PSM No. 1 - Final Fantasy VII [S1E1] - FunFactor

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So Aidan, I couldn't think of how to change this
joke and still make it funny. So I'm gonna give
you two different setups and then the same punchline for both.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Okay, let's go all right.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
What do you get when you cross a one hundred
percent independent magazine with one that's only for hardcore fanatics
of the world's biggest consumer products company? And what do
you get when you cross an elephant and a rhino
h Alfio? You've got fun Factor to old gamers review

(00:38):
old video game magazine reviews. I'm Ty Shelter, He's Aiden Moher,
and we're two professional writers who grew up loving the
video games and video game magazine of the nineteen eighties,
nineteen nineties, and two thousands. Every episode we take a
critical look back on the games media that, for better
and for worse, inspired us to do what we do. First,
go to fun factor pod dot com and subscribe to

(00:59):
the show on your podcast of choice. Leave us a
rating review on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get
your media. Follow us on Blue Sky at fun factor pod,
and please consider becoming a member by supporting us directly
at funfactorpod dot com. Today's magazine. The very first issue
of PSM one percent Independent PlayStation Magazine, published by Imagine

(01:21):
Media in September nineteen ninety seven. If you look closely
in the top right of the quarter, you'll see what
seems to be the magazine's mascot. It's a big yellow
smiley face like from the sixties, except it's got an
eyepatch which has a white star on it over one eye,
and then the eyebrow it's got a slanty eyebrow over
the other eye, and then the grin only has one dimple,

(01:43):
So it's a smiley face, but with the nineties tune.
I think it's to drive home the idea that this
is an independent magazine. Like aiden, do you see the
nineties vibe?

Speaker 3 (01:55):
I see major nineties vibe, and like the best thing
about PSM, you eet the review. They're good, the features
were good, the jokes were good. Came with stickers, and
the smiley face is also a sticker that you would
put on the circular lid of your PlayStation, so your
PlayStation would have that nineties two as well. And you

(02:15):
know you could wrap your favorite one independent PlayStation magazine
at the same time.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yes, yes, and this this is a big sticker right
in this one labeled hack your PlayStation Aiden. You can
hack your PlayStation like a real nineties hacker by putting
this sticker on the lid.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
I mean me and my friends had to actually hack
our PlayStations because they always stopped working and we would
have to turn them upside down and get pro action
replays and use springs like literally just to play games.
So you know, they were stretching it with the sticker,
but hacking your PlayStation was probably my first experience with
having to do like console wants.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Oh yeah, yeah, Well, you could also play certain CDs
from certain regions that maybe you weren't supposed to have,
or maybe came from certain people's computers and not from
Sony Factory. Who knows.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
My first experience with Final Fantasy Tactics was one of
my best friends. His brother in law went to Thailand
and came back with some oh early release, oh PlayStation game.
So we had Castlevania Symphony of the Night. He had
Final Fantasy Tactics, and he played through a bootleg Japanese
Final Fantasy Tactics months before it came out in North

(03:33):
America and English, and.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
He played through the whole thing.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
And this is like, oh not just as like the
story complex and text w but this is a game
with like menus inside of menus inside of menus. And
he poured, he must have poured one hundred and fifty
two hundred hours in a final Fantasy Tactics playing through
it in Japanese way before the US release, the North
American release, and so incredible. You know, like that wasn't

(03:57):
something that was possible at all on the pre.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Consoles.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
And so you know, the PlayStation in the PSM, you know,
ERA did introduce me to a lot of things that
you know, like were unique to gaming at that time
that have become more relevant over time.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, and so the independent tude was very important because
the very next month, October nineteen ninety seven, Sony and
Zif Davis launched the Official US PlayStation Magazine. The really
wild thing is that, according to RetroMags dot com, the
Official US PlayStation Magazine was just a rebranded indie also,

(04:35):
so there was a PSX short for PlayStation Experience Magazine
that had been running for seventeen issues and then it
was acquired by Ziff Davis and Sony. They gave the
original editor double the budget and headcount and just slapped
the official name on it and relaunched in October nineteen
ninety seven, one month after PSM number one. I mean, okay,

(04:58):
two thoughts here, Can we do more of that? Can
we double.

Speaker 4 (05:01):
Budget and headcount like for magazines and websites please?

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Like, let's go back to that.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
And second, why would you go with the official US
PlayStation magazine with its beautiful official Final Fantasy seven key
art when you could go with PSM, the one hundred
independent PlayStation magazine with its Final Fantasy art that looked
like it was drawn by somebody.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
Who had just signed up for a deviant Tar account.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Well, this is what I wanted to talk about, because
it feels so nineties to claim this like fierce independence
and be owned by a mid size publisher that runs
lots of sibling publications and still have all of your
work be totally captured by superfandom of one company's consumer products.
I want to quote PSM editor in chief Chris Slate

(05:49):
from the intro here, uh that this means more than
just tossing out the Nintendo and sad interviews. It's a
state of mind. PSM is written only for hardcore PlayStation
fanatics in a way that's directed exclusively to you, and
don't worry, we're completely unofficial. You won't miss out on
anything that Sony may not want you to see and

(06:10):
will always be completely unbiased. But then contrast that, editor
in chief of the official US PlayStation magazine, Wataru Mariyama, says,
I'd like to make it clear to our readers that
you always get our one honest opinions about everything and anything.
There are no biases for or against anyone. Just because

(06:30):
we're an official PlayStation magazine. It just feels so weird
because today's media, you know, obviously print outlets, text outlets,
you know, your polygons and katakus and whatever, you know
obviously have journalistic standards, but most meet your podcast video
you know, streamers, YouTubers, This entire concept is foreign to them.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
I mean, like in the era of personality based like
enthusiast press, it's all about that bias and who you
are and what you like, and that's what you're bringing
to the table.

Speaker 4 (07:07):
And it's funny seeing, you know, like an unofficial and
an official version of the PlayStation magazine sort of competing
for that Nintendo power money.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yes, yes, you know.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
Trying to get into a bit of a pissy match
about who is the least biased. And it's like, well, like,
then what are if you don't have biases and you know, personality,
and you're not bringing something to the table, Like what
are you? You're just going to print press releases without
any commentary. And that's a continuing conversation that we still
have where you know, you have conversations about how we
need an unbiased games media and it's like, well, then

(07:37):
you're just going to get regurgitated press releases because what
you're actually looking for are trusted sources who can bring
their biases and their experiences to the table and provide
context and you know, narrative around what it is about
these networks or doesn't work within context of their experiences,
which theoretically match up with with your own experiences.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, oh for sure.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
And I think it's really interesting that we don't have
this now, right, Like what we have is like a
Nintendo Direct, we have state of play. Nobody's going out
and buying a Polygon or buying a Kotok and being
like all right, cool, now you just crank out in
depth text content, right, they're just kind of leaving that.
Then the other thing is, is I wonder if part

(08:22):
of it is just the divorcing from It's a good thing,
right that we've divorced to some extent games coverage from
just raw consumer, tell me if this is worth my
money to buy, Like, let's get this away from just
will this be worth my sixty dollars? Because that's what
people really cared about, the bias, right, Like I remember
when I was a kid, like Nintendo Power, I could

(08:43):
tell you know, I'm like trying to figure out, is
this worth you know, sixty dollars of my you know,
lawn bowing fuddy or birthday money or whatever. And then
I'm sitting here looking at these number, you know, the
ratings and going, I know, if this game sucks, they're
not gonna tell me.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
Right, I mean, like if something got a seven in
Rindow Power, like, oh, that's like you know, you know,
just because there was that incentive, that sales incentive. It
wasn't you know, piece of marketing material.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
I loved it.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
And the depth that they put into like non review
stuff was fantastic. The access that they had to creators
was amazing. But like you know, as a piece of
like critical work, it wasn't something that was necessarily useful
compared to the multi platform magazines EGM and Game Players
and a Game Fan and stuff like that, because you know,
there was that sales incentive. And we're seeing that now

