Final Fantasy 7 (VII) For The Original Nintendo NES

Written by Link on 22nd February, 2008

Credit for this article goes to Derrick at CinnamonPirate.com

The original NES has brought us many classic games. Super Mario, Punch Out and Legend Of Zelda are all games which spawned amazing series that are still around today.

Sometime however, the same works in reverse. The ingenuity of Famicom pirate companies have brought the wonders of Resident Evil, Super Mario World and Street Fighter to our beloved 8-Bit system. However, any pirate Facimom cart ever created pales in comparison to this game which I just discovered. Final Fantasy 7 - in all it's pixelated glory.

Yes, gone are the polygons - in with the bits. It's Final Fantasy 7 and even better, it's not a Sprite Hack, but a fully original game. Cloud, Barrett, Tifa, Aeris, Cait Sith, Cid and that bad ass Sephiroth are all here. No Yuffie or Vincent, but Yuffie and Vincent suck anyways right? The most surprising part is though, that the game is good. Now obviously there's a few issues we'll get into, but this has to be the most complicated pirate Famicom games ever released.

When did this happen? Why did it take us so long to find out about this? My best guess is that it was released sometime around the same time as the Advent Children movie (given the label), obviously to capitalize on the popularity the series was experiencing then. Apparently however, it was programmed by Shenzhen Nanjing Technology Co, Ltd, a company which now produces MP3 and MP4 audio players.

Tech Specs

I'm not a tech guy at all when it come to older systems. If you are though, than you have to pay respect to some of the stuff this cart pulls off. Most NES ROMs consist of one or more PRG (program) and CHR (character) ROMs on a board. The company behind this beast took a new approach: a gigantic PRG ROM. The PRG ROM weighs in at 2048KB — apparently one of the largest ever seen on a NES board — and contains no CHR ROMs at all. It sports a battery-backed SaveRAM with a mere 8KB, which is enough for the game’s single save slot.

The dumper has assigned it a mapper number of 163, and thus far, only an extremely hacked-up version of VirtuaNESex supports the game through an ugly bank-switching mapper driver. I'll work on getting a download link for that up soon. I've also been told that it works on Nestopia, but haven't had a chance to try that out.

As I mentioned above, it's not a simple Sprite Hack, but an original game. It does however rip off the music and sprites from several other games, most Frequently Final Fantasy III. Cloud’s sprite is obviously based the game’s fighter class, and Tifa’s is taken from Maria’s sprite in second game of the series. The same goes for just about every single enemy.

The technical achievements the game pulls off are nothing short of amazing.

Final Fantasy VII is apparently the only NES ROM seen with it's own several-hundred character 16×16 font. Most Japanese games are written in 8×8 hiragana or katakana only, and Chinese games typically waste CHR banks dedicated to 64 characters each, and optimize the banks for literally every text window in the game.

Secondly, its graphics are scattered throughout the entire PRG ROM, as they would be in a Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis ROM. This is very odd for a NES game, which usually uses CHR ROMs to access dedicated image banks.

Also, its script is mixed across several banks of data. The game leap frogs between these banks, which is very unusual. The script even uses a unique system where each text window starts with “@nnn,” where n is a three-digit integer corresponding to which character’s portrait to show.

Materia!

Amazingly, the programmers implemented a Materia system similar to the original game. The available Materia, however, are extremely limited. Each character brings one Materia into the party as he or she joins. As players battle and cast spells, the Materia gains points and can eventually level up. The maximum level for each Materia is nine, with nine spells each.

On top of Materia leveling, each spell can also level up, increasing the damage it does over time. You level up spells by sending your characters to the Magic Shop. If the Materia has earned enough points, the mage there will somehow boost it.

Weapons also gain levels, and each character has at least 12 weapons to be found in the game. The Weapon Shop, similar to the Magic Shop, does not sell weapons; it performs equivalent level up services for your steel.

Materia can be swapped to any character. A non-equipped Materia can be used mid-battle as an item to swap the user’s magic. This is particularly useful in later battles, when you may want to change out who is your healer in between fights — the boss fights toward the end come in such a stream that you have no chance to reorganize your party.

Lastly, the game’s items are extremely trimmed down. There are six healing items, the best of which restores all party members to max life, and four magic. The game does not use MP, instead giving the character a limited number of CP, or Cast Points, for each spell. Magic restoration items can restore CP for a single spell. These CP are saved into the Materia in case you swap it mid-battle to another character.

