Part 116: Famicom Part 5 - Snake? Snake! SNAAAAAKE!

Well, it's that time again folks; I hardly remember what FF7 sounded like. The brightness, the vividness, has been converted to a pirated eight-bit memory.

Let's look at the world map.



As we can see, the continents from FF7 are more or less intact, with one or two exceptions. As I understand it, locations that end up unaccessible in FF7F due to unpresent vehicles are simply not put on the map. We'll have to see if this holds true. At the point I've reached in the game, it seems pretty good with respect to keeping the vehicles (although not the minigames) intact.

Let's Play Final Fantasy 7, Famicom Version

Part 5: Snake? Snake! SNAAAAAKE!

Finally, Cloud and the party leave the grassy green urban dystopia of Midgar; the landscape, almost craterlike, highlights the damage that Shinra's mako production has done to the local environment.



A hop, skip, and a jump to the east, is the calm little town of Kalm. Not too much to see here; the NPCs have their same old dialogue. Nobody are sick, though.



Cloud gives his explanation of the events of five years ago. He simply gives all the dialogue from the parts where he explains the flashback, and we don't have to play any of it. In a way, this makes things a little more interesting. At this point, we've only heard Jenova and Sephiroth mentioned together in hushed tones, we don't really know what Jenova is, only that it freaked Barrett out. We didn't even get to see it for ourselves, leaving the terror up to the player.

It reminds me a bit of the original cut of Star Wars. You hear about Jabba the Hutt in those same sinister tones. He's made out to be more and more dangerous as he starts sending bounty hunters after Han. Only until the third movie do we get to actually see him, and discover how dangerous he might be. It builds tension, and adds mystique to the character.



Nobody walks through walls, but this one villager occasionally stands over the river.



With a pleasantly short stop in Kalm, we're free to head south to the Chocobo Far. It seems that the programming team only allowed for the printing of eleven characters in location titles, so we'll be seeing this somewhat frequently.

We do need to get a chocobo, though.

Why? Because there's a big fucking zombie snake between us and the Mithril Mines.



I fought this fucking snake for about an hour, in ten-fifteen minute increments over a period of four days. I think it might have infinite health, but fuck that guy.



So anyways, we buy a Chocobo Lur, for the rather hefty price of 2000G, which is a pretty solid investment at this point.

Rather than running around outside, we take the lure to a small clearing not five steps north of the Chocobo Far. About half the time, a Chocobo shows up, and we can get on and ride.





This allows us to bypass the SNAAAAKE, and enter the mines. What we find is gruesome.





Rude and Elena are down at the end of the mines, apparently waiting for Tseng.



Fort Condor is no more. In a sense, this is somewhat ironic. The least technologically-advanced part of the original FF7 is unreproducible in this port.



Instead, we head on down to Junon. Again, I'm surprised. Junon looks genuinely run-down. It's not flowers and bunnies and farm equipment in what is supposedly the poorest slums in an undercity of endless night. Why couldn't the slums be really run down? I don't know. Maybe the FF7F coding team couldn't read the script? But that takes us back to all those questions about whether this is a tribute or a cash grab. Let us not dwell on it, for that way lies madness.



For the most part, Junon looks pretty good. We've got the tower right over there, the bank running from the town to the waterside, and hey!



We're presented with a boss fight that actually makes more sense than the ridiculous creature in the original game!





That's a little creepy, Cloud.



This, by the way, is a huge lie. We get nothing. It gives some credence to the theory that the Chinese team just reproduced the script without understanding the meaning.



That dolphin, by the way, is a crashing FF1 airship, and I can't see it any other way.



Up top, on the upper side of Junon city, we're dragged into the closet by the first Shinra soldier that sees Cloud, and the subdued emotions, the unresolved tensions, all come pouring out all at once. The soldier gently tousles Cloud's hair, drawing it away to find a bead of blood on his pricked finger. 'We have until President Rufus arrives to get you out of those clothes, soldier', he whispers huskily.



Back in a soldier's uniform, we are free to see the arrival of Rufus and Heidegger on the surprisingly low-lying upper Junon.





We get to participate in the festivities! Really, there's no parade, and no minigames, so we get to just mosey on over back from the closet to the boat.





And we're finally off the Midgar continent, making our way across the ocean to Cloud's homeland, and, hopefully, Sephiroth.



In a way, this feels maybe a little more genuine than the choices you were presented with in FF7. On one hand, if you choose the non-jerk dialogue choices for Cloud, you feel more connected with the characters, and are better able to appreciate the relationships that they develop over the course of the game. On the other hand, if you're a jerk, it just seems goofy and inconsistent with the way the characters behave during the cutscenes. At least, this is how I see it. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the lighthearted jackassery is a crucial part of Cloud's character, and of the way people perceive him. It's a fantastic alternative to sad broody Cloud.



You see, it's because we're on a boat.



Barret's not even wearing a costume. He's not very good at disguise, or stealth. I suppose that's par for the course if you've got a gun for an arm.

A thought: is Barret ever seen to type something or handle something with his gun arm in-game? I can't think of anything off-hand, but it could be a Strong-Bad mystery.



After the deck is cleared, there's still an NPC swabbing the deck who seems totally unpeturbed by the massacre of his shipmates.





Our first glimpse of the game's villain. At this point, we really don't know anything about Sephiroth in FF7F. Not having the Nibelheim flashback means that we don't know what he's capable of, or why he does the shit he does. He suffers at the hands of the cuts more than any other character so far. He's granted something resembling mystery, but given how boring he is in the original game, I'm not sure how much characterization you can take away before you have a mop with daddy issues and genocidal tendencies.

Sephiroth says a bunch about time, and flies off into the air.

Now, I should state that when I played FF7 for the first time, I was a little frosty on the plot up to leaving Junon. Sephiroth was boring, Cloud has a mysterious past, and none of the human antagonists seemed really interesting. Rufus? Bah. After seeing the freaky headless thing in the Shinra building, I wanted to find out more, but was concerned that the buildup wasn't going to give any satisfying payoff. Out of nowhere, on a boat in the middle of the ocean, I suddenly find myself face-to-face with a hulking alien monstrosity totally unlike anything that I've encountered in the game. It shoots lasers and has crazy tentacles and what the fuck is this thing this is awesome! From that point, I felt a lot more willing to march on through the ridiculous plot, and all the nonsensical Japanese stuff. Jenova made me want to finish the game...



Awww...

Next Time: