Sure, up to an upper limite. A "cult classic" implies popularity and dedication from a fanbase not wide enough to quantitatively make it a mainstream success.
Of course, plenty of people dislike liking things that a lot of people like, so they may insist something they like is "cult" regardless of all available evidence of lasting, massified success and popularity.
Final Fantasy was mainstream though. It was advertised everywhere. I can remember my friend's dad who didn't play video games wanting to get a PlayStation because of it. People dropped Nintendo because of it. Everyone knew it was coming years in advance.
the truth is, western millennials were starved for good anime and FFVII scratched that itch just right
but Sephiroth is a mediocre character to be honest, and I still remember morons thinking there was a way you could save Aerith, as if a whole different game would fit in the media
Not that anon, but Phantasy Star 2 was touted as the next big cinematic and graphically impressive RPG at the time that took advantage of next gen hardware. Kind of laughable now, but there was some hype for the anime portraits and anime inspired cutscenes (as infrequent as they actually are in ps2).
calling ff7 a cult classic just feels wrong however i do think there is a large chunk of non-rpg people who love the game but probably didnt get into rpgs more.
I would agree with this because the cult that has formed around the game was not present when the game was actually current.
Games like Tomb Raider, MGS, Tony Hawk, Crash, Spyro, Medal of Honor, Driver, and Twisted Metal were much more culturally relevant and talked about at the time. That's just other series of games, not even getting into sports or racing games and such that had much broader appeal.
All of the FF games got way more culturally relevant around 2000-2001ish when anime really started taking off
Literally the only people who would deny anything I said are zoomers who think nerds on Youtube talking about their childhood gaming experiences reflected cultural reality.
On one hand the world hadn't seen anything like it at the time. On the the I would go on to see better, less influential games be released. I'd go on to see and play a lifetime of games after that if not to finally conclude, "Eh, it was alright. You really had to have been into Japanese ladyboy culture of the late 90s for it to resonate. Most straight males would give it one playthrough and go back to answering their girlfriends calls."
my mom in the early 00s had a friend that was a very normie coast guard guy. his game collection consisted of Pro Skater, WWE Smackdown, Gran Turismo, a handful of sports games and FF7.
the game sold a system, defined a genre and sold millions. what in the frick "cult classic" even mean at that point?
It only did that in Japan. The game sold 10 million copies total and over 7 million of them were in Japan.
In the west it had more marketing and advertisement money spent on it than any game ever, and still barely sold 2 million units.
Keep in mind that renting games was also the #1 way that most people digested media at that time, so quick pick up and play games like Twisted Metal, or shorter games may not move as many units sales wise but would have a much broader reach. A 50 hour long text heavy jrpg isn't going to be good rental material. Resident Evil as an example, literally every single person I knew who owned a Playstation had played and beaten RE, but only four of them actually owned the game.
metal gear solid sold less and is still anything but a cult classic. FFVII was a greater sales success in Japan, but for western fans, it was synonymous with JRPGs in a way it simply wouldn't be there due to Dragon Quest mania having hit there a decade prior at that point. just because it wasn't moving units to casuals and well-meaning gift-buying family members like Namco Museum and WWF Warzone doesn't make the game a cult classic.
there are tons of actual cult classic JRPGs on the PS1 to compare it to that prove the point. compared to even pretty well-remembered games like Legend of Dragoon, Xenogears and Suikoden it's orders of magnitude more popular
It only did that in Japan. The game sold 10 million copies total and over 7 million of them were in Japan.
In the west it had more marketing and advertisement money spent on it than any game ever, and still barely sold 2 million units.
Keep in mind that renting games was also the #1 way that most people digested media at that time, so quick pick up and play games like Twisted Metal, or shorter games may not move as many units sales wise but would have a much broader reach. A 50 hour long text heavy jrpg isn't going to be good rental material. Resident Evil as an example, literally every single person I knew who owned a Playstation had played and beaten RE, but only four of them actually owned the game.
Final Fantasy 7 is not a "cult classic" even in the West regardless, it's one of the most famous games of its genre if not the most famous if you don't count Pokemon as a real representative.
JRPGs are literally "cult classics" by definition. Outside of Japan no one has ever given a shit about them.
