The power of the DS

[BooJaka]

As many of you may or may not know, Square Enix recently announced that they were remaking Final Fantasy IV for the DS, thereby ruining my plans of buying them all for the GBA.

Now, if it's a success, which it undoubtedly will be, we'll most likely see remakes of V and VI as well as a possible I and II since they started with III after all.

We've already seen that the DS is capable of replicating N64 standard graphics with a little extra sparkle but just how powerful is it? Could it be stretched to churn out PS1 style graphics?

What I'm getting at here in a sort of round about way is, could we one day see a remake of FFVII on the DS or is it just not that capable?

[eljay]

You seem to be putting the PS1 on some kind of bizarre pedestal.

Go back and look at FFVII, I can guarantee you the DS is more than capable of exceeding that..... (although the FMVs might represent a size issue... dunno how many there are in FFIII)

[miffy495]

Ummm... didn't the N64 actually have more horsepower than a PS1? I was always under the impression that it was. Correct me if I'm wrong, I guess.

I'd think that if they went that far they wouldn't have any problems putting FF VII, VIII, or IX on the DS, perhaps even with extra polish. Especially because dated graphics look so much shinier on the smaller screen than on a modern TV.

[BooJaka]

There was only really one FMV in FF3 I think, right at the start. Maybe one at the end I don't really remember. But they're more what I meant as opposed to the more in-game graphics

[eljay]

Well the FMVs have nothing to do with capabilities, merely storage space.

The GBA could have shown you FFVII's FMVs if it had a cart big enough to hold 'em. Unfortunately I don't know how big the largest DS cart available to devlopers is, but I imagine it wouldn't need to be as big as 4 CDs, since compression tech is a lot better, plus on the portable screen it's not as noticeable.

[Thrik]

Yeah, the Nintendo 64 was more powerful than the PS1. It was, however, a more difficult beast to program for and thus a lot of games looked a bit nicer on the PS1. The DS should theoretically be able to match either system's graphics, storage space withstanding.

A quick look on Wikipedia does say that the DS has a hard polygon limit though, which means it can only use so many polygons before having to look into other ways of prettifying the games.

[BooJaka]

But again with smaller screens the quality wouldn't be so much of an issue, right?

[Spaff]

i seem to recall a video recently of someone who got mgs maps kinda running on a GBA

ah yes

http://www.destructoid.com/gba-tech-demo-shows-off-some-mighty-horsepower-31045.phtml

so i assume that the ds is better.

[Roderick]

wow, most 3D on the DS looks worse than that! I've no doubt the PS1 FF's would work, but I don't think they'll appear. A remake for current consoles is more likely.