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We're behind on news again, but I didn't want to miss the chance to reuse a headline: Final Fantasy IX, the Final Fantasy packed to the gills with homage and protagonists resembling monkeys, is headed to both Windows and mobile in 2016. This version is going to be similar to the PC and mobile release of Final Fantasy VII insomuch as it is the original PlayStation release with control tweaks added for touch devices and some ease-of-play functions like autosave and optional random encounters. There's no official release window set forth as yet, and very little media.

This release of IX differs from that of VII, though, given that there is an announcement at all; the Final Fantasy VII release on iOS came as a surprise, so there's no way to extrapolate any further details regarding a potential release window based on what we know now.

Source: Famitsu

1) Where's Final Fantasy VII for Android?
2) Where's Final Fantasy VIII for Android?
3) Square Enix, please make Final Fantasy IX hit Android please. I've been waiting ages for a certain game, please read point number 1.

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I am Exdeath. Step aside pesky clowns, or your warranty is Void!

Quote (Pooka @ 31st December 2015 17:33)

1) Where's Final Fantasy VII for Android?
2) Where's Final Fantasy VIII for Android?
3) Square Enix, please make Final Fantasy IX hit Android please. I've been waiting ages for a certain game, please read point number 1.

IX is confirmed for Android.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote (Rangers51 @ 1st January 2016 00:26)

Quote (Pooka @ 31st December 2015 17:33)

1) Where's Final Fantasy VII for Android?
2) Where's Final Fantasy VIII for Android?
3) Square Enix, please make Final Fantasy IX hit Android please. I've been waiting ages for a certain game, please read point number 1.

IX is confirmed for Android.

...well, as much as how Final Fantasy VII is also confirmed for Android... I'm still waiting for a money-sucker to show up, even if it'll be the same game without improvements unlike VI and down the slope.

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I am Exdeath. Step aside pesky clowns, or your warranty is Void!

Quote (Pooka @ 31st December 2015 19:57)

...well, as much as how Final Fantasy VII is also confirmed for Android...

I'm just going by what the official site says when I say it's confirmed for Android. I don't recall Squenix ever making such a pronouncement for VII, though I'm not an Android user so I admittedly didn't follow up on that. I did just search around for it and I see comments that they announced the game for Android at E3, but no source directly confirming that and I don't remember hearing it myself at the time.

Anyway - I see it in writing at the link above. For what that's worth.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Side note: How old of an Android we talking here, cause I'm rocking what I have got to figure at this point is a relatively underpowered Galaxy Tab 3

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What's interesting about this is that 7 and 8 were based on the original PC ports, but no such thing was ever released for 9. So unless there's an existing, unreleased FF9 PC in the Squenix archives that never got released - which seems unlikely, as I don't recall it having been on the table at any point - they're going to have to do this as a fresh port from the PSX version, or stick it in an emulator.

I'd normally assume they'd choose the laziest possible option, i.e. the second one, but they could always opt to make a revolting-looking port with all the charm, grace and student project-level polish of the FF5-FF6 mobile ports for extra irritation.

Still, this an announcement I would be very happy to hear if I could send it back in time fifteen years. Regardless, please don't make this one a total mess-up.

Quote (Tiddles @ 1st January 2016 15:06)

What's interesting about this is that 7 and 8 were based on the original PC ports, but no such thing was ever released for 9. So unless there's an existing, unreleased FF9 PC in the Squenix archives that never got released - which seems unlikely, as I don't recall it having been on the table at any point - they're going to have to do this as a fresh port from the PSX version, or stick it in an emulator.

It'll probably be a PSX emulator. You see, FFVII and beyond is much bigger to reproduce than FFVI which is the most deep title in artwork and sprites and backgrounds and whatever in the SNES/NES land.

Can't really think of anything else. Unless they will actually do a proper port a la FFVI.

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I am Exdeath. Step aside pesky clowns, or your warranty is Void!