By your own admission, FF7 is the most famous game of its genre, and it sold less in America than WWF Warzone, two of those Namco collections, and a fricking Frogger remake.
There are way way too many people on this board who have been insulated inside their nerdy gaming bubbles and related communities for so long they completely lost scope of reality. It's become routine to make asinine statements like Chrono Trigger being a key piece of the SNES lineup, when I don't even think the game sold 250k copies.
by that moronic definition, all retro games except for like mario 1, oot, and pokemon red/blue are cult classics. most people don't play retro games these days period.
yeah, or like saying halloween is a cult film just because some people go their whole lives avoiding horror films. halloween is not a cult movie, sleepaway camp is a cult film. for something to be "cult" it needs to be under the radar and considered appreciated only by hardcore devotees of said genre, not simply ignored by the ignorant or aloof. you can't be even remotely interested in gaming on any dedicated hobby level and not know about final fantasy by name
Cult classic does not mean some unknown piece of work that 5k people have ever played, and no one heard of until 15 years after it's released.
It simply means that something has a specific fanbase that doesn't crossover or branch out much with others, and doesn't really enter the mainstream.
All the comparisons made are terrible, Metallica has their songs played at NFL games, Halloween is a staple of any theaters yearly spooky movies weekend every October. Everyone has heard or watched them, even people who's musical interest doesn't extend past Taylor Swift, and people who don't watch anything but capeshit.
FF7 did not have the same universal scope in America. The average Playstation owner who would be considered a "gamer" by society who spent time with Crash, Driver, and Tomb Raider wasn't playing FF7. The turbo normie who only played Tony Hawk and NFL Gameday didn't even know FF7 existed outside of name recognition. You want an easy scope of mainstream awareness and popularity, look at the Tomb Raider movies compared to the titanic level flop that was Spirits Within.
You want an actual comparison with FF7, Rammstein. One big hit that let everyone recognize the name, no real broad appeal, no lasting social integration.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>The average Playstation owner who would be considered a "gamer" by society who spent time with Crash, Driver, and Tomb Raider wasn't playing FF7. The turbo normie who only played Tony Hawk and NFL Gameday didn't even know FF7 existed outside of name recognition
This is completely false. Ff7 was responsible for jrpgs becoming super mainstream in the west, wtf are smoking, gay? Dicks? Yeah you're probably smoking wiener
8 months ago
Anonymous
JRPGs were never super mainstream in the west. This is full on delusion brought on by the bubble mentality of nerds only interacting and discussing things with other nerds I was talking about.
8 months ago
Anonymous
No, it's not. Every final fantasy after 7 sold gangbusters and as much as I don't like using gaming magazines as a source, they definitely were talking about RPGs more after ff7. Ff7 and pokemon created a deluge of jrpg fans in the west, myself included and pretty much everybody I know became jrpg fans to an extent through either ff7, pokemon or both. I had heard of final fantasy but I never played one until I got a PlayStation, because ff7 was marketed like fricking crazy same with pokemon and they just so happen to still be in the top 25 jrpgs of all time.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Every FF after 7 sold less. No other JRPGs had even 1/5th of the succes the FF series had, and Pokemon is as much a jrpg as Madden is.
What's really funny is that games like Baldurs Gate or Phantasmagoria sold just as much or near as much as FF7 did in America, but most of these same people who will parrot how huge FF7 was will happily call them niche games because they didnt play them when they were 8 years old.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>Every FF after 7 sold less.
Post the numbers.
8 months ago
Anonymous
8 months ago
Anonymous
And where are the rest of the final fantasy game sales?
8 months ago
Anonymous
looking at this made me realize how much the current gen is shite
8 months ago
Anonymous
Less than ff1,2,3,4,5,6? I never even said they sold more than ff7, you're arguing from a point of misunderstanding. I said they sold gangbusters, which in comparison with every other final fantasy BEFORE ff7, they did.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Your exact quote was that FF and jrpgs was "super mainstream" in the west and you are now realizing how moronic that was and desperately trying to walk it back.
8 months ago
Anonymous
No I stand by it. Your list has ff7,8 and 9 on it. No others. It supports all of my arguments.
