I told you we were going to do it. I told you we were going to do commentary for Final Fantasy Unlimited.
And so we are.
But what is Final Fantasy Unlimited?
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On January 31st 1997, the seventh (roman numeral) installment of the Final Fantasy series was released in Japan. This old PlayStation title remains one of the biggest video game obsessions of all time, as proven by the still active fanbase.

Though this is indeed the game’s fifteenth anniversary, the FFVII as we know and love it was not released until the latter half of 1997. In Japan it was titled “FFVII International”, while in the rest of the world it became the standard edition of the game. But despite the original’s glaring lack of Weapons emerging from the Northern Crater or the inability to use Exchange to instantly swap materia between party members, this release was still considered an awesome experience and instantly spawned a huge following in Japan while the overseas gamers were still drooling over Sony’s ad campaigns for this epic game.

Our gratitude extends beyond the re-release it spawned, as in recent years it has been revealed that this first edition is the possessor of many exclusive, deeply hidden secrets such as the now classic Honey Bee Inn lobby scenes. Whether it be in story or gameplay, this game truly is more than meets the eye!

The Lifestream.net wishes Final Fantasy VII a glorious fifteenth anniverary!

Forum member Quexinos has very kindly provided TheLifestream.net — and you, our fellow fans of Final Fantasy VII and its related compositions — with the missing link in our coverage of translations from the FFVII 10th Anniversary Ultimania: Cait Sith’s profile.

Sure, we had Reeve Tuesti’s profile, but not that of his beloved feline avatar. Thanks to Que being less lazy than the rest of us, however, we can at last offer you the only main character profile we had overlooked.

We here at TLS are very proud of Que, and it warms my heart to unveil her first frontpage translation effort.

Character Profile

Sex: ?
Height: 100cm
Blood Type: ?
Date of Birth: ?
Birthplace: ?
Weapon: Megaphone (when riding the moogle)
First Person Pronoun: ボク [Boku]
Voice Actor: AC, DC — Hideo Ishikawa

A remote controlled stuffed cat. Reeve, head of the Shinra Company’s Urban Development Department, manufactured him for such purposes as scouting out intelligence and spying. Because Reeve is the one operating him, he speaks with the unique accent of Reeve’s original Kansai dialect. He’s powerless and limited when alone, so he often rides on the fat, stuffed toy moogle during times of action.

The sector seven plate was dropped as a desperate act to crush a dissenting voice ShinRa could not control. While it was an act of retribution, it was also an act of censorship and of control by intimidation- it was to serve as a warning so that no one else would attempt the act again.

SOPA and PIPA, the proposed Internet Security acts currently in the US congress, also seek the ability to control the flow of information, to be able to control and censor the information online, and this could be extremely problematic for website reliant on information that originates from other sources, including and especially this one.

Even in the reduced forms, these bills are dangerous and set a terrible precedent as far as free speech rights are concerned.

There is, however, a shiny golden wire of hope. Many sites, including Wikipedia, Google, Boingboing, and countless blogs, are going dark today as a form of protest against these bills, to demonstrate the terrible repercussions the ability to censor the internet would have. Many sites are urging their readers to contact their own congress members and urge them to vote against the bill.

We urge you to do the same. This bill would not just affect this site, it would affect us all, both here in the US and with possible aftereffects abroad as well.

So, The Lifestream stands with the Blackout and Against SOPA and PIPA, for a free and uncensored internet.

We just hope you stand with us all too.

Site translator hitoshura has been kind enough to provide us with a chapter-by-chapter summary of the newest official FFVII novel. Released on December 15th, the book was written by Kazushige Nojima, writer of the original FFVII, as well as Crisis Core, Advent Children and the On the Way to a Smile novellas. As such, The Kids Are Alright is an authentic entry in the world of Final Fantasy VII.

Sadly, however, it had no official release outside of Japan. So, while you could still import it if you lived elsewhere, you novel, FINAL FANTASY VII Lateral Biography TURKS -The Kids Are Alright-. Released on December 15th, the book was written by wouldn’t be able to read it without some knowledge of the Japanese language.

Were the contents of this newest tale in Cloud Strife’s world, then, to be kept from us indefinitely? Blessedly, no. TheLifestream.net’s hitoshura has already stepped forward to provide his fellow fans with a rundown of the book’s main events.

This is to tide us over until he is able to provide a complete translation of the 354-page novel — an endeavour that is already under way, so be sure to check back in the future for updates about that.

What you’ll also find in this article: scans I’ve made of all the book’s artwork (illustrations by Shou Tajima), and my translation of a page from the beginning of the book that introduces several of the characters featured in the story. Additional thanks go to hito, by the way, for correcting me on a word I had mistranslated on that page.

So, if you’re ready to get caught up on the latest events in this world we all love, click upon “Read the rest of this entry” below.

