Believe it or not, adorning walls with world maps from various video games has become a fairly common way to decorate a home. Some of the most popular maps are from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras of Final Fantasy. Recently, a fan of the series took that idea and gave it a twist, recreating our own world's map using assets from the first Final Fantasy.
The map was made by Reddit user u/gigioromba, who spent around 200 hours finishing the project. They were able to produce the map placing 48 different 16x16 tiles and using multiple world maps as reference. Because there are no snow tiles in the first game, the colder regions of the world have desert tiles -- Antarctica was nixed as a result. The creator posted the original piece, which has 33177600 pixels and 8K resolution, on Reddit for anyone who wants to use it.
In other Final Fantasy news, the series' current, popular MMORPG is about to launch its next major bit of content. Ahead of its release Final Fantasy 14 passed a major milestone. Director Naoki Yoshida recently revealed that the game has gained over 24 million players. This tremendous achievement has led to it becoming the most profitable entry in the entire series.
Once the next expansion, Endwalker, releases, even more players are likely to join the world of Eorzea. The release received a major push due to the pandemic, but now has a firm date of November 23, 2021. The expansion will add an enormous amount of content, which includes two new jobs for players. Now that the embargo on the game's Media Tour has been lifted, content creators have provided in-depth analyses of Endwalker job changes.
As for the future of the franchise, Final Fantasy 16 is currently in development for the PlayStation 5. There are multiple fan theories about the Final Fantasy 16 trailers that have been released so far, but Square Enix has yet to confirm them. Those looking for an update on the title were disappointed to see it absent from Tokyo Game Show this year. However, a livestream from the show did offer one small nugget of information on the progress of the game -- Final Fantasy 16's main story is completely written.
The Final Fantasy series continues to grow and change, and the fandom has done much of the same. While fans are always looking to the future of the franchise, they also look fondly at its past, celebrating previous games in the series through artwork and other homages. That's certainly the case with the Final Fantasy-inspired world map. For those who enjoy that particular work, the creator is hoping to keep adding to the piece, inserting original sprites like cities or volcanoes in the future.