8 months ago
Anonymous
you're a moron
8 months ago
Anonymous
Nice rebuttal, and I accept your concession.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Final Fantasy 7 was not nearly as obscure as you think it was, sorry zoomoid born in the year 2000.
I was the kind of person who didn't play JRPGs at all until adulthood, and I've known every detail about Final Fantasy games since FF7. A cult classic doesn't have to be the most obscure thing in the world, but it can't be as well known as Final fricking Fantasy.
8 months ago
Anonymous
you are a fricking idiot who clearly wasnt alive when the game came out. they aired commercials for this fricking game daily, i vividly remember them. "BUT ITS NOT A MOVIE, ITS VIDEOGAME COMING TO A CONSOLE NEAR YOU" "FINAL FANTASY SEVEN" or something like that. it was a HUGE FRICKING DEAL and every person i knew, gamer or not, knew about this game. go frick yourself.
I literally made a post explaining that cult classic has absolutely nothing to do with public recognition and you morons completely ignored it while replying to it.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Scott Pilgrim are both cult classics and everyone has heard of them. Recognition has nothing to do with being a cult classic, its the fanbase that is curated around it
8 months ago
Anonymous
No, cause there is most certainly an aspect of something being more fringe that determines it having "cult" status, not just anything with a cult around it literally. It has to be considered underrated, niche, only appealing to die hards, etc.
Rocky Horror Picture Show is a cult classic musical, Grease is just a regular classic. FF7 is most definitely the Grease of JRPGs.
8 months ago
Anonymous
you are a fricking idiot who clearly wasnt alive when the game came out. they aired commercials for this fricking game daily, i vividly remember them. "BUT ITS NOT A MOVIE, ITS VIDEOGAME COMING TO A CONSOLE NEAR YOU" "FINAL FANTASY SEVEN" or something like that. it was a HUGE FRICKING DEAL and every person i knew, gamer or not, knew about this game. go frick yourself.
Metalica stopped being a good metal band very early on.
JRPGs are literally "cult classics" by definition. Outside of Japan no one has ever given a shit about them.
By your own admission, FF7 is the most famous game of its genre, and it sold less in America than WWF Warzone, two of those Namco collections, and a fricking Frogger remake.
There are way way too many people on this board who have been insulated inside their nerdy gaming bubbles and related communities for so long they completely lost scope of reality. It's become routine to make asinine statements like Chrono Trigger being a key piece of the SNES lineup, when I don't even think the game sold 250k copies.
>and it sold less in America than WWF Warzone, two of those Namco collections, and a fricking Frogger remake.
FF7 sold very well in other parts of the world.
>Metalica stopped being a good metal band very early on.
Not the point of the comparison at all, but for what it's worth the number of bands or artists of any genre who released four to five albums in a row that are generally accepted as good or equally their best is a very short list. Metallica turning shitty is only so dramatic because of the fact that they're a band many people know, thus that many more people can be let down and complain about. Also, the degree to which they've sucked at certain points has been pretty particularly bad, but also not the point.
As a yuropoor FFVII was the first FF released in Europe. I remember friends played the PC port and were introduced to the playstation through it. I guess you could say it created a cult around it and around Japanese gaming in general, which felt very new and different back then. The same guys I knew who raved about FFVII also raved over anime films like Ghost in the Shell and Ninja Scroll.
Cloud is literally in a game with Mickey Mouse and Aladdin. And anyone who was actually alive at the time, remembers it was Cloud every nerd was excited about because for some reason gamers thought he was the ultimate badass. Nobody cared about the other FF cameos in KH, only Cloud.
No, but the idiocy of the median consumer (as is also the case with the median populous), will inevitably mistake definitions and mix and match words until they're don't make sense. It's ok for the lexicon to change over time, but there's no excuse for the kind of mess we are in with so much slang these days. Ebonics/slang, whatever you want to call it. It's more of a problem with ignorance x ego, it's easy to look up definitions of wprds these days, we have so much information at our fingertips, but people love to double down on being wrong, until enough idiots agree on being wrong and foce a change of definition, which a lot of the time is incompatible with the original definition. Society hasn't evolved for over 10,000 years, only technology has evolved.
Well if it's one thing we all know it's that your feelings are always right.
FF7 is the best Final Fantasy. I never played 1-6 and I stopped on X2 which was my 2nd favourite Final Fantasy.
