Final Fantasy 9 (IX) is a RPG developed and published by Square for the PlayStation in 2000. During the development, the design for the characters was different from the one in the final version, as you can notice from the images in the gallery below. As we can read on Wikipedia, the game was developed in Hawaii as a compromise to developers living in the United States.
In the game’s conceptual stage, the developers made it clear that the title would not necessarily be Final Fantasy IX, as its break from the realism of Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII may have alienated audiences. This led fans to speculate that it would be released as a “gaiden” to the main series. By late 1999, however, Square had confirmed that the game would indeed be published as Final Fantasy IX, and by early 2000, the game was nearly finished.
If you can write a description for the design differences in these concept arts, please leave a reply or send us a message! We would like to make this article more complete.
Thanks to D-Vide for some of the images below!
Images:
U64 is an archive with articles, screens and videos for cancelled, beta & unseen videogames. Every change & cut creates a different gaming experience: we would like to save some documents about this evolution for curiosity, historic and artistic preservation.
7 Responses to Final Fantasy 9 (IX) [PSX - Beta / Concept]
Ian
March 30th, 2009 at 12:55 am
One of the Character Artworks looks a lot like Tidus from FF X.( 16th picture from the top) Possibly a leftover from when FF X was orginaly going to be Number 9.
Motherfreak
February 6th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
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bob randazzio
October 22nd, 2010 at 8:50 am
These pictures, compared to the actual game, can be described as being more Disney-styled, anime-styled or “american” anime-styled. Though no picture seems to be all three, pretty much all of them are one of the three.
Robert Seddon
November 23rd, 2010 at 12:39 pm
http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2010/11/23/sakaguchi_ffix_vault/
I’m guessing someone will translate the source soon enough, but if not I’ll ask GlitterBerri about it.
monokoma
November 24th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Thanks for the link Robert! Hope to read a translation soon :)
Robert Seddon
November 30th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
There’s now an official translation (though it could have done with a proofread; some of the grammar is off): http://www.mistwalkercorp.com/en/column/index.html
http://www.siliconera.com/2010/11/28/sakaguchi-notes-about-final-fantasy-ixs-opening-highlight-cuts-and-differences/ summarises the changes.
monokoma
December 1st, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Thanks for the update Robert! :)