Both would be major changes to FF7's engine that would require much hacking skills.
Instead of magic spells, abilities, and bonus stats being saved to a. Customization in the game revolves around a so-called 'Materia' system. The only way to make a PSX version of FF7 with better sounding music would be to completely change the sound engine to be more like other PSX games where samples are loaded on song change, or to use Grandia-style streaming that supports disc access while streaming music. Like its predecessors, Final Fantasy VII is a role-playing game in Japanese style, featuring turn-based combat with a real-time (ATB, 'active time battle') element against randomly appearing enemies. In the japanese FF7 demo, we can hear a couple of songs with better instruments (because the soundtrack wasn't finished so they needed less instruments, meaning more space for them) and it indeed sounds much better. Since there is limited room in sound RAM and that it has to hold all the instruments for the whole game, the instrument's quality is poor. In the cutscene before the final battle, voice samples are overwriting the last part of sound RAM (and it remains overwritten during the whole ending) However, FF7 only writes to it at two times:Ģ. Most PSX games that use sequenced music write to sound RAM before every new song. With PSX's FF7 sound engine it's impossible to make it sound (significantly) better.
