You don’t have to suffer through ugly backgrounds for the sake of your Final Fantasy IX nostalgia anymore.
A new mod for the PC version of Final Fantasy IX on Steam replaces the classic role-playing game’s backgrounds with cleaner, high-resolution versions. Community modder Fraggoso released the mod on Steam earlier today in a thread on the Final Fantasy IX Steam community forums. Final Fantasy IX originally debuted for the PlayStation in 2000, so updated graphics could make the game look better than ever.
You can download the mod from OneDrive or from Mega. To install the mod, unpack the zipped contents into the Final Fantasy IX install directory where you see the “StreamingAssets” and “x64” folders. You may want to backup the .bin files p0data11 through p0data19 in StreamingAssets in case anything goes wrong or you want to revert to the original art.
Final Fantasy IX was the third and final entry in the core Final Fantasy series on the original PlayStation. Unlike its most immediate predecessors, it backed off of realistically proportioned characters in favor of a cute, chibi style reminiscent of the franchise’s Super Nintendo era. In April 2016, Square Enix revived Final Fantasy IX on PC with the game’s release on Steam. It is available for $21, and fans have given the PC port “very positive” reviews.
