Square Enix Scoured Fansites to Find Original Final Fantasy Tactics Source Code

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Key points
- Square Enix developers had to scour fan websites to look for the game’s original source code.
- According to them, they had to do this due to the original source code of Final Fantasy Tactics being essentially lost.
- Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles will be released on Sept. 30, 2025.
The development team behind Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles mentioned at PAX West 2025 that they had to look at fan websites in order to look for data there “because we know you guys do such a good job of keeping all of that up to date.”
The developers also highlighted that the main reason the source code was considered lost is due to the fact that it was overwritten over and over when they translated the game into English. When it needed to be ported to another language, they overwrote the code, which led to it being overwritten a bunch of times, and the original being “lost.”
Due to that, they had to go on a journey just to look for the source code that they felt was closest to the original. According to them, they used whatever resources that was available to them, paired with scouring different fan websites.
The developers also pointed out that while Final Fantasy Tactics has been ported to smartphones, PSP and other consoles, each of them had their own fine-tuning, which actually made it harder for them to search for the original source code.
Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles is a remaster of the original Final Fantasy Tactics game, which was released back in 1997. It will be available on Sept. 30, 2025, for the PC, PlayStation 4 & 5, Nintendo Switch & Switch 2 and Xbox Series X|S.