There's a moment in Final Fantasy 7 Remake that did just enough to overcome the poor voice dubbing, the cliched evil-villain laugh, the two second lag between entering an area and the start of the cutscene, that unbelievably stupid Chadley fellow (Chadley?????), having to hold triangle for 5 seconds to make your character flip a switch, side quests where you search for cats,11. I'm a cat person and I still hated this. the jarring presence of a cowboy in the middle of an industrial epicenter, and worst of all, listening to Aerith pimp herself by saying the words, "I'm so generous that I donate supplies to the orphanage" moments after the player watches her donate supplies to an orphanage.
Just as I was preparing to write off FF7R as a parade of cringe, I began a battle in which the music swelled so emotionally and the combat hummed so seamlessly that I was instantly transported back to the year 1997 (which is weird cause the combat from the 2020 game is comparable to the 1997 version in the same way Blake Lively is comparable to Rosie O'Donnel). Final Fantasy 7 Remake may not stand as a great game on its own, but as a time-machine it's a success story.
Which is why I find myself writing about the topic; not because I want to parse out the pros and cons of this remade version -- that's easy.
The pros: fighting is fun, music is spectacular.
The cons: everything else.
Instead I write because the game unleashed a wave of memories that as a nostalgia-dipped lad I have no choice but to surf.
Playing the original 1997 Final Fantasy 7 used to be my job. I mean, I wasn't actually paid to play it -- unless you count the Cherry Pepsis or home-made breads Ian would gift me during gaming sessions -- but it represented my nine-to-five obligation during the early teen years. And certainly the hours spent grinding against mindless opponents on the beaches of Mideel to rank up our XP felt at times like more work than play. Against the backdrop of 2021 gaming it's crazy to think I spent so much time on a game where you didn't actually control the characters during fights, but rather delivered inputs like a computer programmer to command your avatars to battle. The fact that a game with such a reduced level of interactivity could hold so much interest in my heart is a tribute to the friend I enjoyed it with.
That friend was Ian Wright and the bulk of our progress in FF7 occurred during sleepovers. I challenge you to put together a stranger menu than what we organized for these nights. We would start with homemade Orange Julius, which sounds innocent enough until you realize 10-year old kids don't measure well. We believed a recipe which called for one cup of sugar was in fact calling for a cup of sugar per cup of liquid. Perhaps we struggled with this basic math because years earlier we had spent an evening equipping our grandfather's army helmets and swinging bats into each other's heads. Either way my dad was beyond pissed when he saw us shoveling the white stuff into the blender with no fear of diabetes. Whether he actually cared about our health or more the assault on his food storage reserves, has never been confirmed.
After an appetizer of Orange Julius we'd move to our main course: fries from Sam's Mexican Fiasco. I'm not sure what the real name of this fast food place was, but we called it the fiasco which is rude considering they delivered superb fries in abundance for $1.50. Shockingly our weekly contributions were not enough to keep them in business.
Finally for desert we enjoyed packets of Limon. Like a fart during a road trip this "candy" made a strong but short-lived impact on our sixth-grade selves. What is Limon? It's salt. Salt with some lemon flavoring added in. That's it. And we loved it. Want more information on Limon? I promise the below screenshots are not photoshopped. I pulled them from a site called mexicancandy.org.
So Limon is reminiscent of ocean water and comes with a health warning. Huh. And yet it had enough redeeming qualities that I loved it. Hey, kind of like Final Fantasy 7!
We'd suck this stuff down like it was a Fun Dip, with our fingers playing the role of the candy stick. Other folks, braver than Ian and me, would pour the contents straight into their mouth like a shot of protein powder, but after seeing a classmate accidentally blind himself in this fashion we stuck with the finger technique. (Limon was banned from Valley Crest after the incident -- not kidding)
By the way, thank goodness I hadn't seen any drug shows at that time in life or I'd for sure have tried inhaling some through the nose and while it may have prevented the nose-hair problem I now suffer in the mid-life, I suspect it would've had a weird impact on my allergies.
