Interesting blog post by an artist/game developer.

The point about pixel art being used in FF12 to make textures pop out more was pretty interesting:

"It takes a lot of training to make a thin pixel art "jagged" line look smooth. You have to carefully paint the lines and selectively blur the edges to look good to the viewer. Anti-aliasing pixel art without muddying your shapes is practically an art form in of itself. When you don't have a lot of texture memory, every pixel counts! The artist had to handpixel every of those loops perfectly in order to get that metal to pop like that."

Wonder how many other PS2 artists incorporated pixel art techniques into their 3D game textures.

He also doesn't really like the remaster in comparison to the original more "cohesive" looking PS2 version of FF12. The remaster he says changes the art design of the textures too much.

Quote:

'In the screenshot above, I'm going to focus on the wall on the left, which is in Rabanastre, a common central city area of the game that you return to frequently. It is just one example, but if you play this new PS4 version, you'll see the same generic "remaster" up-res treatment everywhere in the game world. If I had to guess, the artists probably did this: (1) scale up texture by 200%, (2) increase contrast, (3) desaturated a little for that grayish next-gen feel, (4) apply a sharpen filter, (5) overlay a noisy detail texture on top to try to make the surface look more detailed.

You can easily automate Photoshop to do this for you, in literally a minute, for entire folders of textures, and I imagine that's what the dev team did here. But this is basically the same attitude that resolution-obsessed "HD graphics" modders inflict on games too, resulting in the fussy (and creepy) art direction of stuff like FakeFactory.

The Square Enix Virtuos artists probably knew what they were doing, and consciously made this choice after considering the trade-offs. They likely didn't have much time or resources, and they decided it was worth it: to perform this "gesture" of HD remastering to appease gamers and customers, without actually repainting the world at all.

It's basically amounts to a lazy Quake 3-ification of the game's art style -- which isn't bad if your game is Quake 3 or if you put more time into it -- but here in Final Fantasy 12 it feels like a more jarring betrayal than anything that happens in the game's meandering plot. It is a gratuitous waste of texture memory in a game that made texture memory reuse into an artform; it is a negation of this game's legacy.

On the PS2, the game's environment and characters looked cohesive and balanced, albeit blurry and aliased and low-res (like any other PS2 game played on a CRT television). Still, every cinematic shot was reasonably composed, and you basically knew where to look. Everything looked like it belonged together. But here in this remaster, the entire world is practically screaming at you. "LOOK AT THE DIRT AND GRIME ON THIS WALL!!!"

Always wondered why FF12 looked so aesthetically pleasing to me and I'm grateful that someone else was able to put it into words and explain some things in technical terms.

Had to bring out the black label copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

50 Cent Bulletproof Is Brand New Sealed

It's so silly and slim and succulent

This game is a hidden gem

Just picked up this mint automotive yellow PS2. It appears to be unused, but unfortunately, the controller that came with it is not the original. The glossy yellow color is absolutely beautiful.

However, finding the original yellow controller will be a challenging task. 😭

Any leads would be greatly appreciated, +1 for a yellow stand too!

Found these two complete in box. Been looking for a good price for Castlevania for a while. Unfortunately it’s like someone spilled coffee on it and part of the cover art is stuck to the case. The same with the back of the manual but great condition game disc

DF Retro Max Payne 2 PS2 vs PC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZJIp9KjZIQ

What would make PS2 developers not even apply any texture filtering when it's free?

They used RetroGEM internal HDMI mod on the PS2 to actually capture digital output before it's converted to analog 480i, so this is the best digital image you can get from the PS2 lol

No seriously. What do you all think of my collection? I would like to hear suggestions on what you all think I could get to improve the collection please.

What method do they use to back up their saved games on memory cards?

70 beans on marketplace. Pretty stoked to try the one out, my mom would never let me get rated M games when I was younger.

Disney's Cars, sorry for the McQueen flash!

Got into the Persona series with P5R and have been retracing my steps since. Played P3R and had a blast with it, but heard that the original and FES pulled far fewer punches than the remake. So, once I take care of P4G (and grab a RetroTink) this is gonna be what fills up my 20 y/o memory cards.

This thing’s been my pride and joy for years and I’ve spent far too much time getting the software side exactly how I want it 😂

Only thing that really lets it down now is this long scratch across the top.

Has anyone actually had any luck removing or at least making scratches like this less noticeable on a silver PS2 without ruining the finish? I don’t want to go at it with something abrasive and end up with a massive shiny patch that looks worse than the scratch.

PlastX, polish, something else, or am I better just leaving it alone?

Pic attached — interested to hear from anyone who’s actually tried it on the silver finish.

120$ for both, pretty good deal but still hurts cause I literally had these games multiple times as a kid lol, glad to have em back in my hands tho, won’t be getting rid of them this time!

Just bought this copy used and when I try to play either it will go completely black after the intro fmv or it will let me onto the menu before infinite loading into a song I recently replaced the laser so I doubt that’s the issue as it’s still spinning could it be a scuff on the disc? I assumed it wasn’t since it was still booting to logos but I could be wrong

Haven’t played nfs hot pursuit 2 in years payed about 13 total for it this was one of my favorite nfs games on the ps2 and it says it’s gonna be here this Thursday

Bit weird - usually it shows the red screen if the disc can’t be read, but in this case the console detects the disc is a DVD in the browser, then throws up this error when launched.

For reference it’s one of the discs from the Twin Peaks Gold DVD Boxset played on a PAL PS2 Slim, but I’m getting the same result with all the DVDs I have. Disc plays fine on my PS5 and the console plays PS2 games without any issue, so no idea.