It's heralded as one of the greatest, if not THE greatest JRPG of all time, and the recently released Final Fantasy 7 Remake has done justice to the spirit of the original.
But, as a timed exclusive for the PS4, PC gamers are out of luck (for the time being, at least) if they want to give the epic re-imagining a go. And while the spruced up rework is impressive, it is still quite a departure from the PS1 original. Where are the turn-based battles? The beautiful hand-drawn backgrounds? There's a fear that some of the original's charm will be lost in the conversion.
So, if you're looking for something a little more faithful, and own the PC version of the original game, feast your eyes on the Remako HD mod, an AI-powered fan-made upgrade that's just about to get a whole host of sparkling new features:
AI makeover
"Using state of the art AI neural networks, this upscaling tries to emulate the detail the original renders would have had," writes the mod's author.
"This helps the new visuals to come as close to a higher resolution re-rendering of the original as possible with current technology."
Essentially, it's a smart upscaling technique – the image is re-rendered at a far greater resolution than the original. Some detail is lost, but the original feel of the game is very much preserved.
The Final Fantasy 7 Remako mod is due a major upgrade itself, too. As well as introducing an easier installation process, it'll fix up some existing textures, repair some bugs, add a HD user interface and include support for the popular Reunion Mod, which offers improved translations, character models, 60fps battles and high quality audio.
It's something that Nintendo has also been experimenting with, alongside Nvidia. In China, Nintendo's games are available on the Nvidia Shield, with the chip maker using its neural processing techniques to give the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess a bit of spit and polish.
- Final Fantasy 7 Remake review: a dazzling, well-considered re-imagining