(09:33):
too in modern games media, where you're having places like
Walmart start up quote unquote independent games journalism platforms, games
media platforms, and at the end of the day, they're
trying to get you to come into Walmart and buy
a video game. And so there's you know, how much
hands off, how much you know, arm's length. Yes, pressure

(09:57):
is there on them to create certain certain stuff, and
that you were asking the same questions of you know,
Official PlayStation Magazine, Nintendo Power, but even stuff like PSM,
like they were going to hype up PlayStation because if
they weren't hyping up PlayStation, they weren't growing and maintaining
their quote unquote like hard core PlayStation fans, right, Like,
if they wanted to keep that audience, Uh, they needed

(10:17):
to convince you that, like you can get by with
just a PlayStation.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
And it's it's funny because the indie today's independent media
is like truly independent, right, you know, four or four
remap Radio Aftermath like these are like truly worker owned,
four or five employee collectives making this content directly beholden
to their readers only. Versus here, it's like, okay, well,

(10:41):
you know, Imagine Media to become Future Us was like
a multinational publishing company. Like they were small, you know,
but like they published a bunch of different video game magazines.
A lot of the staff, as we'll get to it
a second, you know, worked on other magazines before or
after and during this you just this idea that it's like, oh,
this is by for only true hardcore PlayStation fanatics. It's like, well,

(11:04):
I mean, you know it is and it isn't. And
they're still be holding the corporate interests and they're still
getting advertising money from all of these you know, companies
as we'll see. Uh. And that's what's really weird to
me too, is the idea that you could have like
a twenty person staff supported just buy one platforms reviews,
that they're for one platforms advertising too. You know, these

(11:25):
are only companies that are publishing games on PlayStation are
going to be published, you know, buying ads in this magazine.
You're not going to get Xbox ads.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
You're not gonna get Nintendo.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yes, you're not going to be so like it seems
wild to be you can have a podcast about one platform.
I don't think you could have a website about one platform.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
And like for context at this point, like on the
cover it says sixteen pages every PlayStation code. Ever, so
there was like the volume of games for PlayStation as
a brand, all the codes could fit onto sixteen pages.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
In a magazine.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
Yeah, which is not a lot, right, I mean, like
no getting past the idea that this was still when
they would print like cheat codes and magazines, but like
every PlayStation game, every code for every PlayStation game could
fit on sixteen pages.

Speaker 4 (12:09):
Like that's not a lot of games at that point.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
And so continuing to drive home like the idea that
like despite all the uncertainty around PlayStation, all the like
you know, growing pains at a new company entering the space.
Had you know, they're advertising Final Fantasy seven. This is
before Final Fantasy seven sort of like really blew up
the PlayStation as you know, a mainstream console, and so

(12:33):
like getting into this space, they were anticipating you know,
growth for the platform, but like that wasn't certain but
they were still, like you say, devoting all of this
time and effort and energy to be not just the
only PlayStation magazine but one of at least two on
the market at that point. And now we can't even
sustain a print magazine for every every game, even if

(12:57):
it is like basically a marketing tool from games Stop,
you know, like Game Informer was closed recently and it
serves the same purpose. It was like it was a
fantastic magazine. Writing for them was great. I got to
write one of my favorite stories ever that had no
real marketing crossover. It was about fans who do modern
like retro dm makes of modern games. Oh yeah, something

(13:19):
like Elden ring into like a Super Nintendo game and
making a video about it. Like they weren't selling that
in stores, there was no way to make money off it.
They still created opportunity to tell these stories above and
beyond honestly what other publications and online publications were offering.
But they were ultimately trying to get you into the
store to buy games that isn't even really uh, you know,

(13:40):
sustainable by current capitalistic standards of you know, growth and profit.
And you know, we could we could, we could argue
whether those are the wrong metrics to measure something like
PSM Game in Form or buy And I think that
would be a pretty you know, we'd both be fairly
in favor of the idea that they shouldn't need to
you know, meet growth standards of capitalists.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Like you know, shareholders.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
But the fact that you know, you could do this
for one magazine and twenty years later, thirty years later,
you can't do it for all the you know, all
the games, all the systems out there is just wild
sucks bad.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
Well, and maybe you couldn't do it then either, because
in the end, none of anything we just said mattered
in two thousand and seven, because if Davis shut down
Official US PlayStation Magazine and then PSM one independent PlayStation
magazine acquired the license and became PlayStation the Official magazine.

Speaker 4 (14:39):
Sellouts, absolute sellouts.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
They're you know, all of their right to be fair.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
Like Chris Slate, who was the editor in chief PSM,
like he's at like a legit guy who had a
big impact on a lot of like nineties gaming mags.
So it wasn't like they were you know, just throwing
anybody out there. They went out and got great writers,
great editor is a great editor in chief with Chris
late who I think went on is am I correct
that he was working for a Nintendo Power for a
long time after that.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yes, yes, well we'll get into that in the next segment.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
Actually, we'll get there. We'll get that back off. Yeah
we will. We will open up the.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Cover, we'll dig in the masthead, dig into the stories,
and eventually we will get to our review of their
review of Final Fantasy seven hand tug right here on
fun Factor, Welcome back to fun Factor, where two old

(15:45):
gamers review old video game magazine reviews. Of course we
want you to review us. Do we get a full
five point zero in fun Factor? We'll leave a review
On Apple Podcasts, we'll read the best, funniest, kindest, and
most entertaining ones on the air. Now I've written like
three episode scripts of this show with you so far,
and already it feels like all my gaming magazines ever

(16:06):
were like two and a half maybe two and a
quarter magazines in one trench coat.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
I mean, it was a wild West back then, and
I think we're starting to see around ninety seven, you know,
through the late nineties, but definitely into the two thousands,
you see a big shift in how sort of gaming
mags came together and what they looked like. And you
look at what, especially ZIF, the Ziff crew started getting
with EGM and game trailers and one up, and that's

(16:32):
when it started to shift into sort of this more
I don't even I don't even know what the word
has grown up or mature or whatever isn't really the
right word, but just you had it started with, like,
you know, in the early to mid nineties, a lot
of like kids writing for kids. And then by the
late nineties and into the two thousands, that's when these
these kids who started out as twenty year olds writing

(16:54):
for fourteen year olds, they then had ten years of
experience right in the right, right in that market, and
we're just you know, getting better at understanding how to
create compelling magazines and experiences that weren't just sort of
put together to excite a bunch of little kids.

Speaker 4 (17:10):
The audience started changing a bit too.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Let me get into the numbers real quick again. September
nineteen ninety seven, issue first issue ever, debut issue, one
hundred and thirteen pages, not counting the three page advertisement.
After ten games were reviewed in this magazine, but they
had a backlog of fifty seven, so they just slapped
a number on every US release up until the launch.

(17:35):
Just like for the record, here's what we would give
all these games, number of systems reviewed for one, just one.
In the PlayStation we already talked about the Pirate mascot.
Lid sticker went ahead and gave us a top twenty
five games of all time. Very interesting. We'll get to
that in the flip through, but I want to look
at the masstad Like you said, Chris Slate, it was

(17:56):
longtime editor for and of the various incarnation of Game Players.
He's the editor in chief at launch of PSM. He'd
stay there for ten years, which is an eternity in media.
It was then now it still is. In two thousand
and seven, he led a Future helmed relaunch of Nintendo Power,
so the same publishing company taking you know, taking over

(18:18):
Nintendo Power. He ran that for five more years and
then took over MacLife. But when Future hit financial troubles
and closed its US operations, he joined in Nintendo as
Senior manager of Corporate Communications.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
I think that was twenty sixteen.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
He's still there today, so still he went you know
from running Nintendo Power and then just joining Nintendo and
running the communications side.