FYI, Steam page for FFIX is up:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/377840/

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 7th January 2016 00:37

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current games (2024-02-19):
Fairy Fencer F ADF
Pokémon Perfect Crystal

finished so far this year:
Gato Roboto
drowning, drowning
New Super Mario Bros.
TMNT 3: Radical Rescue

tabled: Lost Ruins

Based on the screenshots and video, it looks like a genuine port rather than emulation. Granted, I haven't followed the scene much lately, but that would be a real cracker of an upscaling GPU implementation if so.

The screenshots clearly show it has the same problem as FF7/FF8 did even in the nineties with the field backgrounds being in their original resolution, but the models being rendered much more sharply, leading to all the models standing out too much. This isn't a big problem on the map or in battle, just in the field, and it should surprise approximately nobody since they don't seem to have any of the original assets to rerender the backgrounds for these games. There are things you can do to sharpen up the backgrounds, but these require human artistic effort to pull off acceptably, so it's no surprise that hasn't happened - even the better of these ports has hardly looked like a labour of love.

But it's not terrible, and it's better than some of the vomit-inducing "improvement" efforts. It looks fine in the brief gameplay bits in the video, though I would assume they wouldn't have picked obviously sucky looking scenes for the trailer, and I don't completely trust it given that the video is 16:9, but all the screenshots show 4:3 with borders. That also shouldn't be surprising, but the original aspect ratio being used is really a good thing considering none of the backgrounds will have been extended. It might have been possible to break out the battle and map scenes into widescreen, but the inconsistency would be jarring.

I was a bit worried about this screenshot because I thought this little hippo guy at the top was having some priority issues, but the original looks like that too - I guess it's just one of those slightly Escherish moments you get in the PS1 FFs where it's not quite clear how the static background is meant to stack up in three dimensions. This screenshot does illustrate the contrasting sharpness issue pretty well though, if you're unfamiliar with it.

It looks about as good as I might have anticipated, anyway, given that it's not labelled as HD or remastered or anything, and it's Squenix. Cautious thumbs up from me.

I haven't played FFIX, but I remember the contrast between the rendered characters and the pre-rendered cutscenes in FFVII on the PC version...and they were nowhere near this bad.

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current games (2024-02-19):
Fairy Fencer F ADF
Pokémon Perfect Crystal

finished so far this year:
Gato Roboto
drowning, drowning
New Super Mario Bros.
TMNT 3: Radical Rescue

tabled: Lost Ruins

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 11th January 2016 06:56)

I haven't played FFIX, but I remember the contrast between the rendered characters and the pre-rendered cutscenes in FFVII on the PC version...and they were nowhere near this bad.

With the models in FFVII actually not being as good as FFIX's, the contrast wasn't that visible. But I dunno about FFVIII, even though I played it. In FFVIII, the characters for the first time in the series looked like actual humans on the field, and indeed. However I didn't think the contrast was that bad.

Its probably because the models are simply rendered in a much better way than the rest of the art. They'll have to hold back on the rendering if they don't want more people complaining the styles are contrasting.

But hey, if the game releases on Android, I probably won't notice it given my phone's small resolution (unless I decide to throw the game on my Gamepad 2 which will run it at 720p). What I hope is that they don't mess this one up and add DRM to the Android version. It doesn't make sense to use it anywhere, PC, console or phones, but its really the worst when used on phones.

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I am Exdeath. Step aside pesky clowns, or your warranty is Void!

This pleases me but I think I won't be able to play it till I get a new computer

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X is blue.

If its because your computer is weak, it wouldn't be for Final Fantasy IX. VII and VIII didn't bend any computers to their breaking points during their heydays.

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I am Exdeath. Step aside pesky clowns, or your warranty is Void!

You demonstrate your lack of two key facts:

1. The system requirements for ff9 are far greater than vii or viii on PC, and are in fact already out.

2. My computer is exceedingly old.

You presume quite a bit...

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X is blue.

The requirement are already greater even with the same level of graphics? Oh my... What tricks have they this time for the higher requirements?

