It's been an age since I last played Final Fantasy VII, so I said what the hell and gave the just-released-for-North America version a download.  Sitting at a little over 1300 MB in size, $10 ain't bad at all, and not having to swap discs, plus being able to play it on PSP (legitimately) is quite cool.

I'm up to the second Mako Reactor, and so far, it's pretty much looking like the same exact game that was released back in '97.  (For North America, that is.  We know that Japan got the International Version for their PSN release, which is essentially the title America originally got.)  The game's pre-rendered backgrounds and polygonal in-game models still hold up well, looking particularly good on the PSP screen, and quite respectable via PS3's upscaling.  I only wished they actually implemented an analog mode, so that you can control your character via analog stick or nub.  It's still murder moving around with the Sony d-pads.

I'd forgotten how brisk the game's pacing is, battles especially.  Of course, they're nowhere as fast as the 16-bit predecessors, they are significantly quicker than FF8 and FF9's battles.  The load time transitions are super speedy, and the fights themselves play out at a lively clip.  They can become even faster should you decide to adjust the fully-incremental Battle Speed level in the configuration menu.

Looking forward to once again taking down Shinra.  Story-wise, I think that's what I enjoyed most about FFVII; that, throughout the course of the game, you'll eventually be able to take on each and every member of the corporation.  (Save for Reeve, natch.)

I loaded up the PSX FF games a little while ago with the intention of watching the opening movies (and strictly for that purpose). Flash forward eight hours, and I am shaking my head as I try to kill the Midgar Zolomn knowing full well that I was stupid for even trying to convince myself that watching them was all I was going to do. -______-;

FFVII is still my favorite entry in the series.

I actually restarted FFVII -- on emulator -- a bit ago with the intention of playing a materia only game (one of the easier challenges). What strikes me is how I was soooo knocked out by it back in the day and now it's just so...jagged.

I remember being taken aback at how graphically ENORMOUS the Midgar Zolom was when I first fought it.  It's gotta be one of the largest standard enemies in the game, right?

bought it recently, I have original but having it on PS3 without necessity of inserting discs and having it on psp in one file(officially), was worth it.
if it was more than $10 I probably wouldn't snagged it but at this price, worth the convenience itself.

The only other one of a similar size that comes to mind is the Dragon Zombie in the Northern Crater.

Gonna finish downloading it tonight!    Cloud + Tifa + Vincent FTW.

... on a completely different note, who's picking up the blu-ray version of Advent Children?  Mine's on the way from Amazon.  So excited!!  For the longest time I had a HUGE crush on Rachel Leigh Cook (She's All That, Josie & the Pussycats) and I literally JIMP'd when I found out that she was doing the voice of Tifa.  It was like two supernovas colliding and creating my ultimate fanboy dream!

tl;dr - life's different when you're 15 years old.

I still have the original game discs, bought in 1997. When I was 17. It's hard to believe it's been 12 years since the game was released.

I remember putting the game in several months ago, just to see how it has aged. I was wowed again by the opening cinematic... and then started to laugh uncontrollably when Cloud jumped out in his pixelated glory. What was state of the art in 1997 looks outrageously bad now (especially on an HDTV). Still, it's hard not to forget how I felt as a kid when I first put disc 1 into the PlayStation.

I'll give it a rental for sure.  Curious to check out those twenty-six additional minutes, as well as the near guaranteed across-the-board audio/visual reference quality.

I find the crappy character models endearing.  The crude assemblages of few polygons gave me room to imagine how the characters would look and move if they were real.  Final Fantasy VII was the last game in the series (excluding spinoffs) to leave something visual to the imagination.

I still have the original game in English, but I wouldn't mind getting the Japanese version to see what the characters are ACTUALLY saying in all that jumbled mess. At 1500 yen it's kinda steep though, and I'll probably be able to find a retail version for that price by now...

I did get the Advent Children Blu Ray, but haven't watched it yet. The main reason I got it was for the FFXIII demo, which I thought was rather disappointing. I looking much more forward to Versus XIII now.

I watched the blu-ray tonight, and wow if you have a great tv/sound setup at your home you are going to be mighty impressed.  The new stuff is fan freakin tastic visually (the older stuff kinda has a bit of a softer touch to it, maybe they didn't process that stuff as much as they should have). 

The FFXIII preview on the disc looks mighty sweet too.  The battle action looks almost too complicated.  The anime episode about Denzel just kinda serves to expand on his character motivations.  Even though this disc was called "complete", the Last Order OVA is still missing from it.  I think the only NA release that had this was the Collector's Edition FFVII AC DVD set.  You get the story of Zack and the Turks tho in game snippet format with the Compilation of FFVII universe digest extra. (they use scenes from the other games in the FFVII series)

One minor nitpick about this release here for NA - if you were expecting to hear the new Himuro Kyosuke/Gerard Way song "Safe and Sound" - it's not on here.  Still have "Calling" from the original release.  Probably yet another rights issue. 

