FF Tactics Remake: a reason why things like the Repo is NECESSARY

[jon2]

https://archive.md/7VnPK

It's been 28 years since Final Fantasy Tactics was originally released, and in order to remake the game for Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles (out next month), the team needed to account for one massive problem: they no longer had the source code from the 1997 game.

At a panel at PAX West 2025, director Kazutoyo Maehiro explained that the reason why Square Enix no longer had the original source code for Final Fantasy Tactics boiled down to how that original source code was overwritten when the game was brought to audiences outside of Japan: "We would basically take that data from the Japanese version and overwrite the English data on it, and we wanted to do another language, we would keep just stacking on top and overwriting and overwriting," Maehiro began.

"So we kind of went on a journey to find the original version, and we were using whatever resources we had available to us, so all those different versions would be analyzing what was there to try to find what we felt was the original. On top of that, we actually had to go to different websites made by fans and look for data there, because we know you guys do such a good job of keeping all of that up to date."

(emphasis mine)

Repos and wikis about old games help preserve the classics and the forgotten/neglected ones...

 

[Tortuga]

Braindead publisher lost source code to their cult classic is really getting out of hands

And yeah repo is important because those shiti remakes/remaster exist as replacement not preservation

 

[RustySK]

It is utterly baffling and plain irresponsible how so many publishers either lost or plain deleted the source codes for their games over the years.
Really incredible how dangerously shortsighted execs (and even devs) can be. Never forget the complete embarassment that was the Silent Hill HD collection.

 

[Evoluder]

Square Enix lost another game's source code?


must be a day that ends in y

 

[nobitakun]

And they are japanese. I can't believe they didn't know what is a backup 30 years ago, and a backup of a backup.

Probably they didn't allow any worker to take the sources to any place outside their building in case some leaks occur, because they sometimes are square headed, no pun intended lol.

 

[Uitsualnemetia]

It's been 28 years since Final Fantasy Tactics was originally released, and in order to remake the game for Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles (out next month), the team needed to account for one massive problem: they no longer had the source code from the 1997 game.

At a panel at PAX West 2025, director Kazutoyo Maehiro explained that the reason why Square Enix no longer had the original source code for Final Fantasy Tactics boiled down to how that original source code was overwritten when the game was brought to audiences outside of Japan: "We would basically take that data from the Japanese version and overwrite the English data on it, and we wanted to do another language, we would keep just stacking on top and overwriting and overwriting," Maehiro began.

Well, that's a lie. In 2007 they ported the game to the PSP (The War of the Lions), and that specific version was directly based on the Japanese PS1 release, since it didn't have any of the changes made in the North American PS1 release. Hell, even if they lost the original PS1 source code since then, they should still have the source code for TWotL because they ported that version to iOS and Android! You could argue that that's not the original version of the game, but TWotL doesn't change many things and it would be far, far easier to revert those few changes if they so wished rather than remaking the game from scratch.

 

[jon2]

Well, that's a lie. In 2007 they ported the game to the PSP (The War of the Lions), and that specific version was directly based on the Japanese PS1 release, since it didn't have any of the changes made in the North American PS1 release. Hell, even if they lost the original PS1 source code since then, they should still have the source code for TWotL because they ported that version to iOS and Android! You could argue that that's not the original version of the game, but TWotL doesn't change many things and it would be far, far easier to revert those few changes if they so wished rather than remaking the game from scratch.

Official S-E article:

SQUARE ENIX | The Official SQUARE ENIX Website

Welcome to the official SQUARE ENIX website. Find all the latest news and updates about your favourite games and upcoming releases.

www.square-enix-games.com

Kotaku article:

The Final Fantasy Tactics Remaster Had To Be Brute-Forced Into Existence And Makes Some Controversial Cuts - Kotaku

Square Enix's missing source code left the team in a tough spot

kotaku.com

Key points:

1. Maker of new remake was the team that made the original PSX game

2. Maker of new remake wasn't involved in the PSP remake

3. Maker of new remake didn't want the PSP version, he wanted to remake his original opus

4. They didn't save any of the source code nor any documentation for the source code of the PSX game

5. Maker of new remake had to make his team scour fan-sites to learn again how his game was supposed to work

TL;DR: maker of original game wanted to remake his own game without relying on the remake of his game that was made by another guy

