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FF7 Battle on an IBM 5150

A command-driven Guard Scorpion encounter assembled from prepared action clips and a shared idle loop.

The captured package is an interactive battle recreation. The IBM 5150 footage and its hardware notes are AcornsN64's demonstration; the framebuffer captures are from QEMU.

Watch the real PC How it works ↓
FF7 BATTLE — REAL IBM 5150
FF7's Guard Scorpion battle playing on an IBM 5153 colour monitor on top of an original IBM 5150 PC.
Real hardware: AcornsN64, 8 November 2026.
Intel 8088
4.77 MHz
Guard Scorpion
1 encounter
Captured package
6.26 MiB
Hardware demonstration
Real IBM 5150

01 / The battle

Command-driven playback

FF7 Battle in QEMU: Guard Scorpion faces Cloud and Barret above the live Attack, Limit, Magic and Item menu, with party HP and MP at the right.
Command menu and party overlay. QEMU capture.

Menus and overlay

The package selects an action clip from the live command menu and returns to the common idle scene. Party statistics and menus are drawn over the prepared footage.

The FF7 Battle launch window, with the Video Battle title picture and the instruction Click or Press Enter to Play.

Launch window

Open FF7.O88 and press Enter to enter full-screen playback.

02 / The trick

Clip selection and prefetch

The idle battle scene with the command menu ready.
Idle loop
Cloud's prepared attack clip playing against Guard Scorpion.
Selected action clip
The shared idle scene, ready for another command.
Return to idle

The video description reports prefetch beginning when the menu selection moves, before Enter confirms it. That allows the next clip to load while the current loop continues.

Playback notes

AcornsN64's description is the source for the prefetch and shared-idle behaviour. The builder supports more action types than the demonstrated minimal encounter uses.

03 / On the real thing

IBM 5150 demonstration

AcornsN64's real IBM 5150 playing the battle on an IBM 5153 colour monitor.

Recorded configuration

AcornsN64's 8 November 2026 recording uses a 4.77 MHz IBM 5150, IBM 5153 and PicoMEM V2. The timestamped links below show Ice and Braver.

Watch the demonstration ↗
An ice spell fills the IBM 5153 screen at 1:20 in the real-PC demonstration.Cloud casts Ice Cloud raises his sword during Braver at 3:03 in the real-PC demonstration.Cloud's Limit

Source: AcornsN64's video of the real PC. The earlier 86Box demonstration is linked in its description.

Hardware and capture notes

The video description reports that PicoMEM supplies disk and Sound Blaster 2.0 emulation. The ST-225/ST11M and Hercules card were disconnected for this run because of the stated IRQ/option-ROM conflict.

The disk-read CPU comparison is reported by AcornsN64 in the video description. The package screenshots use QEMU; capture provenance is recorded with the website source.

04 / Try it

Run FF7.O88

  1. Writable volume

    Boot the live hard-disk image or an installed writable volume.

  2. Battle package

    Copy your own FF7.O88 to that volume; it does not fit a floppy.

  3. Full-screen entry

    Launch FF7.O88, press Enter, then a key at the title. Arrows select and Enter confirms.

Get os8088 Read the setup guide ↗

The battle package is not included with os8088.