, Genesis, or NES, rarely two or all three of them) always had action games of some kind. Mario and Sonic were pretty much inevitable sights, representing the side-scrolling platformer genre well. I strongly remember beat 'em ups like Golden Axe (though they were far more represented in the arcades), run-and-gun platformers like Earthworm Jim, and a couple racing games. I saw quite a lot of combat simulation games curiously enough like Super Strike Eagle and Super Battletank, but good luck finding a JRPG in that time period.
For me and most of the kids I knew, our introduction to JRPGs was specifically through Pokémon (which arrived a year after FFVII). FFVII was huge (particularly in how pervasive its marketing was), but I think it was the one-two punch of FFVII and Pokémon that really shot the JRPG into the public consciousness in the Fifth Console Generation in the States.
I remember when FF7 came out. Playstation 1 went from something I had rarely heard about to the most in-demand console amongst my friend group. Prior to this, RPGs were those weird things that your one friend's strange older brother was into (we all had a friend like that), but afterwards, I remember them being much more accepted. I also remember how wild the early forums and message boards went over FF7. No one would stop talking about it for almost a decade afterwards and forums were full of people with FF7 (and FF8) usernames or profile pics.
I played FF7 for the first time on a friend's PS1 and I was instantly hooked. I begged him to let me borrow the system to finish the game and I'm glad he did 😁
Been a FF/ JRPG fan ever since 🙌
I bought FF7 in 1997. Wasn't sure what to expect but gave it a shot. I was hooked until...
Materia Keeper.
The bane of my existence back then.
I couldn't beat that boss, no matter how hard I tried, so I decided to sell (?!) my copy of FF7, but...
I couldn't get the game out of my head.
So... I bought the game again, started from the very beginning (I had deleted my save game), and then grinded on levels until I got to level 60 (or something) and FINALLY beat Materia Keeper.
I'm so happy that I eventually got back into the game and beat it.
FF7 has had a massive effect on my personally and love to see how many people have the same feeling about it.
FF7 will forever be one of the best games of all time, a important & monumental masterpiece ❤
So, I was a Sega kid. I saved up for months in 1998 to buy my own playstation because I'd heard how good final fantasy 7 was at pokemon gym meets at my local booksamillion, where we all showed up to trade pokemon on our pokemon blue and red games, use each other's gamesharks to get mew (or in my case, I was the only kid who had a gameshark and kept getting $5/pop for mew from other kids), and do pokemon card battles for gym badges, which were just fun little pins you got from the cashier.
FFVII blew my mind. I'm 37 (turning 38) now and, while I had a Dreamcast, everything else I've bought since I got that original Playstation has been a Playstation. Or, in the case of Nintendo, I do own a Switch. And I only bought Playstations because I wanted games like Final Fantasy X and the Kingdom Hearts games.
Without FFVII, I do really wonder what gaming would look like today with regard to the console wars. I wonder if the Dreamcast would have had more of a chance, too.
I remember buying a N64 just for FF7 assuming Squaresoft would stay with Nintendo. RPGs were my favorite genre back in those days, didn't realize I was in the minority. FF6 was and still is my favorite followed closely by 7.
Final Fantasy 7 and Metal Gear Solid are the two games that got me to leave the N64 to the PS1. I've been a Sony consumer since. I still have Nintendo consoles, but most of my software are for the Playstation brand.
The game that changed it all back then was Ocarina of time. It made more money than the blockbuster movie Armageddon. the movie cost something like 300 million to make and market. Ocarina of time 8-12 million. The next year at E3 all the big movie studios had mega booths.
not sure about the jun iwasaki quote about Playstation not hitting 1 million yet. by September 1996 Resident Evil crossed the 1 million mark in the US alone. FFVII released a whole year after that in the US. not sure when he was brought on to square to head the US marketing department, but at least on US launch, several games (also Tomb Raider) had crossed that 1 million line.
I as a kid in the 90's, didn't BUY Chrono Trigger or FF6...I rented them, repeatedly, I imagine a lot of us did, hence the love we have without the sales numbers.