 

[Uitsualnemetia]

TL;DR: maker of original game wanted to remake his own game without relying on the remake of his game that was made by another guy

That's a really weird decision, since TWoTL mostly just added a few new characters and items, two new classes and a multiplayer mode; all of which could be very easily stripped out to have "the original experience". The most reasonable explanation I have found regarding that comes from the Famitsu interview linked in that Kotaku article:

https://www.famitsu.com/article/202506/44572

Maehiro: Additionally, in "The War of the Lions", issues with data preservation at the time and the absence of the original development staff due to other projects led to unstable behavior in areas like frame rate, VFX, and sound effects. Therefore, for this production, we readjusted all these elements to the original standards, resolving every issue. Particularly for the sound effects, we enlisted the sound team's cooperation starting from the restoration of the original version.

That sounds sensible, but to me it seems a bit strange.

1. As far as I'm aware, the only frame rate issue the game has is slowdown when spells are cast... which, for whatever reason, was a deliberate addition by the PSP team. There have been homebrew solutions to that slowdown for more than 10 years, so I'm sure a group of veteran, professional developers would have had no problems stripping that strange feature out.
2. The only "graphical issue" I know the game has is that the picture is stretched to fill the PSP screen. Again: There have been homebrew solutions for years, so I doubt the team at Square Enix couldn't easily change that.
3. Regarding the sound effects, I have no idea what he's referring to. Perhaps because they were sequenced sound effects that sounded weird on the PSP? In any case, they could probably change it so that the game plays back streamed audio instead (which I'm pretty sure is what they are going to do with the new version).

If there are other issues or I'm mistaken about something do make me know though, I'm not an expert on this game.

And finally, nothing said in any of the interviews change the fact that in 2007 they still had the source code of the original Japanese PS1 release, which contradicts what I quoted in my earlier post. I do admit that that's a bit of a weird thing to lie about. Maybe back then they recreated the Japanese version by manually reverting the changes made to the NA source code? Or perhaps there is/was some internal miscommunication regarding this issue.

 

[Tsetskhli776]

How the hell do so many Japanese publishers lose their games source code? Did they all just simultaneously combust or something?

 

[ThatOneLum ThatOneLum]

This has been unfortunately common across multiple different media, sadly. Especially in their early/adolescent days.

Back in the day, the BBC had a policy of recording over old media to save money, which is why there's a bunch of historical TV shows either partially or completely lost to time.

Money. Kills. Preservation.

 

[HITMAKER_99]

yeah honestly FF7 for example, i im playing the OG right now and it made me realize how shitty and souless the remake is, why the fuck did they made a famously turn based franchise into a shitty 3rd person hack and slash.

and it looks so souless and sterile, was it because its hard to make a good JRPG with a lot of content, and also the dumb zoomer have to have constant action on all the time............. and yellow lines.

 

[ThatOneLum ThatOneLum]

yeah honestly FF7 for example, i im playing the OG right now and it made me realize how shitty and souless the remake is, why the fuck did they made a famously turn based franchise into a shitty 3rd person hack and slash.

and it looks so souless and sterile, was it because its hard to make a good JRPG with a lot of content, and also the dumb zoomer have to have constant action on all the time............. and yellow lines.

See, I've had this discussion with my friends who really like the remake.

I'm not even that into the original PS1 game to be 100% honest, but I can still tell after playing it that it has much more personality and character than the remake does. I've literally dropped the remake twice and I don't see myself going back for it anytime soon.

 

[HITMAKER_99]

See, I've had this discussion with my friends who really like the remake.

I'm not even that into the original PS1 game to be 100% honest, but I can still tell after playing it that it has much more personality and character than the remake does. I've literally dropped the remake twice and I don't see myself going back for it anytime soon.

from the top of my head i remember the Don Corneo section in Disc 1, in the og it was a quick and to the point, get the dress, perfume, tiara and the makeup, and if you get the best tier of dress you can skip a fight and go directly to the don and make the section faster.

in the remake the whole section takes like 3 hours for no reason besides filling it with their shitty writing and add more tumbrl tier romance writing with Cloud, Tifa and Aerith,and just because you can add more stuff in general it doesn't mean you should.