I Regret Solving A 14-Year-Old FF7 Tifa Mystery

screenrant.com:

Tifa Lockhart is an undeniably iconic video game character. As a central figure in , she's made a long line of appearances in the years since the game's 1997 debut, most recently getting a new spotlight in . With a design that's been plastered on merchandise and made into a lot of figures, Tifa has the distinct honor of being named the pin-up girl of the "" by the. According to Wikipedia, at any rate.

I'm not really one to fuss about the much-debated accuracy of Wikipedia, as it generally serves its purpose as a basic knowledge repository well. There's something eye-catching about this little tidbit, though. It's so distinctly 90s, and I'm endlessly fascinated by the bemused way that publications like the tended to discuss games at the time. I wanted to know if the really said it, and in what context they might have done so. I had to find an answer. I did, ultimately, find it, and it's not exactly the one that I wanted.

There's a lot of great character work in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, but some of the very best details can also be the easiest ones to miss.

Per the Wayback Machine, the pin-up girl of the "" tidbit first appeared in the Wikipedia article on Tifa in 2010 (it may well have been added in 2009, but it certainly wasn't there in 2008). Prior to that point, it hadn't seemingly been said anywhere else on the internet, or at least not in those specific words. It's survived a lot of revisions since, and the source for the quote has gone from the 38th listed citation in the article to the 63rd.

The citation isn't for the, though, but for a book called I got it into my head to examine the veracity of the claim in April during a 2 AM Discord call with a friend, and the first thing I did, naturally, was check this book. It didn't mention Tifa or. Oh well. I stopped thinking about it for the next several months until the compulsion struck again. This time, I dove directly into the digital archives of the to see what I could find.

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