This post has been edited by Pooka on 12th January 2016 04:11

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I am Exdeath. Step aside pesky clowns, or your warranty is Void!

I'm gonna guess it has something to do with fast forward not breaking the game to death.

EDIT: Final Fantasy IX Players who've forced SE to make the game too fast for my computer to run.

This post has been edited by Spooniest on 15th January 2016 15:03

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X is blue.

It might have been possible to break out the battle and map scenes into widescreen, but the inconsistency would be jarring.


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This post has been edited by Godfery2 on 19th January 2016 02:43

Capital observation. Sounds just like something I would have said!

I expect the higher requirements will stem from porting it for modern PCs using modern techniques, as much as anything else - you just wouldn't do it the way you did FF7/FF8 if you were doing it now. The FG/BG inconsistency doesn't look any worse than the others to me, but it's worth remembering that it will be more obvious the higher you set the resolution - the Steam screenshots for IX are all pretty high res and hence show it off pretty clearly.

The original nineties PC ports only upscaled 2x to 640x480, so that in itself made it less obvious, particularly playing on a nice soft-edged CRT. But there were some horrible looking moments in 8 where a bunch of people would just be painted into the background instead of being rendered in real time, and that stood out like nothing else.

I imagine most phones that will be able to play it comfortably will be at least 1920x1080 too now, so I wouldn't necessarily expect any respite from that option. I'm not sure if the finer dot pitch might even make it more obvious.

On the plus side, there are external shaders and things folks have run over FF7 to mimic the way a CRT would have smoothed things out. This seems pretty good considering the source material, and the poor decision to unlock the aspect ratio.

I'm rather curious as to why they can't just use higher resolution images for the BGs. I mean, I find it hard to believe they don't have the original images files in the company archives since a lot of the backgrounds are swimming around the net at much higher resolutions. I suppose it might be a copyright issue with the original creators...

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Arts

Farts

Twarts

Quote (Narratorway @ 17th January 2016 18:13)

a lot of the backgrounds are swimming around the net at much higher resolutions.

Are they? It's funny, Tiddles and I were just talking about higher resolution stuff outside the forums the other day (as you might be able to tell from his posts) and we didn't think to look. Are these higher-resolution images actually official, or have people gone around upscaling and/or re-illustrating them?

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote (Narratorway @ 18th January 2016 00:13)

I'm rather curious as to why they can't just use higher resolution images for the BGs. I mean, I find it hard to believe they don't have the original images files in the company archives since a lot of the backgrounds are swimming around the net at much higher resolutions. I suppose it might be a copyright issue with the original creators...

Because Square Enix and their habitual loss of the source assets. There's the answer. Now I'm waiting for Android Police to just outright claim the game is released... that is if they get it out before I set up a PS1 emulator on my phone and then it'd be too late.


That and VII..... oh man.

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I am Exdeath. Step aside pesky clowns, or your warranty is Void!

Quote (Rangers51 @ 18th January 2016 05:43)

Quote (Narratorway @ 17th January 2016 18:13)

a lot of the backgrounds are swimming around the net at much higher resolutions.

Are they? It's funny, Tiddles and I were just talking about higher resolution stuff outside the forums the other day (as you might be able to tell from his posts) and we didn't think to look. Are these higher-resolution images actually official, or have people gone around upscaling and/or re-illustrating them?

I know a while back someone posted an appreciation post on tumblr for some of the artists who made them. For instance, a good portion of the Alexandria interiors were made by a guy named Jake Rowell.

He's gotta section on his personal site full of 'em.

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Arts

Farts

Twarts

Ah, never knew anything about that. Thanks for sharing.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

As a trophy hunter, I'd love for the to eventually port this to ps4 like 7. I'd love to show off that I've actually beaten Ozma which surprisingly few people i know have.

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At this point, I think I got what enjoyment I could from this game. Without significant new content in this rerelease, I'd rather spend my gil on new experiences. It's a great game, though, so I hope it reaches lots of new players.

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