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.