Don't forget the PlayStation mag demo disc with a demo of FFVII. That was my first exposure and had me begging for a PlayStation for Christmas.
It was the game that introduced me to JRPG's and taught me that gaming wasn't just about having fun, but that they could also tell an amazing, thrilling story. It was also the first game that made me shed tears.... when Sephiroth did the thing.
The impact of this game is legendary and deserves to be on lists that include Mario, Zelda, Resident Evil 4 and other groundbreaking titles that shifted the industry.
I remember loving Final Fantasy four and six. I knew seven changed the game, but it kind of blows my mind to hear how bad the other two did. I always wondered why they never brought over two, three, and five. I guess now I know.
if you really think about it, rpg, great and vast story, lineraity and open world at the same time, amazing combat system, a ton of mini games, a ton of side quest before they were even called side quest as we know them, they were just secret things, like making a golden chocobo, only way to know this was checking online, the weapon extra fights, vincent and yuffie, the underwater materia, cloud dress at corneos, secret materia and materia combination, fort condor mini game, among many other stuff. Amazing graphics for the time, I could play the game today and would enjoy it (I played several times when I was a kid, a teen and a grown up). Also the music holds well until this day.
It really put the bar high, and shows that is not a matter of tech or graphics but more of actually making a good product
Anytime someone tries to downplay FF7's importance and amazing game mechanics I just giggle and nod my head
Aka mouth breathers
I honestly thought the FF games were popular in the states. I loved FF 6. By far still my favorite FF game. Good times
I started becoming a fan of RPGs due to FF6 and Secret of Mana so once I heard FF7 was coming to PlayStation I switched over to Sony
I was a Nintendo fanboy, and had also been playing FF games since the first one dropped. I loved those games, as well as Chrono Trigger. The sales numbers on those games are absolutely shocking to me - I would've figured they were FAR-more popular than that, especially considering all the nostalgia I've seen on the internet about them in the past 20+ years. It's legit crazy to me.
As for VII... VII was the reason this Nintendo fanboy bought a PlayStation. I HAD to have it - the advertising campaign was amazing effective, not to mention my own curiosity. One of the best decisions I've ever made.
RENTED this game with my bestfriend on Friday night after school. He hated the turn base combat. I fell in love with the story and soundtrack 🎵
That's a bad friend😜
Maybe FUCKNG FINALLY RELEASING A FINAL FANTASY GAME IN EUROPE made a difference, yeah? Add to that it was on PS1, while 3D was the thing that attracted people not initially inclined to fall into video games, and there you go. Oh GOSH, people would ACTUALLY buy games if only WE RELEASED THEM on their continent! Whoa, who would've known!
That reason alone is why emulation and piracy were and still are such a hit and why it's unlikely to EVER stop.
This, and the massive marketing campaign for FF7, explains a lot of the huge sales numbers. People often point to those as evidence that it's better than any previous JRPG, or that it was the first one with a real story, but neither of those things is true. That said, FF7 is a very good game. I've struggled for a long time to separate that from the excessive amount of hype around it, but it is both excellent and overrated at the same time.
its great to see PS1 discs as historic collectors items, like 1970s vinyl records
Literally every gamer I knew back in 1997-2000 was playing FF7 and talking about it
For me, that amazingly written story is what drew me in. Yes the Aeris twist was massive, but the narrative behind Cloud was SEISMIC
You could also say that FF7's success was due to its setting. Many JRPGs had a medieval swords and sorcery setting that felt derivative of the nerdy pastime of D&D. (Understand, this was before the Lord of the Rings films, Stranger Things, and Critical Roll made D&D and medieval swords and sorcery popular again.) In FF7, you had freedom fighters in a high tech world trying to stop an amoral high tech corporation from destroying the world for their own profit. The main character is not shy to remind his freedom fighter colleagues that he is just in this for a paycheck.
