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