So, out of morbid curiosity, I wondered just how the original PlayStation version of Final
Fantasy VII would stack up to this strange, strange PC version we’ve just seen.
And so, in the interest of science and the edification of the YouTube viewing populace,
I ran through the majority of Midgar on both versions, on film, to get side-by-side comparisons.
Now, for clarification, this is an original PS1 copy running on a PS2, because when I
tried running it on a PS3...
… yeah.
And that’s with smoothing on.
It just makes the jaggies even jaggier.
And I’m not even sure what that checkerboard-looking effect is.
We puzzled over that one for a while.
One of the first things you notice is that the PC version has much higher-res fonts,
which save the eyes from trauma when dealing with an exceptionally wordy RPG like this.
That said, when the time for talking is over and there’s pre-rendered cinematics to be
watched... the difference is kinda negligible.
In battle, though, the improved power of the PC port really shines.
Sure, it’s using all the old models, but they looked pretty good back then and look
even better today with more definition.
I have to wonder, would it really have been too much of a pain in the butt to take these
models and use them in place of those ol’ Popeye-armed monstrosities?
Y’know, aside from having to re-render all the cutscenes?
They could’ve used another coat of paint, as could the backgrounds, which are almost
completely unaltered from the original PlayStation version.
At least standard-def TVs have some fuzziness to them that helps conceal their age, but
on a brand-new laptop, those things stick out like a sore thumb, especially considering
that anything you can interact with looks crisp and well-defined.
And the translation.
Yes, there are some fixes.
“This guy is sick,” instead of “This guy are sick.”
A few grammatical corrections.
And, perhaps the most tragically lost, the classic “So that’s how you’ll fool them”
discourse, actually kinda makes sense here.
And your ears don’t deceive you; the soundtrack is a bit off relative to the PlayStation original,
owing to the extra tweaking the audio engineers added as they adapted the MIDI tracks to Sony’s
sequencer format.
The original 1998 PC version of Final Fantasy VII was a...
well, a hot mess, owing to a company that never in a million years thought their project
would be the success it was.
Now they know it’s a hit... so c’mon, Square-Enix, give us that full remake you
teased with that tech demo.
Do it.
Or the flower girl gets it.