Final Fantasy VII Speed Runner narrowly missed out on World Record

A Final Fantasy VII speed runner this morning missed out on the world record by only a few minutes. After a few random attacks cost him minutes during his run, he finally died in one of the final boss battles and he was forced to give up. It had taken him only a little over eight hours to get there.

To get his Final Fantasy VII speed run down to that time, he had to take advantage of various exploits and glitches, including a glitch that allows you to skip ten minutes of the second Midgar trip on disk 2. By holding X and the right button at just the right time, the game activates the “Invisible Cloud,” an always-present version of Final Fantasy VII’s main character that is present even when Cloud isn’t actually on screen.

There were 1000 people watching the stream at its conclusion. Things had been going rather wrong for quite some time before. Tifa – his main power character – had been put to sleep and killed during a battle earlier on, and Cloud was dismissed from a battle after that. In a speed run based on an RPG, you’ve got to be completely aware of when you might have problems, and only save when it might save you time. When a random encounter throws something your way and you’ve not planned for it, you can lose hours of time (since saving itself takes time).

You can watch the full attempt:

Reckon you can compete with the big boys? Reckon you might be the world champion Final Fantasy VII Speed runner in disguise? The genre-favourite RPG is now available on Steam. On the fence? You can check out our review.