Speaker 4 (18:39):
Seems like a pretty good career path to me.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, run also jealous on the flip side.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
Managing editor Charles Frohman would leave after a year and
a half to run learn to dot Com was kind
of like an e how you know how to cite?
Then he took a content job with AOL and started
going to law school on the side, started practicing employment
on two thousand and five. Never went back to the
media business. Smart, it seems like a smart career.

Speaker 4 (19:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
Learnto dot com is like the most web two point
zero website team I can possibly think of, right, incredible,
it's like and to be clear, it's a two like
numeral two. Yeah, learn numeral two dot com dot com amazing.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
Now this is my favorite one obviously. Well we'll have
a whole run of this to go through all these
these contributors. But I was really interested. Reviews and Previews
editor Stephen Frost would stay with PSM until two thousand
and four. Then he jumped the table and joined EA
as an assistant producer. He was there and then at
Activision briefly, and then went to Sega as a full producer,

(19:45):
had a nine year run at Sega, and then in
twenty sixteen he joined Digital Eclipse as an executive producer.
Now he's head of production there. So from journalist to
triple A producer to head of production at a studio
that specializes in re releases of games that he covered
as a journalist. In this very September nineteen ninety seven issue,

(20:07):
his review section gave Super street Fighter collection a five
out of five. In twenty eighteen, he produced the Street
Fighter thirtieth Anniversary collection for Digital Eclipse.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
I mean, listen, if I worked at Digital eclips, my
entire career would be focused on getting Chrono Trigger re
released on modern consoles.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
So I you know, I can't blame the guy.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
He probably just flips through old issues of PSM looking
for his five out of fives, brings it to his
boss at Digital eclipses.

Speaker 4 (20:34):
As found our next game collection.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
I love it. It's good.

Speaker 3 (20:39):
It see exactly what I would do. I would just
do re releases of my favorite games.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
And why wouldn't we all like, that's that's what that's
what we're here for, that's what we would love to do.
But hey, we've waited long enough, it's time to do
the flip through. I liked the graphic design a PSM.

(21:03):
You know, you kind of go through a table of contents.
Here you really see this sort of repeated triangle theme.
It looks like the start button. Right, so they like
highlight all the page numbers, the reviews. There's a few
different fonts, but not like seventeen different fonts. All of
the fonts are legible.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
I love I love how having like eight fonts is like,
you know, signus is.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Great at the time that you know.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
And again already which they have the code bible, the
backlog with other reviews. They got a preview section. They
put the reviews up front, which is interesting. My favorite
in here the top twenty five PlayStation games of all
time again September nineteen ninety seven.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
Right, so there's like.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
Yeah, fifty determined that there are sixty seven games. Yah, yeah,
there's almost half of it. Yes, yeah, yes, amazing.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
I'm just super super quick. Uh, Toball number one cracks
in at sixteenth all time. Don't think that holds throughout
the life of the PlayStation. Destruction Derby two tenth best
PlayStation one game of all time. Apparently I don't even
remember Destruction Derby. Twisted Metal is nine. To be clear,

(22:22):
I don't think you crash. We got a lot of
play out of Twisted Metal. I don't know that I'll
come No, that's what in comparison. I'm like, if Twisted
Metal is nine and Destruction Derby is ten, Destruction Derby
two is ten.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
Like, what are we doing? Uh? They sweak it in
at number six.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Yeah, I mean i'd put that higher, but you know,
putting the PlayStation its whole thing was three D graphics, right,
and there's a whole thing about how they like tes,
apocryphal stories about how they refuse to release Pixelark games.
The fact that they had Sweaking in here at number six,
you know above stuff like Crash, Bandicoot and Ridge Racer

(23:05):
is pretty remarkable. Yeah, Frankly, like there was somebody there
who was like standing for traditional Japanese RPGs and probably
fought pretty hard to get Sweeken in. They probably wanted
it in that top five, right, but then they got
in at six. I think that's pretty impressive frankly for
a magazine.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
Like, yeah, the remainder of the top five you got
wipeout XL Soul Blade techn to tomb Raider and then
Resident Evil. So I mean, yeah, like you tell me
which one that sweak it and bumps off, but like
that's still way way up there. Very cool. And then
you know the preview section blast Oh, which fortunately they

(23:44):
avoided next Gen's Fate Blasto. They gave Blasto the full
cover the I know at least a couple other magazines
gave Blasta the cover.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
I remember that issue.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yeah, we tested exactly how independent all of these magazines
were when they had they gave the huge cover spread
to Blastow and then had to give.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
It the Blasto meter.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, one star reviews pretty amazing, and like you said,
the code backlog is pretty cool. Previews are exciting.

Speaker 3 (24:15):
It's got Colony Ward's preview and Castlevania Symphony and I
Prehound like a couple of bangers.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
The early PlayStation was pretty cool, Like it.

Speaker 3 (24:24):
Was a great time to be a gamer. And there's
a pretty good spread of previews here, you know, like
when we do talk about being able to maintain a
magazine based off one game console, like there's some pretty
good stuff, yeah, coming out for the PlayStation, you know.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
Game Day ninety eight, tomb Raider two, Bushido Blade. You know,
not all of these cashed on the premise, right, but
Crash Bandicoot two. It's like, okay, you know you've got
a lot of stuff that you're like, oh, I want
to play even this Wild Nines. I remember just this
art from this magaz and going, this looks super cool.
I want to play this, and I don't. I don't

(25:06):
even know if it came out. I don't even I
don't remember it at all, but I remember this covered this.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
Sorry, this is this.

Speaker 4 (25:11):
I remember playing the demo Wild Bines. Actually it was fun,
but I didn't buy it, so it couldn't have been
too fun. Death Trap Dungeon, Oh, I hoses a follow
up to tomb Raider.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
Oh there is a character?

Speaker 3 (25:24):
Yeah yeah, like the most egregious like boob armer I've
ever seen.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
It's just like two.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
Metal like pasties, nipple metal pasties connected by a chain
with like a gigantic chain connecting them.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
And that's that's it. And then like what looks like.

Speaker 3 (25:42):
You know, a metal bikini bottom uh and the most
insane uh proportions I've ever seen, and which is saying
a lot on the PlayStation because it was like, you know,
it basically sold itself as the Lure Cross Boob Yes
for two years and this is you know, is above
on that. This is definitely like you know, it's made

(26:03):
by IROs and they definitely were like, oh, people like
Larry's boobs.

Speaker 4 (26:06):
Let's go like, you know, twelve out of ten on boobs.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
And reader, you know, if you listener, if you're the
audio only version, just know that this is like about
fifty total polygons, maybe fifty two. Oh, this is this
is very triangular. Things are happening.

