I buddy of mine is joining in on the next generation bandwagon so he decided to sell me his PSP. With all of the hacking and custom firmware stuff going around, it’s too good of a deal to pass up on. My main attraction to the PSP? Playable PSX games. More specifically, the Playstation’s huge library of amazing RPGs, most of which I totally missed out on. So the first thing I did was rip my copy of Final Fantasy VII - which I stopped playing after a few hours years ago - and give it a go.

I’m disappointed.

I’m an old-school kind of guy when it comes to RPGs so i’m not complaining about the gameplay at all, but visually… damn, it hasn’t aged well at all. In fact, it looks absolutely horrible, even on the smaller PSP screen. Now, I knew it wasn’t going to look very good from the start, which is why I opted not to play it on my TV with my PSX or PS2, but sometimes it’s just painful to look at. It really makes me wish Square stuck with 2D for a little while longer, seems 2D gaming has aged a lot more gracefully. Zelda: A Link to the Past and Chrono Trigger and two excellent examples of this, both are still beautiful to look at and play today as they were in the early and mid-90s. Things like texture quality and model complexity can always improve, but that’s one of the big reasons why a lot of the early 3D titles we all enjoyed playing a decade ago look like complete shit today. The technological gap has become so huge, it’s only natural for earlier titles to look like garbage in comparison. I think the whole “3D era” got started a few years too early and 2D gaming got tossed aside before ever reaching it’s prime. It’s a shame, really… Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was a nice glimpse of how 32-bit 2D gaming would have evolved.

I’m still going to get through FFVII, it’s still a great game, but what I wouldn’t give for a 2D remake. Yea, it’s unrealistic and it’ll never happen, but still, it’d be nice.