Part 115: Famicom Part 4 - This whole thing's stupid. Let's keep going.

Let's Play Final Fantasy 7, Famicom Edition

Part 4: 'This whole thing's stupid. Let's keep going.'


Another thing that really sterilizes the mood of FF7F, beyond the lack of body language, is the lack of music. Most of the music in FF7 is easily recognizable; the tunes are distinctive and suit the mood of their scenes/characters very well. Although the title music is preserved, everything else is randomly slapped down music from other sources, presumably FF3, for the most part. Then again, perhaps this is my fault, playing the game on turbo, and having much of the music sped up into a whirring auditory mess.



The game finally presents us with a choice, rather than handing us a decision. Busting our way in gets us into a couple of fights with the standard Shinra soldiers, but at this point it isn't really an issue. We stride our way confidently into the lobby.



Taking the sneaky way in treats us to way too many stairs. The dialogue is happily unchanged from the original. "How much longer do these stairs go on?" "Why don't you ask them!".









The door at the top takes us to the exact same lobby that fighting our way in did. Oh well.

The floors serve the same purpose that they did in the original game. Floor 61 features a bunch of NPCs, one of whom gives us the key card for floor 62. Floor 62 has the mayor. Rather than getting clues for the mayor's password from the library, we find them in pages from his diary. His question gets changed, too. Rather than a random four-letter word, the options are "The Powerful Mayor", and "The Weak, Useless Mayor". The mayor has self-esteem issues, being a figurehead and all, and the proper answer is "The Weak, Useless Mayor". Apparently, that sounds good to him, and he gives us a keycard to the 63rd floor.







Also, the mayor has a useless ladder on his floor. Your guess is as good as mine.



The next floor has the 'find the switch in the treasure box' puzzle, except without the model of Midgar. I suppose that's somewhat reasonable.



We watch the meeting of our villainous council from the sides. We've already seen Pres. Shinra, Heidegger, and Reeve, but that leaves two characters that we don't know yet.





These are prepubescent Palmer and bearded Hojo. I think Hojo has stolen whatever testosterone Palmer may once have had. Come to think of it, he looks just about ready to kick somebody down a pit ( This! Is! Shinra!).



Nothing really interesting here, but I love the idea of Shinra having bears patrolling their office corridors.



We don't get a good glimpse of what's in there, but we'll be seeing the face of Jenova soon enough.



I couldn't say it better myself, Barret.



On the next floor up, we meet up with Red XIII. Red carries the Fire materia, which is, in fact, very logical. Hojo throws his horrible eldritch monstrosity at us.



Although arguably, this fight is supposed to showcase Red XIII, the Specimen is immune to fire magic, so Red XIII doesn't get to do all that much here.



Trying to take the elevator, Cloud is accosted by his well-to-do evil twin.





Rude doesn't have much interesting to say, but I wanted to get all the portraits out there so that you guys can see what sources they've been ripped from.



The crew lands in the big house. I do wonder why the Shinra didn't just take Aeris and Red XIII back to Hojo's holding pens, though.



Something, however, happens.

All the NPCs in the Shinra building are oblivious, however. You can go back to every other floor in the building, and nobody will remark on anything odd.



Arriving on the top floor, we find President Shinra with a sword sticking out of his head. I might say that it would be dangerous for Sephiroth to go on alone without it, but that would be a bad joke.



Now-President Rufus flies in, demonstrating that he has his mother's eyes and his father's moustache. Palmer hops into the air-football, and Rufus gives his speech about power and money and how to be as evil as possible on a budget. Cloud stays to fight, Tifa stays behind for him, and the remainder get to fight Shinra's advanced military hardware.





The greatly limited number of things in the NES Final Fantasy games that look even remotely robotic means that some bosses are just going to be their original sources. Not too bad, I suppose. It's weak to fire, too, so Red XIII finally gets to shine.



Rufus Shinra fares somewhat better. I can imagine that this guy is a maniac capable of murdering thousands.

One interesting thing about this fight is that the game strips all materia from characters when they leave the party. Switching from the Aeris-Barret-Red XIII party to the Cloud party means that when Cloud's fight comes up, he has no equipped materia. Dark Nation can only be hurt by magic. I spent a good amount of time thrashing about until I found out that you can actually switch materia in the middle of battle, an incredibly useful ability, but not very easy to find (there are multiple screens in the item menu that are accessed by pressing left/right, and not up/down like you'd expect).



Rufus flies off.



Less complicated than you might expect, Cloud.



Barret makes this whole thing worthwhile.

Tifa tells us she's got an idea for a way out of Midgar, and we proceed to....



...walk out on foot.



At the end of the road, we again fight a product of Shinra's advaced military technology. This boss battle doesn't even really make sense, considering that we aren't attacked by anybody on our way down the road. Nothing even really connects this thing to Shinra in any way. If I didn't know what was going on already, I'd be damned confused.



Barret asks the important questions.

The simple answer? We go about ten steps south.



Toto, I don't think we're in Midgar anymore...

Next time: 'Chocobo Far, Chocobo Near', or, 'Fucking Snake Die Die Die!'