>I never played 1-6
You should. It's nice to see how the series evolved from 1 to 7.
*devolved
Sure, up to an upper limite. A "cult classic" implies popularity and dedication from a fanbase not wide enough to quantitatively make it a mainstream success.
Of course, plenty of people dislike liking things that a lot of people like, so they may insist something they like is "cult" regardless of all available evidence of lasting, massified success and popularity.
Final Fantasy was mainstream though. It was advertised everywhere. I can remember my friend's dad who didn't play video games wanting to get a PlayStation because of it. People dropped Nintendo because of it. Everyone knew it was coming years in advance.
the truth is, western millennials were starved for good anime and FFVII scratched that itch just right
but Sephiroth is a mediocre character to be honest, and I still remember morons thinking there was a way you could save Aerith, as if a whole different game would fit in the media
FF7 copied Phantasy Star 4.
>4
*2
Explain
Not that anon, but Phantasy Star 2 was touted as the next big cinematic and graphically impressive RPG at the time that took advantage of next gen hardware. Kind of laughable now, but there was some hype for the anime portraits and anime inspired cutscenes (as infrequent as they actually are in ps2).
Sephiroth is catnip for who the game's primarily designed for: angsty preteens.
Stupid fricking israelite. Why do you let your hubris get this bad?
calling ff7 a cult classic just feels wrong however i do think there is a large chunk of non-rpg people who love the game but probably didnt get into rpgs more.
>ff7 certainly feels like one
Why? Because it's so shit everyone now knows its popularity was a fad? Certainly you must mean something like that
Our culture is becoming dumber and dumber so yes FF7 is definitely a cult classic
FF has some of the dumbest character design ever. I don't know why SE pays Nomura
Are you fricking stupid? Your thread feels stupid
I would agree with this because the cult that has formed around the game was not present when the game was actually current.
Games like Tomb Raider, MGS, Tony Hawk, Crash, Spyro, Medal of Honor, Driver, and Twisted Metal were much more culturally relevant and talked about at the time. That's just other series of games, not even getting into sports or racing games and such that had much broader appeal.
All of the FF games got way more culturally relevant around 2000-2001ish when anime really started taking off
Fricking moronic revisionist zoomer. Seek a rope .
Literally the only people who would deny anything I said are zoomers who think nerds on Youtube talking about their childhood gaming experiences reflected cultural reality.
On one hand the world hadn't seen anything like it at the time. On the the I would go on to see better, less influential games be released. I'd go on to see and play a lifetime of games after that if not to finally conclude, "Eh, it was alright. You really had to have been into Japanese ladyboy culture of the late 90s for it to resonate. Most straight males would give it one playthrough and go back to answering their girlfriends calls."
Do Normies really played this game or are just larping?
my mom in the early 00s had a friend that was a very normie coast guard guy. his game collection consisted of Pro Skater, WWE Smackdown, Gran Turismo, a handful of sports games and FF7.
the game sold a system, defined a genre and sold millions. what in the frick "cult classic" even mean at that point?
It only did that in Japan. The game sold 10 million copies total and over 7 million of them were in Japan.
In the west it had more marketing and advertisement money spent on it than any game ever, and still barely sold 2 million units.
Keep in mind that renting games was also the #1 way that most people digested media at that time, so quick pick up and play games like Twisted Metal, or shorter games may not move as many units sales wise but would have a much broader reach. A 50 hour long text heavy jrpg isn't going to be good rental material. Resident Evil as an example, literally every single person I knew who owned a Playstation had played and beaten RE, but only four of them actually owned the game.
metal gear solid sold less and is still anything but a cult classic. FFVII was a greater sales success in Japan, but for western fans, it was synonymous with JRPGs in a way it simply wouldn't be there due to Dragon Quest mania having hit there a decade prior at that point. just because it wasn't moving units to casuals and well-meaning gift-buying family members like Namco Museum and WWF Warzone doesn't make the game a cult classic.
there are tons of actual cult classic JRPGs on the PS1 to compare it to that prove the point. compared to even pretty well-remembered games like Legend of Dragoon, Xenogears and Suikoden it's orders of magnitude more popular
Final Fantasy 7 is not a "cult classic" even in the West regardless, it's one of the most famous games of its genre if not the most famous if you don't count Pokemon as a real representative.