But I think the elephant in the room for the popularity of JRPGs in the West is EMULATORS. In the mid 90s, computers were fast enough to start running 8 and 16-bit console emulators at full speed and with good compatibility. A lot of gamers used emulators to play these JRPGs they overlooked. In addition, emulators helped rip up the veil separating foreign markets, as we saw the dozens of RPGs that never left Japan (Square straight up hid half of the Final Fantasy games!) Many gamers turned ROM hackers teamed up with amateur Japanese translators to make fan translations of many JRPGs. While the fan translations may have taken liberties with the scripts, it was (and for some games, still is) the only way to play them in a non-Japanese language.
FF7 was popular because it just looked so much better than anything before it. Go look at PS1 games from around 1995-97. The pinnacle of graphics was uh wipeout back then.
It wasn't emulators, people bought and tried more games because all of a sudden you could one for $40 and not $70-85 (inflation adj that's like $120) like they were in the SNES days.
@@rook1196 True, PSX games didn't hit their stride graphics wise until the latter half of the 90s. If we focus only on FF7 and the PSX, its only competition for 3-D graphical showcases prior to its release were Wipeout, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, and Tekken 2. I personally never thought FF7 looked that good, but that is due to the fact that I played its PC release in 1998. By 1998, Unreal, Quake 2, and Half Life had set the 3-D graphical showcase bar pretty high. Though I do believe FF7's pre-rendered cutscenes were excellent.
And yes, PSX games were cheaper than their cartridge based brethren, and Sony's permissive licensing and extensive marketing worked to great effect. But emulators were free. 😉
After FF7 I was hyped for FF8, but was so disappointed when I got it. Weirdly, kids who were new to FF at the time and played FF8 as their first FF game loved FF8.
I remember the magazine reviews and went out the following weekend and bought a copy. It was such an incredible game.
I played FF7 late, around 2005. I'd already played FF8-10 and KH1 beforehand, but I still ended up loving it. It completely lived up to all the hype and praise that I kept seeing people giving it online at the time.
I got the green label in 1998 at Christmas thinking it was a similar game to Zelda lol this game lived rent free in my mind through my teen years and 20s and I thought I was done with video games
You should do a video about exactly what took place as to WHY the Playstation came to be and why Nintendo shot themselves in the foot for backstabbing Sony by talking to Phillips to develop the CD technology for their new console. If Nintendo had not done what they did to Sony and working with Sony with honesty, the gaming world would be completely different than what it is today. I remember how it was back then. I agree, there were some amazing RPGS for the SNES. Squaresoft and Enix made some great games and competed very well.
I was such a fan of RPGS, I bought the PS1 when FF7 was released. The rest is history. I have a huge amount RPGS for the console. Not to mention many other good games as well. I still bought all the Nintendo and Playstation consoles thereafter.
I feel like a big factor for FF7's success was Cloud's outrageous design in the box covers, with that huge sword and spiky hair.
Its way more than that, but sure
This dude makes the best content on GS
The way this guy pronounced Jaguar nearly gave me an aneurysm.
I got into JRPG because of FFVI on the SNES. I played for hours multiple play throughs.
But FFVII was a game changer
Crono trigger was like $85 on release so i think poor sales had more to do with affordability
I really enjoyed this video. Really well produced.
Western audiences weren't interested in JRPGs in large numbers because western gaming audience was still too young to understand or appreciate them. 1988-90 were peak birth years for multiple generations in the west. Most kids were still getting to grips with reading, yet alone simple math skills at the time. It's not a surprise RPGs started picking up steam once gamers had basic reading comprehension and understood things like multiplication and percentages.
I used to read the dictionary as a kid. My first game was FFVII... don't know which Christmas it was... probably 1998 or 1997 or 1999... I also got Tekken 2. The other cool thing I experienced as a kid, was our PC. Our PC had classic Blizzard titles, and CRPGs like Baldur's Gate (watched my Dad play these), so I experienced RTS games... but another thing. For some reason, my family gave away our SNES to distant relatives in another country, but my father was a computer geek and we had Nesticle and ZSNES along with GENS emulators... I learned to appreciate gaming all the way back to the NES, due to emulators. I even experienced early Arcade emulation. My younger years were addicted to screens much like iPad kids of today, but it was actually quality screen time.... My gaming tenure as a child ended with the Xbox 360, after experiencing Gears of War, but yea... It was crazy experiencing everything... literally. from PC to console to Arcade.
