I was playing upscaled PS1 games on the PS2, which were still superior to the first couple of years of PS2 games.
Put the pipe down, son.
Final Fantasy had up until that point with 7 and 8 appealed to the mass market with a lot of eye candy. Those games were typically the prettiest things on the PS1, with some fairly impressive CGI cutscenes in an era where those things still mattered.
9 unfortunately was a victim of bad timing. Not only was that game launched a few short months before the highly anticipated PS2, but it launched almost a year AFTER the Dreamcast- by the time FF9 launched, game media and the casual market had long since moved on to next gen games like Soul Calibur, Shenmue, Dead or Alive, Jet Set Radio, Space Channel 5, Sonic Adventure, Skies of Arcadia, etc.
FF9 was NEVER going to draw a second look from the crowd chasing the latest and greatest. The PS1 was old news. It's a miracle and a testament to the quality of the game (it's probably the best of the PS1 FFs from a story and mechanics standpoint, graphics aside) that it sold the 5 million or so copies that it did.