Final Fantasy IX on Steam

[Pumpkin]

Final Fantasy IX is making it's way to Steam in the west, hopefully in early 2016! The game also includes several new features, such as achievements, and game boosters such as a no encounters mode and high speed. The Steam page is already up if you'd like to check it out!

Linky

This is my personal favourite Final Fantasy (and favourite game ever) so I'm thinking of getting it and praying my computer can play it even though it probably can't.

Are you excited for the Steam release of FFIX? Plan on picking it up? Excited about the new features? Let us know in the comments!

[Fynn]

This is also coming to smartphones, so if your computer is too weak, maybe your phone can do it?

[Pumpkin]

HAHAHAHAHAHA

I don't even get Internet on my cheapass phone

But thank you for the suggestion

[Depression Moon]

Here are the specs for steam.

System Requirements

Minimum:
OS: Vista /7/8/8.1/10
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz or higher
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8600GTS or ATI Radeon HD4650 or higher
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 20 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectSound® compatible sound card（DirectX®9.0c or later）

Recommended:
OS: Windows 7/8/8.1/10 (32bit / 64bit)
Processor: Core i5 2520 2.5GHz or better
Memory: 4 GB RAM
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 20 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectSound® compatible sound card（DirectX®9.0c or later）

[Big D]

Those are some surprisingly high system requirements for a game that worked fine on the OG PlayStation. Is that because the Steam version is effectively running a PS emulatoras well? I recall hearing something about Square Enix losing the game's source code, meaning the on-disc version of the code was all they had left to work with.

[Fynn]

If you take a look at the trailer, the graphics look really polished. So maybe that's why?

[Mirage]

Those are some surprisingly high system requirements for a game that worked fine on the OG PlayStation. Is that because the Steam version is effectively running a PS emulatoras well? I recall hearing something about Square Enix losing the game's source code, meaning the on-disc version of the code was all they had left to work with.

No, it's most likely because SE are greatly exaggerating the system requirements for all their Steam PC ports.

There's nothing about the graphics I've seen so far that would require anything near what they're asking for.

[Formalhaut]

I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to play FF IX on your smartphone, but the Steam edition sounds interesting enough. I still have yet to actually play the game, and it's an FF I've been meaning to play.

[Galuf]

Im really hoping this can be better than the ps1 version. Imo they have 1 maybe 2 things that should be fixed. The battle speed and how long until your characters attack. And 2 would be tetra maste. However i dont think theyll mess with the last one. But ooft it looks so nice now. When i watched the trailer i was pretty surprised. It looked great.

[Fynn]

I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to play FF IX on your smartphone, but the Steam edition sounds interesting enough. I still have yet to actually play the game, and it's an FF I've been meaning to play.

Well, some people just like to play their FFs on phones

[Moogles-Are-Awesome]

Whooooooooooop! I sincerely cannot wait for this rerelease!

[Depression Moon]

I don't think I'll be able to play this until I can buy a new laptop. I only have 1.5 GB of RAM.

[Freya]

I FOUND SOME COMPARISON SCREENSHOTS. To go with the ones they put on steam.

The play
New:
Emulated:

The fight!
New:
Emulated:

Alexandria
New:
Emulated:

New menu
New:
Emulated:

[Mirage]

I don't think I'll be able to play this until I can buy a new laptop. I only have 1.5 GB of RAM.

I bet you'll be just fine. Steam offers refunds for all games sold there, as long as you don't wait too many days.

On the other hand, even if 1.5GB is probably enough for this game, it is very low in general. I'm pretty sure your PC would perform a lot better if you just got some extra RAM from ebay or something. It doesn't have to cost more than a dozen (or two) dollars.

Also, from those screenshots, my previous assumptions have more or less been confirmed. There's some pretty advanced upscaling algorithms used on those background, but none of them indicate higher res base assets than what was in the original release.

Textures have been slightly touched up, but they don't seem to be particularly much higher res. If they were compressed on PS1, they might be uncompressed in the steam release, but I don't know if that was the case. They do seem to be having a lot better texture filtering than the emulator is using in this case, but I don't know what settings were used for that particular emulator. There are many settings for graphical enhancement in emulators, not just a single on/off switch.

The character portraits seem like they have been just sent through an high quality upscaler as well, but it might be an upscale of portraits that were of a slightly higher res than what we find on the PS1 release.

It is a pretty all right retouch job, though. I'll most likely pick it up if combat flows significantly better.

Edit: Seems like the blurriness on the character portraits was actually just me viewing EoFF at 150% zoom because i have an insanely high dpi screen. They look pretty sharp at 100%.

[Ergroilnin]

The new screens actually look like how FFIX looks like in my memory. Cool!