I think I was 7 or 8 when I first played FF7. I remember likening the battle system to the Pokémon game. I’ve always wondered if Pokémon actually helped western audiences take a liking to JRPGs and their battle systems
Back when I was going to choose my first console, I was 100% sure I was going to get an N64, I knew all the games I would want for it, from having played them at my friends' houses. I tried 30 mins of FF7 at another friend's house, knowing absolutely nothing about the game or series aside from the odd TV ads I saw for it. I decided on the spot that I'd be getting a PS1 instead of the N64, and I got FF7 and Gran Turismo for it. The rest, as they say, is history.
There's 2 things bugging me in the video description: 1) it's Jenova, not Genova and 2) you forgot Red XIII as one of the protagonists.
Awesome and interesting video!
Omg, I think it auto corrected to Genova! 😂 And I can’t believe I somehow forgot Red XIII. Definitely will add him back into it tmw.
literally the first RPG that i played back in the day. i still remember when me and my brothers would need to readjust the color of our tv because if the scene is too dark we can only see cloud 😂😂😂
and when Remake was released man it was such a joy to play the characters again
Loving this video, but I am curious of where we can see the sales stats for particular games, like are shown here in the first few minutes. I'd love to see those numbers, and look up other games. For instance, I'm curious what Super Mario RPG did.
Ff9 still my all time favorite FF hands down 💙💙
Was it your first FF? I ❤️ FF9 but FF7 was my first one and is therefor my favorite one.
@@Bobsk3 7 was my first but I didn't finish and 9 was my 2nd. I'm partial to the medieval fantasy type settings, so that's a big reason too lol
FF6 was my first, but 7 is my favorite by a landslide. It transcended everything else released prior to it while everything that followed for years tried and failed to match its impact.
Sony also really wow'ed developers back when the PS1 was coming in. Sony itself was a house hold brand that people trusted. Developers back then flocked to it not only for the increased size but CD's were also super cheap and games could be in print in days rather then months compared to cartridge. That played a huge part as well in helping FF come over to Sony.
The lack of marketing on FF9 was shocking.
Litrally walked into a store one day and it was there.
Remember ringing all my friends to tell them.
Yeah for being so beloved it goes to show how much marketing matters for big sales. I stumbled across FF9 at a Blockbuster lol, no idea it had come out, and haggled to buy it off them and go home right then and there.
I guess I’m kind of an oddball, having played my first RPGs on Genesis with Shining Force2, Phantasy Star 4, and also Chrono Trigger from my friend, but FF7 was just different. When I saw that the bad guys were suited up business executives, with a flow chart of the company and Cloud riding out the window of the Shinra building during the promos, I knew I had to buy a PS1 for this game!😅
I recently discovered that my original Shining force Sega GameGear. which still has its box and book and most of it's shrink wrap is worth ALLOT of money. I still have all my SEGA stuff will never sell any of it
Shining Force 1 + 2 are absolute gems. I've played through them many times and I'm sure I'll play them again.
FF7 was probably inspired by phantasy star 2
Yeah buddy! While Genesis didn't have a lot of RPGs, the ones it did have were excellent. Glad I got to experience both Genesis and SNES RPGs as a kid.
Man I remember reading Nintendo Power and seeing the screen grabs of the game in development for the N64. Core memory unlocked!
FF7 and Chrono Trigger are my absolute two favorite games. I can't decide which one I like better, it's a toss-up on each given day.
Growing up, having the PS1 when it came out and playing FF7 with your friends was amazing.
Lots of Gran Turismo copies were sold bundled with Playstation 1 consoles... So FF7 was in fact the #1 stand-alone seller on PS1.
I member getting Mistic Quest for Christmas 1995. I've never played any RPG before that. Sufficed to say, I enjoyed it very much.
