A team of more than 50 professional game developers and artists has spent three years creating a fan remake demo of Final Fantasy IX, called Final Fantasy IX: Memoria Project, and now it is finally ready for the world to view in a 25-minute Unreal Engine 5 gameplay video. It’s a pretty incredible, ultra high-fidelity upgrade for the kingdom of Alexandria, with the player controlling Vivi as he waddles around interacting with various people, and there is even voice acting. There are also a variety of cinematic moments, from an introduction to Princess Garnet to a fireworks display. It’s pretty awe-inspiring and a great advertisement for the power of UE5.
Now, here’s the catch: You will probably never play this Final Fantasy IX: Memoria Project fan remake demo. The dev team offers the explicit disclaimer: “Memoria Project is a proof of concept and is not meant to be viewed as a playable product. We will never do anything to infringe upon Square Enix’s copyright.” In other words, this cool video and maybe some follow-up clips could be the closest you get to it. This was likely a necessary concession so that Square Enix would not shut it down.
Notably, there was a massive leak from Nvidia back in 2021 that yielded a huge list of unannounced games in development at various publishers, and most of the craziest things included in that list turned out to be real, like Kingdom Hearts IV and a remaster of Chrono Cross. One of the games included in the Nvidia leak was a Square Enix remake of Final Fantasy IX. That project has yet to be officially announced, but if it’s legitimately happening, that is another big reason why Square Enix would never, ever want the public to play Memoria Project.
While we wait for more on that, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is still on the way for sometime this winter.