Speaker 3 (26:26):
It's a lot of texture works to try to make
those bad boys look brown.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
And so then we've got this big splash preview of
Final Fantasy seven and we'll get into the Final Fantasy
seven stuff. And I'm glad they have this because, as
we'll get to in a minute, the review isn't that
in depth. This big you know, character by character, they've
got you know, character bios, they've got a lot of
the original art, the same pencil art drawings, the concept

(26:52):
at drawings we've seen a million times, a whole big
section on materia, like a pretty decent walk through for this,
and I need to go back and actually look at
I meant to check the actual publication dates because I
looked at you know, other Ultra game players. Their sister
magazine that Chris Slate was the editor for before actually
had their October issue be the one that had the

(27:14):
Final Fantasy seven review. So I don't know if they
prioritized PSM number one to have the Final Fantasy seven cover.
I don't know if it got out ahead of the others.
But yeah, them, I mean this is early because I'm
looking at this preview the Strategy Guide quote unquote, and
they're like referring to Macorro Industrial Complex, mccorro town, like

(27:39):
so they're like they are like, there's somebody who was
not using official translations of nakes correct, you have what
else do you have? You do have shin record building,
but then you've got as you scroll down, you have
like after you leave Midgar the rock Town Cannon Town.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
So June on.

Speaker 3 (27:57):
They're calling Cannon Town, oh, the Canon Town boath So
like this is like, this is early, this is pre
English they got Yeah, yeah, for calm On their map
is just called First Town, and so like you are
definitely getting somebody who had a Japanese copy of the game.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
Who is doing their own.

Speaker 3 (28:19):
You know, their own localization, their own translation to write
this strategy guide.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Oh, screenshots are in Japanese. I just realized to the material,
are they okay?

Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (28:29):
Yeah, Nibelheim is spelled n I b U r u
h E l M nib. You definitely have somebody who's
going in there like doing their best with romanization of
Japanese names.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
Some of them are great.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
Cosmo canyons there, you know, you have coasted del soul
Gon Gaga is the same Cosmo Canyon. I think I
said Cosmokanyon twice. That's but yeah, that's interesting. Interesting, Like
look at like also what games magazines were like at
the time, right, Like we in the games media now
get such a kind of controlled asset done from companies,

(29:05):
especially for a game like Final Fantasy, you know, for
Final Fantasy seven Rebirth or for Final Fantasy sixteen, Like
the publisher control over the assets and the communication of
what you're allowed to put in your you know, features
or interviews was is so nailed down by the publishers now,
whereas this is like they got a Japanese copy of
the game and then wrote a strategy guide based off

(29:27):
one person sort of interpretation of how to localize some
of these names and stuff, which is wild. You'd never
see that now.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah, you know, you would never see uh U Tai
utah U Tai.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
Yeah you Tai. You can be so of town.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, just making stuff up, that's fine print it uh again,
it's I think part of that also speaks to some
of the a little bit disposability of this. Yes, like
nobody was nobody was planning on you and me making
this podcast in twenty adults.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
No, definitely not, which is part of what Video Game
History Foundation is sort of trying to solve with some
of their recent digital archive stuff, is this stuff was disposable,
It was.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
Never really meant to last.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
But it's important, and it's so fascinating to be able
to go through this and look at what the you know,
gaming culture and gaming industry was like at the time
for a huge release like Final Fancy seven, and how
that differs from what we're looking at today.

Speaker 4 (30:22):
So I'm glad we can I'm glad we can see this.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
It's cool.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
Like I have a lot of these magazines physically because
I kept them, but that doesn't help other people if
they don't have access to it as well.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
Right, And a lot of new people don't know, you know,
younger gamers do not know how these games are covered
at the time, and then you see a lot of
myths and stuff brought up around.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
You know.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
One of the weirdest things on TikTok especially is seeing
like twenty three, twenty four to twenty five year olds
explain to thirteen, fourteen, fifteen year olds what life was
like in the nineties and like, no, uh huh, no
it wasn't or yeah, yeah, that was true for like
some people, but a lot of other people thought very

(31:04):
differently or had very different experiences, and you know, so
it's fascinating that this is all still here if you
know where to look for it. I love digging into this,
but I love having the context of it and how
it informs you know that, like I say, because that's
still in our brains, right, Reviews, previews, letter sections and everything,

(31:25):
like modern content sites are still kind of structured like this. Yeah,
I've got one more final Fantasy seven like preview thing
I'm scrolling through near to the end of the magazine
and maybe maybe we touched on this later. If we
touched on this later, you can cut this out tie.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
But near the end of the magazine. They have taught
this section, and so they give you three challenges Challenge one,
challenge to challenge three, and I think the second one,
which is Final Fantasy seven, speaks to the experience that
they had playing the game. Probably in Japanese. The challenge
is can you beat our time for disc one?

Speaker 1 (31:59):
Huh?

Speaker 3 (31:59):
Instead, here's a cool contest for all you RPG fans
out there. We played through the first disc of Final
Fantasy seven and finished it with a time just under
twenty seven hours. You think twenty seven hours when I
played Final Fantasy seven. Now I beat the first disc
in probably.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Like seven hours.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
Tes yeah, I can if I'm taking my time, when
like back in the day, you were probably looking at,
you know, twelve to fifteen hours, and so here's somebody
being like, hey, I beat it in twenty seven hours.
Think you can do better? Like I played through Final
Fantasy seven year or two ago, and it took me
like forty two hours total, and that was doing most

(32:41):
of the side content, and so, like, you know, this
was a different experience as well, because you know, there
wasn't access easy access, especially before games were out in
the West, to like sides and walk throughs and like
online communities existed, but if the game wasn't out, like
you were stumbling through in Japanese trying to figure out
to get through this game, just like my friend who

(33:02):
played Final Fantasy Tactics in Japanese, and it just forerever
and the idea that the challenge would be to beat
the first disc of Final Fantasy seven and under twenty seven.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
It's incredible.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
It's incredible, wild and tells you tells you a lot
about like what gaming was like at the time.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
All right, well, Aiden, I'm having five stars out of
five stars worth of fun.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
So far are you?

Speaker 3 (33:22):
I'm having five is five the max I can give
it well and go over five Apple ten out of
ten stars and one hundred out of one hundred stars.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
That's where I'm at.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Okay, Well, folks, if you are to leave us a
rating and review on Apple podcasts one hundred out of
five stars, please we'll read the best, funniest, kindest, and
most entertaining ones on the air.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
Advite a little bit of advice for reviews. If you
mentioned your favorite host, yes a fun factor and if
it's Aiden, we will definitely read your review on We
absolutely will probably I'll probably link to it on Blue
Sky take some screenshots, all right, So name your favorite
host if it's Aiden, extra exposure.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
Future generations will know who the favorite is.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
When we get back.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
We review PS Number one's review of Final Fantasy seven
right here on fun Factor. Okay, Aiden, it is time

(34:30):
we're reviewing the review Final Fantasy seven p. S Number one.
First of all, you know, we could do we could
probably do. There have been entire podcast series about replaying
Final Fantasy seven. So I don't want to get too
deep in the weeds, but what's your history with seven?

Speaker 2 (34:47):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (34:48):
What did you think of it when you played it?

Speaker 3 (34:50):
I discovered for like control RPGs with Final Fantasy Vix
and Chrono Trigger, and became a big fan on Super
Nintendo near the end of the Super Nintendo's lifespan. And
so Final Fantasy seven was, you know, like it was
all me and my friends talked about. We read all
the previews, we had, all the issues. We were so
excited for it. Only one of my friends could actually

(35:12):
afford to get a PlayStation when it came out, and
so one of my life absolute core gaming memories in.