Although several exceptional JRPGs were available in NA prior to the release of FFVII - you ignored the exemplary Phantasy Star II and Phantasy Star IV, btw - it's undeniable that FFVII popularized the genre in the west. It was a combination of changing time and changing tastes - kids that had grown up on the SNES and NES were ready for deeper games with more complex plots and themes. Which is a large reason why the Playstation began to succeed at the same time FFVII released - it wasn't just FFVII, but games like Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, and though it seems cheesy now, Tomb Raider. Ironically, with the exception of Tomb Raider (1996) I would consider the 1997 release of FFVII the least playable today of all of the games I've just mentioned. It really needed that modernized update.
I tried playing FF7 in the early 2000s when my only experience with turn-based RPGs was Pokemon and I really didn’t get it. Never even made it through the first disk. Now I’m 32 and I still haven’t gotten through it. I’ve honestly been enjoying my first playthrough of FF6 more than every other time I’ve attempted FF7. Can someone please help me see what I’m missing??
play it until you are out of midgar then it takes on a life on its own and drags you along lol
Like 2402 said. Midgar, the first time around, can seem slow. But keep playing and it really hooks you. You start learning crazy tricks w/ materia. Some really fun sidequests open up. The story becomes a roller coaster. One of the few games that gets better as it moves on.
Final Fantasy 7 made weapons, magic, and skills customizable while being easy to understand and use. FF8 got rid of MP points to having spells stocked like items. The spells could also be allocated to increase stats, add elemental or status attacks, or defense. They added more granular control over what spell to allocate but it was a lot more complex and requires a lot of grinding to draw the spells from enemies. FF9 scrapped all the changes to Final Fantasy and basically went back to the classic Final Fantasy prior to FF7 , just with the best 3D graphics and CGI yet for Final Fantasy series on PS1. FF10 looks like Square wanted to make JRPGs more accessible got rid of active time battles in favor of time freeze during your turn. It’s the first Final Fantasy Game with no Over world map screen. The rest is history.
7:23 was that Paul Rudd?! 😳
Is that Paul Rudd at 7:23? Lol
That’s my mainland name. My Hawaiian name is Kunu.
that sweater is wild
FF7 is such a great game the story the characters and the music are all awesome
For a game named Final, it's ironic it has more installations than most games out there.
They actually wanted to call it Fighting Fantasy, but the name was already taken.
I played final fantasy 7 for the first time in 2003!! It was great but for me legend of dragoon was better !!!
3:15 It may have been a big rental game… i think I owned it but I could imagine us just renting it a bunch too
I prefer 6, 4 & and 10, but i can't deny 7 has the biggest impact.
I'd say FF VI - X is the golden age of JRPGs.
6 is the best by far, and 4 still holds up pretty well. Just played the pixel remasters of both and had a great time. I love the new arranged soundtracks. Haven't played 10 yet, but it's on my list.
Hope this doesn't spark outrage but I doubt the comments made by Square about the N64 vs PS1. CD had far more capacity than carts but to imply that N64 couldn't handle a PS1 game is suspect. N64 was the most powerful console of that generation by a wide margin. I think Square saw more revenue potential with Sony.
I bought the PS because of FF7, and my whole world changed. I never knew that ANY game could pull me in so much. The emotion, the concept and storyline!!! And the biggest Spoiler since Darth Vader being Luke's father. This was the gutsiest game ever for its time and now I feel that SquareEnix is trying to recapture that same magic in a bottle.
I still remember I was playing Wild Arms which was maybe "the first real pseudo 3D RPG...?" then got blown away by FF VII's genuine 3D graphic
Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG never had a real chance to sell as well as it could've if it didn't release by the time the PlayStation and Saturn were already out. Especially Mario RPG, it had been the most-rented game in the United States for 14 weeks straight around it's north american release
Hello everyone, good viewing🐼
What about Pokémon? It came out after FFVII in the U.S. in ‘98, and sold millions. Could it still have done that without FFVII’s success?