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UPDATE: All done, we’re now on a 1 GHz virtual PC with a fat internet pipe. Will do some more tweaks and optimizations to increase speed and decrease server load even more; keep an eye out on this thread.

We have experienced some downtime on the forums some time ago, in part due to peaked activity, in part due to shitty vB plugins, in part due to a restrictive webhost that blocks databases at times of peak activity. With that in mind, we decided to go forth and move to a new, better host – again.

This time around, we will be moving from a shared hosting account on Hostgator to a ‘virtual private server’ hosted by Leaseweb. The benefits of the latter are pretty big: A ‘dedicated’ machine, so no database blocks anymore, full control over the system (SSH / commandline control, w00t), and a lot more flexibility in what kind of software we can use.

The plan is:

* Close the forums for new replies at 3 PM my time – that’s 2 PM GMT and about… 9 AM eastern time? Something like that.
* Request a full backup from the host. This may take a few hours, depending on Hostgator support.
* Move the backup to the new server. This’ll take about as long as it takes to transfer a ~5 GB backup file – probably about an hour and a half to two hours, but it depends.
* Unpack and setup the backup. This should only take a few minutes
* Change some settings
* Test stuff
* Switch the domain name over to the new server. I set it so it should only take a few minutes for the DNS change to take effect, but results may vary.
* With luck, the whole move will take about three hours. But that’s with luck, so no guarantees, might take longer.

While we’re moving, feel free to head over to awesome sites like FFOF, SO, or goatse.cx.

Alternatively, join the TLS IRC at irc.ipocalypse.net, channel #tls.

Tis the season, whatever you believe, to get together with family and friends, and we at TLS would like to wish our readers the best.

So, whatever your belief or lack thereof, have a pleasant end of year holiday and may you have a happy new year, and remember, Aerith died on Christmas day, but Hojo’s death rang in new hope for the new year.

PS- If you’re playing FF7 again for the Christmas season and new year, though we can’t actually be 100% sure on what day each event happens, you should definitely have finished disc 1 by now and you’ve only got a week to finish all of disc 2. So keep on plugging away at the game, folks.

Today’s music arrangement spotlight features another character theme. This is a ‘debut’ song by YouTube user naomiCENSOREDv2. It is a fan-vocal cover of Yuffie’s Theme by Nobuo Uematsu.

She wrote the lyrics, arranged the arrangement, performed, and recorded the entire song herself. The lyrics specifically cover Yuffie’s character development throughout the Compilation, and they do an excellent job of capturing the core essence of her character. The lyrics can be found on the YouTube version of this song. If you like it, be sure to drop by her page to leave a comment to show your support and check out her other songs!

Without further ado, we present Descendant of Shinobi, and as always you can right-click to save the MP3.

Hello and welcome to the third in our continuing Final Fantasy Music spotlight feature.

Today, we’re back to something more specific to Final Fantasy Seven, Cid’s theme.

This particular arrangement is by SongLeReveur, who you can follow on facebook if you like his work.

Here, we’ll let the artist speak for his own work, where he says “Before I get any comment about the sound/mix/instrument playing: YES it’s supposed to sound like that. I decided to use some dirty and imperfect takes, with guitar out of tune (well, the vibrato bar helps) and bongos sometime out of rythm. It fits better with Cid’s character, I think.”

Without further ado, sit down and drink your goddamn tea for four minutes forty seconds as you enjoy the song.
You can listen to the song via the streampad application, by clicking here, or right clicking to save the MP3.

The Let’s Play commentary continues.
This time Jocalyn, who last participated in Part 27, makes a comeback. Newcomer is Shademp, author of the Unused Text Series, who lends his Swedish accent for some Scandinavian hijinks. Veterans Ryushikaze and Pixel return, joined by Tennyo from Part 45 and onward.

Enjoy as we explore a Mayan pyramid, enter a sleeping forest via a village of bones, then solemnly end disc 1 with a tragic visit to a city made out of dried up coral reefs and giant sea shells.

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As many of you may have noticed, TLS’s main site and forums have been going up and down a lot over the last several days. We’ve contacted our host and made some optimizations to the server, which should hopefully keep things up and running properly. We’re also looking into the possibility of dedicated hosting options to ensure that any future site outages are as brief as possible (pronounced: hopefully won’t happen at all).

Overall, thanks for bearing with us during the downtime, and we’re working hard to keep things running smoothly for all of our loyal fans.

Welcome back to the LP. Pixel’s quickly rushing to the end of the first disc, and while we’re not there yet, we’re getting close, so come join us as Pixel has a side trip over to the ethnically confused Wutai, goes on a date with a lucky lady (or possibly a massive man), grabs a final limit break, and gets ready to do some archeology.

More, as always, after the break.

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