Final Fantasy 7 has now been given a remake. But the original PS1 version occupied a player for the last two years, as he wanted to reach Level 99 in the first area. He needed a total of 500 gaming hours for this.
How did he do it? The player is YouTuber David “CirclMaster” Curry, a 34-year-old cashier from California. He spent the time only in the first reactor, so even before encountering the first boss.
However, for the success, he didn’t even use the entire area, instead running monotonously back and forth at one spot to encounter low-level enemies in random battles.
He partially streamed his progress on his Twitch channel. Towards the end, he even suffered from severe pain as he had to undergo arm surgery shortly before.
On the video platform, he shows the last hour he needed to level up the two characters Cloud and Barret to Level 99.
But beware, we are issuing an acute danger of falling asleep:
The special thing about the challenge was that he managed it on a PS1 console. This means he couldn’t skip sequences and also couldn’t save whenever he wanted.
Why does he do something like this? CirclMaster started the challenge in 2015 because he was frustrated. He was registered in a private forum where another user named Dick Tree claimed he would reach Level 99 in the first reactor of Final Fantasy 7.
He started his undertaking in 2012. But one day, the user stopped posting his progress. So CirclMaster decided to take matters into his own hands, as he explains himself (via kotaku.com):
I got tired of waiting and, based on my track record of pointless accomplishments, decided that I could get this done before he could even bother to finish.
In a post, he explains that he developed hatred and contempt for Dick Tree, and that’s why he took on the challenge. He did this challenge for all the comrades who followed Dick Tree only to be disappointed (via theverge.com).
Meanwhile, Final Fantasy 7 has a remake that our MeinMMO author Irina Moritz can recommend for both newcomers and veterans:
CirclMaster revealed that this is by no means the end of the line. He wants to focus on Final Fantasy 6 next and attempt to get the main character Terra to Level 99 before encountering the first boss.
We can be curious to see how long the YouTuber will take for this success. The player in the following article has also invested many hours in a title: Player plays game on Steam more than others in their entire life – “The first 20,000 hours were okay”
