Blue Dragon Escapes Xbox 360 Exclusivity With Fan-Made PC Port
Blue Dragon—Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi’s first RPG after leaving Square Enix—is finally free from the Xbox 360, thanks to a fan-made PC port.
Last year, a fan-made PC port of Sonic Unleashed helped open the floodgates for native PC versions of Xbox 360 games through the new XenonRecomp tool. Although I had mainly hoped the tool would be used to port WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2007—which, surprisingly, did happen—others were likely eager to see two of the Xbox 360’s biggest RPGs from the creator of Final Fantasy reach PC: Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon. Sakaguchi previously said he was not particularly interested in bringing either game to modern platforms.
Sakaguchi left Square in 2001 following the box-office failure of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. In 2006, he returned with his first new RPG, Blue Dragon. The game reunited Sakaguchi with Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu and enlisted another RPG legend: Dragon Quest artist and Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama. This classic can now finally be played on PC.
What the re:Blue PC Port Offers
As reported by PC Gamer, re:Blue is a fan-made PC port of Blue Dragon released earlier this month. It allows owners of the original Xbox 360 game—which remains available through the Xbox Store—to dump their game files and play an enhanced version on PC.
- Support for multiple aspect ratios
- 4K visuals
- Keyboard and mouse support
- Frame rates of up to 120fps
- Access to in-game achievements, including new achievements created specifically for the port
Although Blue Dragon has technically remained playable through backward compatibility on Xbox consoles for 20 years, this PC port gives more people an opportunity to experience one of the Xbox 360’s earliest crown jewels in the form it has long deserved. It is an important piece of Final Fantasy history. Lost Odyssey should be next.
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