TSUNA
FF7 was my first ever game, period.
As a child I wanted to play it so bad and nobody would read it to me, so through sheer motivation this game literally taught me how to read! And now, many years this later this game is my full-time job as a Twitch streamer creating mods live for everyone to enjoy! Most commonly you’ll find the Echo-S voice project and The Cetra Project remake model imports!
Along my journey of modding FF7 I made countless new friends and met many talented individuals that share the same passions that I do. Now I have my own community named Tsunamods and I even moderate for the Qhimm forums!
I myself currently have no skills in modding FF8 or FF9, but we have people that do! And eventually when my time free’s up I wanna dive into those titles too and bring everyone some amazing new upgrades to use.
Tsunamods was created to bring people together as a team to create many awesome things for everyone to enjoy. Before it existed the only community was the Qhimm forums, and in my opinion at the time Qhimm was a very one-for-all place. The modders there didn’t communicate, they were all rivals. If someone made a good texture mod, someone else would say “I can do better” and go make their own. I personally didn’t like this so I created Tsunamods.
In our team, we have many talented artists, musicians, modellers, coders, you name it. We all came together to lend our talents to one another and work together to make the best possible end result we could.
The FF7 remake we got was cool and all. And don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy the remake. But.. it isn’t what many of us wanted. So, we decided to make our own through improving the original!
The vision from the Tsunamods team is to keep our old, favourite game alive. I am in touch with Square-Enix and our team has the go ahead to do what we like to these games within reason. That being that we aren’t breaking any TOS or Copyright laws of course.
We wish to bring our own remasters of these old games into the present by making the beautiful, sound amazing, give them new features and just improve the overall experience! We wanna try make these games have the same feeling they did 20+ years ago when you enjoyed them for the first time.
Right now we are very FF7 heavy, but in the near future that will change as we expand to FF8 and FF9! And we may not stop there! We’ll have to wait and see.
Meet The Team
UpRisen
Lead Project Manager
I'm UpRisen and I spend my days as a JRPG and Coop game streamer, with the primary focus being on Final Fantasy VII mod creation and playthoughs. Final Fantasy VII is and has been my favorite game since its release. I joined Project Echo-S in mid 2017 while I was working on my AVALANCHE ARISEN battle field retexture mod and have been the Project Manager since then through several changes and overhauls which led to the formation of the Tsunamods team. My future goals within the team are completion of The Barret Mod overhaul, A Time Keeper companion mod currently codenamed ``Night Terror`` and the collaboration mod AVALANCHE ASCENDED, a full remodel and retexture of every battle field, minigame terrain, and the entirety of the world map.
STRIFE
Modder and Moderator
I got into modding actually through early days Minecraft. After seeing what could be done there, I grew curious of other modding possibilities. I didn't have any of the Fallout games, or the normal modded PC games at the time, just a pretty crappy laptop, but I did have Final Fantasy VII. So I looked up mods for FF7, and it brought me to Qhimm. Since then I've become a moderator and Discord owner for Qhimm, and one of the managers for Tsunamods. Outside of modding I've gotten into streaming, dungeons and dragons, and I've gotten a love for music.
Crane
Voice Director
Christian ``Crane`` Sekhanan is the Voice Director of Echo-S and voices a slew of characters from Main characters like Cloud Strife and Squall Leonhart to supporting cast like Barret Wallace and Hojo and even many NPCs. He has been in the indie voice acting scene for over 10 years and is a FF content creator on YouTube and a streamer over on Twitch. Crane was originally scouted to play Barret back in 2019 by Tsunamix. Soon after a series of auditions and back-up castings, he landed the role for Cloud Strife after being the 2nd understudy. In 2020, after his YouTube channel Still Thinking Films completed redubbing The Last Order and Advent Children Complete, Crane was formally instated as the Voice Director of Echo-S. Under his direction Echo-S experienced a huge overhaul of both process and cast.
Keatran
Software & Infrastructure Development Lead
I'm Martin or Keatran, I have been a long time fan of Final Fantasy Games and other JRPGS, and have worked in Computer Programming and Network Engineering all my adult life, I Got into the community though Uprisen and have built software on request directly for Tsuna before joining the team officially as a Developer to assist with an already existing software Ultrasound and manged to improve it i now work with the team to maintain other software and developing new features for Mods. I'm also a Founder for Beaconsoft building cutting edge Bot Blocking Software, Beacon also help us by providing our Hosting of Digital Infrastructure Environments.
Bonez
Sound Engineer
Being a drummer/musician in today's day and age basically inherently comes with a background in sound design. In 2001 Final Fantasy X was my first RPG. Having loved it so much, I had to play the rest. While I loved the earlier games, I yearned for them to look and sound like FFX which brought me to the modding community. Seeing the sound effect side of FF7 had largely gone untouched unlike all other aspects of the game, I decided to use my skills and tackle it myself. Two years later I released Cosmo Memory - the only full sound replacement and overhaul for FF7 with every bell and whistle you can think of. Now I basically do anything that needs to be done for Tsunamods/Echo-S in terms of sound; sound effects, voice line editing, music looping, etc.