Speaker 4 (35:20):
Life is when we went to his house.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
We all so I grew up on a small island,
so to get Final Fantasy and a PlayStation, we had
to like leave our island, catch a faery, catch a
bus ride that was like forty five minutes up to
the like the mall with the Sony store, get the
PlayStation and Final Fantasy seven, pile back on the bus
all the way back down to our ferry, take the ferry,

(35:44):
get home. So you know, we probably spent five hours
getting a PlayStation, play and Final Fantasy seven, got back home,
went to my friend's house, loaded it all up, played
through that intro, and I just like soaking in the
glow of that CRT watching Avalanche take down the Maco Reactor.
It just like it's sunk in with me in a

(36:05):
way that like pretty much nothing ever has matched in
terms of just like immersion in.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
An experience, in a gaming experience.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
How it took the cinematic qualities of Final Fantasy six
and created something so much like bigger and richer and
more detailed. It's just incredible, And my relationship with seven
has gone up and down over the years. At the
time it was, I felt like it was amazing. Then
I went back and was like, oh, the localization's pretty crack. Yeah,

(36:35):
I feel like it. You know, it's a pretty janky
I like this one or that one or whatever better
nine is so much nicer looking or whatever. Then Rebirth
Remake trilogy came out. I revisited seven and just looking
at it from the perspective of the way that its
story is so far ahead of its time and like,

(36:56):
honestly feels incredibly apt to the moment we're in with
its sort of anti capitalist pro environmentalism themes. I don't
even call them like themes because they're so overt the text,
like they're not met text messages or like the.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
Text like these games.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
This game is just like, you know, a anti capitalist,
pro environmentalist like takedown of corporate culture. I look back
at it now and I'm like, man, that game was
cooking in a way that nothing else at the time was,
and the fact that they have this in a game
in nineteen ninety seven is remarkable, And like, is it
still a little janky? Sure, but like you load it

(37:34):
up on a CRT on PlayStation, it looks it's beautiful. Still,
It's still fast and snappy in a way that some
of the later games aren't. And the remake trilogy just
like renewed my love for the game. And it's still
it's not my favorite Final Fantasy, but it definitely went
from like sort of a bottom third to a top
third Final Fantasy over the course of you know, the

(37:55):
past five years as I revisited it.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
Yeah, I had kind of a similar experience. I had
my own PlayStation, but I had a tight friend group
and we had like the rich one, right, like uh yeah, yeah, yeah,
the one that we got the guy who's a family
owned a small business, so he had all the and
he had room to hang out. He had his own
like little mini apartment over the garage basically, so you know,

(38:18):
at that point, we all we'd all hang up out
there and we would take turns. We'd like bring our
memory cards. We'd be playing at home. But then came
and like hang out after school and like.

Speaker 4 (38:26):
Sure, yeah, yeah, we did a lot of that too.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
But we had one guy who did not have a PlayStation,
and so he would play only at the rich guy's house,
and he was so he was a little behind us, right,
So we all get to the first disc. This guy
he had renamed Erith after that spring. That spring he
had dated a German exchange student for like the course

(38:49):
of the Spring is good and then she went home, right,
so this is the Fall we're playing, and he is
renamed Arith after that girl, and I'm like, come in,
I'm oh ahha, and I pull like a couple of
other guys aside.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
We have to tell.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
Him like what no, it's like the spoiler like what,
I'm like, it's.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
Gonna kill him.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
He's gonna die, like you canna have the character. He's
projecting his like long lost German girlfriend from three months
ago on to have what happens happened and you know,
and so of course, like literally it's like a couple
of days later, I went over and he's onto the
second disc and like I think it had just happened
when I got there, and I was like, hey Rob,

(39:35):
and he looks at me and just like the dad eyes.
I'm like, oh my god, dude, like I yeah, ah.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
He didn't he didn't recover. No, And like.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
Those like you know, that was a big moment for
everybody who played it. I think, yeah, you know, I
think it's one of the moments in gaming history. I
think it has had such a tremendously profound impact on
what a lot of people need and want the remake
series to be. Yeah as well, and I want it
to be. I mean we can spoil it, right.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
Yeah, sure.

Speaker 4 (40:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
So, like I think there's so many people like that
that that poured so much and had so much emotional
attachment to that moment when Earth is killed by Sepharroth,
that they needed the remake series to like fix them,
to come back and go back to nineteen ninety seven
when your friend's German girlfriend was you know, impaled by
a seven foot long sword and fix that moment of trauma.

(40:30):
But the whole game, and especially the remake series, is
about how trauma isn't fixed. Yes, yes, there's no way
to go back and just undo trauma. You have to
learn to live in the world where it exists. And
I think you can trace a lot of like I
don't know, like big feelings and big like a lot
of dudes, especially, Yes, I'm sure like girls and women

(40:53):
went through the same thing learning about their feelings right
as fourteen year old Sure fell in love for the
probably for the first time with a video game character,
and then Square was like that hold up, yeah, and
we never you know, never really recovered the same way
Cloud never really recovers.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
Oh, and I think that's really interesting, right, like.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
It you know, there are games that tried to put
the player in the role of, you know, the main
character in the game, but Final Fancy really like pulled
a nasty rug pull on the player by like really
leaning into the idea like, hey, you're like you love Earth, right,
She's right, Like she's got a place in your heart

(41:34):
and you love her, and you're gonna feel this in
a way that you haven't felt anything in a game
of no. And I think that that shaped a lot
of you know, a lot of people's adolescent lives and
expectations for stories, and expectations for love and heroism and
a whole bunch of other things.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
Yeah, and incredible moment. And I think it's it was
interesting to me because then the back half of that
I felt, you know, obviously, I was also wowed by
the technology, you know, incredib storytelling, cinematic, lots of innovation,
and I think we all kind of forgave it was
so ambitious. How many things were yankee or how many
things fell a little bit flat. The highs were unbelievable.

(42:12):
I also thought that it you know, some of the
stories at the time were like, oh my gosh, like
they hired over one hundred people to finish this game,
which at the time was kind of ridiculous to staff
up like that to generate enough our assets for a game.
And now that's like medium, especially like.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
Square at the time was not planning for this to
be a big worldwide hit. This was a Japanese game
made for like a Japanese audience. So to scale up
like to that level for a game that they didn't
really have like major worldwide ambitions for.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
It is even more remarkable because.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
Like at the time, like one hundred doesn't sound like much. Now,
like we're at a place where BioWare just had a
bunch of layoffs and they're down to like quote unquote
just under one hundred devs left over, as like meaning
like that's like a skeleton yes, company like that, Yes,
Whereas like Square, like you know, hiring up to like
one hundred devs or however many it was, is.

Speaker 4 (43:09):
Like that was a lot at that time, and I think.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
Like it showed, the seams showed and some of the
project management, the fact that there's you know, the in
game textureless characters, the battle scene characters that had the
textures and realistic proportions. There was the chiby blocky ones
and then some of the cut scenes where chibi blocky hyres.
Some of them were more realistically modeled, some of them

(43:33):
were straight.

Speaker 4 (43:34):
Depending on like which, yeah, which, like CG.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
House did the scene, you'd get either the chippy models
or you'd get like full on like rendered like realistically
proportioned models like no rhyme or reason Nope, just like
you you know, you got one or the other. And
that was yet and it was basically whoever got got
farmed out For that one particular scene, there was sort
of that. And I like, to me, Final Fantasy seven,

(43:59):
outside of the remarkable stuff it does with its story,
I think it feels very much like a company that
is finding its way in a really new version of
the media. You know, like all this space on the discs,
all this new technology, like Final Fantasy eight feels like
such a technical level up, Like it feels like a
new generation almost because they learned so much with seven

(44:23):
yecause they were feeling their way through. But in some
ways that makes me like it even more looking back,
you know, I like all the scenes.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
I like the ambition.

Speaker 3 (44:31):
I like that they didn't hold back and tried everything
that they could, because I think it feels scrappy in
the way that Avalanche and Cloud's crew were scrappy and
didn't really you know, like didn't really let up. They
had to try everything, use everything at their disposal.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
Yeah, and I like you kind of went back to
the remake, I'll say. I also had this kind of
we're all on the couch and we're playing through. I
think it's kind of the Cloud is it medial scenes,
you know, in the second half, and like when Cloud
is like, oh, I'm like whole again, I remember feeling no,

(45:09):
I still don't understand what happened, Like yeah, no, I'm not.

