With SquareEnix's recent announcement regarding their expansion into Europe, I'm still left wondering about the quality of their up and coming releases. Now SquareSoft/SquareEnix, have made some really great games and some not so great, but for the most part they are up on top.
Now I'm not really talking about the games themselves, because games like Final Fantasy XII are just destined to be great, it's their thing, it's what they do. No I'm talking about the PAL conversion, ahh yes. My main concern being the black boarders that Square, nay the companies that are responsible for the conversions love to lump on us PAL users with.
Now I don't pretend to know what goes into the process when converting a game from NTSC to PAL, I have a basic understanding of what's involved, but I would say for the most part it could be fairly complex. However, it's always amused and shocked me that such large ranking games like the recent Final Fantasy X-2, have an immence amount of black. This was expectable with the PSX, but it's really not with the PS2 and especially this far into it's life and development cycle.
Now I know many people have complained about this time and time again. Especially with Final Fantasy X and X-2. But this isn't a rant about those games, that's in the past and nothing can be done about it. What I hope SquareEnix will do now that they are focusing more on the European market (that includes Australia) is that they really try hard to make the conversions of up and coming games the best they can.
It obviously can be done well, as the recent release of Disgaea is a great conversion with no boarders at all. I just hope SquareEnix have learnt from passed experiences/releases and really do improve on future PAL releases.
Now I'm not really talking about the games themselves, because games like Final Fantasy XII are just destined to be great, it's their thing, it's what they do. No I'm talking about the PAL conversion, ahh yes. My main concern being the black boarders that Square, nay the companies that are responsible for the conversions love to lump on us PAL users with.
Now I don't pretend to know what goes into the process when converting a game from NTSC to PAL, I have a basic understanding of what's involved, but I would say for the most part it could be fairly complex. However, it's always amused and shocked me that such large ranking games like the recent Final Fantasy X-2, have an immence amount of black. This was expectable with the PSX, but it's really not with the PS2 and especially this far into it's life and development cycle.
Now I know many people have complained about this time and time again. Especially with Final Fantasy X and X-2. But this isn't a rant about those games, that's in the past and nothing can be done about it. What I hope SquareEnix will do now that they are focusing more on the European market (that includes Australia) is that they really try hard to make the conversions of up and coming games the best they can.
It obviously can be done well, as the recent release of Disgaea is a great conversion with no boarders at all. I just hope SquareEnix have learnt from passed experiences/releases and really do improve on future PAL releases.