Armor has been revamped and has a far greater impact on character stats. It can boost vitality, which in turn boosts characters’ HP more than leveling ever will. The strongest equipment will render your characters rather imbalanced: they will take damage like a tank but fight like they equipped with toothpicks.

What's Not Here?

Inevitably, the original Final Fantasy 7 was such an enormous and sprawling game that much of its fluff had to go. The chocobo racing game is gone, as are the sledding and other mini games. You can no longer raise or breed chocobos, and Chocobo Billy now gives you a Boko-Whistle in place of greens. The whistle allows you to draw out any chocobos wandering around in forests.

The land rover is present, but its use is much more limited. Its only purpose in the game is to get you across the Gongaga River.

Summons have been completely dropped and there is no Chocobo Dance at the farm. The islands and places hiding things like Knights of the Round have also been cut. The Weapons are all missing as well, but this is due more to where the game draws to a finale than cutting. More on this later.

Perhaps most aggravating for some players will be the omission of Yuffie and Vincent. The game only has six characters: Cloud, Barrett, Tifa, Aeris, Cait Sith and Cid. By the end of the game you will only have five.

Since Yuffie is gone and because of where the game ends, the islands of Wutai and Mideel have also been dropped from the world map. The Chocobo Sage was also dropped — if you cannot raise chocobos, then there is no reason for him to exist.

Fort Condor has also been cut. I guess the programmers did not want to bother with adding an SRPG mini-game engine to the existing 2048KB or packed-in data.

There are no Limit Breaks, which as you can imagine, sucks. Not only because of the awesomeness of limit breaks, but it makes game play even more slow and gruelling. Lastly, you never get a vehicle which can fly. The Tiny Bronco is immediately shot down, and the game ends before you can claim the Highwind.

If this sounds like a big list, it is not. Anything not on here is something that went right.

Game Sequence

The game begins the same as the PlayStation game, just without the spinning CG overview of Midgar. The train pulls up to the Sector 7 reactor and Barret and Cloud disembark. Soldiers run out and attack Cloud in groups of two, and you continue on through the Mako Reactor. Every event is in place, from Jesse tripping to the dialogue between each character as they crack passwords and open gates. After placing the bomb, a boss jumps out. You beat it, the reactor blows, and everyone scrambles.

Back on the street, Cloud bumps into Aeris, buys a flower, then gets chased by guards and cornered in three fights before being able to jump on the train. Jesse explains the new ID systems and shows Cloud the train maps before it pulls into Sector 7 and everyone heads for Tifa’s Seventh Heaven.

In a normal Famicom Pirate, this is where the game would probably die. It dosen't.

From start to almost finish, the game follows the PlayStation port. Key dialogue sequences are completely identical, such as when the group finds what Sephiroth did to the Midgar Zolm to when Cloud freaks out and hands over the Black Materia. Aeris tells the drunk old dressmaker how Cloud has always wished that just once he could dress up like a girl. Dyne and Barrett have the same conversations as in the PlayStation original. Nothing is missing or out of place.

That said, there are some condensed scenes.

The dialogue Cloud has with himself when he first enters Junon is missing. Buganhagen’s part in Costa del Sol is cut quite short since he does not have an 8-bit planetarium, and you never come back since the Giant Materia quest never happens. The mansion in Nibelheim is only one room, and though Sephiroth says he is heading for the mountain and the map shows and entrance to the mountain, there is no way for you to actually get there.

Things start to get choppy after passing Icicle Inn. The team reaches the northern crater and the sequence leading up to the JENOVA Reunion is almost identical to the original game. However, following the scene when Cloud asks Hojo to give him a number, Sephiroth comes out and he goes bonkers. It appears that somehow, he and Tifa end up in the Lifestream at the Northern Crater, and she is able to draw out the real Cloud.

With Cloud finally himself again, the team heads into the crater to fight the One-Winged Angel, and later Sephiroth. With the battle over and Meteor still on its collision course with the planet, the screen goes black and the game’s final FMV is narrated through a series of six dialogue windows.

The weapons are missing and you never see the towns get wrecked. Honestly speaking, Disc 3 of the game sucked, and this is as good of a wrap up as any without derailing the story in a series of meaningless side quests.

