CONNECT WITH US
Gaming

Gaming

Blue Dragon has been stuck on the Xbox 360 for 20 years, but no longer: a fantastic unofficial PC port unlocks the FPS, goes 4K, and even adds mod support

PC Gamer logo

Published on

Add as a preferred source on Google
Blue Dragon has been stuck on the Xbox 360 for 20 years, but no longer: a fantastic unofficial PC port unlocks the FPS, goes 4K, and even adds mod support

When Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi left Square Enix in the early 2000s, he started a new studio, Mistwalker, to keep making RPGs. For the last 20 years, every single one of his games with the exception of Fantasian has been stuck on one defunct console or another, never ported or re-released. And that's a shame, because some of them are great RPGs.

Or I should say it was a shame, until now—because as of Friday, Blue Dragon will be playable on PC thanks to a fan-made port that's likely far more impressive than an official release ever would've been.

re:Blue, a static recompilation of the Dragon Quest-inspired JRPG, follows in the footsteps of the unofficial Sonic Unleashed PC port that proved how effective fan-made ports can be. These projects cleverly translate the original game code to run natively on modern PCs, but don't include any of the original assets to avoid copyright issues.

This technique has proven so popular that it's inspired a wave of AI vibe-coded ports that don't take the time and care to thoroughly adapt the original game to PC. But in spite of that, the good projects—like the recent Zelda: Twilight Princess port—have made it one of the most exciting things happening in games right now.

"My standards have always been pretty high when it comes to this kind of stuff—I like to make quality products," says Tom, the programmer behind re:Blue as well as ReXGlue, a toolset meant to help developers create more recompilations of Xbox 360 games like Blue Dragon.


Source link
Related Topics:Gaming

Disclaimer

We strive to uphold the highest ethical standards in all of our reporting and coverage. We TheMorningPulse.fyi want to be transparent with our readers about any potential conflicts of interest that may arise in our work. It's possible that some of the investors we feature may have connections to other businesses, including competitors or companies we write about. However, we want to assure our readers that this will not have any impact on the integrity or impartiality of our reporting. We are committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news and information to our audience, and we will continue to uphold our ethics and principles in all of our work. Thank you for your trust and support.