Grandia HD collection video and information

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=rLSa-WNhGPQ

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The outlet also spoke to GungHo Online Entertainment America director of game publishing Takeshi Minagawa, who offered the following tidbits of information:

Grandia HD Collection will be available “very soon,” but Minagawa would not provide a release date or more specific window.
When asked if there are plans for a physical release, Minagawa said, “Not at all.” It will be a digital-only release.
When asked if GungHo Online Entertainment would consider releasing a PlayStation 4 version, Minagawa said, “We’ll think about it, but we felt the Switch was the console platform best suited for JRPGs, and we are first focused on release for Nintendo Switch and PC.”
The code for Grandia is based on the original PlayStation version.
The ports are being handled by Sickhead Games.
GungHo Online Entertainment touched up as many art assets as possible. Most of the user interface received a complete overhaul, aside from a few menu digits that could not be replaced. There is no option to use the original sprites.
In the E3 2019 show floor demo of Grandia HD Collection, the battle ability voices were in English despite selecting Japanese voice-overs.
The audio quality will remain the same as the original PlayStation version, and no additional elements are being added to Grandia.
Asked about a potential Grandia III remaster, Minagawa said, “I cannot say. The history with Grandia III is so complicated—who distributed it, who published it, who actually has the rights. If you really want to ask that question, you’d have to go ask [original developer] Game Arts first.”

Grandia HD Collection will be released for Switch, and Grandia HD Remaster will be released for PC. Grandia II HD Remaster is already available for PC. Read more about the collection here.

Watch the footage below. View the screenshots at the gallery.

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https://gematsu.com/2019/06/grandia-...mation-tidbits




Based on the PS1 version.....for fuck's sake why..... While you're at it just base Grandia II off the PS2 version. It's a letdown and the video does not look good. Still for someone who never played them this is the best way I guess. I do want more people to play these great games. Sad about no physical version but I kinda expected that. I have my originals at least. Yeah, I'm getting it regardless. I love Grandia/Grandia II to death so I have to.

Another crushing disappointment. Time to sell the Switch

Ew, it looks like they're using a softened version of the PS1 backgrounds rather than the higher-res Saturn ones. And no physical release? I agree, this totally crushed my hopes. I'll be saving for the Sega Genesis, Turbografx-16, and Neo Geo Minis. All can be purchased at the price of a single Switch and this game. At least I'll own them permanently. -_-

And BTW, this gives even more justification for the English Saturn translation being done by some of our members.

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Originally Posted by SegataS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=rLSa-WNhGPQ



https://gematsu.com/2019/06/grandia-...mation-tidbits




Based on the PS1 version.....for fuck's sake why..... While you're at it just base Grandia II off the PS2 version. It's a letdown and the video does not look good. Still for someone who never played them this is the best way I guess. I do want more people to play these great games. Sad about no physical version but I kinda expected that. I have my originals at least. Yeah, I'm getting it regardless. I love Grandia/Grandia II to death so I have to.

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I think it looks pretty decent but I'm gonna hazard a guess it was easy to work with the PS1's coding then the clusterfuck of the Saturn's.

The camera during the battle scenes looks janky as hell. Incoming motion sickness!

Yeah, I can tell by looking at it that it's 100% based on the PS1 version. Looking at this video here, you can see that they didn't event try to clean up Parm's floor, it's just as screwed up as the PS1 port, and building shadows are missing entirely:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iifvt7V7bBM

Oh and the issue of Japanese voices not showing up in Battle, that's because the Menu Graphics and Battle voices are stored in the same file, so if you just swap them out you'll get Japanese Voices with Japanese Menu graphics. Looks like they're too lazy to make a new file to use that has Japanese Voices + English Menu Graphics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFjqEexH0Tg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=638q-bDMh1I

This gives a look at both games.

https://i.imgur.com/yxRb4E1.png

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Originally Posted by SegataS

https://i.imgur.com/yxRb4E1.png

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From the footage they've released so far I'm seeing zero evidence of that. It's 100% identical to the Playstation version. So once again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFjqEexH0Tg

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Originally Posted by SegataS

https://i.imgur.com/yxRb4E1.png

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Utter lame PR no doubt after getting bad feedback, even the Battle transitions are straight from the PS version.