Oh, and Cloud’s sword is so big it takes an entire second 16×24 character block to display it.

Problems

If I have made this game sound fantastic, than I'm sorry. I'm a fanboy at heart. Do not forget that at its core it is a unlicensed pirate cart. It is not without its flaws.

First off, the music is all lifted from Final Fantasy II and III. Lifted poorly. Battle themes were cut to 12 bars in length and have a repetitive grind that will quickly have you wishing you were deaf. The grinding tunes are exacerbated by a battle engine which emphasizes power leveling. At the start of the game, you are so under leveled that the first two bosses may take 40 or more turns to beat. And with a lack of access to healing items in areas which have monsters, getting your levels up can be incredibly difficult.

The encounter rate is also incredibly varied. On some screens, you can walk quite far with no battles at all. However, on the sea — where screen scrolling is most monotonous — the enemy encounter rate is incredible: every eight or nine tiles.

Weapons and spells simply do not level fast enough, and will often be behind your character’s attribute gains.

And that brings up another question: The original reviewer made it to level 97, but there was still a zero ahead of that. Would the game cap at 255? Would it be 999? Who knows. Someone write in and let me know if level 777 unlocks the game’s missing All-7-Fever.

The way battle screen characters slide out rather than step out is another unnecessary ugliness, though the new attack animations are quite cool, if simple.

Should you play it?

Now here's the problem. I haven't played much of the game, besides load it up, wonder around and kill a few baddies. The language barrier is too much for. Given that, it is still entirely possible to play this game start to finish knowing only English. I know people who have done that with much more complicated games. I just can't personally rationalize dedicating the time if I can't read the script.

I should mention at this point that the majority of this article, as well as all of the screen caps are taken from Cinamon Priate as well as several forums.

Those that have completed the game say you should play it — but cheat. It is not worth spending the amount of time leveling that this game would force you to. Leveling up should not be such a painful, mandatory experience, and the game should not be so unbearably difficult if you do not dedicate hours and hours to building up your party.

For anyone who beat Final Fantasy VII, you will not find anything new in the game in terms of story. The script is almost identical — though a little more fun to read in Chinese — and the game systems are not nearly as refined.

However, it is a new 8-bit Final Fantasy. For anyone who wanted to see a later Final Fantasy re-done in classic style, this is your chance. Were the not-so-kickin’ tunes less aurally offensive, I dare say this title can hold its own against the other NES Final Fantasy games. But jumping back into such an old style may prove too much for players who have grown accustomed to Game Boy Advance or DS remakes.

All in all, this is a great NES RPG and a surprisingly professional unlicensed cartridge. Expect it to have flaws and treat it like you would a beta of the never-finished NES Final Fantasy IV and it will provide hours of entertainment. Certainly more than many Final Fantasy-based ROM hacks would; perhaps to the exclusion of Dragoon X Omega II — a game that would have been so much cooler with a less sophomoric name.

That said, enjoy a whopping 138 screen shots from a full play through this game. Just about every scene and every menu will give you an idea of how complete this NES port really is.

Lastly, anyone seen a copy of this on eBay? I can see this selling for big bucks, juts look at the price of the original Final Fantasy 7.

Need to download the rom? Check out our forums, someone there can probably point you to a link.

Please Digg this article!

Add Your Comments

46 Responses to “Final Fantasy 7 (VII) For The Original Nintendo NES”

898 on February 22nd, 2008 10:40 am

Nice read. I will probably fool around with it but like you said, without understanding the language its too much to go through.
R. Kasahara on February 22nd, 2008 2:18 pm

I must have this cart :O
kaleb on February 22nd, 2008 10:42 pm

its rare alright,not one on ebay!
Spoonstar on February 24th, 2008 10:09 am

You probably should’ve mentioned somewhere before the last three paragraphs that you completely plagiarized this.
D on February 24th, 2008 12:57 pm

Spoonstar: Plagiarism is encouraged and protected by the Creative Commons License. I have no idea why there is such a push for every paragraph of text and every photograph on the Internet to be licensed under it, but I have bent with the times.

My text and pictures were licensed under by-nc-sa (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/), which gives anyone the rights “to copy, distribute and transmit the work” and to “to adapt the work” as long as I am credited. He did mention near the very bottom that the bulk of his text that this article was lifted wholesale from my original, which fulfills the license requirements.

