A Gamer Looks At 40
An exploration of the history of video games told through the stories of the every day people who lived it. Join me along with a rotating cast of friends, family, gaming journalists, and industry types as we share personal recollections from the last thirty years of gaming, one story at a time.
A Gamer Looks At 40
Ep 97 - Final Fantasy 1: An Enduring Saga (Part 1)
When Final Fantasy hit North American shores in 1990, it sparked an RPG revolution in the West. Gamers like myself and many of my friends fell in love with the interesting mechanics, player expression, and overarching story.
These days, Final Fantasy 1 feels like a relic of an era gone by. As a cultural artifact, it's significant but whether it's worth playing, even on the spiffy new re-masters, is under debate.
But not on this podcast. Join over a dozen of my friends and fellow Final Fantasy fans and I as we discuss our first time playing the title, the mechanics, and the lasting legacy of a game that's more than worth visiting, even if it's for the first time.
STARRING (all handles from Twitter)
Aiden Moher (@adribbleofink)
Barry Carenza of Premium Edition Games (@HawkHellfire)
@Dancarnate
Greg Sewart of the Player One Podcast and Generation 16 (@sewart)
J.R. Sommerfeldt (@sommerfeldt_r)
Jody aka (@bakuiel)
John Trenbeath (@crazyjohnt)
Julian Titus (@julian_titus) of The Stage Select Podcast (@StageSelectPod)
Kyle of the The RPG Podcast (@TheRPGPodcast)
Matt of the Backlog Busters (@skinnymattk)
Mekel Kasanova (@MekelKasanova)
Mike aka MageORage on Twitch and YouTube (@mageorage)
Nate McLellan (@natedoescomedy79 on TikTok)
Ryan aka @GameswCoffee
Wade aka (@ProfNoctis)
SONG COVERS
Final Fantasy 1 - Town Theme (Nes Acoustic Classical Guitar Fingerstyle Music Tabs Cover) by Jonas Lefvert - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpJ7j8M6dtw
Final Fantasy 1 - Chaos Temple (Acoustic Classical Fingerstyle Guitar Cover Music Theme Tabs) by Jonas Lefvert - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9jZXqPPbt0
Final Fantasy - "Opening Theme" 【Metal Guitar Cover] by Ferdk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5-T3nPBG3Y
Final Fantasy: Main Theme (String Quartet) - ft. Israfelcello by Patti Rudisill - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii3IEp4UiL8
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I didn't grow up an explorer. Due to the realities of where I lived on the doorstep of Newark, New Jersey, my parents didn't allow me to roam the streets as a kid. My wife, who grew up in Iowa, has memories of playing all day outside only to return when the streetlights popped on. Like this idyllic Americana cranky old people like me complain about when we talk about play dates and things of that nature. I was allowed to go up and down the street, a total of three blocks on my bike. And that was it. So rather than adventures in the world, I explored virtually through video games. When I got my NES in 1987, I could suddenly race around the country in Rad Racer, save the princess in The Legend of Zelda, and play baseball without the fear of being made fun of by my peers if I struck out. My television was a safe place to grow up. Final Fantasy on the NES was a formative game in my evolution as a person. Not only did it open me to a massive quest with seemingly limitless potential, it allowed me to grow with my characters and identify with them on a personal level. It was the first fantasy fiction I had ever ingested and the first sci -fi I ever tasted all served on the platter I could play, control and experience. Not surprisingly, my experiences are not unique. On this episode of A Gamer Looks at 40, we deep dive into the original Final Fantasy on the Nintendo Entertainment System. In part one, over a dozen guests share their origin stories with the game. some like me on the NES and others further down the timeline in a re -release or remaster. And then later in the episode, we're going to touch on the freedom Final Fantasy provided, some of the gameplay elements and the titles notorious difficulty. Time to choose our classes, name our characters and embark on our groundbreaking adventure as we begin episode 97, Final Fantasy 1 and Enduring Saga. Part 1. start off our exhaustive exploration of the original Final Fantasy, we're going to talk back in the day. Let's join Julian of the Stage Select podcast, followed by Mike of Major Rage TV on Twitch and YouTube, Wade, AKA Professor Noctis on nearly anything that plays a video, and then finally, JR Sommerfeldt of thepixels .com as they share their first impressions from so many years ago. So Julian Manott, The first question is really the most basic, but I guess that'll be a good launching pad for what we'll be discussing. What was your first touch base with the Final Fantasy series? One, baby. One, right from the beginning, huh? Cool, man. It's actually kind of a funny story. Go for it. So, and I think I might have mentioned this in a previous A Gamer Looks at 40, but I grew up in a relatively strict household, and my father... hates fat people and he was afraid that if I got to play video games at home that I would become fat. Turns out I just became fat because genetics. But I so I wasn't allowed to have like a console for a very long time. But I absorbed everything that I could because as soon as I got my hands on video games for the first time, it was like, oh, oh, you know, and yeah, I remember going back to visit. We went back to Steubenville, Ohio to visit like my grandparents and stuff. And I went to go see my friends, Colby and Zach. And they had like a pretty big Nintendo collection for the time. And I remember just looking at his shelf of games and just like seeing what I wanted to play. For some reason, I was by myself at this point. I don't know why. And the cover for Final Fantasy just kind of stood out. I mean, that art for the Nintendo version is just really pretty. And so I popped it in and I was kind of messing around with it. And like, almost messed up his save. He was actually like, I think trying to like, he was like at Tiamat. Like it was in that dungeon. And so he was like, Oh no, what are you doing? But it was just enough of a taste that when later on. And so here's where my memory gets a little fuzzy because I did get a Nintendo, but it was like after the Super Nintendo came out. So I do remember renting Final Fantasy 1 for the first time, but I think we actually rented Final Fantasy 2 slash 4 for the Super