Yesterday was a big day for Final Fantasy, what with the release of Final Fantasy XIII-2 on North American shores. But it was a big day in another way — with Final Fantasy VII turning fifteen years old. The series’ first 3D entry on the PlayStation rocketed the series and the genre to a worldwide popularity unseen before that time. It was a terrific landmark for the series as a whole, and we’d like to celebrate this anniversary by asking you to share with us your memories of Final Fantasy VII.

Final Fantasy VII was my second Final Fantasy game after FFVI (or III on the SNES as it was known then), and I remember anxiously waiting in line to pick it up as soon as it was shipped in to our local retailer at a mall twenty miles away from where I lived. It was right when school started, when the summer heat started to lose it’s intensity and the cool and crisp sunny days of autumn were on the horizon.

The car ride home seemed to last forever (and then some when you have a new game you’re anxiously awaiting to jump into), but as soon as we were home, my shoes were slapping on the basement stairs to a little makeshift family room we had with a cold and bare cement floor and some old dusty furniture not nice enough for the main floor. I already had my PlayStation set up, and it took mere seconds to destroy the plastic wrapping around the game, opening the multi-disc case, and placing Disc 1 into the PlayStation with a surgeon’s precision.

The days after were spent completely enthralled in the game, and I vividly remember waking myself up at five in the morning to play the game before I went off to school. Our cafeteria discussions were always filled with game talk, and for many months after we would discuss our different materia combinations, our fascination with the story, and our amazement of cinematics that you could play during!

What I thought I’d do is dig up an old interview with Squaresoft staff on Final Fantasy VII, just for nostalgia’s sake. So in addition to that, please share your memories in the comments below!

Have a unique or interesting Final Fantasy-related video or project you’d like to share with the world? We’d like to start a segment where we turn the spotlight on content our readers (or the fandom in general) have created or spied around the internets.

To send in your suggestions to have content featured, contact me through our Staff page! To kick things off, here’s an interesting remix of “Still More Fighting” from Final Fantasy VII by YouTube user carlocastellano.

While we’re just about to get into the swing of Tokyo Game Show, I thought I’d bring up an old video from the Tokyo Game Show 2003. Today also marks the 6th anniversary of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children‘s release in Japan and the 8th anniversary of the announcement. What are your feelings looking back on the project after all this time? How did you react when you first saw this footage? Leave a comment below!