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I've spent the last week or so playing through Final Fantasy VII again, only this time I'm doing it on the NES. Yep.

Yay China. Yay pirate software.

The enormous market penetration of "Famiclone" systems over there has lead Chinese programmers to adapt newer franchises to the quarter-century old NES/Famicom hardware. The results can be pretty entertaining, actually.

Granted, it needs an English patch and some game mechanics changes to really be playable (get the "97% patch"), but it might well be the best NES RPG I've ever played. It's certainly more engaging than FF1, FF2, or FF3 in their Famicom incarnations.

The WHOLE story is intact, including every last shred of dialogue. Obviously no FMV, and the battle mechanics are very different (materia system still persists), but it's a *really* good game for a Famicom RPG.

There's a Famicom-adapted version of "Link to the Past" circulating also, but it REALLY looks like the SNES game. No ROM dump yet, I might buy a hardcopy and dump it myself. No crime in dumping pirate software!