By the way part two, who knew there's a solid demand for this product nowadays? The first Amazon listing I stumbled upon sells a 7-ounce three pack of this salt FOR A MERE $148. In other words you could buy three bags of Limon or a PlayStation 5. Hard choices these days but I think I'll stick with the PS5. Though on the other hand one Amazon reviewer says they use the stuff to combat motion sickness. Ok I'm back in!
Now I must admit I never expected I'd deliver six paragraphs, two links, and two pictures on mexican salt but I guess that's the whole point of this really -- FF7 remake wasn't a special game but it sent me back to a special time in life. Stuff I once forgot is forgot no longer.
And so it is that I remember my confusion when Ian became depressed over Aerith's death. How could he care about a girl? I wouldn't even choose the girl characters when selecting my three-person party, let alone shed a tear at one's demise. (It would be three more years before Buffy unlocked my hormones)
I remember yelling at the TV as we failed to defeat the game's greatest boss, the Ruby weapon, even after we reached level 99 and found the ultimate Knights of the Round summon. (20 years later I'd laugh in disbelief watching a speed runner topple Ruby weapon in under five minutes relying primarily on one of those female characters I was too manly to use)
I remember the thrill when Ian bought the soundtrack some years after the game came out. We made plans to buy blank CDs, take them to Sam Touch's house, and spend 10 hours burning copies of the songs. It never worked because **1990s tech probs** and I was sad, never imagining that within a decade I could pull a 6-inch computer out of my pocket and instantly play any song that had ever been produced in the history of the world.
I remember the sacrosanct process of naming a new character when they joined your team. The best characters were matched with my best of friends of course (Barret for Bunna, Cid for Ian), while the girl characters were given random names so nobody could accuse us of naming one after a crush.
I remember laughing immaturely as we bred chocobos and there's a sentence I never expected to type.
I remember the hours we spent working on the foot-soldiers.net website intro -- not the actual site mind you, I'm talking just the intro scene that one would enjoy (or rather was forced to watch) when first dialing up the address -- which we synced to the opening theme of FF7.
I remember playing FF8 over and over, willing ourselves to like it as much as FF7 like spouses in a broken marriage. It never worked.
I remember FF7 as the first open world game I ever played. It's a quaint idea now, but in that era being able to hop in a plane and navigate the entire planet was not something I believed to be within the bounds of gaming. Hitherto I travelled left-to-right on 2D Mario and Sonic maps.
So yeah, I won't praise FF7 Remake much beyond a few awesome fights and a few awesome songs. But who cares. It made me remember stuff and in this era that's worth the cost of a video game.
Playing the original 1997 Final Fantasy 7 used to be my job. I mean, I wasn't actually paid to play it -- unless you count the Cherry Pepsis or home-made breads Ian would gift me during gaming sessions -- but it represented my nine-to-five obligation during the early teen years. And certainly the hours spent grinding against mindless opponents on the beaches of Mideel to rank up our XP felt at times like more work than play. Against the backdrop of 2021 gaming it's crazy to think I spent so much time on a game where you didn't actually control the characters during fights, but rather delivered inputs like a computer programmer to command your avatars to battle. The fact that a game with such a reduced level of interactivity could hold so much interest in my heart is a tribute to the friend I enjoyed it with.
That friend was Ian Wright and the bulk of our progress in FF7 occurred during sleepovers. I challenge you to put together a stranger menu than what we organized for these nights. We would start with homemade Orange Julius, which sounds innocent enough until you realize 10-year old kids don't measure well. We believed a recipe which called for one cup of sugar was in fact calling for a cup of sugar per cup of liquid. Perhaps we struggled with this basic math because years earlier we had spent an evening equipping our grandfather's army helmets and swinging bats into each other's heads. Either way my dad was beyond pissed when he saw us shoveling the white stuff into the blender with no fear of diabetes. Whether he actually cared about our health or more the assault on his food storage reserves, has never been confirmed.
