Final Fantasy IX Turns 25 today and that's wild
But first, here's my contribution - I named my acoustic guitar Vivi because of a black mage sticker I put it on it when I first got it
The guitar's name is Vivi and when I record with it, I usually name the track "Vivi" instead of "Acoustic" or "Guitar" because I'm that kind of nerd
The sticker came with a Fangamer shirt in like 2017; the ae of Fangamer where they'd do ridiculous gymnastics to make a design as legally distinct as possible to avoid litigiousness; a long way before they nailed down legitimate publishing deals; hell they do official Okami merch for Capcom now. See the generic black mage art, the incredibly unsubtle "IX" in the corner? Good times. Another lost era.
And Speaking of Good Times™ - I bought FFIX on release day. It came pre-bundled with the BradyGames player's guide at my local mall Software Etc store; yes, the infamous 'virtually useless and every page suggests you go to PlayOnline.com for the rest of the information' edition. Funniest thing was I didn't even own a playstation at the time; my neighbor was nice enough to let me borrow his for a bit since he'd picked up a PS2.
I'm one of those oldheads that likes VI the best of the franchise; if I ranked everything that came out before IX as my brain at the time would rank them, it'd probably be this:
- VI
- Tactics
- VII
- V (Fan translation romhack)
- IV
- I
- VIII
Keeping in mind that this is from the perspective of the year 2000 - II only came stateside in FF Origins in 2002, and III's DS release was 2006. As a Tactics sicko someone on a forum recommended V and sent me a fan translation patch and that was a whole month of my life (complimentary).
The point is, I really did not get on with VIII in the late 90's and I yearned for a return to the older game styles...so naturally I fucking flipped when I heard the FFIX battle music for the first time at a demo event in San Francisco. It used the old motif!!! 17 year old me was beside themself.
Over the course of that fall I spent as much time as I could with the game until I had to return the playstation and dive into the world of ePSXe - thanks to a card reader dump I was able to transfer my save from the memory card and not lose any progress, but I spent SO much time with this game and this world. It meant a lot to me. The themes of found family, existential crisis and how blatantly the "hey so what if summons were actually portrayed as weapons of mass destruction" hit hard. (Could have done without the main character being a flirty sex pest though?? If you're playing for the first time, I promise - he gets better)
So here was are 25 years later - I see the clamouring for a remake (which I'm convinced is entirely fueled by the nvidia leak where everything else, including the Final Fantasy Tactics remaster has come to pass) and like - I get it, but with IX (and Chrono Trigger for that matter which people always claim to want a remake of) what can a remake add? Especially from the company that brought us FF7R? I won't devolve into a giant tirade here but while I enjoyed FF7 Remake, Rebirth has had me screaming into the void about artistic intent (Cosmo Canyon should not be a fucking tourist attraction with a 5 star hotel lmfao) and the (lack of better term) Ubisofticiation of AAA video games at large. Every time I open the map I wanna die.
Regardless of platform though, you can play Final Fantasy IX as it was released right now. The original holds up fairly well, minus maybe some load times on the PlayStation version but that's mostly gone in Steam and later console releases. If you REALLY want it to "look prettier" there are mods for that, but I don't really condone since the most popular one used a shitton of Stable Diffusion to make it work and it feels kinda gross.
Final Fantasy IX is an impressive piece of history; both a love letter to the franchise's origins while also being a sendoff of that style of game. Short of the Bravely Default series (Which if you like older FF's at all you should play), Square doesn't really make the FFI-VI, IX style game anymore.
Anyway, all this said I think they should nerf the Vivi Magic Card. Shit's broken as helllllll
Final note - here's the Vivi the guitar's headstock. It doesn't have anything to do with the post but since I took other photos of the Vivi I figured I might as well show the whole thing.