Speaker 4 (45:13):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
I don't get it, you know.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
And I kind of turned to my friends and I
was like, Okay, so this is the best Final Fantasy ever,
buy a long shot, the best RPG ever, buy a
long shot. But are we are we all in agreement?
This is not as good as six in terms of, like, yeah,
just as a game, like how the story is executed
and story told and like start to finish, you know,
and there we're kind of like, yeah, no, like six

(45:37):
was better executed. Yeah, and then and then Jank and
some of this stuff and that you know, the localization obviously,
which we didn't know all that stuff. So like that
was kind of where I landed with it, which is like,
it's amazing, incredible, groundbreaking, revolutionary. You can still really see
the seams and kind of the rush job and some
of the stuff that fell flat. But going back and

(46:00):
playing Remake and Rebirth so far, it surprised me how
hard the characters hit, how much all the love and
attention they put into those like call back and every
little single moment where I'm like, oh, I remember this
from back then, you know, like the house as an enemy?
Why did they make a house as an enemy and
then remake the hell house is a boss? You know.

(46:23):
And I've told you this before, and I've brought this
up before, but when we were watching the intro cut
scene to Remake, it's sweeping through when you see these shots,
you know, and my oldest who's twenty now, turns to
me goes, well, you did it. You made me nostalgic
for your media. Great job you said that to me
in a feature I was working. Oh yes, that's wrote

(46:45):
for IGN about how rebirth and remakers started like uniting
two generations, millennials and their kids, and we talked about
that and how the new games so effectively tap into
that nostalgia for millennial parents who played the games initially,
and how just the new modern take on Final Fantasy

(47:06):
allows younger gamers to be like, oh, okay, yeah, this
is cool. I can see why you like it in
a way that like, we couldn't show our kids Final
Fantasy seven, the original theog if they're not already sort
of into that yep sort of game, Like I think
one of your kids is like Xeno Gears and stuff, right, Like,
you know, like there are younger kids who like those
older games, but for the most part, if you tried

(47:27):
to show a random like Fortnite twenty year old player
Final Fantasy seven, they'd be like this, this is awful. No,
nothing to anybody is saying makes sense. It's slightly you know.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
This or that or whatever. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
So I think the remake series does such a good
job of that. And in that same article, I've spoke
with Naoki Hamaguchi, who like helped make Rebirthen is part
of the leadership group on the remake series, and he
talked about how what you're describing as sort of like
the rough edges and and the story bits that we're like,
this doesn't this doesn't really explain how all of a

(48:03):
sudden cloud is better or whatever. He recognized in his
team recognized that those holes were opportunities to fill in
the remake series, that there were areas in the original
game where it couldn't go far enough to tell its story,
and that the remake trilogy was an opportunity to say, Okay,
like this story was too ambitious for our understanding of
the detech our experience. How can we take the holes

(48:26):
and fill them with something that feels not only like
satisfying from a modern perspective, but creates a richer, fuller understanding.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
Of the story we wanted to tell initially, Which I
think is so interesting.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
You have so many remakes that either try to like
slavishly emulate the original, or you have ones that feel
like they need to like really create something new with
a brand new identity. But the idea of going back
and filling in holes in an existing property is so
cool to me. Yeah, and I think I think the

(48:59):
new games do that really well. I'm a big fan
of the.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
Me too, and we could. That's a whole nother episode.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
I'm sure people, aren't you gonna review their review instead
of reviewing those games and the remakes?

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Yeah yeah, so ps let's review.

Speaker 4 (49:13):
Game Informer like three hundred and ninety two.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Or whatever where they review of remakes.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
PSM used a five star system like the one I
admired so much at the sister publication Next Generation. Five
stars a PlayStation classic. No fan should be without a
can't miss game no matter who you are. Four stars
are really well done game. If you're a fan of
the genre, you should check it out. Three stars a
pretty good game. Has its share of rough spots, but
some redeeming qualities as well. Two stars may be worth

(49:39):
a quick look if you're a diehard fan of the
genre or license. Otherwise, don't bother.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
One star.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
Don't even make eye contact with this one. It's not
worth a second of your time. And then they have
a really interesting tick where they add they have like
few bullet point takeaways before the final score itself, and
then the final score self is accompanied by kind of
like a logline, like a one shot summary sentence. But
imagine media was kind of doing this thing where they

(50:05):
don't have bylines on the reviews. And this is also
like that we know Stephen Frost was the editor for
the reviews, but we don't know who actually wrote each
of these reviews, if it was freelancers, if it was
all him, other contributors, whatever. So the review itself is
only two hundred and fifty seven words, and it was
kind of interesting to me because the magazine, We've got

(50:28):
one page for Final Fantasy seven, but that also includes
the table of contents, the review metric, rubric, the header
and stuff the next page. Three reviews on one page. Yeah,
three reviews on each the page the rest of the way,
So game players Ultra game Players usually had one page

(50:49):
for a review or two for a bigger gabe, and
the Ultra Game Players that comes out the next month
had two whole pages that was just Final Fantasy seven review,
and it's much more in depth in this only two
hundred and fifty seven words, and they basically do a
pretty good job of summarizing the intro and everything else.

(51:11):
I aiden I want you to, I'm gonna put it
in the chat here. Just go ahead and read for
me this section because I think it really kind of
gives uh, just what we were at at this time,
still in nineteen ninety seven with RPGs. Hundreds of beautifully
rendered backgrounds were created for the game, and they gave

(51:33):
each locale an eerie sense of realism. Mostly a mixture
of low tech and futuristic building designs, the architecture of
the Final Fantasy is unique. At the very least, Each
town has its share of residents that the game's characters
interact with. Some will aid Cloud while others will attempt.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
To stop him.

Speaker 3 (51:54):
The only real dent in the armor is the lack
of a Red Book audio soundtrack. Basically all of the
games music is played through the PlayStation's MIDI chip. Well adequate,
This doesn't seem to do the game justice.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Okay, so first of all, I love each town. There's towns,
and you'll walk from town to town at some NPCs
will aid Cloud while others will attempt to stop. Like
we're at this level, Like how do RPGs work?

Speaker 2 (52:22):
Groundbreaking?

Speaker 3 (52:24):
But seven was positioned and like this is the start
of positioning. Final Fantacy seven is like your first RPG.
Yeah right, Like yeah, Fohanzi six reached like six hundred
thousand people in uh in the West in North America,
like Founanci seven sold ten million, so like that's potentially
nine point four million people who hadn't played on rpg before.

(52:47):
And stuff like this and framing it in that way
I think is part of what helped it find that
new audience. So see, it sounds silly to us, but
I think I wonder if it's intentional as well of
trying to like say, hey, like, you know, you might
not know what RPGs are all about.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Yes, doesn't this sound enticing?

