8 Video Game Tech Demos Which LIED To You
6. Final Fantasy VI: The Interactive CGI Game
By dint of the Super NES not having a processor suited for fast-paced action games, Nintendo's 16-bit hardware became the home of the very best the more pedestrian, number crunching JRPG genre had to offer. Unquestionably the kings of the field were Enix's Dragon Quest, and Square's Final Fantasy.
The latter arguably reached its apex in 1994. Final Fantasy VI was a towering accomplishment not just for JRPGs, but gaming as a whole. When it became clear, albeit courtesy of SGI's bogus showreels, that Nintendo's follow up to the SNES would pack more punch than the warehouse manager of a boxing surplus store, Final Fantasy fans began licking their respective lips. Just imagine what the company could achieve on their long-term partner's new hardware?
A tech demo at the 1995 SIGGRAPH show in Los Angeles gave them a tantalising glimpse. Final Fantasy VI: The Interactive CGI Game presented three familiar heroes in jaw-dropping 3D, as they took on a series of enemies via a novel gesture system (drawing a star with the cursor would summon Bahamut, for example). Composed via the same SGI workstations as the Project Reality presentation, the smart assumption was that Square's sample was a test for the 'Ultra Final Fantasy' to come.
Smart, but wrong. It soon became clear that, if Square were to make a truly groundbreaking next-gen console RPG, then the CD-ROM format was non-negotiable - a format Nintendo had rejected for the N64. As a consequence, 'Final Fantasy 64' - as it was later dubbed - remained precisely that: a fantasy.