What are the main difference between the 2 versions? I haven't played the Saturn one in years and I got about 40 hours in and stopped do the language barrier and went over to the PSx version.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

From the footage they've released so far I'm seeing zero evidence of that. It's 100% identical to the Playstation version. So once again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFjqEexH0Tg

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Where do you find these hilarious videos?

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Originally Posted by Da_Shocker

What are the main difference between the 2 versions? I haven't played the Saturn one in years and I got about 40 hours in and stopped do the language barrier and went over to the PSx version.

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More detail in environments. Shadows and such all removed from the PS1 version. Backgrounds were blurry on PS1. Alcohol was changed to coffee.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoactLpR29A

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Originally Posted by SegataS

More detail in environments. Shadows and such all removed from the PS1 version. Backgrounds were blurry on PS1. Alcohol was changed to coffee.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoactLpR29A

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Well that last bit is just an issue with translation, not porting.

But here's a rundown:

• Floors are done by VDP2 and are much higher quality with shadows and sometimes roads and paths being more logical in large towns.
• Due to VDP2 doing these floor layers and fog layers many special effect are missing or poorly recreated on PS1 (Water, fog, etc.)
• The Map Screen runs at a higher resolution and looks nicer
• Audio is ADX and is higher quality
• Battle screen backgrounds are twice the resolution on Saturn coming in at 512x512 vs the 256x256 of the PS1 version and they look much sharper.
• Most VDP2 based spell effects are missing entirely.
• FMVs technically run at a higher resolution but it's debatable if they're actually higher quality.
• The font has had it's resolution lowered in the PS1 version for both English and Japanese. As a result the Saturn font is cleaner and easier to read.

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Originally Posted by BonusKun

Where do you find these hilarious videos?

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Internet.

August 16th. No price was given.

I'm more interested in news about the translation of Saturn Grandia...

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At E3 2019, GungHo Online Entertainment kindly invited us to their private conference room for a gameplay demo and presentation for Grandia HD Collection coming to Switch. With the game coming out in a few days, we’ve rounded up all the important details and new information below that producer Takeshi Minagawa was able to share with us.

Here’s the full rundown:

Overall

– Dual pack of Grandia & Grandia II is exclusive to Switch.
– Steam will have both games up as separate purchases.
– French, German, English, Japanese text options available.
– New translation of French and German. Translated more than 1 million words across both games. Wish they could have added more languages, but time constraints restricted them.
– Audio language can be switched on the fly in the options menu.
– GungHo is working with Sickhead Games in Texas. Minagawa tells us it is a small team who are all extremely careful with the source material.
– 1080p.
– Minagawa’s personal favorite is Grandia.
– Minagawa said they do check online for fan feedback to see what players want.
– He knows some fans were not satisfied with the PS2 version of Grandia II.
– It was extremely important to Minagawa to pay respect to the original versions of the games, and he doesn’t want to disappoint fans. Trying to balance just the right amount of change in updating the games. He wants to satisfy those who want an updated version, and those who want to retain the original feeling.
– When prompted with the question if we could see Grandia III re-release or a new game in the Grandia series, Minagawa responded, “I’m not sure, but we’re working on it.”

Grandia

– Opening movie has been extended to fit 16:9 aspect ratio.
– All fonts, icons and character portraits have been updated.
– Sickhead Games had to extract the textures and update them all manually.
– Minagawa didn’t want to overwork the visuals too much; he wanted to retain the original feeling of the game.
– Based off of the Saturn version. Development had the Saturn version side-by-side with the new versions to give great care to the visuals.

