Rhombaad
Video Game Time Traveler
Griffith said:The commercials for it were AWESOME. I don't even want to look them up because I'm sure they'd seem quaint and cheesy now but at the time they were most effective at making it seem like this amazing, otherworldly experience.
I watched them a few years ago, and they don't hold up that well in my opinion. I'd stay away if you want to maintain your memories of them.
Griffith said:I love the old console war propaganda mixed in there too, "Cartridges are for LOSERS!"
Part of me misses the console wars. Even today, when I see a Sega and Nintendo crossover, it feels weird to me.
Griffith said:I'm delighted to hear you like my proposition; I'll only require a "Created By" credit and a small, small percentage.
But of course.
Walter said:I distinctly remember seeing a Junon Cannon billboard in Atlanta around 1998, and it was fucking surreal. For me, FF7 was just a cult kind of thing, and very special to me. Prior to its release, I can't remember ever being more invested in a single game. This hype was mostly because I was a huge fan of FF6 (still my favorite game), and the fact that Square was riding the crest of their career. Everything they sent stateside had been solid gold for years.
I had followed its release closer than any other game (to this day). In an age when game news sites didn't update every day, I would still check extremely frequently. Square would regularly release CG stills of environments, and also character info / designs in a trickle fashion up until the Japanese release (I remember Sephiroth was the last). I would print out pictures and tape them to my goddamned wall like some kind of serial killer. I ended up importing the game at the Japanese launch, and modifying my PS to play it a hardwired solution, not the disc swap. I played through most of the game blind at first, and then with a guide. I also ended up memorizing a few kanji and hiragana/katakana just to navigate the menus and spells. But by the time the US version hit, and the FULL scope of the story had settled into my teenage brain, it really didn't live up to my expectations. What possibly could? I had ruined my experience with the game by treating it like it was supposed to be a transcendental experience.
That was my experience with Final Fantasy IX. I had a PS2 by then, so it was the first one I could play shortly after it came out. It's probably the best of the PSX Final Fantasy games, but at the time I felt it was over-hyped. I enjoyed it a lot more the second time around.
Walter said:For anyone who lived through that time, this is an incredible article on the game's creation and the people and personalities behind it: https://www.polygon.com/a/final-fantasy-7
Thanks, Walter! I'll have to check it out. I didn't follow FF7's release as closely as you did, since I was an N64 kid at the time, but I remember the tremendous amount of advertisements in EGM and Game Pro.