This is the first installment where we look to bring some attention to some of the many remixes of Final Fantasy VII music that you may not be familiar with. The first song we’ve decided to feature is one that fits the theme of our site particularly well: The Lifestream Overture. This arrangement was created by OCRemixer, Reuben Kee.

Running at 18 mins and 26 seconds, The Lifestream Overture flows through most of the familiar Final Fantasy VII songs in a beautiful rendition of the classic tunes of the game. It provides a unique feel of passing through many of the different emotions and locations throughout the world of Gaia, much like the flow of the Lifestream through the Planet itself. You can listen to the song via download located below, or by using the streampad banner at the bottom of the page. Also, feel free to drop a comment, and let us know if you have any suggestions for a future Music Arrangement Spotlight!

In closing, we also wanted to this post to serve as a memorial for the song’s creator- Reuben Kee, who passed away four years ago today, at the incredibly young age of 23. I can think of no better way to honor the memory of this talented individual than to enjoy the music arrangement he created, named after the ever-flowing cycle of life.

Click to listen to ‘The Lifestream Overture’ (right click to Save As)

When it rains, it pours, folks, Pixel’s already gotten some more time free and played a bit more of FFVII, and we’ve already given it a thorough going off topic over, so get ready to cry since we’re finishing the story in Cosmo Canyon, visiting the curiously undestroyed Nibelheim and meeting the mysterious man beneath, and finishing up by meeting the greatest pilot in the world with the foulest mouth in ten.

More after the break, as usual.

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Article Index

Rescuing Aeris, Story Time at the Inn

The Midgar Train, Sector 7 Slums and the Honey Bee Inn, all areas that Motomu Toriyama was responsible for, provided us with condensed amounts of unused material. As we take a pause from his work, the game heavily decreases in unused content per area. Though no field in later parts of the game rival the sheer amount of unseen text as seen in the game’s beginning, there is still much left to analyse.

Now, let’s get out of Midgar. The individuals of the FFVII development team responsible for this article’s main events are Masaru Oka and Kazushige Nojima. The former left behind a more difficult version of Mayor Domino’s password challenge in Shinra HQ, while Nojima wrote aspects of Sephiroth’s character that would not be used until ten years after the original game’s release…

Fasten your seat belts, dear readers. From now on we’ll be speeding through the game’s scenarios.

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It’s been awhile folks. Over half a year. But Pixel finally found time in his busy schedule of making our audiobooks to play a bit more Final Fantasy 7.

This time, I, Ryushikaze, am joined by forum regulars Satsu, Tifabelle, Celes, and Tennyo as we head out of Costa Del Sol and get ourselves involved in the sordid world of Bird racing, gambling, moogle breeding programs, bloodsport, chintzy unreliable fortune tellers, and worse, a man without any pants on. Yes, we’re headed to Gold Saucer.

The rest of the videos, as always, are after the break.

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The drought of official FFVII Compilation news has been replaced with a surprising rainfall, by the appearance of a book on Square Enix’s e-store. The book will focus on the Turks, but in what manner is as of yet unknown.
Source: SE e-store

The product details give us these stats on the book:

Release Date: December 15th, 2011
Cost: 1,470 yen
Page Count: 338
Genre: Novel

It is written by veteran Final Fantasy scenario writer, Kazushige Nojima. Illustrations are done by Shou Tajima, whose previous work related to FFVII seems limited to a drawing of Cloud for Square Enix’s manga magazine, Shonen Gangan.
Source: FF7citadel

What role will this play in the expanded universe of Final Fantasy VII? When will it take place? Expect TLS to analyse the contents of this book once it has been released.

Thanks to forum member Suzaku for bringing this book to our attention!

HypochondriacPiano has put together a fan tribute album, “Final Fantasy VII: Pulse of Life.” This music has been featured on the TheLifestream’s On the Way to a Smile Audiobooks, and if you’ve wanted to get your hands on it, and listen to it on your portable mp3 player of choice, now’s your chance! Click Here to Download the Album in .RAR and here as a .ZIP and be sure to let us know what you think in the comments!

Article Index

The Honey Bee Inn

Of all the areas in Final Fantasy VII, the Honey Bee Inn ranks as one of the most memorable. The staggering amount of unused material here serves as a tribute to its legacy as a fan favorite. Make room in your hearts, folks, because after reading this and watching the embedded videos, you will love this place even more.

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Just a reminder here guys! Just in case anyone was interested to catching up with us in our fantastic Final Fantasy VII journey, feel free to hop in at any time! Follow along like a sing along song, dawgs.

That’s right.

The proof is in the wedding of Maaya Sakamoto and Kenichi Suzumura, the voice actors of Aerith and Zack in Advent Children, respectively.

Oh, the couple’s worked together on numerous other titles as VA’s too (Gundam SEED Destiny, Ouran, Kara no Kyōkai, Black Butler II, etc). But that’s not relevant,

One of our members pointed out some new FFVII merchandise popping up on amiami.jp, most likely the most awesome piece of merchandise ever to have been released by Square in all its nearly-30-year existence.

A cup.

While it is the most awesome merchandise each and every of the FFVII fans (and the haters) should buy and put front-and-center in their FFVII shrine, the most shocking revelation was made by TLS member LicoriceAllsorts – the cup is Rufus’ Ultimate Weapon.

Don't mess with the Cup.

After acquiring and using the polkadot-chocobo’s special Alternate Play ability to get Rufus in the battle against Onyx WEAPON, you can go to the PlayStation menu and delete your save game. Turn off the console, wait for exactly 10 seconds (any more or less and your 999-hour save is permanently lost), then turn it back on. Next, defeat Onyx Weapon with just Rufus, and he will gain The Cup of Rufus, his Ultimate Weapon, which does a guaranteed 99,999 damage and unlocks a hidden date with Rufus and Cloud at the Gold Saucer where, indeed, a happy ending involving the Cup will be shown in a hidden CGI video.

Please share with us any other previously unrevealed secrets of FFVII and its merchandise, who knows what other shocking revelations there may be.

Hey dudes! Recently I’ve been thinking about how long it’s been since I’ve had a proper playthrough of FFVII, and I know that the community itself probably hasn’t played a full game in a while either, with few exception. For that reason I thought it’d be cool for all of us to run through the game at roughly the same time. After all, FFVII is what brought us all here, right!?

Here’s how it’s gonna work;

I’m going to lead the playthrough in terms of setting up checkpoints; segments of the game where we’ll slow down for a bit and discuss some stuff as a community relevant to that part of the game. Questions such as comments on the characters we’re using, that particular plot point, and gameplay stuff like our Materia setup and stuff. Then I’ll continue and set up another checkpoint, and so on.

That way we’re roughly on the same page as our progress. Don’t worry, you can skip ahead or lag behind a little bit, and you can join in whenever you want, so if you happen to be reading this while we’re on say, Disk 2, go ahead and jump in and start going on about the middle of Disk 1 if you like! We’ll plan as we go. With that said, let’s get started!

So nearly three years after a Sephiroth-themed Sackboy was shown off for LittleBigPlanet’s showing at Tokyo Game Show, there will finally be a set of FF7 Sackboy costumes. Cloud, Sephiroth, Tifa, and Aerith costumes will be available for $1.99 apiece. If you purchase the bundle for  $5.99 / €5.99 / £4.79, you’ll get all of those costumes as well as one for Vincent. Despite the Playstation blog’s wording as “the rest of AVALANCHE”

So on July 13, 2011 you can begin trying to keep Aerith away from Sephiroth in LittleBigPlanet2. Thanks to forum member Zeuz for the heads-up.