The FFVII Mobile Game Initiative (2004-2008 Era)

[NaoyaShinota]

So I got curious and found this Before Crisis FFVII trailer on web archvie. However I noticed that this one has a narrator in the background and that the message displays Service for the game starts on September 24th witch is the official release date for the game. I have heard of a trailer playing on tv in japan, but I haven't seen one on YouTube.
Square Enix game commericals : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

 

[NaoyaShinota]

While browsing the Before Crisis Final Fantasy VII wiki I have found this, game developer magazine did talks about Before Crisis Final Fantasy VII. This is something I recommend reading in case you haven't looked at it yet. I think you will like the Cover.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

While browsing the Before Crisis Final Fantasy VII wiki I have found this, game developer magazine did talks about Before Crisis Final Fantasy VII. This is something I recommend reading in case you haven't looked at it yet. I think you will like the Cover.

Nice find!!

 

[NaoyaShinota]

A few months ago I purchased a lot of phones. I love Japanese phones and just wanted to take a chance and though just maybe their is some glimmer of hope to find BCFFVII. For most I didn’t have the batteries and assumed it wouldn’t boot up. Also 43 phones is a lot. Today I was going through some of the phones and was trying to start up the ones that wouldn’t start up. I noticed that I had a 920SH which was compatible with Before Crisis.I got it to boot up, despite being nearly broken. I was hoping for BCFFVII but Instead I found FFI, FFII and FFIV the After years. Sadly no BCFFVII.

 

[NaoyaShinota]

An update on the current status of FF Mobile games that are either lost or found. Below is also a list of what carriers that have been found from and can be found from.

Found/data extraction method being looked into
Final Fantasy I (Docomo, Softbank)
Final Fanatsy II (Docomo, Softbank)
Final Fantasy IV after years (Softbank)
Dirge of Cerberus LE: Demo (Docomo)
Dirge of Cerberus: (Docomo) (only the purchased app has been found, the rest of the data from SD is lost.
BCFFVII: Demo (AU)

Lost/haven’t found yet
Final Fantasy IV (Docomo, Softbank, AU)
Final Fantasy IV after years (Docomo, AU)
Final Fantasy Legends (Docomo, Softbank, AU)
Before Crisis (Docomo, Softbank, AU)
FFVII Snowboarding (Docomo, Softbank, AU, Verizon)
Dirge of Cerberus (Docomo, Softbank, AU, Verizon)
Final Fantasy Legends (Docomo, Softbank, AU)

 

[NaoyaShinota]

An update on Before Crisis Final Fantasy VII Demo dumping.
I have been in contact with Kraze and for those who don't know he is good at this stuff. Very knowledgeable in my opinion. He has informed me that JTAG is not possible for accessing the file content in the W51H. This sort of thing isn't new. In fact, it is very possible that all of the phones that I have may bot be able to be dumped with JTAG. But we will never know until someone tries. Do keep in mind, this is Japan. Who knows what they have done to their products and what they know to protect it from this type of thing and that they problably keep almost a lot to everything a secret. That and not many have tried to do what we are doing. Watch the video about the hackers who were able to hack the Wii to get an idea of how hard it was. This just means that another method will be needed in order to hack and dump the phone. Let this update be more of a progress update as well as a process of elimination of what doesn't work rather than a let down. I have been busy with several projects and I am still searching for Before Crisis game and content (books, screenshots and just about anything else) despite that we are getting Before Crisis of some kind for Final Fantasy VII 25th Anniversary next year. I don't know exactly what it will look like but regardless I still want to play the original. And also a big thank you to everyone here for being so patient.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

And also a big thank you to everyone here for being so patient.

Thank you for your ongoing efforts (and updates).

 

[NaoyaShinota]

Thank you for your ongoing efforts (and updates).

Of course. I will try to search for another W51H and see if I can use that one if it doesn't have Before Crisis on it and use it as a sacrifice for software extraction. I am currently looking into other methods as well.

 

[GoodTofuFriday]

Of course. I will try to search for another W51H and see if I can use that one if it doesn't have Before Crisis on it and use it as a sacrifice for software extraction. I am currently looking into other methods as well.

I believe i have one of the games you guys were looking for. Called final fantasy legends on a D904i. Sadly I cant open the game because I do not have the original sim card.

 

[NaoyaShinota]

Nice. That’s no surprise that it’s locked. I’m surprised that this has slowly turned into a FF Mobile game hunt.

