Thread: Final Fantasy VIII

Hot off the heels of my last thread, here's the Final Fantasy VIII thread. Any existing fans don't need a reminder I'm sure, but FF8 is sort of the Black Sheep of the PS1 FF classics, yet it is my favorite. There is something about having an entirely humanoid party with edgy/angsty main character that feels so deliciously 90's to me and allows me to empathize with their struggle moreso than say...Vincent from FF7 or Quina from FF9.

The game was one of the first I played on my PS1, my neighbor was 7 years older than me and he loaned his copy to me when he finished it. This was around the time I was getting into Pokemon full-swing (I caught on about 1 year late), so I had just realized that RPGs exist. The game entered my life at a time when I was ready to be amazed by something; I was malleable at the time. I had seen FF7 and FF Tactics, but I didn't realize they had any connection at that time. I played and replayed Disc 1 of FF8 over and over, trying to learn as much as I could to progress through the more difficult challenges later on (I only half understood the Junction system). Keep in mind that at this time I lived out in Kansas. If you imagine Nowhere, Kansas from Courage the Cowardly Dog...it was like that. I was an only child as well so that meant pleeeeenty of PS1 time. I got the completion of Disc 1 down to a science.

Years and years later here I am still re-playing it every few years. Sometimes with a new friend who has never experienced it before and currently with my wife. She's playing through it in Japanese and reading it to me, it's interesting to see just how much the translation to English changed each character's personality. There are the classic trivia bits like "Selphie has a country accent in Japanese" or "in the Japanese version, the hot dogs are bread"....but I mean more nuanced stuff than that. The characters speak to each other more respectfully in the Japanese version from what I gather, whereas the English localization has them ragging on one-another like a sitcom cast.

Lastly, we come to collectibles. I won't sit you down and list off the things I bought and act like I'm some cool guy. I'll just list what's out there in general terms as an "fyi" kind of thing. If you want to know more, ask!

Bandai Figurines - These are hella cool and a lot larger than you'd expect. They made figures of the main cast, plus Edea. Sadly no Laguna, Kiros, Ward, Ellone, etc. They also have a Guardian Force series and a Monster series (monsters like Forbidden and the Iron Giant). Some of these contain parts of thee Ragnarok ship, so if you buy a certain series of figures, then you can put together the complete ship!

FF8 Desktop Accessories - Software disc from 1999 or so containing a LAN version of Triple Triad, an e-mail client, and an icon/cursor pack. Just ordered this last week so I can't say if it works well on an English machine or if any of it is remotely compatible with Win 10, but I'll report back on that.

Cards - Lots and lots of Triple Triad cards you could get at stores back in the day. I think E B Games had them in the USA, not certain about elsewhere.

PocketStation - While not exclusively an FF8-related accessory, this nifty little doodad was like a memory card and Tamagotchi rolled into one. If you are familiar with VMUs for the Dreamcast, it's the same thing but for the PS1. It was only released in Japan just like the Desktop Accessory disc, but it actually works just fine with the English version of the game. Plugging in a Pocketstation will unlock Chocobo World, a simple virtual pet game in English! Despite the add-on not being released here.

Coke toppers - There were marketing deals with Coke for FF8/9/10 in which the characters appeared on these little plastic toppers, sold on/with coke bottles in Japan. You can still find them at thrift shops in Japan which is where I get them, and there are quite a few. They are on eBay as well, with full sets ranging from $250-300+ for ALL of them from all 3 games.

Hopefully there is a kindred soul out there who has some feels for FF8 and can chat on the subject. Let me know!

I liked it more than 7
I never beat the game because I somehow made it to the last disc with no problem and all I did after was just play the card game trying to get them all. I vaguelly remember playing the game and not s sure how I managed this unless it was a lot more easier than 7 but compared to 5 every other game was a cakewalk for me besides 2
I just played the game casually; the only one I ever played religiously was 5 and 1

The card game in FFVIII (Triple Triad) is absolutely the best mini-game in the series. It's so satisfying to collect a new card, which is pretty impressive coming from me as somebody who doesn't like card games in the first place. FF8 can be a lot easier than 7 or a lot harder, it all relies on the Junction system. As I mentioned before, my wife is working her way through the game now and can't wrap her head around the Junction system (granted, this is like the 3rd game she has played in her life. not counting a SINGLE round of Street Fighter 5).

