Japan officially designates today Final Fantasy 7 Day
Today is the 26th anniversary of FF7's Japanese PS1 release, and Japan's decided to make things official.
To commemorate Final Fantasy 7's major significance as a cultural export, Japan has officially designated today—January 31—as the official Final Fantasy 7 Day, marking the anniversary of the game's PS1 release in Japan. The listing for the anniversary on the Japan Anniversary Organisation (JAO) website describes the game as "a huge hit in Japan and overseas," and hopes that "more people will enjoy FF7, which is newly developed with the latest technology as the REMAKE series". Feels like it gets earlier every year, right?
We’re delighted to announce “Final Fantasy VII Day” has been officially registered in Japan, to commemorate the anniversary of the launch of the original game.To celebrate, here’s a special message from Yoshinori Kitase, producer of the Final Fantasy VII remake project. pic.twitter.com/GBphY8AYR4January 31, 2023
To be clear, this isn't a national day of celebration with parades in the streets and time off work, it's just an official yearly commemoration of FF7's significance for games as a medium and the Japanese games industry in particular. Other entries on the JAO list that FF7 Day is on include things like "Wet Towel Day," and "Yamamotoya Egg Sandwich Day" (which, to be fair, sounds incredible), so it's not quite a Golden Week level of celebration.
Nevertheless, to mark the occasion, Square Enix put out an official statement from Yoshinori Kitase, who worked on the original FF7 and as the producer of FF7 Remake. Kitase said that January 31 was not just the game's release date, but "marked when so many big things started moving for those [...] who worked on the game," recalling "being overwhelmed at the breakneck speed with which video game technology was evolving, but also dreaming big things for the future".
"With the establishment of this official anniversary day," he writes, he'll "now always remember these things, and hold them dearly in [his] heart". It would have been strange if he'd forgotten them even without the anniversary, but it's good to see the impact of the original game—and the contributions of its developers—get some well-deserved official recognition.
The FF7 Remake story is meant to continue this winter in FF7 Rebirth, and work is said to have begun on the third and final game that will follow it. It'll be a PS5 exclusive when it comes out, but let's not pretend like that game isn't absolutely coming to PC as well at some point. With any luck, it'll be sooner rather than later. Maybe they could release it on FF7 Day.