Holy trout: Someone Dug Up a Ton of High Resolution Art From FFIX's Production

[XxSephirothxX]

A guy who posts on the gaming forum NeoGAF has a reputation for digging obsessively into games he likes to find all kinds of old concept art, cut content, little snippets of story, and so on. He just did it for FFIX, and he found some pretty awesome stuff.

More specifically, he found a ton of art assets that made it into the game as pre-rendered backgrounds. Only these renders are high resolution, at least compared to the PS1's 320x240 resolution. Much, much higher.

Do the actual renders still exist on some Square Enix file servers somewhere? Maybe not, or maybe they didn't use such hi-res assets for the entire game. If they did, we probably would've seen a FFIX HD re-release by now. It all still looks very much like 2000-era CGI, but I think the style holds up remarkably well at a higher resolution.

Check out the whole thread here. There are probably close to 100 images, including a lot of concept art that may be pretty rare or only available in a Final Fantasy art book. (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=551612)

http://i.imgur.com/ZED6fpL.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/5i1tbbl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/sFAQumY.jpg

[Snakz92]

the last image looks really smoothed out. Reminds me of the FF7 on PC graphics. everything is the same, just really smoothed out.


BUT HOLY SMOKES IS THIS AMAZING!!!
dang ps1!

[Rostum]

Wow, amazing! So much attention to detail by the artists.

[Mirage]

the last image looks really smoothed out. Reminds me of the FF7 on PC graphics. everything is the same, just really smoothed out.


But it isn't.

[Jinx]

Omg, so beautiful. ;-;

I have to check out this site at some point.

[Rantz]

Wow! I wonder how he finds this stuff?

[XxSephirothxX]

Wow! I wonder how he finds this stuff?
He does a ton of digging through artist portfolios, resumes and such, which can take a huge amount of time. He probably looked through the entire credits of the game, noted all the artists, tracked down as many as he could on LinkedIn and such, found their personal blogs/websites, then ferreted out this art. Commitment!

[Rantz]

Well I can respect that. It's certainly a lot of extra value.

[Depression Moon]

What part of the game was this in
http://i.imgur.com/1ZLKoVj.jpg

It looks familiar. I want to say a shop, but there would be a counter somewhere in there

[Snakz92]

Thats probably on the prima vista.

[Rantz]

Yeah, it's on the Prima Vista. It's where Zidane, Blank and Cinna run out from during the play in the beginning.

[Cloudane]

Awesome.

Makes you wonder about the feasibility of a HD remaster some time in the future..

[Night Fury]

I hate you Azar. I was just about to write this as an article. :(

[XxSephirothxX]

I hate you Azar. I was just about to write this as an article. :(
You still should!

[Elpizo]

I don't remember who said it, but it looks like whoever said "This game should have been on PS2" was right.

Wow... Hard time imagining IX being even better than it already is. O.o

[DMKA]

That...is amazing. And depressing.

Some of those are stunningly detailed...whoever worked on these really cared about this game when they were making it. I'm in awe at some of these images, as I can faintly recall playing through these areas of the game (it's been a few years) and...yeah, so much, SO MUCH of this is lost when you see it in the actual game. The game itself does not do the sheer level of detail going on here justice. It actually makes me a bit sad.

Looking at these also begs the question: why was there a PC version of VII and VIII but not IX?!?!?!?!?!? Not that the PC versions of VII and VIII did their backgrounds justice either, but man!

Heck, if SE still has these images stored away somewhere, it wouldn't be too hard for them to release an enhanced remake of some sort.

God bless the guy who gathered these up and God bless the creators. These are an absolute treat to look at and really make me want to go and play Final Fantasy IX again.

[XxSephirothxX]

That...is amazing. And depressing.

Some of those are stunningly detailed...whoever worked on these really cared about this game when they were making it. I'm in awe at some of these images, as I can faintly recall playing through these areas of the game (it's been a few years) and...yeah, so much, SO MUCH of this is lost when you see it in the actual game. The game itself does not do the sheer level of detail going on here justice. It actually makes me a bit sad.

Looking at these also begs the question: why was there a PC version of VII and VIII but not IX?!?!?!?!?!? Not that the PC versions of VII and VIII did their backgrounds justice either, but man!

Heck, if SE still has these images stored away somewhere, it wouldn't be too hard for them to release an enhanced remake of some sort.

God bless the guy who gathered these up and God bless the creators. These are an absolute treat to look at and really make me want to go and play Final Fantasy IX again.
I've always wondered why they never ported IX to PC. Might've been VIII just didn't sell well enough or their engine changed and it would've been a lot of work that wasn't worth it. And I assume that they don't have IX's assets readily available or else they'd have done an HD port this generation, but I really hope I'm wrong. There's clearly potential for the game to work in HD with prerendered backgrounds; it would be far more work to remake those than it is to uprender a primarily polygonal game, as they're doing with FFX, but that issue goes away if the original backgrounds still exist somewhere hi-res!

I do hope they put them to use someday.

[Skyblade]

I don't remember who said it, but it looks like whoever said "This game should have been on PS2" was right.

Yeah, that was me (among others). I've been saying it for years.

Honestly, I just find this sad. Because I don't think it will ever amount to anything.

I really, really hate FFIX's graphics. They are incredibly over-pixelated, and too blurry to make out all the details.

But I love the aesthetic and style, and this just shows how much potential it had. It's like playing Phantom Hourglass instead of actually playing Wind Waker.

I really wish they did an HD update of this game. Not only would it clean up these absolutely gorgeous graphics, but it would also let them fix a few of the other technical bits that I felt the PS1 held it back on.

And yet, I think it will never happen. This game never was a smash hit, unfortunately, and they've shown no interest in revisiting it. Despite the fact that it is one of the ones most worthy of a revisit.

[UndeadPanda]

Great pic's love them