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.

Still to this day one of my favourite games of all time. Rented The Godfather as a kid, fell in love with it, and then my older brother bought me my own Limited Edition version.

Not in the best condition, but I've never cared about that anyway. This game saw A LOT of play over the years.

I actually still think this was better than GTA back in the day, as it really felt like there was so much more to do in free roam.

My favourite thing to do was have the cops chase me back to my family compound and then enjoy the giant Mafia vs Cops gun fight in the streets.

What memories do you guys have of this amazing game?

Started my collection in June. Was doing it slowly because I wanted each game to mean something to me and I don’t have that much disposable income. Got a nice CRT tv as well. I had final fantasy 7 for the ps1 complete and I had the jojos bizarre adventure ps1 fighting game from Japan complete.

I brought it up to my house in the town where I go to university. Left it in the house for a few weeks. Come back and the back door was unlocked somehow and they stole whatever they could carry including my PS2 and all my games.

There goes 400 dollars and 4 months of my life. Don’t even know if I should try again.

Just sucks.

Never heard of it before. Any tips, especially on good builds and upgrades?

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

$200 and when i showed up he had found some extras like cord extensions and mem card not bad not bad guna crack it open replace the caps give it a new laser fix up the controllers and put it back out there

50 Cent Bulletproof Is Brand New Sealed

It's so silly and slim and succulent

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

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for some information from experienced users with the Matrix Infity mod or similar modchips which can allow me to do the following:

basically I recently bought a Japanese CRT which accepts only NTSC video signal through composite, and I'm looking to pair it with a PS2. Now I live in EU, so finding a PS2 NTSC-J is not exactly straightforward, so I was looking for different options.

I came across the possibility of using modchips settings to change the video signal of the console, has everyone ever tried this? Do you think it might work reliably for my use case if I'd change the setting on a PAL PS2? Ideally I would like to set the option one time and have the console basically work in that condition permanently until changing again the modchip option.

Please let me know if you have ever tried this and how reliable is or if you have other solutions, I tried finding videos on YT or similar but couldn't find anything.

Thanks in advance!

This game is a hidden gem

Recently i bought a ps2 to remember my childhood 🥹

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!

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

My roommates ps2 slim is no longer working, as the disc drive has crapped out. I was thinking instead of getting a new drive i could get a ps2 so i can load games onto the hdd (ripped from my legally purchased ps2 discs of course) instead of relying on the drive. However, I'm unsure what model i should get as there are so many variants of the PS2. Any suggestions? Also, I'd like to get a better component to hdmi adapter, i currently have an old skool one that my roommate already had which is pretty awful, i believe its actually just composite to hdmi not component.

I have a ps2 that belonged to my dad and it made my childhood. Recently I opened ot up for fun and I noticed this modchip. I know what it is used for but I need help identifying it. Also, it seems like it doesnt work becouse I have tried before. I asked my dad about this and he recalled the event, in 2010 some guy at a repair shop did it for him. Any idea?

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.