Of course, whether the license exists to protect plagiarism or to foster derivative works is another matter, and whether the advertisements on his page would render this a commercial use of my work, which would be in violation of the license, is another question: one for which I have no answer.
demauk on February 24th, 2008 4:04 pm

It makes sense you ripped this whole article from someone else. It’s too well written to be yours; you can’t even spell Cinnamon Pirate properly.
Kitsune Sniper on February 24th, 2008 10:21 pm

Wow, now you’re removing my comments?

YOU STILL RIPPED THIS OFF. Just link to the original artist, don’t be a dick!
Kitsune Sniper on February 24th, 2008 10:23 pm

Or rather, I meant, link to the original article and delete all of this. You didn’t write it, you didn’t even bother removing the comments Derrick made.

Classy.
Link on February 25th, 2008 4:47 am

Kit,
I`m not hiding anything, so only removed your one comment because it was a little over the top.
xezna on February 25th, 2008 12:29 pm

I like this game
not really
Kk on February 26th, 2008 8:46 am

This is so fake it’s making me cry.
First of all, 16 bit (SNES) cartridge? Yeesh.
Shopping clearly 16 bit images on 8 bit screens?
Right…

Drastically going over the size of spritelimit?
…
You sir, lose.
That Girl on February 26th, 2008 8:20 pm

at least the pictures were cool to look at, even if its not real
Link on February 27th, 2008 7:55 am

KK you should Google what a Famicom cart looks like.
Kk on February 27th, 2008 10:13 pm

I have a nintendo with some japanese cartridges they do not look alike.
maz on February 28th, 2008 4:45 pm

Kk, you’re right, a “nintendo” would not like like a “japanese cartridge.” However, if you’re saying that the first picture in this blog does not look like a Japanese Famicom cart, then you’re either blind or lying that you have some.
hello i m mastur cheef on March 20th, 2008 4:32 pm

lololololololololololololololololoolololololololololololololololololololololololololololoolololololololololololloooololololololololololololololololol
hey on April 7th, 2008 11:47 pm

where could i buy this cart? and all those rinkaku games? i seen a diablo 2 one where are they all hiding??
prescildo on April 20th, 2008 12:58 pm

Brazil-BR como eu faço donwload desse rom da nitendo final fantasy VII
khoi on April 30th, 2008 2:20 am

KK your dumb fuck, nintendo and “japanese” famicom cartages are different, and the picture up top is not a snes cartage, its what a real japanese nintendo(famicom) cartage looks like. peoples ignorance…makes me sick
Kail on May 9th, 2008 6:52 pm

Wow… this is lame, and yet I desperatley want to play it, as I am a FFVII whore.
tlsolrac on May 24th, 2008 11:33 pm

…. where can i download it?!!!
shio on May 28th, 2008 1:53 am

you can get the rom here http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1BLQMS5N

Only gotten it to work with Nestopia but it works

I anyone finds a real cart of this anywhere let me know.
shio on May 28th, 2008 1:58 am

at shiozaki699@aol.com
Jeff on June 3rd, 2008 8:01 pm

Hey guys I have this game complete in box with manual.

[IMG]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/jeff_in_edon/100_0189.jpg[/IMG]
drawde edward on June 6th, 2008 2:43 pm

!!!!!!! just when I thought the fakes couldn’t get worse. FF7 without yuffie or vincent is not FF7. whoever hacked this could at least add them for the were even in advent children. I dont know wether to lol or be ashamed for you people who shouldnt be hacking in the first place.
drawde edward on June 6th, 2008 2:53 pm

NO SUMMONS!!!! who are you people!?!?!?!
drawde edward on June 7th, 2008 8:18 am

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Aric on July 3rd, 2008 3:47 pm

Why is there never anything like this on SNES
Anon on August 13th, 2008 6:08 am

Hey Jeff, any chance at getting a scan of that manual?
Lindblum on August 14th, 2008 4:36 pm

romhacking.net is working on a translation.
James on September 25th, 2008 7:56 pm

As mentioned he borrowed most of this information from another website. — Atleast he isn’t a chinese guy ripping off other companies licensed video games……. !!!!!!!!!
Matthew Corgan on September 30th, 2008 10:48 am

This game looks very interesting. The one map area looked like the Gold Saucer. The picture of Cait Sith was funny 8-bit as well. I was happy to play nes games at vnes, and http://originalnintendo.net

The memories this brought back of FF7 and nes. Also you weren’t overhyping the game as stated.
Anonymous on October 14th, 2008 1:25 pm

This is amazing, but it would’ve been cooler if they’d done it on SNES instead.
Programmer #A-5 on October 28th, 2008 10:27 pm

Another pirate gem. Pirates are fun to collect for the FamiCom/NES systems.