Wait, seriously?  After they made such a big deal about it?  What the crap?!

I also picked this up. I thought Square-Enix would charge $15, so I was pleasantly surprised that it was $10. I had previously transferred all my PSOne saves onto my PS3 with the memory card adapter, so I was able to load up my 99 hour FF7 save. Good times. It did take me a while to get use to using the d-pad to move around, though, haha. Good ole pre dual shock days...

Don't plan on buying this but I'm glad it's out in some form to deflate the prices of used copies.

Seriously, $400 for sealed black boarder? Yeash....

What the hell? Where on Earth did you see that? :S

On eBay. If I recall correctly, some dope actually paid that much for it.

At least no one bought that sealed MMX2 for $999.99, at least I hope not.

Just wanted to say: Those Who Fight is still the best damned battle theme in the entire series.  Yep, it is. 

The Sector 7 pillar assault (where you first encounter Reno) is one of my favorite sequences in the game.

I remember getting the Eidos published (and produced?) PC port back in the day, it finally coming in that bizarre box they were experimenting with back then, having about ten minutes to read the manual and install it before I went to some programming class I inevitably would fail. First experience with a post-SNES console game, first real experience with Final Fantasy or a major JRPG (really, my first notable RPG since Ultima VII).

I'm pretty sure I cried during the install as a midi of "The Prelude" played while the install program cycled between the different classic 3D renders that the game was promoted with (as seen here). I wasn't, you know, bawling, but I did shed tears. Something about the music and the pictures of the characters convinced me I was about to be part of an amazing story.

And, well, as far as FF7 was concerned, it was pretty much all downhill from there.

I beg to differ. I assume you only mean normal battle themes of course. The best one, in my opinion, is FFX's normal battle theme.

The best FFVII battle theme is easily "The Birth of God."

Didn't you get the memo?  The best battle theme from FFVII is One Winged Angel.  Everybody knows that!  Seriously though, it's easily my favorite of all the final battle themes from the series and definitely the most memorable for me.  I give props to Dancing Mad and Seymour Battle too.  And I gotta agree with Angela.. FFVII's Those Who Fight for best normal battle theme, for sure.  FFIX's Battle 1 comes in a very close second though.

I'm more in favor of his electronic battle themes, so I have to agree with the props for Seymour Battle, but as one might guess, The Extreme is my favorite final battle theme. FFIX's is good too .

I ended up buying this too. If only for the hopes it spurs FFVIII and FFIX. It took me forever to get into FFVII as it didn't really appeal to me at all at first (it was no FFVI for sure!) and I think I finally bought and beat it in 2000/2001 or something.

I'll support Angie by saying FFVII has THE best main battle theme in the series.

As far as boss themes go they pretty much all rock. The Extreme and One Winged Angel are definitely some of my favorites, as are J-E-N-O-V-A, Jenova Perfect and most of all Messenger Towards Destruction.

Man, Uematsu made some kick-ass battle themes in his PSX days...

No doubt about it. I loved FFVIII's boss theme a lot, too. Very nuanced.

So I broke down and ended up buying it on PSN.  It's only 10 bucks, so why not?  Now I legally own two copies.  I mainly bought it to support the idea of letting Square know that I want more games like FFVII, so let's hope they get the hint.  After loading it up purely to watch the opening and maybe play a little bit, two hours pass, and I realize why this game is so damn popular.  CAUSE IT'S THAT GOOD!  And man.. I was rockin' out to the music the whole time.  Makes me really miss the days of PS1-era Uematsu.

I think I'm definitely going to be re-playing this game soon.  It's been too long.

Man! Now I'm tempted to put the game in! I haven't played it in years...

Battle theme, fine.  But as far as Boss themes go, you can't beat FFIV's Boss theme.  The only thing I've heard come close to this was Uematsu's A Mighty Enemy Approaches from Lost Odyssey.

Yep, Those Who Fight for main/normal battle theme - although it does happen to be one of my all-time faves as well.  (Yet again, I must take the opportunity to plug norg's and SnappleMan's Voices of The Lifestream arrangement, "Full Frontal Assault."  It's the closest we've ever gotten to the badass-rockin' treatment it deserves.)

As for my personal favorite boss battle, that would be a tie between VIII's Force Your Way, and X's Enemy Attack by Nakano.

Best 'Boss 2' battle is a three-way tie between V's Clash On The Big Bridge, VI's Fierce Battle and VIII's Premonition.

And final battles go to VIII's The Legendary Beast and IX's Messenger of Destruction.

I just loaded up my old PSX save game with 48 hours of playtime using the PSN download.  My guys are an average of level 69 and have Knights of the Round.   I also have another save in the northern crater so I can kill Sephiroth and complete the game when I please.

nah, you should start from the beginning.