Final Fantasy VII - The Awful Scrapped Nintendo 64 Version

[@TopHatGamingManChannel]

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[@greenkoopa]

🤐🐢

[@demonology2629]

I know this sounds selfish. But final fantasy never needed to leave the regular Nintendo era. But if I was to play another version it would be Final Fantasy on SUPER NINTENDO!!!

[@anthonysmith3415]

hey dont use AI art, it's not cool

[@songoku9348]

Isn’t it ironic how decades later FFVII would eventually come to a Nintendo system, that uses cartridges no less?

[@ScorpBerserker]

Switch uses flash cards, not cartridges.

[@hayatorpg3896]

I know. I have it on digital for Switch

[@nickivy9758]

@@ScorpBerserker what even is a cartridge tho

[@zanychelly]

@@nickivy9758 Cards and Cartridges are fundamentally different, but both have a ROM in them.

[@zanychelly]

Only took Nintendo 20 years to sort of catch up…

[@casmx7300]

Final Fantasy VII literally sold systems. Not only do I believe that it single-handedly pushed the Playstation into the dominating position it held for so long, it personally sold me on a Playstation back when I was a teenager working at McDonalds. In fact, I actually purchased Final Fantasy VII first, before I actually owned a Playstation. I remember going to high school, working at McDonalds and just itching for my next paycheck so I could finally buy a Playstation and play my game. For a solid week, I read FF7's instruction manual several times a day, twitching with anticipation. I did finally get my Playstation and when I booted the game up for the first time, it was absolutely everything I had hoped for. Funnily enough, I had my Playstation and I had my FF7 but I did not have a memory card. I didn't realize I needed one. I had previously owned a Sega CD and while it has 'memory cards' in the form of full sized Sega Genesis cartridges, it had some small amount of built in storage to play and save your Sega CD games. The memory card cartridge(s) were completely optional in order to expand your storage capacity. However, everyone that ever owned a PS1 knows that a memory card was NOT optional in order to save your games. They were mandatory. This did not work well with a game like Final Fantasy VII. So, when I played my game and realized I couldn't save my game, my poor system was on for about 3 days straight before I convinced my brother's girlfriend (I didn't have a car at the time and walked back and forth to work) to run me up to Gamestop to buy a memory card. To this day, it's one of my favorite memories and I can honestly say, it's all due to Final Fantasy VII. Had it come out on the N64, I would have bought that instead. But I was so impressed with the Playstation that I never owned an N64 and have actually never owned a Nintendo console since (excluding handhelds like the 3DS). That game sold me on Playstation and I've never regretted it. Oh, and before people respond saying I missed out on some great Nintendo classics, I've played them. Between family and friends having them, I've probably played all the games worth mentioning. But, I personally haven't owned a Nintendo console since the SNES.

[@greghohenberger3185]

1000% this, they killed themselves by letting this game go anywhere but Nintendo.

[@loganbigmo]

@@greghohenberger3185It's funny how stubborn Nintendo is. They refused to switch to CD-ROM in the 90s, and even with the GameCube purposefully had mini discs, and in the late 2000s refused to adopt the trophy/achievement system that Xbox & PS did... and as of right now, 2024, they _still_ don't do achievements, even though PC games for Steam and Windows have even adopted it. They're really set in their ways.

[@udance4ever]

​@@loganbigmo yeah - the decision to go with mini discs shows you how paranoid Nintendo is about piracy. They witnessed how easy it was to burn audio CDs and even though they could have come up with copy protection, a mainstream disc format just meant it would be broken that much sooner.

[@billyjoejimbob75]

It was similar for me, but I just kept upgrading my computer.

[@billyjoejimbob75]

@@ayanefuji I put elemental materia & fire on Cloud's weapon, so he was kinda my flame champion.

[@beastinator456]

The Sega Saturn sitting there like 😐

[@3Rayfire]

Right?

[@andyukmonkey]

I do wonder if Sega ever attempted to get FF7 on the Saturn?

[@neubro1448]

@@andyukmonkey Maybe if Sega had never hired Bernie Stolar as Sega of America chairman who had worked for Sony of America. His draconian policies allowing what games to be released and his hatred of 2D graphics and RPGs.

[@Tremadog102]

@@andyukmonkey It does make me wonder if the game would have been possible on the Saturn. Not many developers bothered to learn how to utilise the Saturn's bizarre architecture so it probably would have been fairly compromised. We got Panzer Dragoon Saga which is a darling for the second hand gaming market but never had the cultural clout of Final Fantasy.

[@loganbigmo]

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Square was disatisfied with the N64, and Sony reached out to them offering them the PlayStation. Who knows, maybe if Sega had reached out to Square first and offered their disc format, they could've inked out a contract and secured FF for Sega consoles and Sega would still be a giant today. Or at least would've lasted a generation or two longer in the console market.

[@nodarkthings]

I remember well all the excitement and expectation over FFVII on the N64!! I was so excited. We used to discuss it in the echoes on fidonet, just before I got the internet. We would speculate wildly about how it might come out on the "Bulky Drive" (as the 64DD was referred to at the time) and how it could be a vast open world with data being written and read from the drive. I miss those days. I did end up buying a Japanese N64 in the summer of 1996 for about 600 quid (a huge amount for me). That summer was so good....

[@skins4thewin]

Lol sorry to hear that man. Could've just bought a PS1 and been much happier. Always felt kind of sorry for the kids who were bought an N64 for Xmas instead of a PS1. I owned both & within a couple years of their launch it was pretty clear which one was the superior console.

[@pattersong6637]

64DD discs having a capacity of 64 MB made the whole thing pointless. Even though that was better than all but 3 N64 carts ended up doing in real life (and those three only tied it), if they had gone the 64DD route and committed to it they'd STILL have a giant storage capacity shortage vs the PS1 while sacrificing the "No loading times" advantage of cartridges just for a little extra space. 64 MB isn't THAT much bigger than the 32 MB most major N64 games ended up at and would still be about a tenth of what a CD could hold. That said, I guess the 64DD would've opened up the possibility for multidisc games. Even so, though, what, would they have put out a 15 disc version of FFVII?