For anybody wondering why most pirates are on FamiCom is because the system is the most pirated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famiclone
Final Fantasy VII (NES) « Cavv-es on November 2nd, 2008 5:16 pm

[...] GameSnipede [...]
Nickwii2112 on December 26th, 2008 7:51 am

This is like… a joke, right?
kao ni men ma on January 14th, 2009 3:19 am

一群SB，全都去死吧
Final Fantasy VII (7) Famicom NES Version | Famicom | gameSniped.com on January 28th, 2009 8:43 pm

[...] VII (7) Famicom NES Version Written by Link on 28th January, 2009 Looks like another copy of this horribly awesome game is up for sale, two [...]
I have a copy on August 21st, 2009 7:06 am

You want the game? Email me at boinker2k2@yahoo.com. Or you could go to http://www.thepiratebay.org and search for Final Fantasy 7 NES ROM and download it AND the emulator you need. My suggestion, however, would be to download an English version of VirtuaNES as well, not because it will load it – NO F-ing WAY! – but because the chinese version is difficult to navigate, unless, of course, you speak chinese. BTW, this port is in English, and it is VERY TEDIOUS, but I don’t have to cheat – yet. The biggest problem I’ve found with it is once you get out of the land rover the first time, which you have to, it doesn’t work the same. You have to hold the “A” button (which is X by default) and walk across to get the damn thing to move one space. Rinse, and repeat. But, seriously, I have this game. I found it the same day I read this article, which was yesterday. I’m on my way to Nibelheim and I have to cross the river again, so I’m messing with the stupid land rover until I get there. For what it is, the game is awesome. It really is a callback to Final Fantasy 2 I’d say, except with FF7 context. And believe me, if you haven’t played the NES version of Final Fantasy, you won’t know what to make of this. I’ve had to up the turbo speed to MAXIMUM just to get normal battles over with within five minutes. I do wish I had cheat codes, because between playing this, FF7 on PC, and crying for a PS3 remake, I’m surprised I have time to work 60 hours a week. heh. Needless to say, I don’t get much sleep.

Email me or search for it on piratebay.org. It’s real, believe me.
YaN on October 2nd, 2009 9:02 pm

WTF!!!

i wish Square enix will release a FF7 Remake on the PSP!!

Yeah!!
that would be cool!!
Roxas3sora on October 27th, 2009 10:06 pm

where do i download it is there a way?
D7 on November 28th, 2009 5:38 pm

Well, I found a translated ROm on a torrent site, and it plays like a charm on Nestopia. It is an odd duck, I’ll have to say. Overall it’s impressive although I would recommend playing it with the volume muted since the music is ear splitting at best.

I have yet to get past level 2 or 3, but it’s a neat little oddity.
D7 on November 28th, 2009 5:40 pm

Direct link from Isohunt:

http://isohunt.com/torrent_details/88592961/final+fantasy+vii+nes?tab=summary
D7 on November 28th, 2009 5:41 pm

English translation from same torrent site:
http://isohunt.com/torrent_details/77233069/final+fantasy+vii+nes?tab=summary

Yeah, it’s got some other FF games in the same torrent, but it’s worth it.
Famicom Chinese Original Games – Diablo, Chrono Trigger, Resident Evil, Zelda, Harvest Moon | Famicom | gameSniped.com on January 14th, 2010 12:45 am

[...] Resident Evil, Zelda, Harvest Moon Written by Link on 14th January, 2010 We've talked about Final Fantasy 7 (VII) For The Original Nintendo NES / Famicom a ton of times [...]
UlteriorMotives on March 17th, 2010 3:07 am

You can find a translated version, free to play on this website.

http://www.vizzed.com/vizzedboard/retro/game.php?id=11287