Final Fantasy 7's AI-upscaled graphics mod is now downloadable

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Final Fantasy 7 Remako hits Beta 0.1, while FF9's Moguri Memoria mod hits v5.

Final Fantasy 7's pre-rendered backgrounds looked pretty pixelated on the PC, upscaled from their original tiny resolution. But now you can make them look remarkably better with the FF7 Remako HD graphics mod, which is available to download as a beta today. "Using state of the art AI neural networks, this upscaling tries to emulate the detail the original renders would have had," writes the mod's author. "This helps the new visuals to come as close to a higher resolution re-rendering of the original as possible with current technology."

If you're wondering how that works: Last week I wrote about how modders are using neural networks to more intelligently upscale images, to great effect with the low-res backgrounds featured in old PS1 games. The upscaled images aren't magically perfect—there's naturally some lost detail and some bluriness when you quadruple the size of an image, but this technique does a remarkable job of preserving the style of the original work while getting rid of the pixelation. Check out the video above for some comparisons.

According to the Remako Mod's author, all the backgrounds in FF7 have been converted, but it hasn't been fully checked over. Some graphical oddities will likely crop up here and there, hence the beta release.

A similar mod for Final Fantasy 9, Moguri Memoria, is likewise a work-in-progress. Its latest release, v5, is available here.

Wes Fenlon
Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.


When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).