[@MrCaptainobvious77]

​@pattersong6637 Funny you mention that. I have always wondered if they could have expanded the storage data on a 64DD disk. SquareSoft mentioned that it would have taken between 20-30 64DD disks to match the equivalency of 2 playstation disks. They had a vision of what the finished FF7 would look like. Cartridges would not cut it.

[@Yiiino]

It's not lost, it was never made.

[@Serso70]

indeed, clickbaity bs

[@runnersdialzero1244]

Yeah, and calling a non-existent game "awful" is... uh, really silly.

[@chemergency]

It never technically made it past a single Behemoth character model that was attempted on an N64 devkit that they struggled to render smoothly which factored into the decision to commit to PlayStation. None of the work done for the FFVI SGI demo counts because that's not technically N64 hardware, though it is worth noting that the same hardware was used for the prerendered backgrounds in Super Mario RPG and the FMV's in FFVII.

[@mrnygren2]

@@runnersdialzero1244 It would have been awesome but with the N64 limitaions - nobody would have known how much better the PS1 version would have been though.

[@NefariousDreary]

It says "scrapped". Did he change the title?

[@Flynn01979]

Considering that version of the game never got out of the early alpha stage. Squaresoft, never made more than a tech demo. It's kind of unfair to label a project that never came close to being finished awful. It's hard to say what the game would of been like on the N64.

[@stinkfinga4918]

No it isn't lol just look at games that went to both PS and N64, the PS versions are objectively better.

[@tombstoner6360]

*would have been like

[@Absolutely_puck_fakestine]

​@@stinkfinga4918What games ?

[@Absolutely_puck_fakestine]

@@stinkfinga4918 Shadowman 64 was a masterpiece on n64, awful on PS. Ff7 on n64 would have been great, the only problem would have been the cutscenes. Same with resident evil, they are compressed beyond belief. Other than the size problem, the games are always better on n64, if well adapted/developped.

[@davisbowe8668]

@@stinkfinga4918 The World is Not Enough says otherwise.

[@baronhausenpheffer]

It really is interesting to consider what an N64 FF7 would have looked like. I've heard it said that it would have taken a crazy amount of cartridges (12? 24? 100?) to port the game to N64 exactly as it was on PS1, and I don't doubt that. However, "Resident Evil 2" gives us a road map of how an ambitious multi-disk game might have been translated to cartridge. More than anything, it would involve nerfing the audio down to midi levels and substantially reducing the number of animated cutscenes, if not getting rid of them altogether in favor of subtitled screen caps. Even then, it might have been necessary to push it to at least two cartridges requiring some sort of elaborate password or save data recognition system to make it work, and two cartridges might have made it unacceptably pricey to produce. Part of me still wishes Square-Enix had attempted it, though, because it would have been a cool point of comparison, a godsend for the awful N64 RPG scene, and Nintendo could have marketed the absence of load times as a perk of their version.

[@GoeTeeks]

I mean, if they had to split FF7 into 2-4 cartridges, they could have used the memory pak to carry over data between cartridges.

[@GreatMossWater]

Maybe it would've been like the remake that's split into several separate games.

[@overwatch761]

Not going CD was the N64s biggest downfall. As for the game running better on N64 or PS1 - Randomly comparing unoptimised code isn't a performance measure by any means. Take for instance we see many console to PC ports struggle today despite running on PCs at over 2x the power. The N64 was a complex system like the Saturn and had piss poor development kits that were completely unoptimised for making games. The N64 also required an insane level of advanced technical knowledge (most of which is now only available and being learnt today - basic optimisations in DKR led to an 2x performance increase on real hardware) The PS1 was simply basic and straightforward, combined with CD and an easy to use GDK sum up why it was the best system to develop on in that era.

[@dooshmasta]

Eerie to see the Japanese cover art for dragon quest right after finding out that Toriyama Akira passed away a few days ago.

[@dooshmasta]

lol of course he gets a mention for Chrono Trigger. No one in the west seems to know that he made 6 Dragon Quest games with Enix before they started Chrono Trigger.

[@magnawaves]

Eerie how? DQ isn't going to magically disappear because lost Toriyama too soon. You're watching a video game video, you're more likely to see that stuff.

[@Jimusmc]

@@dooshmasta yeah we did, most dragon quest protagonist has the goku hair.

[@songoku9348]

If Nintendo had the CD rom format for the N64, boy oh boy the N64 and PS1 would’ve had an intense heated rivalry. Nintendo would’ve potentially dominated and won. Imagine having OOT and FFVII on the same system.

[@Elyseon]

Not to mention that Nintendo was also responsible for the existence of the Playstation. They have a history of treating partners and fans badly.

[@joseavalos9988]

the lacking of a cd drive wasnt the only flaw of the N64

[@treytavares1727]

There would be no rivalry cause the PS1 would be the N64. Nintendo created their own worst enemy.

[@AkiKimurr]

​@@treytavares1727impossible to predict what would've happened. It's just a thought experiment after all. Though couple things are clear: games would cost waay less and more developers and publishers would consider going multi-plat or even exclusive for N64 as well. So, yeah, we can't know what would've happened, especially since pretty much every fifth gen opponent had a headstart of at least a couple of years, yet it definitely would've been interesting to witness, especially with a substantial power advantage N64 had.

[@pablocasas5906]

To be fair, if Nintendo would've choses discs instead of cartridges for the Nintendo 64, I'm sure that some games would've been very different in terms of design

[@RandomTTV]

Do you get withdrawal symptoms when you don’t use Akuma’s 3do theme in a video?

