redking56

I remember seeing it as a 10 year old in the theatres. I'd been a big fan of the FF series, although being from the forsaken PAL territories I had only expeienced the PlayStation trilogy thus far.

I don't really remember my initial thoughts other than I probably was confused and thought it was a weird film but even then as a 10 year old I did recognise some of the themes that related to FF, in particular VII. There are some other "fan service" references but they're pretty deep and not very noticable like General "Hein".

I did recently rewatch the film on blu-ray just out of curiousity to how impressive the visual fidelity of an 18 year old CGI film would be. In that regard, it definitely has it's moments but usually only when there's a certain lighting where you can really see their hair strands, eye detail etc.

Watching it again now older and more familar with Final Fantasy and creator/director Sakaguchi I can appreciate the ideas the film had in relation to Sakaguchi's own personal feelings on life and death, the nature of the "soul" and how he relates it to shared memories/experiences. Looking back I can't help but feel pity for how things turned out and how disappointing the whole situation would have been for Sakaguchi.

For me the best part of the film is Aki's dreams and the intro, the empty city at night with all the partical lighting effects really draws you in. But after that it just gets bogged down in "being a Hollywood film".

Overall the film is just cliché with too many film tropes to count, anyone who's seen a few films in their lifetime can guess outcomes and punchlines way before they happen. The characters are alright if a little stock but are decently preformed by their all-star case, Donald Sutherland puts in a great preformance somehow despite the script. All that aside, on balance I think this is probably the best video game film adaption there is (aside from the ones that are popular for their camp/b-movie qualities, looking at you Mortal Kombat.)

I give it 5.8 out of 10 spirit signatures.

My biggest worry with Dan & Jeff reviewing Dragon Ball is they're going to be hung up with the 80s gag manga comedy which revolves around panties, old man groping and other toilet humour. Either they're going to have to ignore it or spend at least 5 minutes on each joke making sure that they emphatically state they find it problematic.

If they do, there is a fan edited version out there that edits everything that wasn't in the manga but I doubt they'll risk promoting an unofficial release.

@zombiepie: Thanks for the reply, your article did make me have a good think about how FF was even like to play back in the day (I came to it late because us Euros didn't get an official release until the PS release in 2003) and I ended up looking up the manual for information on what the game actually tells you and boy is it a tome.

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/clv/manuals/en/pdf/CLV-P-NABJE.pdf

The manual literally spells out everything for you (including how to park the boat :see page 4) and is a full walkthrough up until you get the mystical "floater" which at that point means exploring isn't a hassle since no encounters in the air (take that Wild Arms!). It also came with a map which marks out everything and had lists of all the equipment and monsters in the game. I feel that if you'd read this beforehand you could've saved yourself a lot of pain but then I guess that's part of your fun.

To add to the D&D designs and Amano's designs being partly based on them, this wasn't an issue for the Mind Flayer which was called "Sorcerer" on the NES probably more because it needed to fit the 8 character limit. The real problem was the "The Beholder" which was changed to "Evil Eye" and given a different looking sprite in the US release

To explain why FF is so poorly programmed they hired a man named Nasser Gebelli, a living legend in Apple II video game development and someone greatly admired not only by the staff at Square but also by Richard Garriott himself.

He was first hired by Square to produce "3D" games for the Famicom which resulted in a Space Harrier rip-off and Rad Racer (complete with Power Glove compatibility, it's so bad) but then Sakaguchi suddenly sprung the idea of making an RPG game like he'd always wanted. The problem was not only the language barrier but also that Nasser was completely unfamiliar with the concept of an RPG game and by his own admission didn't understand health as numbers which lead to the tons of oversights since Nasser programmed almost everything game by himself.

To explain why FF got so popular is to explain why FF has always become popular across it's lifetime. It replicated old ideas and presented them in a way that was appealing to a broad audience especially one who's only experience with games were on consoles. Final Fantasy also just stood out massively at the time, Amano's illustrations were a huge draw for sure for the Japanese audience.

Kazuko Shibuya, who doesn't get enough credit, should also be credited with rendering Amano's designs into 8-bit sprites (as much as they are mostly D&D "ripoffs" they are really good looking sprites) and also for her generally inventiveness. For example the "late text crawl" scene was a hugely impressive feat on the Famicom. It might be overblown with nostalgia but people hold that shot of the 4 Warriors in silhouette against the panorama as the magical moment of "adventure" awaits. This translated interview is well worth a read for Kazuko Shibuya and her work.

The "side by side" battle scenes were also huge at the time and inspired the future of console RPGs battles.

And not forgetting Nobuo Uematsu, a veteran of 16 games already, composed some of his greatest tracks on this first FF, Montoya's Cave is genius in melody and it's mind boggling that it was arranged on such rudimentary equipment.

To sum up, FF has always been more about presentation over mechanics. It has always been good looking but hollow inside. A "popcorn" movie if you will which would only get more apt when the series would be taken over by director Yoshinoi Kitase with VI who would take it to even more "cinematic" heights with the opening magitec walk credits scroll, opera staging scene and a recurring "let's try to involve every character for the final dungeon and one of the bosses"

A bit late into the decade but perfectly incapsulates the era.

Many cultures have had different salutes throughout history involving a variety of arm and hand gestures, if it was a left handed salute with a clenched fist then it's different from the salute associated with Nazism (right handed with hand open palm down) which is actually influenced by the painting Oath of the Horatii.

Given the premise of Killzone it's hard to imagine anything other than fascist iconography although it would be much more obvious if it were civilians doing it, as it stands it can be taken as just a plain old military salute with no real continuations.

No, there's nothing about FFIX that makes it better than VII or VIII, in fact it's a regressive step backwards with all the Kitase directed FF melodrama making the worst of both worlds. It's just that people are more familiar with the previous two whereas IX was released at an awkward time between the PS1 and PS2 so not as many people played it and it didn't get anywhere near the media coverage because people were already talking about FFX which was out in Japan by the time IX was in the west.

Because of this it has a bit of protected status because it is never given the same scrutiny so fans of it can proclaim it "the good one" without anywhere near as much backlash from those who hate the FF series. But anyone with a little care to objective criticism can see the deep flaws in it's design and the the rushed nature of being put together while most of Square were working on FFX and PlayOnline.

Ask yourself one question, what kind of game do you want HL3 to be? Do you want it to be just a continuation of the HL2 episodes with better grafix? It's not exactly a grand goal.

stake four plaz

Richard Donner's Superman I and II (his cut, not Lester's).

Tim Burton's Batman films and Mask of the Phantasm.

Blade I and II.

The Crow.

People say good things about X-Men 2 but I've never seen it.

Worth mentioning, Darkman is a great "comic book" movie but not actually based on one.