JRPGs are literally "cult classics" by definition. Outside of Japan no one has ever given a shit about them.
By your own admission, FF7 is the most famous game of its genre, and it sold less in America than WWF Warzone, two of those Namco collections, and a fricking Frogger remake.
There are way way too many people on this board who have been insulated inside their nerdy gaming bubbles and related communities for so long they completely lost scope of reality. It's become routine to make asinine statements like Chrono Trigger being a key piece of the SNES lineup, when I don't even think the game sold 250k copies.
I think Pokemon is more popular in the West than Final Fantasy
by that moronic definition, all retro games except for like mario 1, oot, and pokemon red/blue are cult classics. most people don't play retro games these days period.
>Metallica isn't a well known band, because a good chunk of people don't listen to metal music! Metallica is totally a cult band
Shut up autist
yeah, or like saying halloween is a cult film just because some people go their whole lives avoiding horror films. halloween is not a cult movie, sleepaway camp is a cult film. for something to be "cult" it needs to be under the radar and considered appreciated only by hardcore devotees of said genre, not simply ignored by the ignorant or aloof. you can't be even remotely interested in gaming on any dedicated hobby level and not know about final fantasy by name
Cult classic does not mean some unknown piece of work that 5k people have ever played, and no one heard of until 15 years after it's released.
It simply means that something has a specific fanbase that doesn't crossover or branch out much with others, and doesn't really enter the mainstream.
All the comparisons made are terrible, Metallica has their songs played at NFL games, Halloween is a staple of any theaters yearly spooky movies weekend every October. Everyone has heard or watched them, even people who's musical interest doesn't extend past Taylor Swift, and people who don't watch anything but capeshit.
FF7 did not have the same universal scope in America. The average Playstation owner who would be considered a "gamer" by society who spent time with Crash, Driver, and Tomb Raider wasn't playing FF7. The turbo normie who only played Tony Hawk and NFL Gameday didn't even know FF7 existed outside of name recognition. You want an easy scope of mainstream awareness and popularity, look at the Tomb Raider movies compared to the titanic level flop that was Spirits Within.
You want an actual comparison with FF7, Rammstein. One big hit that let everyone recognize the name, no real broad appeal, no lasting social integration.
>The average Playstation owner who would be considered a "gamer" by society who spent time with Crash, Driver, and Tomb Raider wasn't playing FF7. The turbo normie who only played Tony Hawk and NFL Gameday didn't even know FF7 existed outside of name recognition
This is completely false. Ff7 was responsible for jrpgs becoming super mainstream in the west, wtf are smoking, gay? Dicks? Yeah you're probably smoking wiener
JRPGs were never super mainstream in the west. This is full on delusion brought on by the bubble mentality of nerds only interacting and discussing things with other nerds I was talking about.
No, it's not. Every final fantasy after 7 sold gangbusters and as much as I don't like using gaming magazines as a source, they definitely were talking about RPGs more after ff7. Ff7 and pokemon created a deluge of jrpg fans in the west, myself included and pretty much everybody I know became jrpg fans to an extent through either ff7, pokemon or both. I had heard of final fantasy but I never played one until I got a PlayStation, because ff7 was marketed like fricking crazy same with pokemon and they just so happen to still be in the top 25 jrpgs of all time.
Every FF after 7 sold less. No other JRPGs had even 1/5th of the succes the FF series had, and Pokemon is as much a jrpg as Madden is.
What's really funny is that games like Baldurs Gate or Phantasmagoria sold just as much or near as much as FF7 did in America, but most of these same people who will parrot how huge FF7 was will happily call them niche games because they didnt play them when they were 8 years old.
>Every FF after 7 sold less.
Post the numbers.
And where are the rest of the final fantasy game sales?
looking at this made me realize how much the current gen is shite
Less than ff1,2,3,4,5,6? I never even said they sold more than ff7, you're arguing from a point of misunderstanding. I said they sold gangbusters, which in comparison with every other final fantasy BEFORE ff7, they did.
Your exact quote was that FF and jrpgs was "super mainstream" in the west and you are now realizing how moronic that was and desperately trying to walk it back.
