For the time ever, you can now watch some never-before-seen footage of Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII's lost Chocobo Racing mini-game, thanks to a group of feature phone preservationists.
As you may or may not already be aware, over the last few years, there's been a concerted effort from members of the Final Fantasy fan community and the Keitai Wiki Discord to try and preserve and rebuild the mobile title, which served as a prequel to Final Fantasy VII and focused on a story about the Turks.
This is an action RPG that was exclusively released in Japan between 2004 and 2006 for i-Mode compatible phones (and for other Japanese feature phones, including Softbank and EZWeb handsets, in 2007), but was later pulled offline in 2018.
In the past, the team has had some tremendous success in trying to bring the game back from the dead, preserving a copy of the title back in 2024. However, as Square Enix originally designed the game to require a constant connection to its servers to download new chapters and mini-games, this copy ended up being frustratingly incomplete and unplayable, with the team having to track down further phones with the game installed and create brand new servers to make the game function as intended.
Enlisting the help of the game preservationist, hacker, and translator Yuvi, the team has managed to make many breakthroughs in this regard, recreating various elements of the game including shops, materia generation, materia equipment, and Reno's Training Mode. And now it seems like the game's Chocobo Racing mini-game has been added to this list, with Yuvi posting some amazing footage of the mode in action.
Similar to Final Fantasy VII, Chocobo Racing was available in the game as one of a few mini-games accessible through visiting the Golden Saucer, alongside the basketball game Super Dunk, an Arm Wrestling tournament, and the Battle Square. Not only does it allow players to race Chocobo, but it also reportedly features a training mode, fortune telling, and mating mechanics.
According to Yuvi's fellow preservationist NaoyaShinota, this piece of the game was restored thanks to files sourced from a P900iV phone he was recently able to secure.