Tag Archives: Final Fantasy

Full-size LEGO Buster Sword from Final Fantasy VII is six feet of awesome

I’m not much of a modern gamer. Somewhere around the release of the Playstation 2, I stopped trying to keep up with the latest video games. Nowadays, Dr. Mario on my NES Classic is all the virtual thrill I need. But one of the last major video game phenomenons before I bowed out was Final Fantasy VII, and I have an intense love of it. Not as intense a love as Brick Ninja, as evidenced by the fact that he built a life-sized replica of Cloud Strife’s Buster Sword and I didn’t.

バスターソード Cloud Strife's Buster Sword

Six feet long and over a foot wide, this majestic build floods me with some late 90s nostalgia. (Even though it’s technically based on the sword’s appearance in the recent FF7 Remake.) Brick Ninja has done an amazing job getting the angles of the blade just right. Check out the video below of the builder himself wielding the sword to get a better sense of its weight and stability. It’s such an impractical weapon, but that’s part of what makes it so cool. And when your name is as awesome as “Cloud Strife,” your weapons need to be cool.

The city of Midgar…before the Mako disaster

As dystopias go, Midgar from the cult-classic game Final Fantasy VII has to be as dystopian as it gets – a Pangea of slums surrounding a giant reactor sucking out the planet’s lifeblood and to top that off, it always seems to be night in this location. Fletcher Floyd conjures up an amazing micro-scale LEGO build of the most iconic setting in the widely loved game.

Midgar

In a circular pattern, Floyd assembles a menagerie of smaller light grey elements to construct the metropolis. Literally any grey LEGO piece you can think of is included in this build – from 1×1 cones and cylinders, to lightsaber hilts and binoculars, even chalices and steering wheels help render the industrial mess that is Midgar. The area surrounding the city is rendered with some tiles and mostly 1×1 plates in earth tones such as tan, reddish brown, and light brown. Overall this build perfectly recreates the look and feel of Midgar in miniature.

Take your permanence on the go

Castles, fortresses, and the like have a big imposing permanence to them and appear as if they have been carved out of the very landscape they inhabit and have seemingly been there forever. But this LEGO fortress by WoomyWorld can lift itself and walk away. It is a re-imagining of Alexander, the Roaming Titan that can be summoned in the Final Fantasy games. Each section looks like it would be right at home in a fantasy microscale layout. I can just imagine the earth rumbling as it moves along!

Alexander, the Roaming Titan

Final Fantasy VII scenes recreated in LEGO

My wife and I played and replayed Final Fantasy VII on the original PlayStation, grinding character levels and farming materia so we could survive the insane boss battles like the Ruby Weapon. It’s incredibly disappointing that Square isn’t releasing Final Fantasy VII Remake on any platform but the PS4 any time soon. Nostalgia and minor rant aside, I love this chocobo and carriage by Kevin Waner (Brick Ninja), depicting the scene in which Cloud rescues Tifa Lockhart from Don Corneo, the mafioso of Wall Market. The detailed chocobo and colorful carriage take center stage in the scene, with Cloud and Aeris simply providing a bit of narrative context on the side — Cloud is of course instantly recognizable from his enormous Buster Sword.

ティファを救出 (Rescuing Tifa)

See more Final Fantasy VII scenes recreated in LEGO

A cosplayer’s take on Squall Leonhart

Squall Leonhart is a playable character and the main protagonist from Final Fantasy VIII. In case you’re wondering why a familiar character is dressed up in a female form, that’s because the talented builder Letranger Absurde was inspired by various female cosplayers that took a spin of what Squall would look like represented as a female character. Dressed in a similar dark and goth-like outfit to her original counterpart, what really stands out is the character pose. It’s quite amazing that such elegant form and feature of the human body can be modelled to shape by LEGO bricks.

Squall Cosplay

LEGO Cloud Strife and his Chocobo ride into the sunset.

When Final Fantasy 7 came out for the PlayStation console in 1997, I spent many, many hours playing it, and one of the most pleasurable aspects, aside from kicking the pixels out of a multi-stage boss in epic 45-minute battles, was riding all over the world on my trusty Chocobo, searching for the elusive Giant Cactuar. This creation by Vincent Kiew captures the game’s protagonist, Cloud Strife, astride his Chocobo in large scale.

FF7 Chocobo & Cloud Strife

Vincent managed to make the Chocobo look very light on his feet, which is exactly how they looked and felt in the game. Also, Cloud is very accurate to his on-screen inspiration, down to the large clunky hands, his giant sword slung across his back, and that signature spiky anime hair.

This brick-built Final Fantasy character takes it to the “limit break.”

The Final Fantasy video game franchise has been going strong for over thirty years, but of its many incarnations, the 1997 Playstation release of Final Fantasy VII continues to hold a special place in my heart. TBB regular Moko has reignited my nostalgia with a beautiful rendering of the game’s protagonist, Cloud Strife.

Cloud Strife

What really makes this version of Cloud unique is Moko’s commitment to remaining faithful to the original in-game character design. Like his 32-bit counterpart, brick-built Cloud is a little blocky and rough around the edges but full of brilliant charm. I love that the figure is fully poseable, and Moko did an excellent job of capturing the character’s iconic golden, spiky hair. It would be great to see the game’s other characters recreated in this style.

The Dragon King reigns supreme: this amazing LEGO model of Final Fantasy X’s Bahamut uses over 10,000 pieces

Marius Herrmann used over 10,000 LEGO elements to create this massive model of Bahamut from Final Fantasy X. The so-called dragon king has a wingspan of almost a meter. But most impressively, this stunning creation makes great use of underrepresented colors in the LEGO palette.

Bahamut (from "Final Fantasy X")

Click to see more of Bahamut

When it comes to building your experience points, Squall’s gunblade is a simply striking solution.

Back in 1999, the Sony PlayStation was the undisputed king of home video game consoles. If you owned a PlayStation and were a fan of turn-based RPGs (role-playing games), Squaresoft delivered a treat in the form of Final Fantasy VIII. Those of you who’ve played the game will instantly recognize this awesome model of Squall’s Gunblade by Letranger Absurde. I think it’s safe to say Letranger Absurde has earned enough experience points with The Brothers Brick to level up!

Final Fantasy VIII - Squall's Gunblade

Cloud and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy as LEGO BrickHeadz

One of my favorite video games of all time is Final Fantasy VII, released more than 20 years ago on the Sony PlayStation console. Such iconic characters must inevitably undergo the BrickHeadz treatment, which works very well for the anime styling of character designer Tetsuya Nomura. LEGO builder Ben Fong has captured the look of the two antagonists Cloud Strife and Sephiroth as they’re depicted in the 2005 film Final Fantasy: Advent Children.

FINAL FANTASY 7 "Advent Children" Brickheadz

Cloud wields his enormous Buster Sword, and Ben has even included the stud in Cloud’s left ear.

FINAL FANTASY 7 "Advent Children" Brickheadz