Final Fantasy & Playstation & ... Nintendo? ;O

[Ghosteses]

Short thread is short.

First. I read somewhere that FF7 was originally going to be on the Nintendo 64. I also read about the original final fantasies being on nintendo systems. 1 through 6 (3 in USA)

Why did Square switch to playstation? I suppose i could look it up but... thats boring xD

Also. Why was nintendo mad at Square for doing it? I mean. Certaining they did not do it just to spite Nintendo.

Was anyone mad when FF moved to playstation? (FF1 through 6 minus 3)

Just really curious as I was... nowhere to be found during all of this. Still stuck in the coffin if you know what I mean =D

[Ayen]

They moved to PlayStation because it was cheaper to produce discs than the more expensive cartridges. Nintendo could be mad because of the bad falling out the two companies had as they originally planned to make a system together with Sony, but Nintendo didn't like the deal Sony put out. It was basically going to be a Super Nintendo with a CD drive and after the deal fell through Sony created the PlayStation. I just recently learned that FFVII was going to be on the N64 originally too, but decided not to because of expenses.

The first Final Fantasy game I played was on the PlayStation, so I never had a reason to be mad. I don't feel that strongly towards any one system.

[Ghosteses]

Yeah wow. I looked up N64 carts and those things are SMALL compared to a CD. I mean... FF 7 is on two CDs yeah? I wonder how many carts it would take to fit the game on there :x

Or better yet how much money would it cost? xD

Why was Nintendo still on carts anyway? :x I looked at the rest of the game systems out by then and i am pretty sure they all had CD drives o.o

[LocoColt04]

Because while cartridges were more expensive to produce, they were cheaper to develop for. CD drives were expensive back in the day, and Nintendo had developed on cartridges for over a decade already. Why change what works? (Obviously, by the NGC, they changed what worked. :P)

And yeah, Squaresoft got through roughly 1/3 of FFVII on N64 format before converting their work over to the PSX format.

[Ayen]

Because while cartridges were more expensive to produce, they were cheaper to develop for. CD drives were expensive back in the day, and Nintendo had developed on cartridges for over a decade already. Why change what works? (Obviously, by the NGC, they changed what worked. :P)

And you'll notice the Gamecube didn't sell as well.

[LocoColt04]

And you'll notice the Gamecube didn't sell as well.

Well... the NGC not selling as well had less to do with the format change and much more to do with Nintendo's sudden overprotective keep-everything-kid-safe complex that shooed away third party developers, something which I am glad to see they began to reduce with the Wii and have actually encouraged M-rated content on the WiiU - but that's another topic for another time.

[Ayen]

Not saying it did, I just find it funny that's when sales started to drop.

[Jinx]

We have a forum member young enough to have to look up N64 cartridges to know what they looked like...

[Bolivar]

Keep in mind the kind of game FFVII was wouldn't be possible on the N64. The game was filled with hundreds of pre rendered backgrounds, many of which were taken straight out of and matching to the space-hogging FMVs. The game design was a huge departure from the tile-based backgrounds of the Nintendo games. So it was probably a creative decision as much as it was a business one.

We're also probably lucky in that Nintendo of America would've censored the crap out of the game and that would've taken away from the raw feeling the game had at the time.

[Ayen]

Heh, yeah. We're talking about the people who removed the blood from Mortal Kombat and Doom. The blood was the best part!

[Slothy]

I don't think that FFVII was ever actually confirmed to be going to the N64 to be honest. They did produce a 3D tech demo of sorts using FFVI characters which ran on the unfinished N64 hardware at the time, but I don't think that really qualifies as intent to make FFVII for the system as much as making a tech demo for the sake of making a tech demo. Maybe at one point they thought about it, but I doubt any actual development happened for the N64.

The reason they went with Playstation was a combination of cheaper discs, cheaper licensing fees from Sony, more freedom to do whatever they wanted, and more storage space. If they'd always planned on doing things like those pre-rendered cut scenes, they never could have released the game on the N64. I remember some of their print ads at the time saying if the game was on a cartridge it would cost $1000, and I really doubt that's an exaggeration to be honest. Cartridge memory was extremely expensive, and even by the end of the N64's time they weren't even close to having as much space as one CD, let alone three. And to be honest, I'm not 100% convinced they could have fit the game without the cut scenes on the cartridges available at the time. Cartridges had a lot more storage space by the time the N64 was on its way out, but when FFVII came out they were woefully small.

[Gamblet]

Yeah wow. I looked up N64 carts and those things are SMALL compared to a CD. I mean... FF 7 is on two CDs yeah? I wonder how many carts it would take to fit the game on there :x

Three!

EDIT: What is this "Dearly Departed"?

[Ghosteses]

3 CDs? wow! I actually have a nintendo 64 so i know what the carts look like =D i just wanted to find out the geek stuff xD how much they hold and stuff like that :x

[Mirage]

It's not just that a single CDs was big and cheap compared to carts, but also that you could change CDs without having to worry about having to start the game over again. Saved games were stored on the actual cartridges, so using more than one would probably not even have been possible, not to mention how expensive it would have been.

Also, I am pretty sure the small discs of Gamecube were chosen to keep load times down. Nintendo users were used to short loading times, and I think Nintendo wanted to keep it like that. Smaller discs mean a much shorter distance for the laser pickups to move when seeking for data, which leads to faster loading.