SQUARE's Epiphany (Circa 1992) -With or Without Nintendo

I caught myself digging into a bin full of newsletters i've collected over the years.I came across a newsletter by SQUARE. I remember filling out an information card after purchasing the U.S. copy of SQUARE's Final Fantasy II ( Japan's 4th sequel) in 1991. SQUARE then sent me the 1st issue of Square's newsletter called "The Ogopogo Examiner" in Spring 1992 ( 3 years prior to the release of the Sony Playstation ). Well, I skimmed
through the newsletter and came across an article: "Can't Wait To CD New SQUARE CD-ROM Video Games!" There's alittle more insight on SQUARE's future with Nintendo ( or lack thereof ) . Read it for yourself as I scanned part of the newsletter:



Turns out SQUARE was thinking bigger projects that far back as a company and when a CD Final Fantasy game was originally planned for Nintendo. Nintendo aburptly dropped both Sony and Phillips plans for a CD-ROM peripheral for the SNES - I believe SQUARE was disappointed. Even though Square tried a
Final Fantasy demo during "Ultra 64" development and realized their vision would be dramatically toned down on a cart-based console. They waited for Sony to complete the Playstation console.

It would be a couple more years after the Sony Playstation console's release Square would bring Final Fantasy 7 to the CD format.

And here we are today waiting for the next installment of Final Fantasy on the PS3 - heh!

 

Interesting to hear about the CD plans. Thanks for the scan

 

Cool... I was confused for a moment until they explained it.

 

It's justa shame they slap the Final fantasy name on to any crap the churn out these days. Like so many classics, the name doesn't resemble what it once did.

Yakumo

 

I never owned an N64, but i'm a huge fan of the cartridge format.
I wonder if Nintendo was expecting the cost of eproms to drop over the course of it's life, much more than they did.

 

Meh, meh, meh shame on you Big N!!!

 

I would love to see what what was cut from the CD version Secret of Mana so they could fit the game on a cart. What other games were planned for Nintendo's CD expansion before it got canned?

 

I seem to remember reading that it was just never "fully" completed, not so much as cut.

 

Interesting read on Squares CD plans... did anyone else get a laugh out of the 8 2 exctinction article.. sounds like PR spin on a game breaking glitch....

 

Chrono Trigger was meant to be a CD game also.

 

apparently the DS ff4 has stuff cut from the original 8 megabit wonder. I'm just too lazy to try it out to see what was cut.