11. Dolphin Show

FF7 is a game I’ve loved in the back of my head since I was a child and that feeling only solidified when I finally beat it as an adult. I never got farther than Midgar as a kid, meaning that I never got to FF7’s deeply weird middle section, which Rebirth spins into a whole game. That means I never made it beneath Junon and met the world’s best dolphin, who was relegated to one of the most infuriatingly vague minigames I’ve ever had to do, until much later in life. Rebirth does away with that traumatizing tribulation though and reimagines it as a joyful and straightforward time trial in which Cloud rides a dolphin through a course and rams through beach balls. What isn’t there to love about that sentence? I’m also a sucker for a good drift in racing games, and the ability to do so on a dolphin simply means everything to me. It is exactly in line with FF7’s weirdo spirit without being a chore, and reinterpreting the dolphin’s appearance and this minigame as a way to cheer up the children of the war-torn town is the cherry on top of this bizarrely shaped sundae. — Moises Taveras