[@Patrick19833]

I remember watching the previews back in the 90s lol It took me a few hours to download the video. I do not miss the dial-up days at all, but I did miss my childhood.

[@Defensive_Wounds]

The slowly loading jpeg images on web sites that scanned top to bottom and was pixellated AF then slowly got less and less and less pixellated over time until it was fully loaded...lol It was a revolutionary thing when the dual switch for phone lines came out which meant no longer would your internet be turned off if a phone call came in! Otherwise you were cut off the internet and had to re-dial up with the dial up modem!

[@Xunkun]

2-3 HOURS to load the 30 second Phantom Menace trailer..................... If only we knew.......

[@brichan1851]

I’m betting the third part will be released on the 30th anniversary of the original game.

[@ianbraun271]

And probably on the PS6

[@Fall-oo6mt]

​@@ianbraun271I'm not sure we're gonna have a PS6 in 2027. The PS5's lifespan is probably gonna be about 8 years, like its predecessors.

[@The_Prizessin_der_Verurteilung]

Then part 4 will be rele-look we all know Final Fantasy VII is going to keep being milked until the farm dries up. Maybe we'll get a re-remake, Final Fantasy VII Re;Rebirth Saga, a VII part series to milk a single 90 hour game into several empty 100+ hour versions.

[@GamingNightsNeoMasaki]

R.I.P. Akira Toriyama

[@aegisring]

Using his death for likes? You make me sick

[@Kaepora2]

@@aegisring I highly doubt posting something in Memorial to a legend for likes is even a thing. Likes mean nothing. Touch Grass.

[@GamingNightsNeoMasaki]

@@skidmc he was mentioned in the video…if you guys actually watched it…

[@aegisring]

@@GamingNightsNeoMasaki which proves my point, you're only farming likes

[@seancondon5572]

@@aegisring my friend... you... need to chill. I have some fine (and not-so-fine, but still very acceptable) cigars and Japanese Whiskey for you to chill with. Just... Chill... Like I've been doing the last 36 hours or so.

[@Spacefrisian]

Imagin having several Final Fantasy ideas before the actuall version came out for it, 1 of those being Xenogears which than became a game franchise on its own.

[@jimmyju76]

that's pretty much how many franchises come about

[@Jordabrz]

Would've been sick on the n64 - they would have to remove the cutscenes but it would've had next to no loading times

[@JohnnyProctor9]

Wasn't it planned to be an entirely different game due to the limitations of the format? It would likely be an improvement though, I LOVE the unlicensed Chinese NES demake!

[@TIDbitRETRO]

They might not have had to. Don’t forget they managed to port Resident Evil 2 to the N64 and it kept all of that game’s CG cutscenes.

[@RainerLuizFonseca]

FF7 would not be the same without it's cutscenes, they were mind blowing for their time and transformed what could have been a good RPG into a masterpiece. Square would later be known for producing the highest quality CGI in the entire history in the years that followed. To this day, having top notch CGI still plays a a critical role in gaming, just see what Blizzard has created over the years and how memorable their games are because of that

[@Iceman42069]

Too bad i wouldve bought both

[@jonah1976]

With super blurry textures and 15 FPS, oh boy!

[@FabzP96]

This is funny, knowing that Nintendo STILL can't get with the times in regards to hardware. Biggest cheapskates around in the gaming industry.

[@Brian0wns]

If I recall at the time the reason Nintendo went with a cartridge system is because CDs for gaming were kind of new but have been around for music for a while by then - and I think they were scared that piracy would be a lot easier with a CD system. The ironic thing is that years later it was a lot easier to emulate the N64 than the Playstation. As a kid I was kind of mad that there were no good turned based RPGs on the N64.

[@currywurst2434]

There was piracy on PS1 though (that didn't stop its success). A friend built a chip into mine so i could play a copy of Chrono Cross (wasn't released in Europe afaik).

[@garretdrake2347]

paper mario?

[@brycetheoddball]

Toriyama just passed rest in piece

[@G.L.999]

"Peace".

[@PowerSynopsis]

@@G.L.999 wrest inn piece

[@G.L.999]

@@PowerSynopsis "Rest In Peace".

[@zhizn_snake]

How do we know it would have been "awful"? N64 had its own set of advantages over PS1, even if it was at the cost of CD quality music and storage space. Many argue FFVI was a better game than the more successful VII, and that was on the technically inferior SNES.

[@mattyryon]

They mean from a technical standpoint and what Square wanted to do with 7

[@lubenretrolletarios7901]

Yeah, just look at all those great n64 rpgs...

[@jasonjones7461]

Imo the best rpg on N64 was the infamous "Quest 64". It bugs me that it gets so much hate because it wasnt a bad game at all. It was FAR from perfect and had a few really frustrating characteristics. But overall its a solid rpg. The magic system was excellent and despite absolutely no equipment to found in the game, your ability to customize your characters build was surprisingly deep for those that understood how it worked. You could choose how you wanted to play the game, from being a "healer", to prioritizing defense, or offense based magic, or even the outlandish physical combat mastery build. I had a great time with multiple playthroughs, one of which had me prioritizing leveling up "attack boost" type magic and spells that added affects to physical weapon hits. The game didn't outright tell you, but the more you used your physical "Staff" to attack, the more powerful it becomes. It levels up as you use it. Combined with physical boosting magic you could have a unique playthrough where Brian is a badass warrior haha. Most ppl also failed to realize that "quest 64" was a remake of a GBC game "Brians Quest". The gbc title even features the same clever magic system. "Quest 64" had nice character models, animations and great music too. My ONLY complaint is a big one though...all battles take place without changing to a battle screen. So it was prerty easy to get turned around in the heat of battle and not know which way you came from. Despite being a cartridge, the world and the dungeons are MASSIVE and you have little in terms of a map or navigation help. This results in many frustrating revelations that you were walking the wrong way and wasted a good 20 min doing so.

