It has been called a "masterpiece" ― one that almost single-handedly created a US market for role-playing video games. More than 25 years after it was first released, people are still playing Final Fantasy VII.

With the success of its earlier Final Fantasy games in the late 1980s and early 1990s, game company Square had become one of the top developers for Nintendo ― and series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi had become a legend.

Production on the seventh Final Fantasy started in late 1995. Regular series designer Yoshitaka Amano had become busy with other work, making room for Tetsuya Nomura to lead the character design. The result was a fresh look for the late '90s.

The game introduced 3D graphics to the series, while the music, by Nobuo Uematsu, became more complex. The story also moved away from a focus on forests, caves and castles to a more futuristic world.

Final Fantasy VII had been intended for a new Nintendo system that would replace the Super Nintendo Entertainment System ― or "Super Famicom," as it was known in Japan. But then Nintendo announced that its new system, the Nintendo 64, would use cartridges, not CD-ROMs as Square had hoped.

The game Square was developing was too big to fit on a cartridge. So Square took Final Fantasy VII to Sony and its new, CD-ROM-based system ― the PlayStation.

After that, Final Fantasy VII only became more complex, with more stories, mini-games and options. It set a new standard for video game storytelling, with dramatic cutscenes and even a shocking character death.

When released in Japan in January 1997, Final Fantasy VII sold over 2 million copies in three days. Nearly 10 million copies would be sold worldwide for the first PlayStation, helping to make it the world's top gaming system at the time.

Final Fantasy VII continues to be sold as a phone app, while a remake of the first part of the game was released in 2020 for PlayStation 4, and for PlayStation 5 in 2021. The next part is planned for early 2024.

Back in 2018, United Airlines announced it would no longer be serving some of its food and drink items on domestic flights of less than four hours.

Among the things United planned to stop serving was tomato juice.

However, there was a huge backlash, and United changed its mind just a few days later. Writing on Twitter (now X), it said: "Tomato juice is here to stay."

If you're someone who regularly drinks tomato juice when flying, you're not alone: it's often rated one of the best things to drink on an airplane.

But why do so many people drink tomato juice on planes?

German airline Lufthansa looked into this in 2010 after it realized it was serving passengers around 1.7 million liters of tomato juice per year.

Its researchers found that food and drinks served on airplanes need to have a stronger flavor than they would on the ground, because low cabin humidity and low air pressure reduce our senses of taste and smell.

So if you think tomato juice tastes earthy or sour on the ground, it will taste nice and refreshing up in the sky.

Different research from Cornell University in 2015 also found that loud noises, like an airplane's engine, can dull sweet flavors, but make umami flavors ― which are found in tomato juice ― more intense.

But Sam Wolfson from The Guardian has a different idea: He thinks people just drink tomato juice to get the most value out of their in-flight service.

Tomato juice is almost like a soup, and could be like a free meal on a plane. It's high in fiber and water content, and will fill you up if you're hungry.

Or it might just be that tomato juice is a popular airplane drink because it's thought of as a tradition ― like popcorn at a movie theater, or hot dogs at a baseball game, it's just what you drink on a plane.