The homebrew developer of the Metal Gear Solid prototype for the Saturn is at it again — this time with another prominent PlayStation exclusive, Final Fantasy VII.
Frogbull uploaded a video Dec. 19 to YouTube showing a new proof-of-concept of the 1997 Square RPG running on Saturn emulator Mednafen with ReShade and a CRT shader.
It shows a title screen and a menu for choosing a new game or continuing, followed by a full-screen opening cinematic. After the cutscene ends, the first moments of gameplay are seen, including a battle between protagonist Cloud and a couple soldiers. Cloud dies without fighting back, as commands apparently haven’t been implemented yet, then a game over screen appears and the video ends.
“I would have wanted a result even closer to the PlayStation version before showing you FFVII on Saturn, but Santa is approaching rapidly, so I’ll show it to you as it is,” they said in a post on their Patreon. “It’s my Christmas gift to the Saturn community, hoping that the slightly crumpled packaging won’t bother you too much 😋”
Frogbull explained their process on Patreon:
“Similar to Metal Gear Solid, I decided to create a kind of prototype on the Saturn, for the challenge and to pay tribute to this incredible game. That’s why I became interested in video encoding for the Saturn. I would like to thank Trekkies Unite for his guides; without them, I would have had a hard time achieving this.
The Opening is encoded in Cinepak, and the result is quite good. It runs with SGL, but I haven’t managed to add 3D models when a video is playing in the background yet, though I know it’s feasible. Since the video occupies the VDP2, there’s no fundamental reason that would prevent using the VDP1 in parallel for that purpose.
Regarding the 3D models, I was able to extract the Field Models (Super Deformed or Chibi) thanks to the software kujata by picklejar76 and dangarfield. The Battle Models thanks to Noesis and I also used software like Makou Reactor, Kimera, and Aali’s command line tools for LGP archives. A huge thanks to the entire FFVII community, doing incredible things for over 25 years!
From a technical standpoint, I reused Metal Gear Solid Saturn as a base, and thus, it’s on the basis of XL2’s engine that all of this can work.”
— Frogbull
The video comes two months after Frogbull uploaded one showing a Metal Gear Solid prototype running on Saturn. Frogbull has said that they used code from prominent Saturn homebrew developer XL2’s publicly available code for Sonic Z-Treme, which is available on a Github. They’ve also said that they won’t share the prototype publicly for fear of seeing it burned onto reproduction discs and sold on eBay.
Frogbull gave a few more details about the prototype while responding to comments under the YouTube video.
“Yes all is at 30 FPS on Saturn,” Frogbull said when asked about the framerate. “On PS1 the animations are at 15 FPS but not the camera. Square used a lot of smart tricks 😁”
When another person asked about the long loading times, Frogbull responded, “Huge loading times are only my fault (I play PCM musics instead of MIDI). Both Saturn and PS1 have a 2x CD-ROM drive so the loading times should be the same.”
Danthrax is a contributor to the Shiro Media Group, writing stories for the website when Saturn news breaks. While he was a Sega Genesis kid in the ’90s, he didn’t get a Saturn until 2018. It didn’t take him long to fall in love with the console’s library as well as the fan translation and homebrew scene. He contributed heavily to the Bulk Slash and Stellar Assault SS fan localizations, and has helped as an editor on several other Saturn and Dreamcast fan projects such as Cotton 2, Rainbow Cotton and Sakura Wars Columns 2.
So it played better on the Saturn than the Playstation?
this is unbelievable! if this gets fully done and made Id be really impressed.