Grandia II

– Based on the PC Anniversary Edition.
– Steam version will receive an update to put it on par with the Switch version.
– Movies and animations have been updated to 16:9 aspect ratio.
– Reworked everything they possibly could; some fonts were embedded in the PC programming itself, so they couldn’t access it.
– Environments, textures, icons, characters, etc. were all updated.
– They were still working on optimizing certain areas at the time like forests, which use a large amount of polygons.
– Some high level magic and attack animations in battle use a full movie and sprites, so the development team had to manually program everything to work in 16:9 aspect ratio.

Find some screenshots of Grandia HD Collection below

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https://nintendoeverything.com/grand...ction-details/

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Originally Posted by SegataS

– Sickhead Games had to extract the textures and update them all manually.

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So I'm guessing they extracted them from the Playstation version then. The PS1 version uses standard TIM textures and are rather easy to extract from the files. Saturn's are instead VDP2 tile maps that are palette based. While they're not hard to get out, there aren't as many easy to use tools out there for extracting them, while PS1 TIM extractors are a dime a dozen. Which would explain why the battle backgrounds look like the PS1 version and the floor textures are like the PS1 version.

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Originally Posted by SegataS

– Based off of the Saturn version. Development had the Saturn version side-by-side with the new versions to give great care to the visuals.

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Unless they've changed it dramatically in the past month, I'm calling bullshit on this. All footage they've shown so far points to it being a 1:1 port of the PS1 version.

Agreed. I was going to buy this day 1 but it's sounding like a letdown. I will wait for a sale. Use that spare 20$ I had this month for MUA3 DLC instead.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

Unless they've changed it dramatically in the past month, I'm calling bullshit on this. All footage they've shown so far points to it being a 1:1 port of the PS1 version.

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Its either bullsh8t or a typo by Nintendo everything. Even the battle transitions are straight for the PS version

So when do we get the community hack for Saturn assets?

40 fucking dollars!

What the fuck?! Really?! If Physical I'd bite but digital? Fuck off! That shit better be 50% off before I buy this then.

We're getting close to black Friday, it might just be half off then. I can wait also. Getting it physical for sure myself. Very excited about this.

There is no physical version happening sadly.

wait, after all these "great" news, it's even digital only?

Si.

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Originally Posted by Virtua Hunter

wait, after all these "great" news, it's even digital only?

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The news just gets better, it is the PS version. Think I'll stick with the Saturn and DC classics.
What a joke

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Originally Posted by SegataS

There is no physical version happening sadly.

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Oh damn
Too bad.


Enter: Limited Run Games or Play Asia :rock:

I'm going to rub on the grain here and say that while there is no physical version of the game, I think the $40.00 price tag for two amazing RPGs is worth the price of admission. I've been playing it all night last night and hadn't put it down once. Mind you while I finished the Saturn version and played it on the original PlayStation, I can see where a lot of the improvement to the game was done. It's still blowing my mind at the 100% non-existent load times for one thing.

Overall where I can see some areas where things could have been done better, I really have no complaints. I feel while some of you guys are seriously over-complaining about some of this but, I can also see where you're coming from as well seeing this is also one of my favorite RPG series.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it about a close to an 8 as possible. The fact I can get the Japanese Audio with English text was a huge win for me. lol

https://twitter.com/obskyr/status/1162491796292853761

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Originally Posted by Zebbe

https://twitter.com/obskyr/status/1162491796292853761

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I'm sure they can patch that easy enough but that's hilarious.

Yeah, I'm paying for a digital copy of games that I already own. I still have my CRTs, so there isn't a need for an HD upgrade.

I admit while I'm not a fan of LR, I'd dip on it for a physical version of this collection.

So it does look like since the E3 build that they did go back and replace the upscaled PS1 Battle Backgrounds with upscaled Saturn Battle Backgrounds. Though that looks to be the only bit they pulled from the Saturn version save for a few sound effects here and there. The rest is all PS1.

Just an update. I got an email confirmation for my physical copy of the game yesterday. The thing is a friend of mine ordered one for me as a gift so I'm going to have two copies of this soon enough. If anyone might be interested in this for the cost of the game with S&H let me know.