The Mog Blog

As a huge fan of seeing incomplete work and watching how it evolves through the stages and also a huge fan of the Happy Video Game Nerd (yes, I said Happy, not Angry), I was pretty stoked to see him cover the Final Fantasy VII demo that came with Tobal No. 1. I actually did some research on this a long while back when I was doing stuff for FFShrine.org. Looking back at it… man, my writing was sloppy. Heck, my writing is still sloppy now.

I really enjoyed the in-depth coverage that he did and I think he went way beyond the bounds of what anyone would typically do. I praise Derek for being more informative along with being entertaining. While I do enjoy both AVGN and HVGN, I find that HVGN really touches on things that fulfill the actual nerdness in me while AVGN is more of the child-gamer in me. Yes, I just said that I was an angry child gamer but with stuff like Zelda 2 and The Adventures of Bayou Billy in our library of games, totally understandable.

A few things to point out off the top of my head from when I covered the FF7 Demo a long while back:

Mokoro Plants
“Specials” not Limit Breaks
The “All” Materia wasn’t streamlined.
3 Minutes to Evacuate instead of 10 Minutes in retail release.
The L1/R1 rotation is still in Final Fantasy VII but it’s a strict 45 degree angle rotation.

I remember the Final Fantasy VIII demo rather fondly too and I think it was the very first time I was ever exposed to anything Final Fantasy related. Call me a late bloomer (if you really want to call it that at this point) but it took me a long time before I eventually got into RPGs. My very first one was Super Mario RPG and that was a gateway to a bunch of other games.

Anyways, the Final Fantasy VIII demo is definitely worth looking at if you enjoy Final Fantasy VIII to any extent. I still have mine from Brave Fencer Musashi. Which, by the way, how come I have not seen anyone review this game?

A potential Mog Blog project?

Maybe once I get a suitable capture card for composite. Any recommendations?