The ninth main installment in the long running JRPG series, Final Fantasy 9 was a departure from the more futuristic sixth, seventh, and eighth games, with the franchise returning to its medieval roots for the ninth game in the series. Final Fantasy 9 has been available on the Nintendo eShop for over a year now, after releasing for the Switch in February 2019.
According to Play-Asia, an online retailer which has listed the game for sale, the game will include English, French, German, Italian and Spanish language support, indicating that the game will be hitting Europe and the US at a later date. The physical release of Final Fantasy 9 follows the news that Final Fantasy 7 and 8 will be getting physical releases this year too. Along with updated high-definition movies and character models, the physical release will mirror the 2019 download version, with no encounter modes and the ability to fast forward through the numerous random encounters gamers will find themselves in.
While neither Nintendo nor Square Enix have yet to confirm that Final Fantasy 9 is getting a physical release later this year, the former have a tendency to not announce releases too far ahead, so it's likely that fans will hear confirmation from the Kyoto-based company in the next couple of weeks, as they finalize the holiday releases for the Nintendo Switch. The two companies historically worked together regularly, with all the Final Fantasy games releasing on Nintendo consoles throughout the 80s and 90s, only for Square to make a shift over to Sony, with the release of Final Fantasy 6 on the original PlayStation. The Switch has been supported by Square since release, with Final Fantasy ports and Dragon Quest games, along with an upcoming game that long time series developer Tetsuya Nomura is working on.
The series now has a home across PC and all the major consoles, with the most recent game in the series Final Fantasy 15, one of the largest open world RPGs this generation, arriving on Xbox Game Pass last month, as well as long-awaited remake of Final Fantasy 7 releasing on PlayStation 4 earlier this year.
When the Final Fantasy 9 was ported to the Nintendo Switch in 2019, it was noted that the port was essentially the same as the PC version released in 2016, itself a port of an iOS and Android version that the company had already developed. While PC players can update the game with mods, the popular Moguri mod was updated earlier this year, Switch owners will be stuck with the version that Square release. Having to pause the game to go into fast forward mode, as well the overworld music restarting after every battle (a lot of random encounters means players will only hear the first 10-15 seconds of this great piece of music), were just a couple of complaints that players had back in 2019.
At the end of the day, Final Fantasy 9 is a 20 year old game, and it's not hard to imagine that a lot of the core code and assets that the game was built on probably aren't around at Square HQ anymore. It's hard to imagine that Square would release the same mobile port for $30 to Switch owners, just for the luxury of having a physical edition of the game. The physical releases of games 7 through to 9 should keep fans of the series busy until the upcoming Final Fantasy 16 releases on PS5.
Final Fantasy 9 is available now for Android, iOS, PC, PS1, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
Source: Play-Asia