Square-Electronic Arts today confirmed with the press that those players with modified PlayStations will indeed be able to play the complete version of Final Fantasy VIII.
When SquareSoft released Final Fantasy VIII in Japan this spring, it encoded special software to recognize whether North American PlayStations were modified. If so, a black screen appeared and a red circle with a slash through it warned people that the software wouldn't work, as a protection scheme to prevent players from playing the Japanese game on a different system. Code hackers immediately found a way around this protection scheme, but the point was made: Buy the version of the game for the country you live in.
Although Square didn't give a reason, a good industry source explained that the same scheme would not work with the North American system the same way it worked with the Japanese system. Lucky for us Yanks, we guess…