[@TopHatGamingManChannel]

Paper Mario is great too, but you can see why it wouldn't destroy cartridge space.

[@ruediix]

The lack of the ability to compress 3D motion sequences at the time really put a damper on the game's ability to fit in the small storage space of an N64 cartridge. While by the end of the N64 era, the largest N64 cartridges could hold 2-4 times the capacity of 64DD disks, this was well too late for this. The Playstation clearly had weaker rendering capabilities, but the massive storage of the CDROM could work around this by simply using FMVs to handle backgrounds instead of rendering the backgrounds in 3D or with tile graphics. The big issue with the Playstation is it had much less CPU power leftover after rendering an average scene. However, your typical menu-based JRPG did not need a lot of CPU code. There is virtually no physics to simulate and only simple script calculations. There is absolutely no need for the extra CPU time that the N64 offered. The N64 was also harder to optimize for. This probably showed in the benchmarks he was running. Unless your benchmark is fully optimized for the N64 hardware, it will have horrible results. Most notably is memory random access latency. This also means that one has to optimize the game to run it

[@trashinho872]

I remember this well, as I had the N64 and was super excited for this game. The switch to PlayStation was a big deal at the time since it showed the limitations of cartridge gaming, and I was sad because I didn't have one. I ended up spending a whole lot of time at my friends house just so I could play this.

[@resievil]

Is that Tifa from the thumbnail AI generated or from something? I swear I remember it from like an EGM but I can't put my finger on it.

[@potatonots]

Final Fantasy VII was the reason I bought a PlayStation. I was such a noob to non-cartridge gaming I didn't realize you needed a memory card to save, until I made it to the first save point. Left my game on while I went to town, 15minutes away, to purchase one. 😅 I also share the birthday with Cloud, so I was super invested to role playing the game as a green eyed white boy.

[@tysonpham2153]

Resident Evil 2 on N64 can run well with cutscene included but to my knowledge, i think is kinda expensive. I can see why Square doesn't want to release it

[@ShockedBones]

This stuff about the PS1 being more powerful than the N64 is counter to literally every other source I've seen talking about the differences between the two.

[@Lazumaus]

I believe the 64 was more powerful then the ps1. the big difference was the ps1 had discs which could hold more and have better sound quality and FMV"s. For example, RE2 on ps1 has two discs, but a lot of voice acting and FMV's. While on the 64, it's on a single catridge, the sound is crunched down and the FMV"s are more re-used to save on space. So in the end it all comes down to DISC vs Cartrige, and at this point in time square believed and rightly so that it was disc or nothing.

[@gamble777888]

So freaking long ago now, but yea I remember the hype of FFVII on the N64. It really did shift the entire gaming landscape forever when Square jumped ship. Crazy to think if Nintendo had made the simple decision of going wth CDs that it's extremely likely Sony isn't even a player in the market today.

[@Amdecreations.]

I remember the prototype image of FF7 for the Ultra 64 on EGM magazine. I'm glad Square moved to the PlayStation, but I wonder if it was still possible to do FF7 on the N64 but use silicone graphics like Donkry Kong and Killer Instinct.

[@GrandTheftWatto]

the rendered backgrounds and FMV are actually weak parts of FF7 - the gameplay suffered as a result. it may very well have been a better game on the N64, albeit a smaller, less flashy one.

[@newcorpses]

Hmm. The "N64 version" was an FFVI tech demo, and it doesn't even look bad. The models look similar to what they eventually ended up using for VII. I don't think that demo looked "awful," and if they had ended up making a shorter, less-impressive FFVII for N64, it most likely would have ended up being a good game, albeit a different game that was compromised from their lofty vision. We'd probably still be talking about how groundbreaking the game was, much like people are still talking about Ocarina of Time today.

[@currywurst2434]

Yep, it would have probably been a different game. Full 3d, shorter because of that, not as cinematic. Could have been more impressive in a different way graphically, but for a story driven game it was probably the right choice to go with a system with CD rom and prerendered backgrounds. Honestly i do prefer the old PS1 FFs over the new, including their basic 3d overworlds, everything was more artistic, now its like Kingdom Hearts with too realistic looking charakters and multiculti NPCs that could be real word tourists in Disney Land. Power limits on hardware can have benefits. It was all about story and artistical fantastic places.

[@AceUkiyoGeatsIX]

Nope it would be terrible without discs

[@lubenretrolletarios7901]

No, because someone else should make a great rpg for n64. Noone could.

[@captain3186]

What I loved so much about the 5th Gen other than the Quirky games was that there were games that NO WAY could run on the competing Platform. There were games on PS1 that N64 couldn't do in a million years and games on the N64 that would melt a PS1. Gaming was truly special at that time. Glad I owned Both Platforms + Saturn in their Respective Time.

[@riskybitness]

What I find remarkable about this is that Nintendo's answer to their cartridges not having the storage of CDs was to introduce... slightly different cartridges. Those "disks" really just look like differently shaped cartridges! What were they, some kind of zip disks? Anyway if you want some more FF info for your videos, I have a few pretty good FF videos on my channel although I stopped uploading a year ago. I'm a big fan of Final Fantasy so I know a lot of trivia.

[@JohnVanRiper]

"awful"? It's a friggin' tech demo. Y'all need to stop with the clickbaiting.

[@TopHatGamingManChannel]

Have you even watched the video, before passing ill judgment on my thumbnail? As I made it very clear that Square viewed Nintendo 64 hardware as too awful to host grand RPGs. Also no Final Fantasy 7 tech demo has ever been produced. Stop the misinformation.

[@mrh3894]

what was awful about it? It was never a game. What the fuck.

