Final Fantasy 7, Again

On Wednesday, Square Enix announced another re-release for Final Fantasy VII, this time for the PC. The announcement boasts a few features nobody ever asked for (Achievements and "Cloud saves", har har) and "optimized performance", which we couldn't possibly need to play a PlayStation 1 game on the PCs of 2012, but there is no mention of any improvements.

After 15 years and more than a dozen separate releases, Final Fantasy VII still carries around some shocking bugs. The one that leaps immediately to mind is that the Magic Defense stat is completely non-functional. Oops! This is only one of several dozen glitches and translation errors which have haunted the game for the better part of two decades. I don't mind Square milking their aging cash cow for all she's worth, but its past time these issues got a little love.

For that matter, if Squenix wants to wring every last dime from the project, maybe they ought to consider a cheap graphical update for modern systems. I'm confident that both the PS3 and PC platforms can handle rendering the cinematic quality character models in real time, replacing the blocky, featureless map models of 1997. And that's a minimalist approach. For a tiny investment, they could replace every character and enemy in the game with a spiffy new high detail model based on the original design. Or, for a more significant amount of work, they could re-imagine the entire project in the graphics of 2012 and sell millions more copies of the same game.

Even if Square is dedicated to leaving the game as-is (maybe they're concerned about their "artistic integrity"), there are unexplored and completely ripe markets for a re-release that make much more sense. I carry a Motorola Razr Android phone with me everywhere I go. It boasts hardware that absolutely dwarfs the capabilities of the original PlayStation. I'd pay $20 for Final Fantasy VII on my phone and call it a great deal. Hell, I'd switch to an iPhone if they made it available on that platform.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, "WTF Square?!?"