Yes. Everyone at my school played Pokemon, I hadn't even heard of Final Fantasy until I saw a commercial for FF8 on TV a couple years later. RPGs weren't popular in the west because the gaming audience was very young. 88-90 were a peak birth years for several generations in the US, so in the mid 90s kids were barely 5-6 years old when the SNES was in full swing. Of course they weren't buying RPGs, they could barely read! Yet alone understand the some of the basic math that RPGs use like percentages and multiplication are things older people take for granted and are beyond what any kids knows before 3rd or 4th grade at best.
The game that changed it all back then was Ocarina of time. It made more money than the blockbuster movie Armageddon. the movie cost something like 300 million to make and market. Ocarina of time 8-12 million. The next year at E3 all the big movie studios had mega booths.
FF7 is what pulled me from Saturn back in 97 / 98.
My first rpg ever was Suikoden, than Alundra, Breath of Fire.. and than Final Fantasy came into my life. ❤ I didnt care much for FF's after FF9. FF 7 rebirth is like coming home really.
To see the breath of fire 3 in this video almost brought young me to a tear!
"The Jagwire" 🤣
I still own my OG copy of FF7 on PS1! I play it at least once every year!
FF7 changed what an rpg should be
FF7 Remake changed what a remake should be
I love this saying
Exactly
@user-in8qh3zf9dThey did the same with Mass Effect
I remember when i Saw FF7 trailer on tv. It felt like "is it a video game???". , honestly i never get feeling like that anymore.
I was a broke student that mostly read comic books back then, and had a Sega genesis until PS2's graphics blew me away.
I still prefer FF8 for storyline.. however I dislikes junction mechanism implemented in the game..
I bought a PlayStation specifically for FF7. In fact, I sold my SNES and all the games and accessories to buy a used PS1. 👍🏻
Crazy how mystic quest sold ~400k copies abroad, more than Chrono Trigger and on par with FF6. I dont know a single person who has played thay game and I remember it being in the discount bin at KB Toy not too long after it came out.
FFVI didn’t come out to Europe until 1999. Apparently (I’m looking this up now) Chrono Trigger didn’t release to EU until 2008 for the Nintendo DS.
So, I think it’s likely in the US, FFVI and Chrono Trigger were more popular - where-as Mystic Quest had ~400k in both regions.
@@DaveControlLivegood point, although I'm still guessing MQ probably sold more than half the "abroad" numbers in the US given the install base. The FF6 numbers get fudged a bit with the multiple re-releases as well possibly adding to the total.
So great. This is a story that needs to be told
I never gave the time to play FF7 when it came out. Jrpg games made me feel sluggish in their turn based combat and having so much unvoiced dialogue to read made me sleepy. But I really wanted to play it for its magnificent story. So I bought FFVII Remake Intergrade to finally start the series.
My first RPG and it was a spectacle
Simply put: its as great and as important to JRPGs and gaming as a whole as Citizen Kane or Star Wars was for films
There's one other that deserves more attention Xenogears. That was a great game and wish it got a remake.
FFVII is my all-time #1 favorite game!
He forgot to say another reason why Chrono Trigger sold so bad in the US. The game was also close to $90 brand new. Even used back then it was $75. That didn't help at all.
I don't think they were wrong about not marketing FF7 as an RPG. My parents didn't allow my brothers and I to play RPGs. They didn't want us to "turn weird". But then my dad actually started to see the FF7 marketing material, the screen shots, the trailers...FF7 was one of our big games Christmas '97.
In my childhood, coming from the SNES generation I was checking the magazines whats next. More precisely I was looking where the new JRPGs were.
I saw a lot of cool stuff for the Playstation. What did I see for N64? "Quest 64".... -_-
That was my goodbye from nintendo back then - the decision was easy: Playstation was the future.
Nowadays I have a PS5 and Nintendo Switch, favouring my Switch a bit to be honest.
remember first time boot the game and holy molly see that fmv for the first time was glorius
FF7 certainly made the genre popular, and sales numbers are misleading, because piracy was huge with that console.
It was the 2nd best selling game on the PS1
Many games didn't make it. Terranigma, treasure of the Rudras, Romancing Saga 3, dragon quest 5, to name a few.
Final Fantasy 7 was the game that made me buy the OG Playstation.