Widely regarded to be one of the absolute best games in the series — and perhaps one of the greatest RPGs ever made — Final Fantasy 9 celebrates its 25th Anniversary today (the 7th July).
Back in 2000, the PS1 title was something of a throwback to the older, more traditional fantasy stylings of the franchise. After Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 8, both of which featured more technologically advanced settings, 9 was a much more whimsical adventure.
Now then, as you may already know, Square Enix has been building up to this anniversary with all sorts of tidbits and teases; it's revealed fresh merchandise, a boatload of new artwork, and it's just posted a 'special movie' made up of CG scenes from the original release.
Given the publisher's clear intent to push this anniversary as some kind of worthwhile event, many — including ourselves! — have suggested that the long rumoured Final Fantasy 9 remake might be announced in conjunction with the celebrations.
However, as you can tell, any such announcement is yet to happen.
It's not looking good for the believers, especially since the original game's 7th July 2000 launch date was for the Japanese release. And, at the time of writing this article, we're just hours away from it being the 8th July over in Japan. It seems very unlikely that we're getting any surprise announcements today.