Talk:Final Fantasy VII (NES video game)

Category

I didn't know Category:Pirate video games had been nominated for deletion. Apparently the result of the discussion was to rename the category to Category:Pirated video games... However, I disagree with this, or at least the inclusion of Final Fantasy VII (Famicom) in it. This game is not a pirated game, as it was built from scratch. It is definitely illegal and a pirate game, but it's not a pirated version of some other game engine/build/ROM. What should we do? FightingStreet (talk) 16:51, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that was the best bet for the time being as it gave a blanket title to the category (the original as the guy did point out in the CFD discussion led to the possibility of confusion with pirate themed video games...I really don't know exactly what to rename it to. Unlicensed might work, but that'd include many games in a different category (i.e. Wisdom Tree's bible themed games, the NES porn games, etc). You're right though that it should be named something better at this point.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 17:50, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I think a better category would be something more general like Category:Unlicensed video games or Category:Unauthorized video games. This could include the old Tengen NES and Accolade Genesis games also, which gives a little more meat to the category. Even though their circumstances aren't exactly the same as these games, they do share in common that they are not licensed by the first party, and it's much less ambiguous than calling them "pirate(d)". Ham Pastrami (talk) 07:03, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Wait, what about fangames? They would fall into that category too, but I'm not sure that's what is intended with it. Perhaps we should go with something like Category:Unauthorized commercial video games? FightingStreet (talk) 16:40, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Hm, might be a problem down the line, though such games could be put in Categoy:Unauthorized fangames. I added more of a distinction to the category's description, pointing out the games are solely commercial games that infringe on intellectual properties but are not rom hacks or mods of existing games. If it does become a problem we can always request a move done the line, but really should be fine. I'll just keep an eye on the category.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 16:53, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Don't kill me. I'm an expert on this topic and I know that makes me unpopular in the barrel of fun that is Wikipeia. Still, I would interject several points. First off, the use of copyrighted graphics in this game does not necessarily make it "pirated." The problem is that copyright protections are not valued the same in all locales. If you read my coverage on Chinese FC games in issue #2 of PiQ magazine (Meet the Makers p.105), I interviewed the presidents of a few companies. Essentially, those men, notably the president of Kingformation, said that Chinese governments do not protect video games. When I say Chinese governments, I mean China, the contested Taiwan Province and Singapore -- and maybe Vancouver at this point ;) Chinese governments view video games as a diversion and equate their development to volunteer work. This lack of legal protection is one reason the Chinese industry continues to lag behind the Japanese one despite a 20-year history of original development. Chinese courts have historically rarely found in favor of copyright holders when legal action is filed against a pirate or company known to incorporate pirated material in a product. The only notable case being C&E v. Panda Entertainment in the early 1990s, where C&E won but was awarded nothing. Unsurprising, Panda was allowed to continue using its ill-gotten game engine. As such, within the locale this games and others were developed, it would not be seen as a "pirated" work in any legal sense, moreso even as Shenzhen Nanjing is a mainland company, and in a province with even more lax concepts of what copyright protects. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 221.219.229.89 (talk) 16:56, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Hm...(sorry for the long delayed reply, I got incredibly busy lately). What about a global market sense though? I do know from my emails with SquareEnix USA that they do see this as piracy...and rather rudely too I might add. Seriously you'd think just by asking they thought I made the thing.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 16:50, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

GA nomination?

The article looks really good, we should go ahead and do it :) Judgesurreal777 (talk) 04:21, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Did necessary tidying, and nominated it per suggestion.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 05:40, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Huh? It's lacking a Plot section. Kariteh (talk) 08:15, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Seems kinda odd to add one though given it's exactly the same as FF7's with some sections removed (and that's already mentioned in the article :\)--Kung Fu Man (talk) 13:40, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Final Fantasy VII (Famicom)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

• Why isn't the article title Final Fantasy VII Advent Children (Famicon)?

Common name vs. full game name. Because of the limited availability of the cartridge and more people are likely to play the game as just the rom, they won't see the Advent Children subtitle (it isn't mentioned at all in the game itself). It's relating to an arbitration awhile back regarding common names vs. full ones (though that was in regards to characters). Do you think it should be moved regardless?

If they aren't likely to see advent children, couldn't you just remove that from the first words of the article (in bold) and be done with? giggy _(:O) 01:18, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

• "for the Famicom and their final game" - and their final game? What does that mean?

Fixed to state it was their last released game.

• "In addition to weapson" - typo?

Fixed.

• "As the box and name both make reference to Final Fantasy VII Advent Children,..." - needs italics?

Fixed.

• "A lack of healing options and slow rate of item level-ups hinder things a bit more" - can we get more professional prose...

That should be fixed to read better...sorry about this, some of this was written during a hectic AfD :\

• "The game has managed to receive a great deal of praise from various sources in very short time" - be careful with the POV phrasing.