 

[NaoyaShinota]

it has been a while

As time goes by more and more of Before Crisis Final Fantasy VII stuff gets taken down. Even websites talking about the game. Like Famitsu. Famitsu is also a well known japanese magazine that talks about games. Sadly only 1 of the websites I found was archived. It does talk about support for AU devices for Before Crisis. However the chapters available for those devices are still unknown to this day. But interesting enough FF Mobile did have a page that would list what devices are compatible with other FF games.

au W43H"とau W43HII(随時
Official https://www.famitsu.com/k_tai/news/2007/04/05/607,1175766013,69697,0,0.html追加予定)。

Archived version https://web.archive.org/web/2019050...news/2007/04/05/607,1175766013,69697,0,0.html

https://www.famitsu.com/k_tai/news/1189317_1350.html
W51HとW51CAに

https://k-tai.watch.impress.co.jp/cda/article/event/31137.html

Therefore we know that the following AU Devices are beloved to be compatible
W43H
W43HII
W51H
W51CA

 

[NaoyaShinota]

WAIT A MINUTE!?!?
I just noticed something about this trailer. The scripts are in English. This isn’t a fan made trailer. This is real. My mind is blown. But the footage of Knife, Nunchuku and Legend is in Japanese? Watch it and pause it. This is very interesting. Some of it is in Japanese and some is in English. Take a look for yourself. This is interesting.

Trailer presented in the Cloud Vol.1 Dengeki.
This free book accompanies a DVD with several videos.
Sortie on December 21, 2007.

 

[Makoeyes987]

They were very, very close to localizing and releasing Before Crisis in the United States.

But something happened and they just put the breaks on it. I believe at one point a S-E publication (I can't remember which) even stated it was coming to US cell phones and included English localized screenshots but then it just never happened.

 

[NaoyaShinota]

4:07 BCFFVII Cosplayers in 2004. talk about rare.

 

[NaoyaShinota]

Something that I don’t know if everyone knows about. Back in March, during the FFVII Remake Intergrade, Ever Crisis and first soldier news, Famitsu interviewed Nomura about these titles. I am mainly interested about this. Look at what he says at the end.

Famitsu interview JAP) https://www.famitsu.com/news/202103/17215910.html
English version: https://www.rpgsite.net/news/10888-tetsuya-nomura-talks-ff7-remake-intergrade-ever-crisis-the-first-soldier-in-famitsu

Tetsuya Nomura:
“We have also seen that people want to be able to play the various different series titles on the current console hardware,” Nomura says, “So the design concept behind FFVII EC is not intended to be a replacement for that, but a convenient and casual way to touch on these games.”

Nomura basically acknowledging that yes people do still want to play the original game on CS devices. I’m not sure if they ask for anything specific or all of them such as Before Crisis, Crisis Core or Dirge of Cerberus. But it’s nice that people are asking about this in the first place. At this point I like to look at this and hopefully it will be like a Rod to getting the original just like how we got FFVII Remake. It took time but with enough requests hopefully Nomura will release the original.

 

[NaoyaShinota]

I stumbled upon a 5chan board where people are discussing about Before Crisis Final Fantasy VII. This is 5chan and it has a bit of 4chan in it. So do be cautious that
1. it may have disturbing content in the writing
2. erotic ads may be displayed and I mean very very erotic.
but besides that, it’s cool to see them talk about Before Crisis when they decide to get intelligent enough.

https://hobby7.5ch.net/test/read.cgi/appli/1110250822/?v=pc

 

[NaoyaShinota]

Before Crisis is mentioned in this magazine. I use to look at these things as a kid, how many of them talked about this?

Electronic Gaming Monthly Issue 196 (October 2005)

 

[NaoyaShinota]

This is one of the websites that I got the scans from. I still like the fact that I can find old websites that have stuff like this and is still available to this day.
Before Crisis Artwork and Other (cetraconnection.net)

 

[NaoyaShinota]

First of all thanks to Shademp for all his efforts, he is doing a great data collection job. I remember seen before "assemblergames" thread but my tryings to obtain Before Crisis game data wasn't work.

But now, I'm triying to get it one more time and i noticed one thing. When you use the "simulatorII i-mode tool" and open the supposed download url of Before Crisis you get an 403 Forbbiden Error. This is a good clue because this let us know that endpoint exist and probably jar executable game is behind this check. We can see the uid flag variable equal to "NULLGWDOCOMO" as parameter in the url. I think that if we get a correct uid we can bypass this check and obtain some data as the game launcher at least.

