Final Fantasy VII

Legendary video game composer Nobuo Uematsu has announced he can no longer continue with his current projects due to ill health.

We all have that game, don't we? The one that, while yes, the years have shown you that other games may have done it differently and better, and that while - eesh did those textures always look like that? - some elements may not have been as polished or as groundbreaking as you remember them, your fondness is tied to more than just the mechanics or even the characters. I know we have a tendency to overhype or overexaggerate just how brilliant/influential a game FF7 was, but I'll always regard it as a favourite because of summer evenings spent huddled up against the TV screen, conferring with friends over rumours of secret characters and items, getting midi themes stuck in a loop in my head for weeks on end.

Finally, it's happened: Final Fantasy 7 Monopoly is real.

Final Fantasy 7 is closing in on its twentieth anniversary and over the past two decades, Square-Enix has released countless spin-off games, tech demos and movies based on this epic release. Through it all, fans have continued to hold their collective breath for that one impossible thing - a remake of Final Fantasy 7. We were as surprised as anyone when this project was actually announced at E3 earlier this year, but with its reveal trailer consisting entirely of pre-rendered CGI, we didn't expect to see any in-engine footage for a long while.

UPDATE 20/08/2015: The mobile version of Final Fantasy 7 is available to buy from the UK App Store. It costs £11.99 / €15.99 on iPhone and iPad.

UPDATE 17/08/2015: A short playable demo of the fan-made Final Fantasy 7 beat 'em up has been released. You can download it from the Final Fantasy 7: Re-imagined website.

Folks way smarter and more well-adjusted than I have been able to temper their excitement over the upcoming Final Fantasy VII remake with the sobering realisation that the game will probably be a very, very long time coming, if indeed at all. And even if it does come - it could be rubbish. It could be totally devoid of spirit and imagination. It could pollute the very air of Midgar with Lightning DLC costumes for Tifa and Aerith; it could offer you 'it's-all-totally-optional' Limit Break weapon packs at £4.99 a pop. It could legitimately piss all over our collective childhoods, ruining our treasured memories of an all-time classic game. I should be more cynical, really, given the fact that I haven't really enjoyed a Final Fantasy title since 10.

Our daily roundups from E3 2015: Monday | Tuesday | Thursday | Friday

Final Fantasy 7's remake, announced during Sony's show at this week's E3, captured a fair amount of attention, and a few questions snatched at the end of a roundtable about Kingdom Hearts 3 with its director Tetsuya Nomura revealed a bit more.

Nomura, who was a character designer on the 1997 original, is clearly excited about the prospect. "The talks about making this remake, internally it's been mentioned on and off," he told Eurogamer's Aoife Wilson in the interview. "Sometimes we think we can do it, and then sometimes we think maybe we can't. Considering some of the original staff, like Kitase, he's acting as producer, and [Kazushige] Nojima, he's doing the script - we're all getting older! If we keep going like this, the thought occurred to us that we might have to pass this on to a younger generation, without the original developers taking part. It doesn't seem like such a grand intention, but we wanted to do it with the original members."

So why has it taken 'til now for it to happen - especially as it comes relatively soon after Square Enix disappointed fans by setting up a reveal last December before announcing the PC port of the original was coming to PlayStation 4?

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The PlayStation 4 port of the PC version of the original Final Fantasy 7 has been delayed until winter 2015.

The long called for Final Fantasy 7 Remake is real - and it's coming first to PlayStation 4.

Five years ago, 20-something Mancunian Daniel Burke set out to retranslate Final Fantasy 7.

Final Symphony, a new album of Final Fantasy music performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, is available to download from today.

The compilation includes tunes from Final Fantasy 6, 7 and 10, recorded with composer Nobuo Uematsu at London's famous Abbey Road Studios.

The 11-track album includes an 18-minute musical tour of FF6, along with a three-movement rendition of Final Fantasy 7's themes, lasting almost 45 minutes.

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Final Fantasy 7, one of the most highly acclaimed role-playing games of all time, will be re-released for PlayStation 4.

The port will arrive in spring 2015, Square Enix's Shinji Hashimoto confirmed during tonight's PlayStation Experience 2014 press conference.

But the game is a straight port, however - of the game's PC release. Don't expect any shinier graphics or music.

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Square Enix has set up a cloud gaming company called Shinra Technologies.

Sony Computer Entertainment has just announced the sale of its entire 9,520,000 pile of Square Enix shares to a company called SMBC Nikko Securities.

An income of nearly 4.8bn yen - around £28m - will be marked down in Sony's financial report for the year ending 31st March 2015. The exact sale price of the shares will be revealed tomorrow.

Confusingly, Sony's annual financial report for the year ending 31st March 2014 hasn't been revealed yet, but will be on 14th May. The forecast for the year ahead will include the sale of the shares.

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A Final Fantasy 7 remake - often called for by fans of the Japanese role-playing game series - is not currently in development, Square Enix has said, and it doesn't look like it will be any time soon.

To celebrate the launch of Lighting Returns: Final Fantasy 13, we thought we'd take a look back at one of the most fondly remembered instalments in the series: number seven.

Having already created Cloud's Buster Sword, master blacksmith Tony Swatton has once again taken on the blades of Final Fantasy 7 - this time it's the turn of Sephiroth's sword.