Rewrote to aim for a more neutral tone.

• Ref 10; Baidu shouldn't have italics.

Fixed.

• [1] needs a better fair use rationale.

I think this one's fixed.

• Both of the gameplay images need more descriptive captions.

Should be fixed.

• http://cinnamonpirate.com/blog/507/ is a blog, what makes it reliable? (same for ref 11)

Derrick Sobodash (the blog owner/writer) is being cited as a professional on the subject of games of this sort and rom structure. His coverage of the game is what set off sites like Joystik to give it coverage (in turn citing his article in their own). He has written as a journalist for publications such as PiQ, done work on rom translations Final Fantasy V (SNES), Sonic Eraser, and other material mentioned here which should verify him as a reliable source.

• Why this link in ref 14?

Removed that, also cited editor involved in that article.

• dates appearing as "(2008-02-27)" need formatting - just put one wikilink around the whole thing and it'll format as 2008-02-27 (edit this page and see how it's done).

Should be fixed.

Please leave me a note when done. Cheers, giggy _(:O) 06:45, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully I've managed to cover everything. Just waking up but it should all be in order ^^;--Kung Fu Man (talk) 14:03, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

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This GAN has passed, and this is now a good article! If you found this review helpful, please consider helping out a fellow editor by reviewing another good article nomination. Help and advice on how to do so is available at Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles, and you can ask for the help of a GAN mentor, if you wish.

Cheers, giggy _(:O) 01:19, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Review as requested

Okay, I'll copyedit the article too, but there are things listed below that need to be addressed by the major contributor:

• "The cartridge itself is unique, structurally different from licensed Famicom cartridges." I don't know why this is in the lead; you'll be better off replacing this with a little bit of development info.
• "and an adaptation of the Materia system." The what?
• "However, the original story was reproduced in very minute detail." To say that it was reproduced in "minute detail" does still not give any indication as to whether it was reproduced faithfully.
• There's no mention of the game's "Reception" in the lead.
• "The player engaged in a plot-based cutscene" Just a question, but are you sure it is the player, and not the player's character?
• "Most of the game occurs within the city of Midgar for the first act," I don't follow—is the game split into acts? If so, explain.
• "Each character brings one materia into the party when they join, with each carrying one spell that can be used in combat." For the second part, are we talking about the character or the materia?
• Why is Materia capitalised in the lead but not in "Gameplay"?
• Cut down repetiton: "Each character brings one materia into the party when they join, with each carrying one spell that can be used in combat. Each"
• Regarding "unequipped materia", it's probably best to state another use instead of saying "compensating for the limited amount of healing items".
• "However the game's strongest armor will severely impact a character's attacking ability negatively, even though they can absorb large amounts of damage." Personally, I feel that this should be removed as it's a very specific gameplay feature that doesn't fit the general style of commentary previous. Consider combining this paragraph with the last paragraph in this section.
• Where's the info on the plot?
• Could there not be more emphasis on how this differs from the original; as of now, I can't tell what was available in the original and what wasn't. Also, the info about gameplay in the lead is not reiterated further down.
• "As the box and name both make reference to Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, this places the release window sometime in 2005,[9][10] a statement supported by the game's manual.[1]" Seems like original synthesis. I don't understand how the manual would say "this was made some time in 2005 as it references Advent Children", unless the manual was made by someone else apart from the game's creators.
• "The cartridge is yellow, featuring a label on the front that reads "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children" and the serial number NJ063." Delete
• "NES" needs to be linked or explained so the player knows the difference between that and the Famicom.
• "The game was developed for the SUBOR entertainment system, a clone of the Famicom, though it works on a regular Famicom and will on a NES with an adapter." I'm surprised that this info is not in the lead. It's quite important, and I find it strange that this hasn't been made explicitly clear from the start. It also conflicts with this statment in the lead "[developed and published] for the Famicom console".
• Need to link or explain "sprites".
• Need to link or explain techical terms such as "hiragana".

*"coded from scratch". Watch out for informal phrasing.

• "board" needs to be explained.
• "patch" needs to be explained.
• "dumped" informal language.
• I don't think a link to single video of a game satisfies WP: EL.
• In general, the reliability of the sources used ti cite "Reception" is very questionable.
• For language of the ref, use "|language=" to show it properly as opposed to manual brackets.