After an appetizer of Orange Julius we'd move to our main course: fries from Sam's Mexican Fiasco. I'm not sure what the real name of this fast food place was, but we called it the fiasco which is rude considering they delivered superb fries in abundance for $1.50. Shockingly our weekly contributions were not enough to keep them in business.
Finally for desert we enjoyed packets of Limon. Like a fart during a road trip this "candy" made a strong but short-lived impact on our sixth-grade selves. What is Limon? It's salt. Salt with some lemon flavoring added in. That's it. And we loved it. Want more information on Limon? I promise the below screenshots are not photoshopped. I pulled them from a site called mexicancandy.org.
So Limon is reminiscent of ocean water and comes with a health warning. Huh. And yet it had enough redeeming qualities that I loved it. Hey, kind of like Final Fantasy 7!
We'd suck this stuff down like it was a Fun Dip, with our fingers playing the role of the candy stick. Other folks, braver than Ian and me, would pour the contents straight into their mouth like a shot of protein powder, but after seeing a classmate accidentally blind himself in this fashion we stuck with the finger technique. (Limon was banned from Valley Crest after the incident -- not kidding)
By the way, thank goodness I hadn't seen any drug shows at that time in life or I'd for sure have tried inhaling some through the nose and while it may have prevented the nose-hair problem I now suffer in the mid-life, I suspect it would've had a weird impact on my allergies.
By the way part two, who knew there's a solid demand for this product nowadays? The first Amazon listing I stumbled upon sells a 7-ounce three pack of this salt FOR A MERE $148. In other words you could buy three bags of Limon or a PlayStation 5. Hard choices these days but I think I'll stick with the PS5. Though on the other hand one Amazon reviewer says they use the stuff to combat motion sickness. Ok I'm back in!
Now I must admit I never expected I'd deliver six paragraphs, two links, and two pictures on mexican salt but I guess that's the whole point of this really -- FF7 remake wasn't a special game but it sent me back to a special time in life. Stuff I once forgot is forgot no longer.
And so it is that I remember my confusion when Ian became depressed over Aerith's death. How could he care about a girl? I wouldn't even choose the girl characters when selecting my three-person party, let alone shed a tear at one's demise. (It would be three more years before Buffy unlocked my hormones)
I remember yelling at the TV as we failed to defeat the game's greatest boss, the Ruby weapon, even after we reached level 99 and found the ultimate Knights of the Round summon. (20 years later I'd laugh in disbelief watching a speed runner topple Ruby weapon in under five minutes relying primarily on one of those female characters I was too manly to use)
I remember the thrill when Ian bought the soundtrack some years after the game came out. We made plans to buy blank CDs, take them to Sam Touch's house, and spend 10 hours burning copies of the songs. It never worked because **1990s tech probs** and I was sad, never imagining that within a decade I could pull a 6-inch computer out of my pocket and instantly play any song that had ever been produced in the history of the world.
I remember the sacrosanct process of naming a new character when they joined your team. The best characters were matched with my best of friends of course (Barret for Bunna, Cid for Ian), while the girl characters were given random names so nobody could accuse us of naming one after a crush.
I remember laughing immaturely as we bred chocobos and there's a sentence I never expected to type.
I remember the hours we spent working on the foot-soldiers.net website intro -- not the actual site mind you, I'm talking just the intro scene that one would enjoy (or rather was forced to watch) when first dialing up the address -- which we synced to the opening theme of FF7.
I remember playing FF8 over and over, willing ourselves to like it as much as FF7 like spouses in a broken marriage. It never worked.
I remember FF7 as the first open world game I ever played. It's a quaint idea now, but in that era being able to hop in a plane and navigate the entire planet was not something I believed to be within the bounds of gaming. Hitherto I travelled left-to-right on 2D Mario and Sonic maps.
So yeah, I won't praise FF7 Remake much beyond a few awesome fights and a few awesome songs. But who cares. It made me remember stuff and in this era that's worth the cost of a video game.
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