[@PaladinLarec]

I'm old enough to remember that issue of Diehard Gamefan (and I still have it) where they showed those FF7 shots on "ultra 64". I remember drooling over it and being hype thinking Celes and Locke were coming back. I hated Sony but ended up being a PSX just to play FF7. Don't regret it.

[@TheBlackSeraph]

I ended up buying an N64 because I thought given the SNES' track record of great RPGs (I didn't know about the schism between Nintendo and Square or Enix) the N64 wouldn't disappoint. It did, since the only PAL RPG I know of is Holy Magic Century (Quest 64).

[@interoffice5402]

I was obsessed with that issue. I made up some convoluted lore in my head about those Celes, Locke, and Shadow making an appearance or the world getting a 3D remake of FF3 that had come out, back before such a thing was even really considered.

[@videogameobsession]

Where in this video is the FF7 N64 tech demo shown? I scrubbed around, but didn't see it here.

[@syncmonism]

If Nintendo had committed to including the 64DD floppy drive with the system from the beginning, or at least to releasing it very early on, then that likely would have actually worked out very well, but there was also a lot of financial risk to doing that, as it would have meant adding a huge amount of cost to the system which Nintendo would have had to pass on to the consumer, and/or may have had to sell each system at a loss. A CD drive also likely would have worked out for them as well, but also would have added a lot of cost, OR, if they had gone through with their Sony partnership, there would have been other downsides to that arrangement, though it's easy to see with the benefit of hindsight that without having to compete directly with Sony, that console would have absolutely dominated the market. Those floppy disks would have set the minimum capacity available to each game developer at 64MB, which while it is still a lot less than the capacity of a CD, that would have still been a huge improvement over the typical 8-16MB size of a cartridge (8MB cartridges were the standard early on, with typical sizes increasing over time as the cost of the ROM chips came down over time). It is my understanding that the floppy disks would also have been a lot cheaper to manufacture than cartridges, especially in terms of Yen (or dollars) per MB, which would have made multi-disk games entirely feasible as well. This would have been more than enough capacity to be able to include the same amount of content that even larger Playstation games had, aside from FMV video, which they couldn't use as much of, and/or would need to reduce the quality, and there would be more limitations to what kind of music could be used, and how it could be compressed. The much larger size of CDs might sound like a big advantage, but for this generation, that much capacity was far some necessary, and it came at the expense of long load times and slow seek times, and the 64DD had about three times shorter seek times, and had about three times faster loading times. 64MB floppy drives would have actually been very well suited to this generation of consoles, if only Nintendo had actually committed to releasing it early on and started releasing its own games using that format.

[@ShuckleII]

2 minutes and you still haven't said a single piece of information relevant to the title or interesting to the people that would likely click on this video

[@tritran7003]

Patience is a virtue, child.

[@BryanM86]

Took 10 mins of skipping to get to it

[@BryanM86]

@@tritran7003thanks grandpa

[@StudioKelpie1993]

Do find it funny how Nintendo eventually went to discs for 3 console but then going straight back to Cartridges for the Switch which Third Party Devs just decide to release their games Digitally on Switch with a few Cartridge based games

[@MatrixEvolution17]

that artwork in the thumbnail looks cool who did it? What's the name of the artist who drew it? I would love to know the name of whoever drew it. Please tell me who drew it.

[@TopHatGamingManChannel]

Arty Officiaco Intelligencio

[@mbii7667]

Where can I get that Tifa artwork in the thumbnail?

[@TopHatGamingManChannel]

I made it using AI

[@raidomegnuo2868]

@@TopHatGamingManChannel you did used it a lot during the video. Well, if it's supposed to be used for comedic purposes it's fine.

[@JMrealgamer]

If not for Dragon Quest we wouldn’t even have FF. We wouldn’t have a lot of other RPGs either. I’m thankful for Yuji Horii getting Akira Toriyama and Koichi Sugiyama together for that one. Chrono Trigger the first ever game with a new game plus and multiple endings Yuji Horii also headed up with Akira Toriyama and Sakaguchi from FF fame. Yasunori Mitsuda did most of the music and passed out due to overwork so Nobou Uematsu had to step in and help out a bit. Yasunori Mitsuda does the music for Xenogears as well as Xenoblade Chronicles games as well. Geniuses in their own rights.

[@phillyredsox]

Nintendo can get bent. If they wouldn’t have screwed Sony they wouldn’t have created the problem in the first place. It is wild that they get mad and feel betrayed by Squaresoft when they did the exact same thing to Sony.

[@The_Prizessin_der_Verurteilung]

As a PlayStation Move, PlayStation Vita and Xperia Play owner, I can speak from experience when I say Sony fans are the LAST people to talk about betraying anyone. Sony didn't even support us, Why do you care so much that Nintendo hurt their feelings one time?

[@DocVolteer]

Say what video was at 20:08 ?

[@angryalbertan9353]

Glover 64 trailer.

[@Zhello79]

​@@angryalbertan9353lol that game was a classic 😂

[@DocVolteer]

Thank you@@angryalbertan9353

[@MANTASYNTH]

Wow, imagine if Sony and Nintendo had joined forces to develop a disc based system... .... .... ....

[@Sugurain]

Maybe it looked impossible at first because of the initial capacity of cartridges. The maximum capacity in 1996 was 8MB, that's what Mario 64 used. Later games, like Resident Evil 2, Pokemon Stadium 2 came in 64MB cartridges, that's an 8X increase in capacity. Similarly, the largest 64DD disk was 64MB, but like super floppies of that era (Ex: Zip drive), larger capacities could become available later on. I believe the largest Zip Drive produced was 700MB in size, that's as big as a CD-rom. Maybe something similar could've happened on the 64DD, where FF7 could've been released in 3 64DD disks. Dual access was also possible with the 64DD, so part of the game could come in a standard N64 cartridge, and the rest in the magnetic disks. I'm not saying FF7 would be possible on the N64 right away, but that it COULD'VE happened later in that system's life. If not FF7, then maybe FF8 or 9.

[@TheBlackSeraph]

This would only be possible if you assume that the hardware for the N64 and the PSX are comparable, and can handle data/memory the same way, which is unlikely. Even then, you'd need a standard N64 cart (multiple disk spanning, anti-piracy/cheat detection), a controller pak (save files), an expansion pak (improved textures/polygons, dynamic resolutions) and multiple 64DD carts (the actual game, who knows how many). I doubt that FF8 or FF9 would even be possible.

[@G.L.999]

You were close with the largest Zip disk storage size; however, the largest at that time was actually '750MBs'(100MBs more than the PS1 CD) in size! Though I don't know how expensive or cheap a Zip Disk drive of that calibur would've cost Nintendo to onsider manufacturing at the time!

[@lucascostanzo2046]

​@@TheBlackSeraphThe game would have to be rewritten from scratch to work with the N64 hardware, but that's possible since multiplatform games existed back then. The best example would probably be Resident Evil 2, which even includes FMV on the N64.

[@lucascostanzo2046]

​@@G.L.999 More than a CD for sure, but surely less than a standard high capacity N64 cartridge. Hahah

[@MrCaptainobvious77]

I remember speaking with a Research and Developer in regard to this. He did mention that these type of disks can hold more than a CD-ROM. He still thought Nintendo wasted their time with the 64DD as it was going nowhere.

[@Smaxx]

5:20 I'm not sure. I'd say those buildings definitely look pre-rendered, not created as individual pixels. I could be wrong, but I think a few games claimed to have used rendered graphics/backgrounds, such as Secret of Evermore, Terranigma, and Kirby Superstar/Kirby's Fun Pack. Yet they definitely don't share the art style seen in Donkey Kong Country series or Super Mario RPG.

[@TrentCantrell]

To a teen who had managed to download a tiny low resolution preview of the N64 demo, it looked amazing. Ultimately, I followed Final Fantasy to the Playstation. Knowing what I do now of Squaresoft's history with Nintendo, I'm surprised they stuck around as long as they did. Squaresoft had games in production for the SNES CD (Mana) when N just decided to drop it and Nindtendo was an infamously difficult company to work with in that period. The only downside to the move was that Squaresoft's love of CG animation led to them thinking they they should create movies. Such a pity that they forgot it was their stories we loved them for.

[@neodeckard5158]

Intriguing story you have here, and yes, there was a lot of visual improvements that really helped Final Fantasy VII to become the most sold Playstation game of all~ I have an idea for a new video: Retro gamers know that Sunsoft was (And is returning to be) a prestigious game developer on the NES, getting notorious as said console was getting older and more sound gimmicks and chips were getting added into their games~ The one thing that puzzles me is, why have they fallen so bad after the release of "Gimmick!"? What was the reason their SNES releases in U.S. were mostly, if not only made by U.S. companies? Why almost every Japanese release has failed to get out of Japan, including Albert Odyssey and some Ufouria/Hebereke games? Such a nebulous time period. 2 decades of little to no games in the 21st century until they have decided to come back and make new games again... As of myself, I am currently enjoying their recent release of Hebereke 2(Ufouria The Saga 2), as you can see. Yes, it's a long text, but just as long as probably reading the manual of the Japanese release of the first Ufouria.

[@The_Prizessin_der_Verurteilung]

The best seller on PlayStation was Gran Turismo, not Final Fantasy VII. (Also the ONLY time a first party title was Sony's best seller on a system) Don't take that away from them.

[@M1XART]

Actually, N64 did draw more polygons than PSX, later on systems lifespan. But early on Nintendo only offered really poor microcode that limited number of polygons on screen in favor for N64 exclusive special effects.

[@bingobongo1615]

But I mean Mario 64 likely has more polygons than any PsOne Game of the time…. The playstation had not a lot of games with larger levels simply because its 3D rendering capabilities were so "poor" (It was older hardware in the end).

[@M1XART]

​@@bingobongo1615 Big limitation on PSone was 2MB RAM and CD -medium combo. Basically every level and everything on screen had to fit 2MB. So not really benefit of CD space. However, polygon count is actually measured polygons per a frame * framerate. So, 3000 polygons at 60fps = 180000 polygons/sec. Sure N64 had always bigger levels, ie. more polygons on screen, but if framerate was low-ish, then it's not a lot polygons/sec.

[@chrislaws4785]

It's funny how Final Fantasy Started out as a Nintendo game, but is now thought of as SOLELY as Playstation game...lol. I mean Nintendo DID kind of screw Sony over when it came to the N64 anyways when they "dumped" Sony's CD based console in order to go with cartridges. And that IS why Sony then took their CD based game and gave Nintendo a big "F U" and created the Playstation.

[@KellicTiger]

I still want to hop into an alternate universe where the colab between Nintendo and Sony on the Nintendo CD had actually happened for the SNES. The games that would have resulted from that device would have been absolutely epic and the subsequent N64 with a optical drive would have been....earth shattering.

[@Lowie81]

Awful? I remember seeing the first screens of this game back in the day and for the time it looked awesome..

[@172louis]

What was also shocking was the fact of wondering how can FF games go from FF3 staight to FF7 just like that. Then we nerds started searching and realising. And those other titles was already being translated super quick in versions found on the internet if you were clever. Mind was blown. 🤯 Man the memories.

[@RetroArcadeGuy]

The game is basically printed in both discs with finite unique data mostly pertaining to the disc swap and which may well still fit into one single CD and still have space left for the whole OST (which it's tracked music like MOD files) and some FMVs. Most (if not all) of the maps , sounds, models and data are shared between discs. Theoretically, if Square didn't cry about the cartridge's space and remade the cutscenes using a graphical engine, they could've ported the game 100% albeit without FMVs, as they would be rendered in-game, music would had a bit of hit in quality but wouldn't sound something far like the music found in Ocarina of time and for backgrounds they could've used the same techniques used in RE264. RE2 is the best example of an impossible port done right, and this is a 2 discs game on either system ported at.

