Final Fantasy 8 now available on PC (again)

Final Fantasy VIII is now available on PC for $11.99. It features a "Magic Booster" to give you an immediate stock of spells, and the Chocobo World mini-game missing from the initial western release.

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Final Fantasy VIII has been re-released on PC today, Square Enix has announced. This version packs a handful of tweaks, along with one feature that was unavailable in the initial western release in 1999.

It's now available on Steam for $11.99. The re-release features a Magic Booster to quickly give you a stock of spells instead of needing to grind them from monsters, similar to how the Final Fantasy VII PC release included a character booster. It also includes the Chocobo World application, originally a Pocket Station game in Japan. Finally, the Steam version features Steam achievements and cloud support, naturally.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    December 5, 2013 10:15 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Final Fantasy 8 now available on PC (again).

    Final Fantasy VIII is now available on PC for $11.99. It features a "Magic Booster" to give you an immediate stock of spells, and the Chocobo World mini-game missing from the initial western release.

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      December 5, 2013 10:18 AM

      It doesn't say whether the music is the original or not. FFVII started off with midi but was later patched with the original PSX music. Presumably they would have learned their lesson from the bitching, but it *is* SquareEnix

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      December 5, 2013 10:39 AM

      purchased

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        December 5, 2013 10:40 AM

        Then I fwd my question to you - music?

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          December 5, 2013 11:27 AM

          If I recall correctly, the soundtrack was a lot less bastardized than FF7's, but it's been a good decade since I played the PC version.

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            December 5, 2013 11:44 AM

            I thought so too, as I don't recall midi versions of the music. I just bought it anyway since square will patch it ala FFVII if it's not already included. I feel compelled to support them when they get it right vs horribly wrong (ie that fucking IAP laden shit on ios)

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          December 5, 2013 1:26 PM

          It is MIDI and bad, just like FF7's was when it first hit Steam. It's also using DirectMusic SGT files so you can't just dump some replacement Ogg files in the music directory like you could before.

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      December 5, 2013 11:24 AM

      [deleted]

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      December 5, 2013 11:30 AM

      will purchase. i had fun replaying FF7 when it was rereleased. never beat FF8 originally; as a kid i didn't really grasp the enemy level scaling and the magic draw system. i played FF8 exactly like FF7 and by the third disc the bosses were so hard that i couldn't beat them

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        December 5, 2013 11:38 AM

        My only gripe with the game was that they closed off all the cities and old locations once you got to the final disk. This was likely due to disk space problems, but it would be nice for them to overhaul this stuff now that disks aren't a bottleneck rather than just release them as-is for the cash in.

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          December 5, 2013 11:40 AM

          hhhhhnnnnngh seriously. I really enjoyed the game, but that mechanic really fucked me off.

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        December 5, 2013 12:33 PM

        The bosses scaled to your level didn't they?

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          December 5, 2013 12:35 PM

          yup. i kept grinding levels thinking it would make it easier. wasn't getting new gear, wasn't using magic draw. obviously now i know why this was a bad idea but at the time i had no idea FF8 was any different than FF7

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            December 5, 2013 2:06 PM

            Chaos Rings is like this too. Kinda annoying and will make you put the game down if you don't realize this going into the game and know what to expect.

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      December 5, 2013 11:42 AM

      Do you think we will ever see 1-6 and 9-14 (excluding mmo's) on the PC? It looked like they sold a ton of ff7 keys.

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        December 5, 2013 11:45 AM

        Honestly? How hard would it be to port the 'hd' ios / psp ports to steam? That would make my face melt with happiness.

        1920x1200 Final Fantasy SNES games. Good god

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          December 5, 2013 12:00 PM

          I think I have wet dreams of this...

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            December 5, 2013 12:25 PM

            Considering the work they are doing on FFX I don't get why they keep ignoring the earlier games.

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        December 5, 2013 12:11 PM

        [deleted]

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      December 5, 2013 12:01 PM

      It's a damn shame they won't do FFVI (US 3). It would probably be much cheaper to port as well but who knows.

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        December 6, 2013 9:59 AM

        Hell yes don't forget FF2 (US) best FF games

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      December 5, 2013 12:05 PM

      [deleted]

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        December 5, 2013 12:15 PM

        It was the last one I ever completed. I had a stab at 9, but it bored the shit out of me.

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        December 5, 2013 12:45 PM

        It's the only one I've never played! (not counting the MMOs)

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      December 5, 2013 12:42 PM

      I bought this game when it originally came out. Probably the #1 worst console port I had ever played. It was ridiculously bad. Overworld map ran like a slideshow (running around in towns/dungeons was fine, battles were fine), the pre-rendered static backgrounds didn't line up correctly causing a weird grid effect to happen. I had a Geforce 256 at the time which was a very powerful video card. Ended up re-buying it on PS1 just so I could enjoy the game.

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        December 5, 2013 12:43 PM

        That's weird, when I first played on a friend's PC it was perfect.

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        December 5, 2013 1:31 PM

        the two things i hated about the PC port:

        - the controls were completely different than the FF7 PC port. FF7 used the numeric keypad (and could be played one-handed!), whereas FF8 used the arrow keys and a bunch of other random keys (requires two hands).

        - they attempted to do a high-quality scale of the backgrounds but actually it's more like a horrific blur that made everything look awful. and any time an actual 3D model was there, it wasn't blurry like that, so it stood out like a sore thumb

        other than that i had no problem with the port itself

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      December 5, 2013 12:43 PM

      I know i'm crazy but this was my favorite FF from the PSX era. I played this so much and I'm tempted to repurchase.

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        December 5, 2013 1:32 PM

        It was my least favorite of the PS1 era. I really didn't like the draw system or the summons that took ages even with the skip button.

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          December 5, 2013 2:07 PM

          Was this the FF that you could do the summons that had like a thousand lashes and it could be doubled so the summon would last like several long minutes?

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        December 5, 2013 1:47 PM

        I'm kind of the opposite, I think this was the weakest of the 90's releases. I would sell my copy, but it only goes for like $15 these days.

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        December 5, 2013 1:52 PM

        FFVIII had the best music in the entire series. And arguably the love story in this one was stronger than the one in FFX.

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        December 5, 2013 2:12 PM

        It was broken as shit but I still love it for some reason. It had the best soundtrack of the PS1 games.

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        December 5, 2013 8:35 PM

        I played 8 before 7 and it was basically the game that made me a nerd. Will be buying.

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