Final Fantasy VII Remake for DS? Full Report

[wraggster]

Hot rumour from Japan enticing RPG gamers over the weekend foretells of a high-budget remake of Final Fantasy VII for Nintendo’s DS portable, news that if true proves the games industry can match any soap opera for drama and twist.

The rumour began with Square Enix producer Tetsuya Nomura confirming to Japanese PlayStation 2 magazine Dengeki PS2 that Final Fantasy VII will have a significant showing at next year’s Electronics Entertainment Expo, building on the company’s comments from last year when SE promised “…polymorphic [Final Fantasy VII] content providing well-known properties on several platforms, allowing exposure of the products to as wide an audience as possible.”

Of course, this rumour stands in contradiction with established talk that a high-budget PlayStation 2 remake of Final Fantasy VII is in the works, though it could be argued that it makes far more sense for a DS version to be released.

As you may well know, Final Fantasy VII was - to put it mildly - something of a controversial PlayStation game. The RPG was originally in development for Nintendo’s new home console, a 64-Bit machine going by the name of Nintendo Ultra 64. The code was in a fairly advanced stage and Square was at the time amongst the most active of companies lobbying Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi to ditch cartridge-based media in favour of a CD-based system. Yamauchi - a stubborn man - rejected all calls to move away from the relatively secure cartridge, and in turn assured Square that any game could be accommodated, even if it meant spreading its new RPG across several cartridges. Square rejected this idea and, under constant courting from the emerging PlayStation camp, cancelled Ultra 64 Final Fantasy and announced that it would be releasing Final Fantasy VII as a PlayStation exclusive.

This news sent shockwaves through the Japanese games industry and is widely seen as a turning-point in the fortunes of the Nintendo 64. The console was by no means a failure, though it was crippled by reluctant third-party support; the angle with which Sony rose to dominance over the old guard.

And for years afterwards, Nintendo - under Yamauchi’s control - openly derided Square, with the Nintendo president always on hand with a word or ten of discouragement for his one-time ally. Then something happened. The launch of the Game Boy Advance had fans up in arms, requesting Final Fantasy and other Square RPG properties for Nintendo’s new handheld, in essence a portable SNES. Nintendo was seeing profits tail off as the Pokemon boom faded and so Yamauchi - reluctantly, we are told - allowed Nintendo to re-enter talks with Square. After the second meeting, both parties were highly positive and Yamauchi made the surprise announcement that he would chair the next meeting. Legend has it that the perceived betrayal of Nintendo by Square stood as the lowest point in Yamauchi’s career and the great man seemingly wanted to iron out the wrinkly past, with an agreement in principle being reached during that third meeting, ending more than a decade of tension between the two Japanese giants.

History lesson over, it is a fact that a considerable amount of the code which comprises Final Fantasy VII was tapped in using Ultra 64 development kits and this code can easily be ported across to Nintendo DS. A DS remake will make more financial sense and require considerably fewer resources than an enhanced PlayStation 2 remake.

As we mentioned, the videogames industry can hold a candle to any soap opera, though it must be said that Final Fantasy VII DS would even trump the murder, return and murder (again) of Dirty Den.

[Vegetable]

Final Fantasy 7 is one of the most popular games of all time, and if Nintendo and Square actually pull this off, SONY is out of the handheld business. For sure.

[King DS]

Amen to That! at least they settled there little fight after Square stabbed the N64 in the back and hopped onto the Gaystation which hand totaly Pants Graphics compared to the N64, being as the PS was 16bit and the N64 was... i dont even have to say coz your a retard not to guess. and it was 16bit coz i read it on an article about the the handheld war and it said that the PSP would fail as it has no idea what its doing, Ninty have the EXP and the know how of what people want. PSP crams everything into a fragile thingy thats basicly a PDA with a Crap OS and no touch screen.

[plungmonies]

16 bit? wow such ignorance, I bet edge isn't exactly banging on your door for your services are they....sorry thats a bit harsh but a little bit of non biased research into what you are saying would not go astray. The psp also uses a cpu from the same family as the n64, ps1 and ps2. What is wrong with supporting both consoles, after all competition is a good thing.

[King DS]

it just doesnt seem logical, plus the DS would open it up more and give more possibilitys and more things to do. a PS2 remake would just be graphical and maybe a few extras. like with the Resi 4 thing, but that was downgraded and extras were shived in to compensate, and i got the thing i read was while i was on a plane to dublin, it was going over all the consoles in history leading up to the DS vs PSP war thing that never actualy happened.

[plungmonies]

I do agree with your thoughts on resident evil 4 being watered down but a remake of ff7 may also be watered down sice the original spanned multiple cd's, so you will probably have to say goodbye to the fmv's, and lets be truthfull folk's, final fantasy games are hardly the pinnaccle of solid gameplay these days.
Also nobody really knows how far ff64 actually got in the development stages, in fact early screenshots were nothing more than sgi onyx mock ups.
of course this story is nothing more than rumour and speculation in the first place and if truth be told I hope its false since square are really falling behind the 8 ball with game design and flogging a dead horse really isn't the way out. What they need to do is reinvent their franchises and bring in new concepts much the way nintendo has done with the zelda series (I am really looking forward to twilight princess).
Wherever you read about the psx being 16bit is full of $#@!. Many people actually believe that the n64 was really a 32bit console since the r4300 chip was limited to a 32bit bus, then again none of this actually matters, after all the xbox runs off a 32 bit cpu and so do most modern personal computers.

[King DS]

we just gotta wait and see, there working on a Crystal cronicals DS that plays online, that should be somting to look foward to even more so if hte bottom screen is gonna be the same as the GBA screen when you play multi, that was a good idea. i still recon FF7DS would be Cool, even if its multi cart or even duel cart. (that would be cool. have a main card in the DS slot and the GBA card slot would be like Disk 1,2 and 3) so they could still keep all the FMVs. plus all the models would be updated made better, smoother textures and more polys to give it less of a blocky body.

and i agree the new Zelda should be Fun and the DS version when it arise's

[malrak]

Anyone have a link to the infos/rumors about FFVII on the DS?

[plungmonies]

it would still be a case of cramming 1.8 gigs of data onto a solid state format which is just not financially viable for squaresoft, I know that there could be video compression but I just don't see it happening.

[King DS]

Supose we should wait to find out, there remaking all the others on the GBA anyway so they mas aswell. we got 1+2 already, with 3,4,5 and 6 on they way it would be cool to have the next gen of Final fantasy games on the next gen console. if you see what i mean, as in all the others are 2D so as were going onto the first full 3D FF game then we move up a level onto the DS.

Anyhows, multi cart is still possible, so its not worth us argueing over if you can or cant and just wait for news, its the best we can do dude.