Main repository of game data (should be redirect to the second URL):
http://www.square-enix.co.jp/mobile/ff/url_i.html
Supposed download file urls:
http://ffi.sqexm.net/mobile/index.cgi?uid=NULLGWDOCOMO
http://ffi.sqexm.net/mobile/servlet/Download?sid=001&pid=38030&comm=PAGE&uid=NULLGWDOCOMO

Interesting Source:Wikipedia page about UID variable in japanese devices

I await your answers

And as gift for all some treasures i found on the internet cache:

More Resources about: Animated Cloud, Tifa y Aerith Avatars

Spoiler

Download HQ Aerith avatar screens
Download HQ Cloud avatar screens

Video Real demonstration of Animated Cloud, Tifa y Aerith Avatars

Source:
Interesting "mokkori67" archive: Scans, translations and videos

I tried doing this now with a vpn and I actually get a Final Fantasy(i) page instead when I use wayback machine. So somebody archived the imode links. I get a forbidden when I try to access it. It is interesting tho.

 

[NaoyaShinota]

A shot in the dark
We have tried several times, many times of finding Before Crisis Final Fantasy VII. Some of you I can tell were here contributing when it was still in service and even witnessed the service shutting down and yet you still tried to help for that I am happy for that. I wish I could have helped during 2017 when this started. And many of you are stronger then me cause you witnessed a downfall. We even found some people who do have/had the game and not even responding about it, or just ignoring us. So I have an idea. It’s seems to simple and it feels like it won’t work but let’s just ask Square in anyway possible to release and play the game in some way? We have something now that we didn’t have back then, or at least it wasn’t powerful and easy to access back then, social media. We have Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I know it seems like that they won’t at times. But FFVII Remake exists right? Now that game didn’t happen in one year, it took them years to realize “oh people do want a remake.” I have completely given up on trying to contact people for the game cause it is clear to me that those in Japan who have played the game just don’t want to help. And this is coming from actually trying and contacting others. I have even tried asking my friends if I came off as rude or polite. And they have told me the same thing. That they just won’t help cause some and many don’t care about these games.
Buying these phones, while collecting some rare games is just expensive no matter how good of a deal I get. I think they do want to play the game but haven’t missed it enough yet or believe it’s possible to play it. Even though the game is very easy to recreate. I know from experience. FFVII is going to be busy. First Soldier has a Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Ever Crisis is going to be coming out soon. Why not use this time to ask about Before Crisis? What’s the worse they can do to us? If anything they can just ignore us. And for once let’s abandon this “they don’t listen to foreigners” stuff. And let’s just try asking. I will. And I would rather ask and try to get their attention instead of being sad and accepting that I missed a chance to play this game because of many factors of my life. Even if I am the only one I will start asking them. But if we never ask, then they will never know if we really want it. How can a company know what you want if you don’t let them know? I can’t buy phone after phone and hope for 1/1000 of a data that may be on a phone that may or may not be able to extract and dump. Will we get the game within months of asking for the game? Probably/probably not. And to those who are still curiousI I am working Dumping the Demo. The only possible problem standing in our way is the missing data sheet for the chip Samsung KBP00W00DM-D424. If we have this we could get a step closer to dumping the demo.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I admire and appreciate your dedication to the mission, @NaoyaShinota

Since EC is bound to revisit BC, though, I bet they'll just say look forward to it -- at least for the next couple of years. Perhaps after that they would be willing to re-release the original if there's still enough fans asking for it.

 

[Makoeyes987]

If S-E wanted to really go for broke, they'd remake Before Crisis as a narratively driven action rpg ala Genshin Impact, utilize assets from each Remake installment, bring back the old Turks, make up new Turks for waifu/husbando gacha money, and just go all the way with retelling shit and letting it pay for itself.

They could really go ham with this. But, they aren't. For better or worst.

 

[NaoyaShinota]

I admire and appreciate your dedication to the mission, @NaoyaShinota

Since EC is bound to revisit BC, though, I bet they'll just say look forward to it -- at least for the next couple of years. Perhaps after that they would be willing to re-release the original if there's still enough fans asking for it.

Most likely true for now. But I’m not going to stop asking. I will like like a hopeless idiot but I’m not going to stop asking.

 

[NaoyaShinota]

If S-E wanted to really go for broke, they'd remake Before Crisis as a narratively driven action rpg ala Genshin Impact, utilize assets from each Remake installment, bring back the old Turks, make up new Turks for waifu/husbando gacha money, and just go all the way with retelling shit and letting it pay for itself.

They could really go ham with this. But, they aren't. For better or worst.

Honestly who knows what they are even thinking over their. If what the trailer is showing us is true than Ever Crisis will have FFVII Remake Models for Before Crisis. I just want the original. Like how we can play the original of most games these days. One can hope though lol.

 

[Odysseus]

I could see them thinking that the original is just too primitive for modern release. We never got KH Coded either, just the DS remake.