Part 118: Famicom Part 7 - Ho Ho Hooooo!

I was originally planning to leave the next segment until after Elentor's next update, but I apparently decided otherwise, because it's once again time for

Let's Play Final Fantasy 7: Famicom Edition

Part 7: Ho Ho Hooooo!

Last time we discovered how horribly funny suicide can be when the victim is eight pixels tall. Today, we ignore the existence of the Chocobo.



Because there is no such thing as chocobo races in this collapsed shell of a reality, we are immediately given access to the buggy after defeating Dyne. For some reason, Dio was expecting us to kill Dyne. Was Dio aware of Dyne's actions? Did he let Dyne into the Gold Saucer? Did he only frame us so that we could take care of Dyne for him? This kind of makes sense. Considering Dyne was murdering people down in the prison camp, it's somewhat reasonable that Dio would want somebody to take care of him. Dio probably killed all those guards himself. It makes more sense than Dyne somehow trekking his way across half the continent to murder a few guards, then trek his way back to prison.



Anyways, our victory nets us the buggy. The buggy was frankly the most obnoxious puzzle in this game for me. In order to get into the buggy, you cannot stand on top of the buggy. You must stand immediately next to the buggy, then press A. As intuitive as it may seem to some of you, it kept me occupied for about half an hour.



Traveling west brings us to Gongaga, where Cloud, from afar, spies the turks.







Yep.



Reno fights in exactly the same way as he did the first two times we encountered him. I don't think he actually gets any more difficult, but was rather just copied and pasted from one encounter to the next. Rude, for being the muscleman, is a little bit odd, to me, as a mage.

After defeating them, Palmer comes out and blithers some lines that I believe were previously given to Scarlet. Palmer seems to have acquired a very feminine figure in exchange. More on that later. There's no discussion of potential spyhood, though.



With the Shinra gone, we are left with the only important looking house in the town, in which Plot occurs.





That's all there really is to see in this town. We've got the shops up to the north, but there's no reactor to visit, and no triceratops tank to fight. We leave, and take our little buggy north, to Cosmo Canyo.





Looking around, Cosmo Canyo doesn't seem so bad as far as locations in this game go. We've got the great burning fire, we've got ladders going up between levels, and the whole place has this sense of verticality, like in a canyon. No shops, though, even though it doesn't matter.





This is about as logical a sprite choice as could possibly be made.



Yep, Red XIII's got daddy issues.



Time to go on a magical journey of self discovery and reclaimation of family history and personal identity, in 8-bits!



The Cave of Gi is apparently the only place in the entire game where FF7F uses this water effect. It looks a bit like wading through this stuff should damage you, but that's happily not the case. There are a bunch of dead ends that have a couple weapons, which are irrelevant, but the actual goal is not that far away from the entrance.



One more thing. Bugenhagen's supposedly this super-wise old guy, with knowledge of materia and life energy and all this jazz, he can float, presumably by his magic power, why doesn't he help us fight the ancient ghosts to whom he directly brought us?



Sassy, pirate ghosts.



Come to think of it, this really doesn't reflect on Red XIII's accomplishments if Cloud and Aeris are the ones beating up the ghosts. Maybe if Bugenhagen had come along with Red XIII, and they had taken on this dungeon as a family thing, to help reforge the broken or forgotten bond between Red XIII and his father.



Frankly, this doesn't look too bad. It's clearly a dog-type thing, it clearly has arrows sticking out of it, it's clearly made of stone. Bravo Chinese bootleggers, I can tell what's going on.



Cloud and crew make their preparations to leave Cosmo Canyo and continue on their quest for the plot.



And we leave behind one of the better-crafted regions of the game. Actually, I think this might be the single best crafted location in the game. It looks like what it's supposed to look like, there's an approximately unique sprite, the dungeon isn't too long or too stupid. This was pretty solid. Next time though, next time we see some serious shit.

Next Time: Serious shit! Gender-bending! The best thing since %$&# TEA!