[@Biglover29]

I missed turn based combat like was in the original FF7

[@zipzeolocke2]

I think the only great thing about using Nintendo cartridges was loading speed. There are no loading screens with Nintendo games that use cartridges because they use RAM memory instead of CD's. The only downside using the extra storage with CD's is that reading them is a slower process

[@jeremyhall2727]

Square made the right choice 😁

[@vidjenko8349]

I like to think if Mother 3 was ever released at the same time on the N64, it would blow this game out of the water.

[@hogginsprasetto9997]

2:41 why use an AI-generated image, man... Is every youtuber going to do this now?

[@jagan2]

I wouldn't say that the N64 demo was awful. Without the cartridges limitations, the N64 had a more powerful hardware than PSX. The demo of FFVI shows an impressive animation, which was nowhere to be seen in FFVII. Both FFVII and FFIX used the cartoony characters, which would have been handled perfectly by the N64 and way better! Not to mention the possibility of having larger open worlds, fully 3D, with better characters models (see Zelda)

[@natecw4164]

It's amazing to think: If they'd simply integrated cartridge swapping, as they'd initially promised devs, this could have been one of very few multicart N64 games. It'd have been incredibly different than either of these versions... Fun to think about

[@TonyRead31]

Did you really have to put video footage of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth in the video? Some of us don't want to be spoiled!

[@candicedebebe6276]

Great video, repeated yourself a couple times for filler I felt. Still very informative and awesomely presented.

[@thebudman1980]

If you call usb flash a cartridge. It can fit more than any disc media. Disc media is obsolete for anything other than games that work offline. Movies that work offline. So when you travel or your internet isn't working. Or your staying in a camper somewhere. Couldn't afford your internet bill but can still play your games for something to do.

[@butler128]

The PlayStation was more efficient at rendering 3D, but that's because it cut corners. The texture rendering on the PS1 did not use perspective and the coordinates accuracy was very low compared to that of the N64. I have a hard time getting used to the rendering of FFVII and FFVIII on the PlayStation because it's all over the place. I think if they could have fit FFVII on an N64 cartridge, it would have looked a lot better.

[@XeroCool420]

13:08 when they were discussing how the N64 needs a CD ROM drive, all I could think of is how Nintendo instead went backwards and tried to make the disk drive using specialized floppy disks. I mean the whole reason I've never purchased an N64 was because as a 1314 year old kid at the time I felt that cartridges were outdated already and CD-ROMs were obviously the future cuz I was also a PC kid. I mean I went from playing final fantasy 7 on Playstation which is why I got my PlayStation in the first place, to going and playing original Diablo on the PC. Ironically Nintendo's always had a hard-on for cartridges

[@turtlehermit6047]

Quest 64 enters the chat.. Lol I grew up playing dogs on nes and super.. I fell in love with them in the PlayStation era.. But when I played quest 64 I hated it so much.. The most impressive game I seen made for 64 was probably resident evil 2.

[@interoffice5402]

Damn I remember following all of the magazines during this time for updates and rumors about what was happening with FF7 before it went to the PS. The screenshots of that tech demo did things to my imagination and I can say the disappointment that it wasn't staying with Nintendo was real, especially with the background of the console warring between Sega and Nintendo.

[@erikgilson1687]

It's nuts that I not only didn't know this was a thing, but also that it was being hyped as THE reason to own a Nintendo 64 when it came out

[@Shalakor]

Nintendo's "choice" to not use CDs deserves a pretty big asterisk, since they certainly made many attempts towards using disk technology before the 64 even came to be, almost directly resulting in things like the CDi and PlayStation existing in the first place when those attempts fell through. Way more than any single one burned bridge involved in this story.

[@cmdrls212]

That was the siggraph tech demo of ff6. Not ff7

[@1moblin2]

man so happy square enix & other Japanese studios moved to Sony & PlayStation its far better consoles & portable handhelds for them to make real Japanese games on pure true innovation & creativity with their many thousand stacked on thousands stacked on even more thousands of endless Japanese games plus best controller gameplay ever....Long Live Amazing Sony & PlayStation of Japan!

[@3Rayfire]

I remember that fire storm. Nintendo was pissed. It was pretty unprecedented, Nintendo had ruled for a decade, it was a huge flip.

[@anon_y_mousse]

I wonder how many compromises they would have had to make to bring a stunted version of FF7 to the N64. That's not to say that the N64 was particularly low powered, but rather that it just wasn't quite at the same level as the PS1, and it definitely had a massive shortfall on RAM and storage space.

[@Andinus3000]

This decision ultimately turned me into a playstation and xbox user until the Wii came out, and I wanted Smash Bros Brawl, (a roommate in college had a gamecube and introduced me to Smash Melee), it just goes to show that video game franchises can have big swing when it comes to console success.

[@cellshade87]

20:06 What game is that? It looked like a 90's CGI cutscene with Loony Toons humor. Everyone was getting hit with a ball then their face distorts. 🤣 I thought the first character was an early CGI test of Cloud but then he gets hit in the face with a ball. 🤣

[@AZodiacCancer]

This was my first FF7 and game console. It will always hold a special place in my heart and I absolutely love(d) Rebirth.

[@DarkAlkaiser]

The FMV fad was the only issue with the 64, without the FMVs, FF7 would have easily fit. Doesn't even have CD quality sound on PS. The Behemoth claim would have just needed optimization, that's utter nonsense XD

[@tugaygunes4816]

thumbnail artist?

[@emcg4131]

Sony made the right move. I didn't buy a Playstation until FF7 was released. Also, I remember going to the movie theater to see the commercial for FF7 that was shown before the previews.

