Final Fantasy 7 spotted for Steam

A Square Enix site briefly mentioned a Steam release of Final Fantasy VII, complete with achievements, Cloud Saves, and a "Character Booster" feature.

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Steam fans may have a console classic RPG coming to them on Steam, if an apparent slip-up from Square Enix is any indication. A site briefly listed Final Fantasy 7 for the digital distribution platform, along with a few features of the port. Square Enix hasn't officially confirmed it, but considering the word came from their own site it seems fairly believable.

A cached version of "FinalFantasyVIIPC.com" (via Eurogamer) promises 36 Steam achievements, Cloud Saves, and a "Character Booster" feature to max out your levels on the fly so you can get unstuck from tricky spots. The domain was registered by Square Enix on June 15, so this leak makes an announcement seem imminent.

Around this time last year, both this game and Final Fantasy 8 were discovered in a Steam Registry, but the PC versions were dubbed "extremely temperamental" on modern systems. Maybe Square has finally worked out the kinks.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    June 21, 2012 11:00 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Final Fantasy 7 spotted for Steam.

    A Square Enix site briefly mentioned a Steam release of Final Fantasy VII, complete with achievements, Cloud Saves, and a "Character Booster" feature.

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      June 21, 2012 11:04 AM

      sweet.

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      June 21, 2012 11:08 AM

      Hope it uses the original soundtrack and not that midi bullshit the original PC release had.

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        June 21, 2012 12:15 PM

        By original do you mean the tracks on the PSX version? I don't remember what was wrong with the PC release, I thought it was the same as PSX.

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          June 21, 2012 12:46 PM

          no completely different, PC release was General MIDI. PSX was vastly superior.

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            June 21, 2012 1:43 PM

            That seems incredibly backwards, but I am not surprised. Then, I also hope they ship with the PSX soundtrack.

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              June 21, 2012 1:50 PM

              Back when it was released that was pretty much the only option and using actual CD audio would of made the game into something stupid like 9-10 cds. lol

              I don't think PCs at the time would be fast enough to emulate the PSX audio chip for accurate audio.

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                June 21, 2012 2:08 PM

                To be fair those of us with good sound cards had options to make it better.

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                  June 21, 2012 2:25 PM

                  yes but even with Soundfonts it still sounded worse than the original PSX music

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                    June 21, 2012 2:30 PM

                    It sounded different, sure. Worse or better is a judgement call I won't make.

                    What I will bitch about was how the game would bilinear filter the background or not depending on graphics card. I switched from a Voodoo Rush to a TNT halfway through and was seriously disappointed by the lack of filtering on the TNT. In general it just wasn't a very good experience. Higher-res characters on low-res background art, etc.

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                      June 21, 2012 2:34 PM

                      Yah might of been Glide vs DirectX?

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                        June 21, 2012 2:46 PM

                        Nah, just differences between what the cards supported, I think.

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                June 21, 2012 2:23 PM

                No but I think there were other types of audio compression at the time, although maybe licensing costs for compression algorithms might have been a factor.

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                  June 21, 2012 2:27 PM

                  yah but you have to remember minimum spec was a Pentium 133 and that was hardly playable even. I remember running it on a Pentium 2 - 400Mhz and it was still pretty choppy in places.

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            June 21, 2012 3:27 PM

            The PSX version did have some ear-piercingly bad instrument sounds in it, though. FinalFanTim's remastered soundtrack is probably the best out there now, which is basically the PC version's MIDIs run through some decent soundfonts or somesuch. It's much less grating than the PSX or original MIDI soundtracks, but the strings are weak and there's a lot of bad reverb.

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        June 21, 2012 2:36 PM

        What? I bought a Yamaha XG soundcard (with motherfucking optical out) especially for this game - cost me upwards of £100 at the time.

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          June 21, 2012 2:41 PM

          yah the XG Midi sounded better, but it didn't compare to the PSX samples.

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        June 22, 2012 12:50 AM

        Completely redone by the Black Mages.

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      June 21, 2012 11:10 AM

      Was the "Cloud saves" an intended pun? :D

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      June 21, 2012 11:13 AM

      I wished this popped up on GOG.com instead of Steam because then at least I would be certain this would be playable on modern machines.

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        June 21, 2012 11:44 AM

        Yah I'm sure that would go over well if they released the old Win95 port as is

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          June 21, 2012 3:33 PM

          I'm thinking to how the Interplay releases of Fallout 1+2 on Steam had issues, and the Lucasarts release of Jedi Knight 2 was unplayable for most without some hacks.

          That said, if this is real and they're adding cloud saves and achievements then that seems to indicate that at the very least they're taking getting it to run on modern systems seriously.

          I don't know what is involved with achievements and cloud saves, but I can't help but wonder - if it requires source code changes then this isn't just a repackaging. And if they've been messing with the source for a year now, maybe they've done more to it than just hitting compile and run?

