The first 3D Final Fantasy?

[Stingy Perry Stingy Perry]

For some of you may or not know back in the ‘90s a year or two before Final Fantasy 7, there were rumors that Squaresoft was in development of what supposed to be FF game for the N64.

We all know Square ditched the big N for Sony because of its stubbornness regarding the use of game cartridges.

Like an old saying goes where this smoke there’s fire, well the smoke is some leaked footages of a 3D demo of supposed FF which could’ve been FF 7 for the N64.

But the truth is it’s a SGI demo containing FF 6 characters Locke, Terra and Shadow that Square showed at some developers convention that they are on the transitioning from 2D to 3D. I honestly thought of making this a full blown article but I couldn’t dig up anymore details aside from this horrendous video.

 

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

yes, they made this demo in the old Silicon Graphics workstations presumably to demonstrate what was possible in the Ultra 64. They even published articles about it in Nintendo Power. I was super hyped for it back in the day since it implied a sequel to Final Fantasy 6, but it really was nothing more than demo, as far as I can tell. And yeah, Sony strolled in with their CD based console, which allowed them to store 10-15 times the data per disc for the cutscenes, and the rest is history.

 

[ThatOneLum ThatOneLum]

I had never actually heard about this demo before so that's pretty neat.

In some ways it would have been interesting to see what become of FF in the alternate future where they released the series on the N64 as well, but I also feel like we'd have seen much smaller experiences due to how much data the n64 was capable of holding.

Isn't that a huge part of the reason that RPGs are sort of hard to find on that system? Because modern RPGs (for the time) would have held far too much data and old-school (for the time) RPGs would have been seen as out-dated.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

For some of you may or not know back in the ‘90s a year or two before Final Fantasy 7, there were rumors that Squaresoft was in development of what supposed to be FF game for the N64.

We all know Square ditched the big N for Sony because of its stubbornness regarding the use of game cartridges.

Like an old saying goes where this smoke there’s fire, well the smoke is some leaked footages of a 3D demo of supposed FF which could’ve been FF 7 for the N64.

But the truth is it’s a SGI demo containing FF 6 characters Locke, Terra and Shadow that Square showed at some developers convention that they are on the transitioning from 2D to 3D. I honestly thought of making this a full blown article but I couldn’t dig up anymore details aside from this horrendous video.

As much as this game was probably never meant to be an actual FF I am sad they've ditched chibi characters.

 

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

Isn't that a huge part of the reason that RPGs are sort of hard to find on that system? Because modern RPGs (for the time) would have held far too much data and old-school (for the time) RPGs would have been seen as out-dated.

Yes, CG cutscenes were the wave of the future at the time, and most 3rd party devs bailed on the N64, JRPG and otherwise.

 

[DanCalibur]

Pictures of that demo were in every gaming magazine at the time, Earthbound 64 was also teased. They say the former president of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi cut ties completely with Square after the announcement of FF7 for the PSX. It was only when he retired in 2002 and Satoru Iwata became president that Square was "allowed" to release games for Nintendo systems again.

 

[Phage]

I mean, I hate to sound like "that guy", but this isn't exactly article worthy. It's old news. It was a tech demo to show what was possible on the N64, wasn't anything even approaching a full game, and there were screenshots of it in magazine back in the 90's calling it out as such. It's a neat bit of trivia for fans of gaming and FF in particular, but nothing more than that.

Trying to make it out to be a potential FF for the N64 that got canned is sensationalist and clickbait-y.

 

[MemeAlert]

For some of you may or not know back in the ‘90s a year or two before Final Fantasy 7, there were rumors that Squaresoft was in development of what supposed to be FF game for the N64.

We all know Square ditched the big N for Sony because of its stubbornness regarding the use of game cartridges.

Like an old saying goes where this smoke there’s fire, well the smoke is some leaked footages of a 3D demo of supposed FF which could’ve been FF 7 for the N64.

But the truth is it’s a SGI demo containing FF 6 characters Locke, Terra and Shadow that Square showed at some developers convention that they are on the transitioning from 2D to 3D. I honestly thought of making this a full blown article but I couldn’t dig up anymore details aside from this horrendous video.

We all seen Did You Know Gaming videos, this is nothing new.

 

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

Trying to make it out to be a potential FF for the N64 that got canned is sensationalist and clickbait-y.

I disagree. If you look at the Nintendo Power article, they tried to sell it as the starting point for the next Final Fantasy game on the N64. Of course, Nintendo Power is a marketing magazine for Nintendo, so they aren't exactly objective but it wasn't outlandish to make that claim based on the information at the time.

 

[Phage]

I disagree. If you look at the Nintendo Power article, they tried to sell it as the starting point for the next Final Fantasy game on the N64. Of course, Nintendo Power is a marketing magazine for Nintendo, so they aren't exactly objective but it wasn't outlandish to make that claim based on the information at the time.

That's nice and all, but we're also discussing Nintendo Power, a magazine that's been out of print for over a decade, and an article published therein almost three decades ago. The truth about this particular tech demo and it's existence in general has been common knowledge on the internet for an extremely long time.

There is nothing about this that merits a news article on a site, and it certainly doesn't merit a clickbait headline that's known to be completely incorrect. Would it merit a wikipedia page on an FF and/or Nintendo wiki somewhere? Sure. But this ain't news, and trying to make it news by muddying the waters with a sensationalist headline that we all know isn't true is scumminess of the highest order.

 

[moonbits]

Square wasn't really committed to a platform at that point, they just recently finished FF6 and they were experimenting with the Sillicon Station and showed off their work at SIGGRAPH. Given Square made FF for Nintendo it was an easy hype machine to push it as a N64 FF.

now imagine Yoshinori Kitase, Hisashi Suzuki and Hironobu Sakaguchi inviting the president of Nintendo to casually... after a few drinks.. tell him that FF7 will be a Playstation exclusive.