[@ruikazane5123]

And not only that...FF VII pushed the hardware to some limits, even to the extent that emulators cannot completely play the game without any specific hacks for the Final Fantasy games. Whatever Squaresoft did, it was pretty much alchemy!

[@chrislaws4785]

You know, i would LOVE to see them make the ORIGINAL 2D version of FF7 that was scrapped, but using today's HD2D graphics like in Octopath Traveler.

[@teruienages962]

Not seeing exactly what makes any of it "awful"

[@TopHatGamingManChannel]

So did you miss all the stuff about the Nintendo 64 being too limited to be able to support the game and Nintendo behaving too ignorant to switch to CD Rom that generation?

[@holzman00]

That doesn't make it "awful". The game would have just been different if it was on N64, not necessarily bad.​@@TopHatGamingManChannel

[@Lightpaladin720]

he don't care

[@Defensive_Wounds]

9:03 - Not from my experiences back in the day and today! The blocky pixellated warping walls of the PSX/PS1 vs the nicely blurred but not warping all over the place of the N64 made the N64 a superior gaming experience right there, no need to try and look past the yucky graphics of the PS1when playing the N64. The developers at Square back then admitted they were noobs at making 3D games so perhaps if they had more experience over time, they could have refined FF7 to run just fine on maybe 2 carts for the N64 and be far superior in fidelity (apart from video cut scenes) I mean the audio is shite sounding midi on the PSX version anyway!!

[@dwayneellis2003]

I am so glad it didn't come out on the N64. No way would it have fit on 1 cartridge and it would've been blurry as hell, effectively killing the series

[@richardm.4227]

Pro tip: It's titled "Final Fantasy" because the game was the studio's last chance before bankruptcy. They thought it would be the "final" fantasy game they would get to make.

[@skins4thewin]

Nintendo plain goofed with the N64 hardware. Going with that hardware configuration was a big mistake, despite the "technically better" 3D graphic potential of the system.

[@davidaitken8503]

FF7 is actually where Square lost their way. It's like they went "Hollywood". In the following years flashy cinematics started to become a larger and larger focus. The pace of combat became bogged down with increasingly elaborate summons. Less and less agency was given to the player as the games became increasingly linear. Square used to be one of the most profitable and important 3rd parties. Now they are only staying afloat through nostalgia with their FF7 reimaginings.

[@redfoxbennaton]

That's disgusting. So the N64 Disks size where actually really small? WTF?!

[@ravenbob4293]

Well is was PS1 disk 700mb vs N64 cartridge 64mb.

[@redfoxbennaton]

@@ravenbob4293 making a disk as low as the highest cartridge is such a pointless scam

[@G.L.999]

@@redfoxbennaton Could've at least doubled the storage to 128MBs if need be at the time.

[@redfoxbennaton]

@@G.L.999 Or just use CD's but no Nintendo wants to patent everything.

[@G.L.999]

@@redfoxbennaton Or just double the magnetic Zip disk storage from 64MGs to 128MGs. Besides, Sony already patented the CD, so why shouldn't Nintendo have the right to patent a media of their own to make money? But I guess in your little world, only Sony can patent something and Nintendo can't based on your logic.

[@mikicerise6250]

Square was absolutely right. Nintendo was ridiculously pigheaded about the cartridges and dug their own grave. Sony was shrewd.

[@JohnCrawford1979]

FF VII would have been easily made on the N64 today, considering you could put a game with at least 1Tb of memory on a USB, and devs have finally gotten used to making games on 64 bit modern computers after nearly 2 decades of primarily developing games on PCs and consoles that rarely tapped into 64 bit computing, and yet made incredible looking 32 bit games.

[@mightylink65]

Now Square Enix is complaining about Sony, saying their console exclusivity is holding them back and hurting the sales of FF16 and Rebirth. I wonder how low they're going to crawl back to Nintendo...

[@AceUkiyoGeatsIX]

They won't, Nintendo gimps their systems like the Xbox S does for PC and Playstation games. Switch can't run these games and its likely the Switch Attach won't either.

[@Stephan5916]

To me, this was a very good video. I already knew the info regarding FF7 not being on the N64. The N64 not having a CD-Rom was a MASSIVE mistake.

[@richardwatson5730]

I've been on an Akira binge since the news dropped. Rip to a legend that brought us not only phenomenal anime, but to include amazing games. The console is irrelevant, artists live forever. Here's hoping whomever takes the torch does justice to his vision.

[@andrewvader1955]

Normally Final Fantasy would be on Nintendo hardware. Going to PlayStation with iconic disk sets making you feel progress while swapping disks was amazing.

[@DimitrisDr3am]

I'm playing through ff7 on my retroid pocket 4+ at the moment and other than the cutscenes, calling it "3d" is kinda a stretch. So far the hardest part of the game is finding my way through an area because I keep missing where you walk under a train, or up a pole lol. I don't remember having this problem in the 90's though so maybe maybe I'm just old.

[@positivevibrations5103]

Nintendo's decision to stick with cartridges for 64 one of the biggest commercial mistakes in all of gaming history. Really feel we could be in a very alternative timeline of gaming history if 64 was CD based.

[@benjib2691]

You can never know for sure. Some games would have been drastically different if Nintendo went for CD-ROM. Nowadays I really appreciate the N64 simply for the absence of long loadings, it doesn't break the pace of games like on PS1 for the majority of games. Quake 2 for example is a technical marvel on PS1, but the loading zones are really annoying. The N64 itself would have been more expensive and wouldn't be as robust as it is today. Seriously this console is a tank, I never had any issue with the 2 N64 I have (one PAL and one NTSC-J), can't say the same thing for my PS1s and PS2s unfortunately, I wish Sony had put better quality drive mechanisms. We can't say for sure if it would have been a better thing on the long run (butterfly effect, etc...)