I'm not a gamer and haven't played any video or PC games in a long time, so I'm not knowledgable with respect to games and their availability. But I remember starting to play this game back when it was released would really like to buy it and play it. However most everywhere I've checked it's not available. Is there anywhere that sells it other than having to use ebay or amazon marketplace? I would rather buy new from a store, but I don't know if I'll find it.

Also, are there any specifications I should be aware of if I try to play it on my Dell Notebook, Windows XP SP2?

I tried searching this forum before posting but I didn't come up with anything. TIA!

The games been out of print for years. No chance of buying it new.

Oh ok, thanks. Would you suggest ebay or amazon marketplace or somewhere else as a best place to get a copy of it?

Just speaking from my experience, you really can't go wrong with Amazon, half.com, or eBay. Just be sure you know what you're buying.

I have never had a problem buying used stuff through those services, plus they all have built in protection for the buyer if that's a concern.

Thanks, I started checking ebay and amazon. With knowing what I'm buying, can I ask another question? I'm seeing the regular cardboard box of the Platinum Edition, priced quite high on both sites.

However I see a few copies of a different types on ebay that appear to be the exact same thing but different packaging because it was released for Australia. The description for the item is:

EA Classics Asia-Pacific Edition, the same version as those that are sold in stores in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. The software and the manual are exactly the same as any other English language edition; only the packaging differs from the UK/US versions. Comes in a 4-CD case with the manual on CD.

and this is the picture, which can be had new for $20. Is there anything else that might be known to be different? Any compatability problems, etc, or is it simply the packaging only?

I have the game for PC. The packaging is long gone though, I'm afraid.

Just to let you know, FF VII for the PC uses something called "8-bit palletized textures" which is no longer supported on modern video cards. If you're not using hardware a few years old which supports this, you will see graphical errors. You can always choose from the game's setup to run in Software Rendering Mode instead of Direct3D, but this won't exactly look pretty.

Oh wow, that's something I was concerned about- an issue with video or audio. I have no idea if my video card supports 8-bit palletized textures. I hope Dell will be able to tell me. The laptop I have is 4 years old (I bought it in the summer of 2003) and I think it's an ATI something, but I've got no clue. Is that a feature or support that a general description of the video card would have, or something I would need to email or call ATI about?

Probably would be better off buying a PS1 for $20 and FF7 for that. Play the real thing.

What's the difference between the PC version and PS1 version? Also, where do suggest I buy it for $20 and is it better or worse video quality than PC?

According to Wikipedia: "In 1998, Final Fantasy VII was ported to Windows-based PCs. This re-release featured smoother graphics and fixed certain translation and spelling errors, as well as various gameplay-related glitches. However, the PC version also suffered from its own bugs, including errors in the display of some full motion videos."

You can get PS1's on ebay for $20-$30. FF7 might cost you twice that though since it's becoming rare.

Try this...

These demos are for PS1 games ported to PC which use 8-bit palletized textures:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/final...d_2536023.html


http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/final...d_2535960.html


http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure...d_2637341.html


If you can download them and play them just fine, you should be good. I noticed some comments on the FF7 link that said the demo didn't work, so I thought I should include links to FF8 and Metal Gear Solid just to be safe.

It's not even close to rare at all, it's just still tapering down from the period where idiots were paying $150 for a copy once the movie came out.

Wow, thanks all for the help!! I'll try those videos on my computer when I get home from work today. If they work correctly, I'll stick with PC, if not, I'll look into PS1.

Anyone know if I'd be fine with that Australian version of FF7 pictured? Looks and sounds to be the exact same thing in a different package.

You should be fine w/ the Aussie copy.

I do agree w/ sticking to the PSX version. The main reason being the bitmap-based backgrounds look grainy and pixelized on the PC version due to resolution. If that doesn't bug you, you should be fine.

Not sure if mentioning this is allowed, but you could always purchase the PSX version and run a Playstation emulator on PC.

I don't think that's something I'm even familiar with so I think I'll pass. Thanks though!

You could always buy a PS2 or 3 and run it on that as well.

I signed up and tried to download those videos from gamespot, but it kept telling me the download would start in 5 minutes, and it would count down to 2 minutes and then jump back up to 5 minutes and it did this for about an hour last night so I couldn't test those videos.

However I did check what video card I have, it's the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000. These are some/all of the specs for it from simply googling it:

List of Features:

36 million Transistors, 0.15µ-process
Core Clock 240 - 250 MHz, Memory Clock 400-440 MHz (both clocks depend on implementation)
Theoretical Fill Rate 960 - 1000 Mpixel/s
Memory Bandwidth 6400 - 7040 MB/s
AGP 8x support
Two DirectX 8.1 compliant programmable vertex shaders
DirectX 8.1 compliant programmable pixel shaders
Four pixel rendering pipelines
One texturing unit per pixel pipeline
Hyper-Z II Memory Bandwidth Optimization
Smoothvision = Super Sampling FSAA
Powerplay - ATi's power management (not implemented in first shipping notebooks!)
Integrated MPEG2 (DVD) decoding units, like iDCT, motion compensation, hardware sub-picture decoder, adaptive de-interlacing
400 MHz RAMDAC, 165 MHz TMDS transmitter, integrated video-out
Multi-display support with ATi Hydravision, allowing up to three displays at the same time (notebook panel, CRT, television)

can anyone tell from those if it supports 8-bit patellitized textures?

To be honest, even these days it's still nice to have a fairly beefy 3d card and cpu to emulate PS1 stuff, so I'm not sure how well the radeon 9000 would hold up in this case.

So you don't think it's powerful enough huh? Maybe not. I'm not sure about emulating, which sounds like having a PS1 "player" program downloaded, I am referring to buying the PC game... not sure if that makes a difference. Anyway, the computer is 2.0 Ghz (I believe) Pentium 4, but it's got less than 1GB of RAM. I know that the desktop we had in 1997/1998 handled FF7 very well, I guess I assumed anything after that wouldn't have a problem either.

If I need to upgrade my video card, is that something I can have done at Office Depot/CompUSA/Best Buy? I'm not comfortable doing anything like that on my own, and understand they have those services where they can install or upgrade the part for you and do whatever they need to with the drivers.

GradVT06 - Simple solution, download the demo ( http://games.softpedia.com/progDownl...load-2772.html ) and see if it runs.

Ah, thanks so much for the help! I'll try the demo tonight when I get home and see if it runs.

To add to my last post, on the demo there is a configuration program that will test your Direct3D device for compatability. This includes the test for 8-bit Paletted Textures.

I'm currently running a GeForce FX Go5200 and pass all the tests (though the demo crashes on me, not a surprise since my current laptop config is in horrible condition.)