As I mentioned in the OP, that Desktop Accessories disc has arrived. For the most part I am interested in the email client, since I don't expect the icon pack or cursors to be compatible with Win 10 (i'm not that into custom cursors or aesthetics anyway), but I may be able to force the email client to work with my wife's help to read the Japanese instruction manual. I'll follow up here if/when I get things going. I may be able to provide digital copies of the disc for people who are interested, but I'm not certain on the forum rules around sharing 20 y/o obscure-as-heck software (still TECHNICALLY file-sharing) that so I'll leave that as a maybe.

I don't remember the junction system at all.
I just looked it up.
I'm surprised I even made it that far into the game.
I'm really considering skipping 7 as a whole and just jumping right onto 8.
I'd been playing the FF games on PSX in order.
6 burned me out and I had to take a break.
I feel like 7 is doing the same as well but I don't hate it like I do 6; just for some reason I can't get into it for some reason and I do want to jump over to 8

Yeah, I'm quite surprised that I got as far as I did at the age I was. I have attempted 6 on 3 separate occasions but I never finish it. It feels like it lacks direction, in my opinion. The way the group spits apart doesn't add much for me.

Back to the topic of FF VIII, it just had its 20th anniversary so I will probably be replaying it this year once I cut down my backlog a little bit more. I'm surprised at the number of articles being written and outpouring of support for the game. I wasn't aware that there were as many fellow fans hiding in the woodwork.

Thank goodness I got an excuse to bump this thread last night.



When Fithos Lusec started playing my heart skipped 2 beats (which hurt pretty bad, let me tell ya...). I've been joking with my friends for years about the screen going black at E3 and that song starting to play. I didn't even think it was real at first....sure it's not a full-blown remake or anything but FFVIII getting screen time at E3 makes me very happy. My wife is about 60-65% into her playthrough of the game, but she is considering restarting with this remastered version. Anyone else interested?

You know I'm excited lol I was just about to post something about this. What I do hope they do with this though is that they add the Pocket Station features to the game for a complete experience. It would be cool if they added voice acting too but I wouldn't be disappointed if they didn't. I would only buy it if they added this feature.

I still need to reply to this thread properly. This remaster is great news though, especially after they lost the source code. I just really hope they don't fuck it up and make the character models look bad.

Originally Posted by OutlawFantasy

What I do hope they do with this though is that they add the Pocket Station features to the game for a complete experience. It would be cool if they added voice acting too but I wouldn't be disappointed if they didn't. I would only buy it if they added this feature.

They will add the PocketStation features, the PC release & more recent Steam re-release have implemented the PocketStation features. What I didn't like about those was that there were microtransaction options to level your characters up if I remember correctly? I hope they do away with that for this release. They won't add voice acting, I don't think they did for the recent remasters of FFVII or FFIX.

Originally Posted by Mantis

This remaster is great news though, especially after they lost the source code.

Agreed! Great news! Anything that gets more people sitting down to play FFVIII is good. For the source code rumor, was that ever confirmed? I know it was heavily implied due to the phone call & the incomplete state in which the Steam version started in...but did Squeenix ever admit that they lost it? I think they did the same thing with FFVII in the 90's which is why the PC version of FFVII is known as one of the worst releases of all time. I heard that when they handed it over to whichever company helped with the Pc version they were like "ok...where's the rest of it?" because they had been handed a non-final version of the game & had to re-create it as you see on PlayStation. This may have not been the PC version, I could be mixing my memories with the PSN port of VII.

As for the character models, you can see them in the trailer so go ahead and judge for yourself. I doubt that they will make them look any better/worse than that. It's likely a nearly-final product at this point. I wonder if they're going to do much with the pre-rendered backgrounds considering all the tech fans have been implementing recently. There is NO excuse for this remaster to have less effort put into it than fan projects, but it likely will. I'll be buying it regardless, even if I never boot it up just as a sort of FFVIII tip jar.

Originally Posted by Mantis

This is all I wanted to say.