[@Dynamo Frokane]

Oh yea, the snowboard one was cool with all those secret modes. I also liked the G-bike, and the roller coaster was the best one that wasn't recycled from the main game. Outside the gold saucer you have the fort condor one, which was pretty meh. And then you have the thirty or so other minigames that aren't much more interesting than the one I posted above. Doing squats, helping Tifa escape from a chair, mouth to mouth resuscitation, saving aries via donky kong style barrel throwing, bitch slap contest, every tedious timing minigame...

Final Fantasy seven was definitely ahead of it's time in a lot of ways, especially when you look at the games that came out at the same time as it. "Grand Theft Auto" and "Castlevania: Symphony of the night" were the only other blockbuster games I can think of that came out that year. It was the first Playstation game to come out on multiple disks, the story was far more complex than your typical console game, and it was very pretty compared to most 3d games of it's vintage. It's definitely a contender for best game of 1997, and it's probably the best RPG of that year. But it has no right showing up on any "greatest game of all time" lists. It's a generic turn based RPG with a ton of minigames thrown in to distract you from this fact. There have also been better stories, with "Aries dies!" being the only plot twist this bloated, long winded tale has to defend itself with.