Hot rumour from Japan enticing RPG gamers over the weekend foretells of a high-budget remake of Final Fantasy VII for Nintendo’s DS portable, news that if true proves the games industry can match any soap opera for drama and twist.
The rumour began with Square Enix producer Tetsuya Nomura confirming to Japanese
PlayStation 2 magazine Dengeki PS2 that Final Fantasy VII will have a significant showing at next year’s Electronics Entertainment Expo, building on the company’s comments from last year when SE promised “…polymorphic [Final Fantasy VII] content providing well-known properties on several platforms, allowing exposure of the products to as wide an audience as possible.”
Of course, this rumour stands in contradiction with established talk that a high-budget
PlayStation 2 remake of Final Fantasy VII is in the works, though it could be argued that it makes far more sense for a DS version to be released.
As you may well know, Final Fantasy VII was - to put it mildly - something of a controversial PlayStation game. The RPG was originally in development for Nintendo’s new home console, a 64-Bit machine going by the name of
Nintendo Ultra 64. The code was in a fairly advanced stage and Square was at the time amongst the most active of companies lobbying Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi to ditch cartridge-based media in favour of a CD-based system. Yamauchi - a stubborn man - rejected all calls to move away from the relatively secure cartridge, and in turn assured Square that any game could be accommodated, even if it meant spreading its new RPG across several cartridges. Square rejected this idea and, under constant courting from the emerging PlayStation camp, cancelled Ultra 64 Final Fantasy and announced that it would be releasing Final Fantasy VII as a PlayStation exclusive.
This news sent shockwaves through the Japanese games industry and is widely seen as a turning-point in the fortunes of the
Nintendo 64. The console was by no means a failure, though it was crippled by reluctant third-party support; the angle with which
Sony rose to dominance over the old guard
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), si tratterà del remake....ma per PS3!