Ritual
Communications Manager
The newest and youngest member of the Tsunamods team, Ritual (Em) is responsible for sharing exciting updates regarding production of the various projects being worked on by her talented friends. Additionally, she works behind-the-scenes to assist with various planning, communications and networking within the community. Being new to the Final Fantasy community has been an amazing experience in which she has learned a lot, and she is eager to try her first game by request of the Tsunamods community - FF9. In her role, she will bring you the latest news and communicate closely with the community to bring your thoughts and questions to the modders who are working hard to put forward the best content possible. She looks forward to seeing you online and in various stream chats!
Satsuki Yatoshi
AI Resizer
I'm a 41 year old nerd, I'll own the answer next year. VB6 and C# noob programmer, I also enjoy 3D printing for fun. As most tech guys do I'm trying to explore at least one new domain each week I'm the AI resizer of the team! I've upscaled almost all of FF7's 2D textures, corrected them and tweaked by hand. I had to train the AI myself, down to teaching it what wood was so it could know what texture method to use! It took a long time, but it was extremely worth it. I even upscaled the movies frame by frame. And while I did it I used a method called interpolation to increase the FPS to 30. The difference is extremely noticeable!
PetFriendAmy
NPC Manager
Final Fantasy VII was one of my favorite games as a kid. It's also one of the games that got me interested in game development! I studied both 3D modeling and software development in college, and now I can use those skills to help make FF7 into a whole new experience. I'm pretty new to the modding scene, so mostly what I've been doing is helping out here and there with whatever's asked of me. I'm also an Echo-S NPC manager, so if you want to hear your voice in the Echo-S mod, you can come and talk to me!
McIndus
Final Fantasy 8 Modder and ECHO-s Voice
Patrick ``MCINDUS`` McGuire is a Premiere Final Fantasy 8 modder, and the voice of Red XIII in FF7's Echo-S mod. 3D/2D artist, specializing in environments, characters, creatures and props. Texture (PBR + retro) and Upscale artist.
Dracula9AntiChapel
Composer for EchoeS of the Planet
I'm Drac(ula9AntiChapel, irrationally long name but it's too well-known to change now). I do music for soundtrack mods for Echo-S, as well as a sprinkling of voicework here and there. Currently, my primary project contribution is the EchoeS of the Planet soundtrack, which is my second go at fully arranging the entire soundtrack for FFVII. It aims to branch out from being 1:1 faithful to the original, and could be considered ``my`` interpretation of the legendary music of this title. I've been alongside Echo-S for a great many years, and seeing it grow into the network and community it's become today has been nothing short of amazing and humbling. It's a great pleasure, honor, and privilege to be part of this whole thing - getting to work on a music mod for the game whose soundtrack is singularly responsible for my recognizing game music as a world of its own and my original inspiration to want to get into exploring that world and create my own? Doesn't get much cooler than that. If you're interested in checking out my channel to follow progress on Echo-S work or any of the other VGM shenanigans I've gotten up to in the past 13 years, please drop by and visit on YouTube.
Chrysaliis
Tsunamods and QHIMM Moderator
Hi, I have a passion for JRPG's and especially Final Fantasy games, I first started playing Final Fantasy 7 back when it was pre released as a demo in 1997 and was immediately in love with the game, I have played the game so many times and explored new ways to play it, when doing this I found the modding community and ended up becoming a member of the Tsunamods team, my main contribution to the team is the Menu and Battle UI, In addition I also help with testing Echo-S, I also am a Moderator on both the Qhimm and Tsunamods communities.
Ferren
Personnel Manager
Frank J. ``Ferren`` Keating IV is the Personnel Manager of Echo-S and Voice Actor of Vincent Valentine; primarily responsible for managing small teams, assigning tasks, recruiting/assisting voice talent, and upholding timelines in which each team member has been assigned to streamline the development and quality of Echo-S. Ferren's primary focus has been on ensuring the community's voices are heard and inspiring upcoming voice actors to showcase their talent via Echo-S. Outside of Echo-S, Ferren is a deeply rooted Final Fantasy fan who got his first start in the series with Final Fantasy X. Having played all Final Fantasy titles in the series, Ferren considers himself a Final Fantasy ``Guru`` of sorts and loves having discussions with others in the community about the series who are just as passionate as himself about anything Final Fantasy. Ferren originally met Tsuna online via Twitch when he was just getting started as a streamer. The two became friends over time and when the auditions were held for Echo-S many friends who knew of Ferren's love of the series encouraged him to audition. Surprisingly; Ferren landed the role of Vincent Valentine, (Ferren's personal favorite character of FFVII), and since then has passionately done his best to give a performance he felt would make fans of the series proud.
Cybercorp
Web Developer and Video Editor
Heya. I'm the web developer for Tsunamods and the website you're on right now was made by me. Just like everyone else on the team, FF7 holds a special place in my heart. I'm what you would call a filthy FF7 purist and sadly the remake did nothing for me in terms of what I hoped would be a true and faithful retelling of the original FF7 story. Luckily for me, I found Tsunamods whos aim it is to revitalize the old classic and breath new life into the game. I just knew I had to be part of it.