After the original Final Fantasy VII became a worldwide success, Square Enix decided to expand the game's universe with multiple titles, including console spin-offs like Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus , as well as mobile games like the Turks -centered Before Crisis . Recovering and preserving old mobile games has proven to be a major challenge, but a recent breakthrough by preservationist Yuvi made it possible to restore and preserve what is likely the lesser-known entry among the Final Fantasy VII spin-off games: Dirge of Cerberus: Lost Episode .
This incredible breakthrough couldn't have come at a better time, as Square Enix continues development on Final Fantasy VII Revelation , which will actively incorporate narrative elements from the broader Compilation of Final Fantasy VII spin-offs.
Dirge of Cerberus: Lost Episode -Final Fantasy VII- is a mobile shooter starring fan-favorite Vincent Valentine (who will steal the show in Final Fantasy VII Revelation ). Originally released in 2006 complete with fully voiced cutscenes, it became completely unavailable after the authentication servers required to download and switch between episodes went offline in 2018 .
Although the game had been essentially lost since 2018, Yuvi gained access to the full game's raw files in 2024 after joining the team working to restore Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII . Having those raw files, however, was not enough to recover and preserve the title.
"Naoya Shinota had been in talks with a person who had the full version for many years before they were nice enough to dump their SD card. The only issue is that these SD cards are encrypted. 'No problem,' we said; we had a solution for this. However, the issue we had was that we needed a special partition from the SD card to start the brute-force process to find the keys," Yuvi wrote in a recent blog post . "This was the first time we have encountered such an issue, because normally we are the ones who have possession of the SD card, so we could get the secret key needed. And well, unfortunately, even two years later we never got that. So this past week I said enough is enough; I’m going to solve this issue. We have the data; we just need to unencrypt it."
The technical process detailed in the blog post presented significant challenges. After writing custom OpenCL software to decrypt the PKZIP file headers, Yuvi assembled a massive GPU farm . "I spun up well over 90 GPU Servers to crunch these numbers so fast, spanning from RTX 4090s, A4000s, A4500s, A5000s, RTX 6000s H200, and more. To the point I had over 125 active clients crunching away. All of these combined, I was putting out nearly 5,500 GKeys/s. That’s well over 70x as fast as my single 7900XTX could put out."
Ultimately, the technical effort and the $900 investment were well spent. Dirge of Cerberus: Lost Episode -Final Fantasy VII- has been fully recovered and preserved, and its newly playable status will likely pave the way for a fan translation effort, allowing every player to experience this forgotten side story featuring Vincent Valentine .
Dirge of Cerberus: Lost Episode -Final Fantasy VII- was successfully preserved at a critical moment, as discussions surrounding the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII heat up ahead of the trilogy's conclusion. Speaking in a recent video interview with Ashif's Release Notes at the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival in Berlin , Final Fantasy VII Revelation Game Director Naoki Hamaguchi confirmed that spin-offs like Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis Core will factor directly into the final entry in the series, alongside the Advent Children .
"There are a lot of other titles within the VII universe. So, we're talking about Advent Children, we're talking about Dirge of Cerberus, Crisis Core. And we want to bring all of those in and make sure we're not leaving those out," Hamaguchi-san stated. "And then on top of that, once we have all of those in place, we're looking towards the ending. And then the question is, what kind of ending are we going to head for in Revelation that still has those ties? And I think that's something that I really hope players will look forward to finding out."
As Final Fantasy VII Remake 's INTERmission expansion introduced Deepground , the Shinra military organization originally introduced in Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII , it was expected that elements of the Compilation games would factor in some capacity in Final Fantasy VII Revelation . However, it will be interesting to see exactly how, and if a positive reception will lead to more remakes . As nice as it is to see the effort to preserve a game like Before Crisis, playing an old mobile game would never compare to a full-blown modern remake.
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