Final Fantasy 9's upscale mod has just received a surprise 3 year update, which includes a 'full redesign' of its backgrounds as well as 120 fps and ultrawide.

Final Fantasy 9 was released at the end of the PlayStation 1 era and featured some of best 2D environmental art in an RPG... rendered at 240p. Square Enix's PC port did not do a great job at scaling the highly detailed backgrounds up to modern resolutions. But along came the Moguri Mod. An AI upscale treatment which preserved some of the art and blew it up by about a billion pixels. Moguri Mod has been completely overhauled, and every background is now re-rendered with a new learning model.

Here's a rundown of the Moguri Mod Page:

• Re-rendered in Upscale of all backgrounds using Stable Diffusion and the original result.
• Full rework on battle backgrounds (re-rendering, restitching and re-mood).
• Redrawing many layer edges
• Most lights have been improved
• Animated textures on Monsters/NPC
• Rework of certain FMVs
• There are many visual bugfixes, including backgrounds, battles and backgrounds

This comparison of the Moguri 9 with the PC port that has not been modified is striking.

This latest release also includes some neat experimental features, such as new "toon" or "realism" shading options for character and enemy model. I'm not sure if I prefer the PS1 polygons or the new "toon" shaders, but I do like how they change the game's look without replacing the character model.

Moguri can be installed via a Final Fantasy 9 mod-launcher called Memoria. As a modding tool, it has added tons of new features over the past three years. These features are now compatible with this latest AI upgrade. Most notably:

• High framerate options: 60 fps (60 frames per second), 90 fps (90 frames per second), and 120 fps (120 frames per second)
• 16:10 and Ultrawide Support
• Custom fonts
• Built-in anti-aliasing

The mod could not create extra art for ultrawide screens where none existed. You will still see black bars along the sides of your screen if you are using a 21:9 display. Because the environments scrolled and extended past the sides of the 4:3 original screen, there were more art pieces to use in certain places. It's amazing to see this old 4:3 title in ultrawide. Steam Deck can benefit from 16:10 support by regaining some of the vertical screen space that was lost when the original resolution was cropped.

You can even replace Final Fantasy 9’s card game Tetra Master with the more popular, less random Triple Triad of Final Fantasy 8, if you prefer. I want to be clear: If you do this, then we can't be friends.

Memoria appears to be still in active development. So even if Moguri's AI upgrade is the final update, it looks like Final Fantasy 9 mods will continue. If this pace continues, the modding community will have completely remade Final Fantasy 9 before Square Enix releases its long-rumored remake.