Fatal Fantasy VII - A fan game that amazed Squaresoft

On several occasions we have seen how fans or users of the world of video games have used famous characters or franchises to recreate new titles, in some cases they create masterpieces that surpass the work of the original developers, others simply do it as an experiment, thus testing their programming skills, this is the case of one of the first fan games that appeared in history, it is Fatal Fantasy VII.

In the mid 90's the video game industry was growing in a shocking way, so much that other companies decided to join to make profits, one of them was SONY, company that developed the first PlayStation, launching it to the market in 1994, however, within their projects was not only the creation of a console for home use, they also showed interest in creating a development kit very similar to the original console, but with the particularity of being able to connect to the PC, allowing the development of games in a more accessible way, this was the Net Yaroze.

There were very few programmers who stood out with their video games created with the Net Yaroze, since distribution issues required in those years a significant investment to publicize the game, however, thanks to this development kit we could appreciate masterpieces such as Devil Dice, a title that greatly impacted the Japanese public, due to their love for puzzle games.

But if we examine a little the short catalog of games that were developed with Net Yaroze we can find something very curious, a title that somehow seems a small mockery of one of the greatest games in history, Final Fantasy VII, just by seeing its name we can deduce it quickly, "Fatal Fantasy VII". Thanks to this videogame an important programmer in this industry became known.

Mitsuru Kamiyama was responsible for starting the development of this game on his own, making use of Net Yaroze in order to develop Fatal Fantasy. At first it may seem like a game with a solid start, but the moment the letters start appearing on screen, the seriousness is completely gone and only laughter will remain, as the story revolves around toilet paper, which is dominated by the company "Zenra", and also talks about Cloud, who is in the facility and is becoming a "Piss", a silly story, but funny.

The project looked very good, as Mitsuru Kamiyama was able to make two scenarios with pre-rendered graphics and 3D appearance of the main character with some soldiers, this showed that he was completely serious about his fan game, however, the word began to spread about this game, even reaching the offices of Square, for this reason Kamiyama decided to cancel the project to avoid getting into legal trouble.

Within weeks, Kamiyama is contacted by Squaresoft for what he did with their most famous game at the time, but luckily for him, he was invited to join the development team for the company, due to the enormous talent he showed in his game Fatal Fantasy. Here he was recognized in such a way that he was allowed to be director on two games in the franchise, these were Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles - Echoes of Time and the second Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles - Ring of Fates.

He also participated in the development team of other well-known games such as Kingdom Hearts III or Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age, all this thanks to daring to make a fan game of one of his favorite games, which for some may be a synonym of mockery towards FFVII, but here he demonstrated the great talent he had as a video game programmer and defined his future in the current Square-Enix.

Did you know the peculiar history of Fatal Fantasy VII? Tell me your opinion in the comments section