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BEL2026 Video Game Madness Four Finalists Matchup: 1 Final Fantasy VII Rebirth vs. 13 Final Fantasy VII Remake
2026 Video Game Madness Four Finalists Matchup
The Younger Chapter Falls: Final Fantasy VII Remake Defeats Final Fantasy VII Rebirth to Reach the Championship
The Defending Champion Turns Away Its Own Sequel and Sets Up a Date With Destiny
Final Fantasy VII Remake defeated Final Fantasy VII Rebirth by a score of 3-1, and the most improbable story of VGM 2026 has reached its most extraordinary chapter yet.
The defending Alexander Delaney Memorial Champion, a 13 seed that was not supposed to win a single round let alone reach the championship match, just beat the most reviewed game of 2024 by two votes. It beat the East's 1 seed. It beat the second chapter of its own story. It beat the game that 151 critics wrote about in 2024, the game that carries the full weight of one of the most anticipated continuing sagas in gaming history, and it did it by two votes in a semifinal that nobody outside the Final Fantasy VII community fully understood how to predict.
This result requires a moment of genuine reflection before anything else is said.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is an extraordinary game. It scored a 92 on Metacritic. It accumulated 151 critic reviews, more than any other game released in 2024. It takes Cloud and Tifa and Aerith and Barret out of Midgar and into the wider world of Gaia for the first time in the reimagining, across multiple enormous regions tied together by one of the best combat systems the JRPG genre has produced in years. It approaches the original game's most emotionally significant moment with a complexity and emotional intelligence that the 1997 technology could never have managed. It is a great game and it has been a great tournament competitor, surviving three overtime matchups to reach the Four Finalists. It lost to a game with an 87 Metacritic by two votes.
The explanation lives inside the specific nature of the community that has been voting for Final Fantasy VII Remake throughout this tournament. These are not people who are comparing review scores or weighing critical consensus. They are people who have carried the characters from the 1997 original for nearly thirty years, and when Square Enix finally rebuilt the opening of that story with the budget and the technology it deserved, those people showed up. They showed up in the Round of 64 against God of War: Ragnarok. They showed up in the Round of 32 against Ori and the Will of the Wisps. They showed up in the Super Sixteen against Spider-Man. They showed up in overtime against Persona 5 Royal in the Regional Final. And they showed up here, in a semifinal against the continuation of the very story they love, and they voted for the beginning of it rather than the middle.
There is something deeply human about that choice. The first chapter of a story you love carries a specific weight that no subsequent chapter can quite replicate. The moment you first walked through Midgar in full fidelity, heard those opening notes rendered with the production they deserved, saw Cloud and Aerith rendered as the people you remembered rather than the polygonal approximations you had loved for decades. Remake is that moment. Rebirth is what comes after. Both of them are extraordinary. The voters chose the moment.
Final Fantasy VII Remake is going to the Alexander Delaney Memorial Championship. The defending champion. The 13 seed. The game that has beaten God of War: Ragnarok, Ori 2, Spider-Man, Persona 5 Royal, and now Final Fantasy VII Rebirth to get there. Six rounds. Six results that went its way by margins that should not have held and held every single time.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is waiting. The overall 1 seed. The highest-scored game of the era. The championship that carries Alex Delaney's name is going to be decided between the game that defined a generation of game design and the game that has been defying expectations since March 19.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth goes home as the East champion, the most reviewed game of 2024, and the game that came within two votes of a championship match against Breath of the Wild. That is not a failure. That is a run that reflects exactly what this game is and what it means to the people who love it.