I hope this helps. Also, on a general, it's debatable about whether many people at all will care about or understand the majority of the middle two paragraphs in "Development". Ashnard _Talk ^Contribs 12:06, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

CHR RAM is not "unique"

From the article: "The board for the cartridge is unique: unlike most Famicom boards it has a single two megabyte PRG (program) rom without any CHR (character/sprite) ROMs." All this means is that the game uses CHR RAM, an 8 KiB chip into which the program copies textures, instead of a CHR ROM. Numerous games for this platform used CHR RAM, including everything on the UNROM, SNROM, or AOROM board. I can think of the following from my memory: the first Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus, Ikari Warriors, Contra, Deadly Towers, at least three of the six Mega Man games including the first, Videomation, most NES games developed by Rare Ltd., and even Pro Wrestling. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 15:12, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Do you have a source for any of that?--Kung Fu Man (talk) 22:09, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I have several descriptions of how CHR RAM works and lists of NES games that use CHR RAM. But because their authors are respected among NES hardware hackers but unknown to the mainstream media, they may not count as reliable enough. The closest thing I can get to mainstream media coverage of NES Game Pak internals is the article "Why Game Paks Never Forget" from Nintendo Power #20 Mar/Apr 1991, pp. 28-31. The Wikipedia article Multi-Memory Controller cites this NP article. Should I quote the relevant text describing UNROM? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 04:01, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Well the way I understand it the issue is that the method isn't "rare", might be best just to use the source to describe in brief what's being done there. Thing is Sobodash is a rather experienced fellow in that field too though, so I'm not sure why he'd call it rare if it isn't.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 04:05, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps CHR RAM is slightly more common in NES games than in Famicom games because several games from the early NES era were either on a custom CHR ROM based mapper in Japan but UNROM in USA (e.g. Contra) or were on Famicom Disk System in Japan but UNROM/SNROM in USA (e.g. Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus), and a couple prominent western developers (especially Rare Ltd.) preferred CHR RAM based boards. Is the new wording, which cites the NP article for the operation of UNROM, any better? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 04:27, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

"SUBOR entertainment system"

IMO these references to the "SUBOR entertainment system" should be replaced with a generic reference to Famicom clones (with a link to Nintendo Entertainment System hardware clone for clarification).

Famicom is basically a "standard" in China, usually just referred to as "8-bit" or "FC" - there are hundreds of different Famiclones sold there and the game is compatible with all of them (not to mention the original Famicom). Subor may be the most popular branded famiclone manufacturer in China but Nanjing's games were by no means exclusive, specifically designed for, or specifically marked as being for that system ("Subor" is not mentioned anywhere on the packaging or Nanjing's old website) and to mention it above any other in the article is misleading. It's like saying a film released on DVD was designed for Toshiba DVD players. It also creates the impression that there is actually such a thing as a "Subor Entertainment System" when in fact Subor produces a whole range of Famiclones and none of them are named as such (mostly they just have generic model numbers). 82.26.23.114 (talk) 00:50, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

English patch already done.

Article needs to be updated. Found a site that has the rom and its patched. Of course, I cannot link it because it is a download. What do we do? --Lesbiangirl (talk) 21:52, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 7 May 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: move slakr^\ talk / 22:33, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

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Final Fantasy VII (Famicom) → Final Fantasy VII (NES video game) – A few things going on here. First, I don't think Famicom is the best disambiguator, since the article is at Nintendo Entertainment System. It might make some sense for a Japan-exclusive game, but that's not what this is. Final Fantasy VII (2005 video game) would be the standard disambiguator, but I don't know how well that fits WP:CRITERIA. At that title, I'd expect a real remake, and I think it's important that the system get in the title to clearly convey what's going on here. Looking over Category:Nintendo Entertainment System games, there's (Nintendo Entertainment System) as well as (NES video game) as disambiguators. Notably, there's no other use of Famicom as a disambiguating term. To sum up: move to Final Fantasy VII (NES video game) or Final Fantasy VII (Nintendo Entertainment System), as first and close second choices. Final Fantasy VII (2005 video game) is acceptable but sub-optimal. --Relisted. George Ho (talk) 03:30, 16 May 2015 (UTC) --BDD (talk) 17:51, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

• Here are my thoughts: the debate between (NES video game) and (Nintendo Entertainment System) is easily resolved by WP:NCVGDAB's point #9 -- the former disambiguator is preferable to the latter. I also don't think disambiguating by year is appropriate in this case -- both for consistency, and because in this particular case, the year of release is a much less unique identifier than the platform. As for Famicom vs. NES, well... I mean, technically this game was released neither for the Famicom nor for the NES (it was for the "SUBOR"), so labelling it with either console is a bit awkward -- but if anything, I would lean towards NES (for the sake of consistency with the console article). My alternative proposals: Final Fantasy VII demake, Final Fantasy VII (demake), Final Fantasy VII (8-bit), Final Fantasy VII (Shanzhai). ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 18:57, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
• Support per nom - seems very logical to use the more natural and well-known (in English) disambiguator Red Slash 03:48, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
• Support per nom. Egsan Bacon (talk) 01:57, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Support (NES video game) looks and feels better than (Famicon) --Anarchyte 07:47, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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