Amazing Unlicensed Backport of Final Fantasy VII...to the NES

Cinnamon Pirate discovered an unlicensed version of Final Fantasy VII for the original NES/Famicom. That's more than just a knock-off—it's an act of true skill and commitment by an unknown team of Chinese coders. Not everything made the transition from Playstation to NES versions—some characters, limit breaks, and summons are dropped—but what survived came through due to the dedication of one talented pirate coder.

First off, Final Fantasy VII is the only NES ROM I have ever seen to have its 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.

Tons of screenshots and descriptions are available; there's even a link to a ROM image if you can get your emulator to execute its non-standard layout.

From polygons to pixels: Final Fantasy VII [CinnamonPirate.com via Kotaku]

[#1 posted by License Farm , February 25, 2008 5:08 PM]

I love this. It's like the NES port of Grand Theft Auto.

Has anyone tried modding a Wii into an NES case? Tell me that wouldn't get Digg all hot n' bothered.