If you're not a console owner, you may not appreciate the significance of Squaresoft's Final Fantasy series and its latest installment for the PlayStation. Maybe you've seen the Final Fantasy VII commercials on TV or the billboards in some larger cities. Maybe you've idly paged past a glowing review in a video game magazine while searching for the token PC reviews in the back. Maybe you've heard a friend mention it admiringly and wondered at his zeal. Or maybe you're a die-hard Ultima or Wizardry fan who's never even heard of it and you're wondering how a Fantasy can be Final seven times in a row. If so, you've got a surprise in store this Spring when Final Fantasy VII marks the series' debut on PCs.
Maybe years ago, you played one of its earlier incarnations on that dusty Super NES tucked away in your closet. "We have a lot of fans who played the Final Fantasy games on consoles and they've graduated to PCs now," says Squaresoft's Randall Fujimoto, who's in charge of the PC conversion (Squaresoft is the US arm of Japan's Square). Eidos has secured the distribution rights for the PC conversion in the United States and Europe. Eidos' Gary Keith says, "I'm getting inundated with e-mails saying, 'Oh, thank you so much! I don't have a PlayStation, but I played the whole series and I've been waiting for this.' Everyone's pretty excited about it."
Final Fantasy what?
What's to be excited about? It's just another role-playing game (RPG), right? Not quite. For starters, it may be one of the longest RPGs ever, clocking in at about 80 hours of game time for the average player. But it's the quality, not the quantity, that makes the Final Fantasy series stand out, particularly in Japan, where it originated. Hironobu Sakaguchi is the creative mastermind behind the series, which is widely known in the Japanese mainstream. When gauging a game's popularity in the mass market, Fujimoto says, "I go by what my Mom knows. [She] has heard of Myst because it's everywhere. It's the same thing with Final Fantasy over in Japan. Your average housewife would probably know about the Final Fantasy games. She's seen them on commercials and they've been in the press so much." In Japan, where console systems have a much higher level of market penetration, it's estimated that over 900f PlayStation owners have bought Final Fantasy VII. The soundtrack even sells in Japanese music stores.
So if the game has sustained such popularity and recognition through seven installments, why haven't we seen more of it in the United States? The answer to this lies in a bit of convoluted math. Final Fantasy VII is technically Final Fantasy IV in the states. While Japan has seen a straight run of all seven titles, only I, IV, and VI have made it to this side of the Pacific, dubbed locally Final Fantasy I, II, and III. The first three (only the first of which made it to the States) were written for Nintendo's basic 8-bit machine, the NES in the US and the Famicon in Japan. The Japanese IV (which was the US II), V, and VI (the US IV) were written for the Super Famicon and Super NES. Confusing, to be sure, but at the risk of leaving Americans to wonder what became of four, five, and six, Squaresoft has chucked the numbers game and decided to let seven be seven. (Oddly enough, there's no continuity of story, or even characters, among the seven games.
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