TITLE
How Final Fantasy VII Changed the Gaming Landscape Forever
AUTHOR
Aidan Moher
PUBLICATION
Gizmodo
YEAR
2022
ARTICLE TYPE
Book Excerpt
FROM THE ARTICLE
There are moments in a person’s life when they know with certainty that things have changed and a new era has begun. That they’re taking a step forward in history. Drenched in the glow of a CRT, a group of friends explored the slums of Midgar and knew, with absolute certainty, that things would never be the same again. That night lasted forever and was over in the blink of an eye. When they stepped out into daylight the next morning, Midgar’s Sector 7 was burning at their backs, and they set forth into a new era of JRPGs.Such was the impact of Square’s Final Fantasy VII. It changed not just the kids in my friend’s basement, but the entire genre its predecessors had helped establish a decade and a half earlier, crossing the threshold of a new era of JRPGs without looking back.
I had been a Nintendo die-hard my whole life, but later that morning, blurry eyed and sleep-deprived, I somehow convinced my dad to take a multi-hour trip by ferry and car to the Sony Store and lay down a few hundred bucks. We left with our very own PlayStation and a beautiful, shrink-wrapped copy of Final Fantasy VII— the allure of Square on PlayStation was irresistible.
Sony’s gamble had paid off.
This little Nintendo fanboy was now a PlayStation fan.
GAMES MENTIONED
Final Fantasy VII
PLATFORMS MENTIONED
PlayStation
EXCERPTED FROM
Fight, Magic, Items: The History of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the Rise of Japanese RPGs in the West