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        June 21, 2012 1:06 PM

        I wish I could say the same. After playing Outcast from GOG...I dunno.

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      June 21, 2012 11:32 AM

      Cloud Saves, hehehe

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      June 21, 2012 11:36 AM

      Hell. Yeah.

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      June 21, 2012 11:39 AM

      I really hope this includes a thorough graphical redressing!

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        June 21, 2012 11:41 AM

        I also wish to win the lottery.

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          June 21, 2012 11:42 AM

          And since the cached website lists the price at $12.50, it seems a little too wishful.

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            June 21, 2012 11:46 AM

            widescreen support would be nice.......

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              June 21, 2012 12:08 PM

              Unfortunately I don't think this is possible without that graphical redressing - all the backgrounds were designed with 4:3 in mind.. It would probably work in the world view.

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                June 21, 2012 12:42 PM

                Wasn't this the version that Square actually came back and said that even re-rendering all the elements wasn't possibility because they were all deleted to make room for the next series? Maybe Google can help find that old article.

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                  June 21, 2012 1:44 PM

                  That sounds a lot like some PR guy talking about stuff he doesn't understand..

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                  June 21, 2012 2:21 PM

                  George Lucas works for Square now?

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                    June 21, 2012 2:57 PM

                    [deleted]

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                      June 21, 2012 3:18 PM

                      It's not the graphical changes people are complaining about in Star Wars. It's the fact that they affect the story.

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                        June 21, 2012 4:44 PM

                        [deleted]

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                          June 21, 2012 9:18 PM

                          It's not updating the visuals (mostly), but the crappy additions like Greedo shoots first, Jabba in A New Hope and stupid dance sequences.

                          Also I was more referring to the bullshit claim that the original assets or versions were/cannot be preserved all of a sudden. It's just a load of crock.

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                            June 21, 2012 9:22 PM

                            This. If all Lucas had done was clean up garbage mattes and enhance the effects I doubt people would have minded at all, but he did far more than that.

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                            June 22, 2012 3:53 PM

                            [deleted]

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            June 21, 2012 2:12 PM

            That seems like a lot of money for a game that came out 15 years ago.

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      June 21, 2012 11:42 AM

      [deleted]

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      June 21, 2012 12:09 PM

      This will indeed be an insta-buy.

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      June 21, 2012 2:20 PM

      I've only put in 13 minutes of playtime in FF7. :/

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        June 21, 2012 3:30 PM

        Well you are kinda the worst.

        • Ebu legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
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          June 21, 2012 4:03 PM

          No, FF7 as kinda the worst.

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          June 21, 2012 4:58 PM

          It doesn't stand the test of time for me. Too tedious.

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      June 21, 2012 2:43 PM

      I'm not sure where EG is getting Steam from. Nothing on the Google cached page mentions Steam. Anyone know?

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        June 21, 2012 3:14 PM

        It mentions achievements and things you can purchase through a store, and on a domain that has PC in the title.

        The "achievements" eliminate services like GOG and Desura, and leave open either Steam or GFWL. Given that Steam has a better relationship with Squeenx than GFWL...

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      June 21, 2012 2:49 PM

      If it has updated graphics, count me in. If not, I'll wait for the remake.

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        June 21, 2012 3:36 PM

        You'll be waiting a pretty long time for a full remake. And I doubt they updated the graphics very much for this port either. It's probably just tweaked a bit for modern resolutions.

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        June 21, 2012 3:49 PM

        If it had updated graphics, it'd be on the consoles and handhelds before PC (if at all on PC). That would be a lot of effort and money to spend on an updated FF7 only to ignore the platforms most people would play it on.

        It's probably gonna be an emulated version of the PS1 original with a couple tweaks, or an update of the old PC version that may actually work by default on modern hardware. Hopefully it's the latter, and they don't completely break the existing mods. A copy of the PC version of FF7, if you mod it to all hell and back (can take a long time), is as close to an updated remake as we're likely to get.

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      June 21, 2012 3:44 PM

      Fuck yeah!

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      June 21, 2012 3:46 PM

      YUSSS

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      June 21, 2012 10:13 PM

      [deleted]

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      June 21, 2012 10:16 PM

      While I really loved 7. I want to know where the fuck the FFX HD remake is.

      I need that now.

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        June 21, 2012 10:32 PM

        I think that's going to be PSN only. Or am I wrong?

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      June 21, 2012 10:17 PM

      [deleted]

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      June 21, 2012 11:51 PM

      who cares...

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      June 22, 2012 12:51 AM

      I loved FF7 (until one of the final bossfights), but it also cured me from ever feeling the need to play JRPGs again.

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      June 22, 2012 12:03 PM

      [deleted]

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