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As far as I know, the situation is something like this:
FF1/2/3 - The original NES code is gone - people just didn't keep stuff back then, really - but Namco Bandai did a pretty amazing job with their Wonderswan Color ports of FF1/2/3, and the code from the ports of 1/2 was used as a basis for the PSP, GBA and PS1 versions of those games.
FF4/5/6 - Status unknown. The GBA versions suggest that it isn't existent in entirety but more intact than many other games.
FF7 - Probably the worst state. Much of the CG background/cutscene work was outsourced to a Hong Kong company that closed mere months after FF7 shipped & didn't archive anything. Square didn't archive much themselves, either.
FF8 - Similar straits to FF7 but a little better.
FF9 - For a while FF9 began life as a PS2 game as well, and then for a while there was an intention to port it, so many of its CG assets were generated at a higher resolution & presumably still exist.
Everything from 10 on exists in its entirety. In the late PS1 era Square began to understand the importance of archiving as they began to port older SNES-era games to PS1.
Here's the key thing: It's easier to reverse-engineer games like FF1-6, as nothing in that game is 'pre cooked' apart from the sprites, and sprite sheets can be adjusted or changed inexpensively. See the GBA ports - they didn't need sources too much because they could just reverse engineer final code. You could do this to FF7, too... for instance, fans have been doing this to the (old - not compatible with the new version) PC version of FF7 for years. The battle scenes are all 3D models, which are all stored raw on the disc, so it's easy to port in higher-polygon models and textures and make the game look pretty impressive for its age. That's no different from the reverse-engineering to make FF6 work on GBA, or FF1 look swanky with its ridiculous smooth sprites on PSP and Mobile. Here's an example, before and after, of what can be done tweaking FF7's battle scenes within the original 1998 PC release:
The problem is the CG backgrounds. In the case of 7 and 8, these only exist at the resolution they were originally rendered - a pitiful 320x240. That's it. The source files for these, the source renders, are lost. if they weren't, it'd be as simple as making them open in modern editing software & then exporting them at a higher resolution. That's impossible without the source. The same is true of the CG cutscenes. FFX features a lot of pre-rendered CG bits too, but when they came to do FF10 HD Remaster all they had to do was re-render them. That's sadly just not possible for FF7/FF8. This'll become obvious in the PS4 port of FF7, as it is on PC - they can force the battle sequences to run at whatever the 4:3 resolution equivalent of 1080p is, but the CG backgrounds in fields, and the cutscenes, will still be 320x240 flat images stretched. To recreate them would be prohibitively expensive.
So when people talk about lost source relating to FF7, it's this in particular they often mean. The CG stuff is gone.
FF1/2/3 - The original NES code is gone - people just didn't keep stuff back then, really - but Namco Bandai did a pretty amazing job with their Wonderswan Color ports of FF1/2/3, and the code from the ports of 1/2 was used as a basis for the PSP, GBA and PS1 versions of those games.
FF4/5/6 - Status unknown. The GBA versions suggest that it isn't existent in entirety but more intact than many other games.
FF7 - Probably the worst state. Much of the CG background/cutscene work was outsourced to a Hong Kong company that closed mere months after FF7 shipped & didn't archive anything. Square didn't archive much themselves, either.
FF8 - Similar straits to FF7 but a little better.
FF9 - For a while FF9 began life as a PS2 game as well, and then for a while there was an intention to port it, so many of its CG assets were generated at a higher resolution & presumably still exist.
Everything from 10 on exists in its entirety. In the late PS1 era Square began to understand the importance of archiving as they began to port older SNES-era games to PS1.
Here's the key thing: It's easier to reverse-engineer games like FF1-6, as nothing in that game is 'pre cooked' apart from the sprites, and sprite sheets can be adjusted or changed inexpensively. See the GBA ports - they didn't need sources too much because they could just reverse engineer final code. You could do this to FF7, too... for instance, fans have been doing this to the (old - not compatible with the new version) PC version of FF7 for years. The battle scenes are all 3D models, which are all stored raw on the disc, so it's easy to port in higher-polygon models and textures and make the game look pretty impressive for its age. That's no different from the reverse-engineering to make FF6 work on GBA, or FF1 look swanky with its ridiculous smooth sprites on PSP and Mobile. Here's an example, before and after, of what can be done tweaking FF7's battle scenes within the original 1998 PC release:
The problem is the CG backgrounds. In the case of 7 and 8, these only exist at the resolution they were originally rendered - a pitiful 320x240. That's it. The source files for these, the source renders, are lost. if they weren't, it'd be as simple as making them open in modern editing software & then exporting them at a higher resolution. That's impossible without the source. The same is true of the CG cutscenes. FFX features a lot of pre-rendered CG bits too, but when they came to do FF10 HD Remaster all they had to do was re-render them. That's sadly just not possible for FF7/FF8. This'll become obvious in the PS4 port of FF7, as it is on PC - they can force the battle sequences to run at whatever the 4:3 resolution equivalent of 1080p is, but the CG backgrounds in fields, and the cutscenes, will still be 320x240 flat images stretched. To recreate them would be prohibitively expensive.
So when people talk about lost source relating to FF7, it's this in particular they often mean. The CG stuff is gone.
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