A small team in France wants to recreate the JRPG-thrills of the PlayStation One era in new game TBT: The Black Tower, for PC and Mac.

This is a retrospective in the truest sense. I've switched on Final Fantasy 7 since its re-release on PSN a few years ago, but never played past the opening section of Midgar - an opening that, at the time of first playing, I thought was the game itself. The PS3 doesn't take PS1 memory cards, of course, so I can't resurrect my Avalanche crew, every single one at max level, while the treasured materia and weapon collection remains out of reach - nevermind my thoroughbred chocobos. Some games you can only play once.

The votes have been counted and the Classic FM Hall of Fame 2013 compiled. Soundtracks from The Elder Scrolls and Final Fantasy series are in the top five.

Every so often, we reach back into the Eurogamer archive for a feature you may have missed or might enjoy again. On this occasion, however, I was prompted to resurrect this one by its subject, who emailed me last week to ask about it - something that will make sense when you read the feature. It was originally published in February 2013.

Imagine the entire story of Final Fantasy 7 recreated in the style of LittleBigPlanet 2. Now open your eyes - someone has done it.

Time has been cruel to Final Fantasy 7 - but perhaps not in the ways you expect. Sure, its 330 locations, pre-rendered in the finest CGI that yen could buy in 1997, now appear jagged and antiquated: a steam-punk world viewed through the mist of an 8-bit kettle. Its characters, once seemingly the most expressive actors ever pushed onto a video game stage, are now as strange as balloon animals, all bulges and protractions, their weird deformation all the more grotesque in high resolution.

But it's not these surface aspects of the game that have been most wounded by time's arrow. Rather, Final Fantasy 7 has suffered from 15 years of myth, anecdote and opinion. Primary-coloured headlines, fawning editorials and bar-stool critiques have overlooked much of the nuance of what is a broad, generous game - far more interesting and complex than the love/hate apologising accounts for.

The second best-selling game on Sony's PlayStation, it's also known as the most returned video game of all time - players reportedly lured in by the visuals then repelled by the foreign foibles of the Japanese role-playing genre. Detractors accuse this flamboyant production, which cost $45 million and required 100 staff - unprecedented numbers at the time - of having spoiled the purity of the medium in its Hollywood-facing ambition. After all, here is an experience as much film as it is game, with its 40 minutes of video cut-scenes. Meanwhile, breathless thirtysomethings recount breaking down in tears at the unexpected turns of its story - these fans endlessly demanding a remake so that they just might feel that keenness of adolescent catharsis again.

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Final Fantasy 7 publisher Square Enix has apologised for issues surrounding the role-player's recent PC re-release and promised to correct them as soon as possible.

Some players have been left unable to activate and play the game. Others have not been issued an activation key at all.

Square Enix said the issue only affected "a small number of people", however.

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Update: Square Enix has confirmed the release of Final Fantasy 7 on PC.

Square Enix has put its official rubber stamp on the Final Fantasy 7 PC re-release.

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Cid it would happen.

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Update: Square Enix has confirmed to Eurogamer that this is real and that more information will be released in the next 24 hours. Phew, because we were worried there for a second.

Final Fantasy fans have for years called for a remake of the seventh game in the series, considered by some to be the greatest Japanese role-playing game of all time. But it seems as if the wait will continue for a while yet.

A new edition of Final Fantasy 7 could finally be released on Steam, a leaked product description suggests.

PSone Classics hit PS Vita this summer with Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy 7, Sony has announced. More titles will follow.

New Final Fantasy games "take precedence" over the potential Final Fantasy 7 remake, Square Enix has said.

Tickets are now on sale for the Final Fantasy 25th anniversary concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

Sony has announced a wide-ranging Final Fantasy sale on the EU PlayStation Store this week, with nearly every early release in the series cut down in price.

If Square Enix was to remake RPG classic Final Fantasy 7 it might not be able to resist the temptation to make significant changes to the original game, according to veteran franchise producer Yoshinori Kitase.

Square Enix has trademarked the term "Square Enix Masterpieces" across Europe - leading some to speculate it plans to re-release its classic games for the current generation of systems in high definition.

Why isn't your favourite PSone game on the PlayStation Store yet? Emulating old PlayStation games for new PlayStation hardware isn't as easy as everybody thinks.

Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada has said that the company may consider remaking Final Fantasy VII after all.

Yoshinori Kitase has built us up and now he is letting us down, explaining that remaking Final Fantasy VII to today's standards would simply take too long.

Sony is selling the PS3/PSP port of Final Fantasy VII for GBP 7.99 / EUR 9.99 on the PlayStation Store.

Square Enix has confirmed that Final Fantasy VII will be released on the European PlayStation Store today. Hooray!

PS3 and PSP versions of Final Fantasy VII may finally be heading outside of Japan.

Square Enix has refused to comment on "rumour and speculation" that Final Fantasy VII is heading to PS3 in a revised format.

Square Enix has won its legal battle with Korean entertainment company Fantom for plagiarising the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children videogame, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

Square Enix has poured cold water on yet another "Final Fantasy VII remake" story, reiterating that it "has never stated this" - but doesn't rule it out at the same time.

Respondents to a survey on emotion in videogames have voted Square-Enix's Final Fantasy titles as the most emotionally rich games ever made, citing the death of Aeries in Final Fantasy VII as the series' most tearjerking moment.