No I stand by it. Your list has ff7,8 and 9 on it. No others. It supports all of my arguments.
you're a moron
Nice rebuttal, and I accept your concession.
Final Fantasy 7 was not nearly as obscure as you think it was, sorry zoomoid born in the year 2000.
I was the kind of person who didn't play JRPGs at all until adulthood, and I've known every detail about Final Fantasy games since FF7. A cult classic doesn't have to be the most obscure thing in the world, but it can't be as well known as Final fricking Fantasy.
I literally made a post explaining that cult classic has absolutely nothing to do with public recognition and you morons completely ignored it while replying to it.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Scott Pilgrim are both cult classics and everyone has heard of them. Recognition has nothing to do with being a cult classic, its the fanbase that is curated around it
No, cause there is most certainly an aspect of something being more fringe that determines it having "cult" status, not just anything with a cult around it literally. It has to be considered underrated, niche, only appealing to die hards, etc.
Rocky Horror Picture Show is a cult classic musical, Grease is just a regular classic. FF7 is most definitely the Grease of JRPGs.
you are a fricking idiot who clearly wasnt alive when the game came out. they aired commercials for this fricking game daily, i vividly remember them. "BUT ITS NOT A MOVIE, ITS VIDEOGAME COMING TO A CONSOLE NEAR YOU" "FINAL FANTASY SEVEN" or something like that. it was a HUGE FRICKING DEAL and every person i knew, gamer or not, knew about this game. go frick yourself.
Metalica stopped being a good metal band very early on.
>and it sold less in America than WWF Warzone, two of those Namco collections, and a fricking Frogger remake.
FF7 sold very well in other parts of the world.
>Metalica stopped being a good metal band very early on.
Not the point of the comparison at all, but for what it's worth the number of bands or artists of any genre who released four to five albums in a row that are generally accepted as good or equally their best is a very short list. Metallica turning shitty is only so dramatic because of the fact that they're a band many people know, thus that many more people can be let down and complain about. Also, the degree to which they've sucked at certain points has been pretty particularly bad, but also not the point.
Did he bang your mom?
As a yuropoor FFVII was the first FF released in Europe. I remember friends played the PC port and were introduced to the playstation through it. I guess you could say it created a cult around it and around Japanese gaming in general, which felt very new and different back then. The same guys I knew who raved about FFVII also raved over anime films like Ghost in the Shell and Ninja Scroll.
Cloud is literally in a game with Mickey Mouse and Aladdin. And anyone who was actually alive at the time, remembers it was Cloud every nerd was excited about because for some reason gamers thought he was the ultimate badass. Nobody cared about the other FF cameos in KH, only Cloud.
What about games that were just cult classic at launch, but have since a found mainstream audience?
honestly earthbound
dunno if i'd say it's mainstream per se but among people who like older jrpgs it's well known now
No Japanese game can ever be a cult classic because a dedicated group of weebs will always suck it off even if it has no redeeming features
No, but the idiocy of the median consumer (as is also the case with the median populous), will inevitably mistake definitions and mix and match words until they're don't make sense. It's ok for the lexicon to change over time, but there's no excuse for the kind of mess we are in with so much slang these days. Ebonics/slang, whatever you want to call it. It's more of a problem with ignorance x ego, it's easy to look up definitions of wprds these days, we have so much information at our fingertips, but people love to double down on being wrong, until enough idiots agree on being wrong and foce a change of definition, which a lot of the time is incompatible with the original definition. Society hasn't evolved for over 10,000 years, only technology has evolved.
They* words* force*
Bro go to your local park and just stand next to a tree for like 30 minutes
I literally just walked to the store for supplies and grabbed a bunch of wood and started a fire, because it's about to storm. You're a fricking nunce
Oh, you're just British it makes sense now
No I live inawoods in the American valley.
Why did you think he was British?
>can a popular game be a cult classic?
American education, everyone.
Cult classic has nothing to do with lacking mainstream appeal. Some if the most mainstream acclaimed movies are also cult classics.
The cult in cult classic does not mean occult or esoteric. It means 'group of people worship it' or culture
Anything that is remembered after its release is a cult classic when you look at what a list of cult classic movies is.
I guess the normal thing is to forget all media as soon as you see it
moron.