The Final Frontier of Final Fantasy VII
(Originally Published on 16 Bits and Beyond on March 26th, 2019)
it took them long enough. but better late than never.
Final Fantasy VII is finally back to where it all started. It only took them 22 years.
After over two decades and hundreds of twists and turns in the console wars, arguably THE game to completely catapult the Playstation and Sony to a dominant led over Nintendo for nearly a decade in a row has finally made it to a Nintendo console and ending the insane drought. March 26th 2019 may not become any sort of turning point in the industry because of the current state of the medium, but for old-school fans, for the diehard Nintendo gamers, and for those in love with the crazy economics behind the cutthroat industry this date will be remembered as a curse being lifted, as a saga finally coming full circle, and the signaling of a constantly-changing world of video games.
Final Fantasy VII, one of the best games of the 90s, one of the top RPGs ever made, and a benchmark in the devastating console wars between Nintendo and Sony, has spent years being remade, having spiritual and actual sequels and storyline continuations in multiple forms of media. However, they were never seen on a Nintendo console, despite its impact and fandom. From the Nintendo 64 through the WiiU, Nintendo gamers and diehards had not experienced any variation of the seventh installment of the epic Final Fantasy series. 25 years ago, when Final Fantasy III released on the SNES, nobody would have ever believed that the next chapter would completely avoid Nintendo for such a long period of time. But Nintendo’s notorious stubbornness (despite it causing a lot of good things to the company) would ultimately create its own worst enemy and destroy one of its strongest relationships.
To make a long winded story short, Nintendo was supposed to partner up with Sony before stabbing them in the back because they got cold feet over the upcoming deal and because of the rising concerns involving the technology that Sony wanted to implement. In a rather cold move, especially coming from the usually-polite company, Sony wouldn’t find out about Phillips becoming the new partner of Nintendo until the infamous 1991 Consumer Electronics Show. After attempts to restructure the partnership for the post-SNES future fell apart, Sony went on their own. We all know how they’re doing nowadays.
But Square Soft became an unexpected casualty in Nintendo’s refusal to accept the CD format. Square had attempted to create this massive epic video game, and the N64 cartridges just wasn’t strong enough to support it. Only Nintendo at this point was truly the masters of pushing the limits of their hardware, which is why third-party support started bleeding and Nintendo began to rely more and more on their first-party software like Mario and Zelda and F-Zero (kidding about that last one…). During their frustrated development phase, Square saw the opportunity to make their epic on the other side with Sony’s Playstation. Nobody really knows how well Nintendo took the news, and nobody really knows how friendly or contentious the break-up was, but with the Final Fantasy series remaining away from Nintendo consoles more than eight sequels later, one can guesstimate things ended quite poorly.
While Nintendo’s gambles with Phillips and not moving to a disk-format until 2001 with the Nintendo Gamecube, Square Soft’s gamble to move to Sony and try to convert their fans from Super Mario to Gran Turismo actually paid off magnificently. Despite requiring multiple discs, Final Fantasy VII sold 2 million copies in Japan alone in three days, and 11 million copies sold worldwide, ushering in a new generation of Playstation and RPG fans. It took them 7 tries to get the Americans to care about Final Fantasy but here they were, suddenly on top of the gaming world merely months after Super Mario 64 and Nintendo 64’s strong start.
The gaming industry is insane, because unlike politicians and movie studios and television networks that can thrive and survive despite making a slew of mistakes, sometimes all you need is one mistake and all of a sudden you are trailing in the market and with little hope for a comeback. The Sony/Nintendo affair cost Nintendo an entire decade of decent market share (The Nintendo Wii would break the streak), and the Final Fantasy VII fiasco left Nintendo without a decent JRPG for arguably an even longer time.
Take away Pokemon, and you’ll see in the late 90s and early 2000s the House of Mario lost Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Chrono, Mana, SaGa, Breath of Fire around the same time. Up until the Nintendo Switch’s mind-boggling indie/third-party lineup, Nintendo was not considered a good home, or even an actual home for the JRPGs that are gaming staples today. One mistake severely harmed Nintendo for over a decade, and it was only their smart financial backings (and Pokemon) that helped them remain afloat until they struck gold with the DS/Wii combo.
But the relationship between Nintendo and Square would remain awkward and distant, even after Nintendo would partner with them for Crystal Chronicles to help cover up for the financial fissure known as The Spirits Within. Nintendo would still not be allowed access to the main series because of Sony becoming part-owner of the development studio (until a few years ago)---and well, also because Square Enix clearly remains disappointed in Nintendo’s continuing ways of making it hard for third-party companies to develop games for them. With Nintendo’s behavior in the early 90s and the subsequent fallout, even in the midst of different people running the company it appears that there are still trust issues and bad blood---although the Nintendo Switch has quickly become the anti-thesis of past Nintendo behaviors towards third-party companies big and small.
I’m sure Square saw the feedback of Cloud’s appearance supported with whopping 6 million copies of Smash WiiU sold to a dismal install base of 14 million and those happy feelings of being with Nintendo started popping up again. Square isn’t as strong a brand as it used to be, and Sony doesn’t even financially back them. Lastly, most of your older gamers remain with Nintendo and evidence of this comes from the first-party games of long-running franchises still selling like hotcakes. Before you know it, Square Enix has reached out to Nintendo and has emerged as one of the larger third-party companies willing to do business. There’s even news about Square creating a new division with the sole purpose of creating Switch software.
But another nice way to patch things up would be to shift a plethora of Final Fantasies to Nintendo, eight games to be exact. Similar to that infamous gesture about a Picasso painting being given to Robin Williams as a way to patch up his rocky relationship with Disney, Square Enix is sharing their prized paintings to a company that had shunned them, and had felt betrayed by them. And among the eight games is the one that saved Square, launched them into a gaming powerhouse, and remains their most popular and profitable title: Cloud-starring Final Fantasy VII. With this, the drought has finally ended. Not only are main title Final Fantasy games finally (pun intended) landing on a main Nintendo console, but the elusive one that helped cause Nintendo’s wild financial roller coaster ride from late Clinton to late Bush Jr.
The future between these two Japanese companies remains up in the air, as suddenly we see Nintendo as the top dog in the gaming world with the WiiU2—er, I mean, Nintendo Switch. The tables have turned a little as Nintendo no longer really needs Square, but it would be icing on the delicious profitable cake known as the Switch. The Switch is easily going to land 40 million lifetime sales before the summer finishes, and this is with the next generation Pokemon game in the holiday horizon.
Only time will tell how Final Fantasy does in the portable console, and if it means Kingdom Hearts 3 and the next Final Fantasy game for Switch owners in the near future. But at the very least, the drought is over, the wounds are almost healed, and we might see a return to partnership form between two of among the few remaining 1990s fighters in the always-insane gaming industry.
The legacy of Final Fantasy VII has finally come full circle back to where they originally started. Cloud, Tifa, and the Chocobos have finally arrived on a Nintendo console.