Square’s New Passion: Ports
Last weekend, at the Playstation Experience event in Las Vegas, it was rumored Square might have a big announcement waiting. Hopes went up as the host walked off the stage to make room for the debut of a new trailer from the company.
The lights dimmed, the screen lit up, and the Square-Enix logo faded away….and then the Final Fantasy VII logo appeared, resulting in massive cheers from the audience of Square fans, who as anyone following games knows, have been demanding a remake of this game for well over a decade.
Then the other shoe dropped: it turned out they were watching a trailer for a port, with the same blocky graphics from 1997, the same embarrassingly bad translations, and the same Guy Who Are Sick hiding in a Midgar pipe. The president of Square happily skipped out from behind the curtain to admire his cheering fanbase. By this point the grins were all gone, but he didn’t seem to notice.
There was no trailer for the Steam port of this game, which this release appears to be based on. FFVII was ported to the PS3 with no fanfare. Generally ROM dumps of Square games aren’t a big deal, which is why the trailer was so misleading. The headlines that went up on sites across the Net said it all: “Square Massively Trolls Its Own Fans.” Yet there’s no indication any of this displeasure has reached the ears at the Square offices.
Today, a few days after the “big announcement,” another future title was accidentally leaked by Square’s French offices. Hold onto your socks…it’s FFX/X2 Remastered, only on the PS4 this time. It’s expected to be the exact same release.
But hey, at least the textures were upgraded in that version. The FFVII port didn’t even get that much.