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Yes? I also like, you know, and again, two hundred
and fifty seven words and they put like fifty ish sorry,
thirty eight of them towards talking about the audio. No
red Book audio, it's all MIDI you know, it's all
through the sound chip doesn't do the game justice. But
then the bullet points, I think, oh.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
Go ahead, that's like honestly, like, looking back, I'm surprised
to see that criticism too, because I didn't think people
were really like noticing or writing about that sort of thing.
I know, red Book audio and streaming audio on the
PlayStation was a selling point, but I didn't think people
like really noticed or cared outside of like all my
friends cared about was that we could put lunar in
our saslayer into the music. Yes, you know, like we

(53:43):
didn't actually really know or understand the consequences of having
like streaming audio, and like when looking back at Final
Fantasy seven, like Uimatsu who did the score, recognizes that
not doing stream audio was a mistake that he made
right and it might even have been I can't remember

(54:05):
all you Umatu or Saka Gucci and saying like they
wanted to avoid loading times. Yes, where the you know,
the game was having to stream audio in or you know,
buffer and RAM, and so they went with the MIDI
chip music chip Dunes. And then they saw sweek it
in which did streaming audio, and as sound quality and
music quality was just so much higher, and they went, Okay,

(54:27):
we should we should have we should have like we
should have eaten the like additional loading times and just
done streaming music because it's such a stronger audio like
not visual, but like audio experience for the player. And
Fall Fantsay seven has a great soundtrack, but the execution
of it on the PlayStation is not good. It sounds bad,

(54:48):
and so I'm pretty impressed actually to see that they
spent any time talking about the audio quality and the
sound quality of that game.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
Yeah, and then it's contradicted. This is the funny part
to me because these re you know, yeah, the bullet
points right, so you get four takeaways. The graphics are heavenly,
the music is classic Final Fantasy seven Orchestra, and I
want to point out here it is say f F
v I I classic f F VII Orchestra, which I mean,

(55:16):
they're not wrong, but clearly that was a typo. Also
worth pointing out there a multiple typos in this review. Uh,
the concept redefines RPGs. I'll play it for months with
no sleep, and then they give it five stars and
a standard setting game no gamer should miss. So and
this isn't the only time. Just from my memory, I

(55:36):
remember sometimes the text of the review and then these
bullet points would contradict, sometimes directly like this. The music
is classic, like you just said that, the only thing
is that the audio is not that good. So like
at yeah, and again not wrong, right, you can both
critique its lack of streamed audio from the CD and

(55:58):
say the music is incredible because the Final Fantas music
is incredible. Seven music is incredible and arcotic, but just
that kind of cognitive dissonance feels like I think it
kind of bilies. You had a contractor or free like
you know, freelancer or some other staff write this review,
and then the editor went through and like boo boo
boop boop boop, and then yeah, cool, summarize and.

Speaker 3 (56:19):
Like, who knows, maybe the initial draft was like hey,
like the actual orchestration and the composition right from Muimatsu
is beautiful and some of the best the series I've
ever had. However, the real dent in the armor is
the lack of Red Book Audio soundtrack, which doesn't do
the compositions justice, you know. And and as somebody who writes,
you know, and gets edited at all, I can see how,

(56:40):
you know, the editor probably wrote those bullet points, or
the initial author wrote those bullet points. The editor came in,
cut out the stuff about the composition being great, left
the stuff about the Red Book audio, and forgot to
update the bullet points, right, And so you can see
how the like the wires get crossed through a process
that's probably you know, not as comprehensive, or was maybe

(57:02):
rushed or a little faster than it should have been.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
So I thought it would be kind of fun. I
went back and looked at the Ultra Gameplayer's view that
was a nine point seven out of ten. This is
a five. You know. I was kind of wondering if
there would be a review that was like talking about
some of the janky story or you know. I did
find a couple of contemporary things that mentioned kind of
the localization, but that was usually in more of an

(57:25):
in depth feature versus this actual review. It was so
far ahead of its time in so many ways that
it feels like that technical achievement overshadowed what I think
we're pretty obvious flaws at the time. But then how
the game is remembered and everything. It's it's just it's
just fascinating to look back on that.

Speaker 3 (57:44):
To me, it is and like I don't know, I
don't know if me and my friends picked up on
the localization being bad at the time, Like I don't
remember any of that.

Speaker 2 (57:52):
I think it.

Speaker 3 (57:53):
I think it was just so impressive in a lot
of ways that you know, the audio visual stuff, the graphics,
the cinematics, the setting, the pre rendered backgrounds, like it
all just kind of smacked you over the head so
hard that maybe we just didn't really notice or care
about the.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
Rest of it.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
I will say I felt like I meant to clip
this out. Everybody loved Eric, Yeah, everybody loved everybody loved
I was a TIFA guy from the beginning.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
But the Ulter Game Players was great in the remake,
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I like I feel like I
feel like the remake executes on what I felt TIFA
was lacking in the original, as like that sort of
third pillar in Cloud's life, because I don't think that's
there in the original game in the way that is
in the remake, and so no, yeah, and that's an
argument argument.

Speaker 1 (58:33):
For sure, sure, But like I the Ultra game Players
review actually called out and it's big thing that surprised
me was talking about Barrett's dialogue and the translation and going, okay,
he's like walking around talking like mister t and like
this is really kind of like wow, this dude is
like a stereotype, which again I was surprised anne pleased

(58:56):
to see called out. I also remember, like the T
for teen rating, being shocked when characters could say shit
and then being equally shocked when characters said dollars signed
pound sign at blah blah, blah blah blah blah. You
know it's like, well, can you say shit or not?
Can you say damn or not? Like how did I
don't understand? You know, and like you know, there are

(59:16):
big dramatic moments and then people are talking in you know,
garbleedygook that.

Speaker 3 (59:21):
You know is a swear word, and then you know
there's like some intentionality behind the localization to like get
that stuff through or create a stereotype out of Barrett,
but then not enough intentionality to like nail the really
important stuff yea, which is weird.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
Very strange. So yeah, I mean five out of five.
Tont that, Like everybody's giving this game huge scores for
for reasons. I thought it was kind of fun flipping
through the rest of this Resident Evil also gets five
out of five. Super Street Fighter Collection i mentioned earlier
also gets five out of five. Ace Combat gets five
out of five. Namco Museum Volume four gets two, which

(01:00:00):
I was surprised to see it too. In the opening issue.
Good for them, you know, but it was basically like
these are this is a really random collection of arcade
games to like pac planned. We were not crying out
for this. There's like a half decent pac Man in here,
but you've played pac Man.

Speaker 4 (01:00:18):
The little bullet points are great. Looks like you made
the games yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
Damn so good, damn the best thing, and I think
it deserved a three.

Speaker 3 (01:00:28):
It should have Gottenn extra point because the Namco Museum collections,
there are five of them, and each one had a
different letter from the word Namco on the front cover
of the case, so or the I guess it would
be the manual, so like you had.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
The first one was n a m c O.

Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
So you line up side by side if you got
all of them spells Namco, and that to me is
like a baseline one what's on the disc. If you
put that level of effort into your presentation, you get
a one at least. So I think they got I
think they got that too wrong on Namco Museum, even
if pac Land is sort of the lead, the lead
game on the collection.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
So flip the page and hey, cut a great deal
at Sears and there's Cloud with the buster sword.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
Clip this coupon shirt. Yeah, clip this coupon.

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Take it to Eddie Sears Fundtronics department for one T
shirt and ten dollars off the regular price. Final Fantasy seven.
I did get the shirt because I pre ordered it
at Software et cetera. I do still have the shirt.
I think I think I wore it to go buy remake.

(01:01:35):
I think I think I think I think I wore
on remake date, bought it digitally or whatever, but like
I wore it just to make sure I'm like yo,
which was great. And then one last highlight, I want
to hear Battle Aerina Toshine Den, which we reviewed this
review in another episode. I don't know if we're gonna
it was kind of our first proto episode episode zero

(01:01:57):
and a half. Probably get to that at some point.
It got four and a half stars from their original
score quote unquote. I guess that's from gameplay.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
Because this is issue one, this issue one.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
Yeah, I don't know, but I think they're like, well,
we would have given it four and a half stars.
Side release new score three four and a half down
to three.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
I guess they played tush in and two.

Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
My favorite, though, is next to it is Jumping Flash two,
which its original score four and a half stars, new
score four and a half scars.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
It's like nothing's change's changed, guys.

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
You couldn't couldn't have found a different game that you know,
like you you realize, like, oh we missed we missed
the mark on here. We gave sweek it in a
three and we should have given it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
Yeah, it's really great for me. The the battlary that
it's like, what changed. The answer is nothing. It's like
it's still a pretty good game that can hold its
weight with today's heavy hitters. They say only complimentary things
and then doc a star and a half.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
Yeah, even by even by today's standards, the three D
character movements have yet to be surpassed. Both new and
long time PlayStation owners still definitely check it out.

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
Screw you three stars, Like what's.

Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
Like thirty three percent of the stars? Like they got
knock that score down by thirty three percent.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
And I think that is just you know, it kind
of reflects the recency bias, like anything new must be
better because it's new, because we're so excited, you know
that the technology is pushing so far forward the like
let alone retro right, it's like what is coming out
last year is like last year?

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
Yeah, I guess like it's kind of like this game
tush in and they have released date of September nineteen
ninety five. So earlier I was talking about how like
PlayStation fever hadn't really kicked in, like you know, hardcore
PlayStation fans didn't really exist at the time, but like
I guess two years later, I feel like at that
time it was still trying to find its way. But

(01:03:56):
maybe that was just me because I was a big
RPG fan and my friends we were just RPG fan
so we played stuff like Toshinden and the original Jumping
Flash like here and there, but it didn't really cement
itself as like the game console we needed until ninety seven.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
We're also rounding into the Hey, there are different consoles
that do different things. Yeah, you know, if you were
an Indudo kid for life or if you were a
Sega die hard coming out of the console wars, but
nobody was, Like I don't want to say nobody. I
don't think you had the same like, oh, you have
to be a plate Like you could be a PlayStation fanatic,
but you weren't a Sony fanatic. No, because your Walkman

(01:04:34):
was Sony, your TV was Sony, your stereo was Sony.
You know, like Sony, there were so many Sony things.
Sony didn't feel like it was it was yours or
ours I could have in that same way that Nintendo
or Sega, and like you said that, like maybe people
were like, yeah, PlayStation is the best console. I've got
a PlayStation. It's the best it's said, Well you gotta
said and blah blah blah blah blah. But that's maybe

(01:04:57):
why there weren't the PlayStation tattoos or the you know,
it wasn't the Sony.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
Raded eye in that same way. And there's there wasn't
kind of that like.

Speaker 4 (01:05:06):
Parasocial association with Sony the way that Nintendo and Sega
like really developed through a lot of advertising stuff too, right,
Like there was like direct like console wars in magazines
where they were trying to kind of steal people's like
brand loyalty away. PlayStation wouldn't say that they were kind
of like, hey, games are for not just children anymore.

(01:05:26):
We're going to position ourselves as a console that's for
you know, grown ups or young adults or you know,
people who were in their early twenties in a way
that like Nintendo wasn't hadn't really caught up with yet.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
Because like I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:05:39):
Looking at this backlog, which is where they give a
bunch of stars to what was at fifth every PlayStation game,
did you say, Yeah, not every, but like a bunch
of them. There's like a bunch of good games in
there that you know, my friends and I, like we
really got into the PlayStation when, like I said that,
one friend got a PlayStation for funal Fantasy seven, but
we knew other people who had them, and so we

(01:06:00):
would go over to their houses and we'd play stuff.
You know, we played Cool Borders and Crash Bandicoot, right,
we played stuff like I remembering the Jet Modo demo
a ton and stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (01:06:11):
Like they're good games on here.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
Which are you know which were fun? Loaded? Was fun?

Speaker 3 (01:06:17):
They gave five stars that soul Blade sweek it in
Super Puzzle Fighter to Turbo was a big one that
we played a lot, uh, you know, Totbal number one,
Tomb Raider, Wild Arms, wipe Out. You know, Like so
we were definitely playing these games. But when you know,
you asked me at the beginning of the episode, it's like, oh, no,
PlayStation started with Funes seven, Like that was the beginning
of like its existence in my head, in my even

(01:06:39):
though like I had all these experiences with these other
games and played them a ton at other people's houses,
but it didn't really like infiltrate our friend group as
like the thing just talked about.

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
Yeah, Kill seven came along.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
Okay, so aiden that's their review their reviews section. Should
we go ahead and review the actual you a Final
Fantasy seven?

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
All right, man, let's let's do it. Let's do this thing,
all right? Cool? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
Yeah, I was thinking we could use like a custom
scale for everything. Right, So I'm gonna give this review
six out of ten Buster Swords.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
Six out of ten Buster Swords, I like it. I
gotta say even one Buster Sword is like pretty cool.
Like if you've got a Buster Swords Cloud Strife, one
Buster Sword pretty cool. So six out of ten not
not bad. Right in the middle, I think, I think
you're kind of spot on there. I might give it

(01:07:35):
a seven, maybe even an eight. I think it's a
pretty good sort of consumer centric buyer's guide style view.
It tells you what the game is, it tells you
what it does it well, and why it's special. When
I go back and I think about this period of
my life, though, there are reviews that have like been
burned into my soul that I read.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
A million times.

Speaker 3 (01:08:00):
That informed, you know, my personality at you know, like
there there's a Chrono review in a Game Player's issue
that like I must read three hundred times, right, I'd
read it every night before that. When it comes to
these big like genre changing, industry changing, life changing games
like Final Fantasy seven, that's kind of what I want

(01:08:21):
from that review. I want something that I like do
and it becomes it is the feature for that issue
of that magazine. That's not what this review is. This
review is fine, it's well written, it's well presented. It
presents Fan Fantay seven straints well. So I'm going to
give it, you know, a median like good review score
seven Buster stores out of ten, which is good seven

(01:08:42):
Buster sorts. I don't even think Cloud could carry seven
Buster sorts. But it's like it's a you know, it's
not super punchy, it's not super memorable, but it absolutely
does its job of telling you what Fan Fantasy seven
was and what it did well.

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
Yeah, and as we talked about, it did give us
the highest and the lows. I just went back and
looked at, you know, the Ultra Game Player's review, a
couple other reviews, and ah Man you know they had
there was two pages, right, like, they really gave it
the haft. And if you're launching a PlayStation magazine, it
looks like they had a huge Maybe I should give
them credit for the huge walk through, the huge feature,

(01:09:17):
but it seems like.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
They knew this was going to be a giant game.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
And you know, again, they also had the big backlog
of games. They're rating all the games that they didn't
get a chance to rate. They're doing all this stuff
for number one. But overall, as it stands in a vacuum,
I just think it's it's it's a little too middle
of the road, doesn't stand out, like you say, doesn't
have enough depth to it hints at some things we
also have, like again the contradictory Willet points. So I'm I'm,

(01:09:42):
I'm I'm willing to go up to seven with you,
but I think that's my limit. So yeah, all right,
let's go seven out of ten. We will give it
seven out of ten. Buster Swords. That is our review
of PS Independent PlayStation Magazine's review of Final Fantasy seven?

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
Did we get it right?

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
Leave our review a review at Apple Podcast, post it
as a comment on YouTube. We will read the best
ones on here, and hey, go ahead pass this show
around to all your friends like it's third grade and
we're on the playground. But unlike these old magazines, you
won't have to wait a whole month for the next installment.
We're dropping new episodes every two weeks, so subscribe follow
however you check out your podcast, follow us on blue

(01:10:21):
Sky at fun Factor Pod, and please consider becoming a
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now you've got the fun factor

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PSM No. 1 - Final Fantasy VII [S1E1]

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