Final Fantasy VII NES Pirate Cart

By: Derek Yu

On: February 26th, 2008

Created by a shady Chinese tech company in the year 20XX, this unlicensed demake of Final Fantasy VII was actually released as a cartridge at some point (when, though?)! A play-by-play copy of the Playstation original in terms of plot, FF7 NES is apparently NOT a hack of another FF game, and is, on a technical level, somewhat of a marvel. Chinese hackers are amazing, aren’t they?

Head over here for a full write-up of the game, including nearly 150 screenshots.

And I’m guessing some of you are probably interested in playing the ROM. Well, follow the “Baidu” link in the article and you’ll get to it eventually, although apparently only “an extremely hacked-up version of VirtuaNESex supports the game through an ugly bank-switching mapper driver.” You have been warned.

Alternatively, you can just watch this YouTube video that shows some (pretty boring) gameplay from the demake.

(Source: Luke Plunkett, via Kotaku)

Posted in Demakes, RPG, Unique / Bizarre

muku

So, is a “demake” a backport of a game to a technically inferior platform?
Al King

Yep, exactly, though it needn’t be an inferior platform, it might just use inferior technology, like Goldeneye 2D
Kornel

Nah, it can be also a backport to a inferior graphics display (DoomRL ^_^)
Jonathan

I saw this reported elsewhere as a “premake” — I prefer that term ;)
oranda

So if somebody did this to Metroid Prime would that be a screeeeemake?
[email protected]

Just like all the other pirates out there, this one has really skewed music.
Melly

Ah, damnit, they stole my chinese bootleg demake idea! The bastards!

Also, since GDC is over we should have another compo soon, right Derek? ^_^
Stij

If someone turned a game into a comic (printed on dead trees), would that be a treemake?

I’LL BE HERE ALL EVENING FOLKS
David

I remember hearing news of this a couple of years ago, but it was being made by some Chinese programmer for fun. No one could find a copy of the game though, it was just screenshots on a webpage. This is basically a hack of the FF3 NES game, though with music borrowed from FF2. The dialog windows with portraits are new though. This guy knows his stuff.
Anonymous

For those without IE / ActiveX, see here.
Eudaimon

There’s something like this out there for FFX also. I never played it, and don’t remember where to find it, but I think I’ve got the patch lying around here somewhere. It has a sphere grid and everything.
Tiktaalik

Gahh… that 2nd link doesn’t work either.
Blueberry_pie

Demakes are awesome. I once remade (very small) parts of Half-Life 2 and Portal in the engine of the first Half-Life. That was pretty cool.
Melly

I like how some games can be demade without loosing much, if anything, of the original game’s feel, showing that polygon crunching and orchestral soundtracks are rarely the meat of what makes a game enjoyable.
Andy

How come when it’s in Chinese it’s a “shady” and a “demake” where something like DoomRL, which is essentially a demake as well is praised?

Double standards.
Derek

Well, I certainly meant no offense to Chinese people, since I am one. I called the company “shady” because they are one of many Chinese software houses that have tried to illegally sell bootleg NES cartridges over the years. Let’s face it, as much as I love China, there’s not much regulation of piracy over there…

And the term “demake” certainly isn’t a derogatory one. DoomRL is a demake, too.
Tim

hahaha