Nintendo at my cousin's house because I recognized the name. I was like, oh, hey, this will probably be interesting because I liked the five minutes that I played of it on the Nintendo. Interesting. And so we rented that and that was it. Like from that point on, any time that I would visit my cousin, he lived in Corpus, I lived in Austin. And so I would, you know, spend like a week at his house, you know, during the summer and stuff like that. Every time that I would go visit after that, we would rent Final Fantasy 2 and just start a new game and just see how far we could get. I didn't finish that game for years. And it sounds like you wouldn't if you had started a new game every single time. That's really funny. So you probably so you you had a taste. So Final Fantasy 1 sounds like it was your the taste. Like, oh, I got a little bit of this. I like this. And then Final Fantasy 2 or 4 as we all came to know it as, that was when you were hooked. But you didn't own it right out, it sounds like. It sounds like you were still the renting or borrowing, right? Or at your friends' house. Not for a long time. So, like I said, I got my Nintendo after the Super Nintendo came out. And I do remember renting Final Fantasy 1 and could not get past the Marsh Cave, which is really the first real dungeon of the first game. Cause just, you know, I mean, have no idea what I'm doing. Don't really understand that, you know, the concept of leveling and all that stuff. But there was something about it. And I think part of it is like the sprites were so big, right? Like it was a very graphically impressive game. The music was really cool. And there was just something about it where it was scratching like some part of my brain that I didn't quite realize. And... I would just start seeking out games like that, like, uh, from that point on, RPGs were my thing. Excellent excellent. No, it sounds great. What was your first touch point with Final Fantasy? Yeah, just your first I played the original I borrowed it from a friend in sixth grade and Play, uh Just it was brutal That version I I never made it past the Marsh Cave, I believe So I didn't The Marsh Cave is brutal. That is like a that is one of the big curves and I was like 12 And I think I just moved on to one of the newer entries. That's smart. Awesome, man. What about Final Fantasy caught your eye or intrigued you the first time you played that original game? Like, what about it caught you? Even though you didn't weren't able to complete it, it sounds like you at least made it to the Marsh Cave, which means you had some interest. I really like the job system. I enjoyed being able to set up my own custom party configuration. I had only played titles before where everybody was already, you know, a personality tied to the character, so it was a little bit like kind of the... the emptiness of the characters in the original Final Fantasy title allows for a lot of projection and roleplay, I feel like, and I feel like that's a big draw of that original title. Just kind of... it leaves some space for player insertion. So yeah, so that first Final Fantasy game you played, was it the original one on the NES or? So I played that and that was a less than serendipitous rental because I was too young to play it. And I got to the bridge and for some reason I clicked on a menu button and there's a number game that you can access at the beginning of the game. Yes. Do you remember this? So I got locked in that and I was like, well, I hate math. as a six -year -old. So I took it back, never played it again, and then Final Fantasy IV slash 2 in America came out. And yeah, that's all she wrote. That was the first one that I really... That was the one you really got into. So you got stuck on that weird... It's like a sliding puzzle game, if I'm mistaken. It is. I hate those things in real life. And so... Definitely wasn't gonna do it in a video game. There's no way I'm gonna do a video game about this. That's not gonna happen. Come on now. When it started out so interesting, it's like, okay, we've got these little characters with swords and stuff. I love that. And then you get number logged. And I was like, I am done. Can you get out of it? I don't even know if... Well, in my little, finite, five -year-old, six -year -old mind, I couldn't. And so, like, now I can get out of it and get into it no problem. But you shouldn't be a pro gamer to have to... play the game right it's so funny i can't you just brought up that crazy memory and i don't know what that does i think it gets you something does it get you anything it has to do something i need to look this up i've never i've never beaten it so i don't know i'm out never to touch it again um i've played final fantasy i never touched the number side of it so i guess i've never platinumed it love it love it So kind of goes well about Final Fantasy just in general maybe. So what was the Final Fantasy 6 your first experience with Final Fantasy? No, Final Fantasy 1 was. Wow, okay. So yeah, what's your take on Final Fantasy 1? I'd love to hear some of your experience with it. The original Final Fantasy 1 came out when I was probably seven. I was like six or seven. So I saw it, Nintendo Power, of course. You know, and it was like, wow, that's neat. You can like go on this grand adventure and find dragons and airships and stuff like that. You know, in quotations, much later in the game. So what we did is we went to Blockbuster and rented it, of course, because that's what you did back then. And I remember playing up until about the Dark Elf. because you know, I've been playing, I don't think I even got to Lich yet. I got to the Dark Elf and I was like, this is so just monotonous. Like it's just, there's just, there's so much. Take a couple steps, get into a fight. Take a couple steps, get into a fight. All your players die. Then you get - it was just like, it was - for a seven year old, I had - on the NES, I had a really hard time kind of connecting with that. Continuing our trip in the way back machine is Dan carnet followed by Barry Karenza of premium edition games Greg Stewart of the player one podcast and generation 16 series of videos and then John aka beat Crohn's on Twitch and crazy John T on YouTube. Okay. Well my entry point with the series was the original one on the NES. You know growing up in the in the 80s. It definitely, we would go to the local video shop and look at the different games and stuff to see what I could rent. Every now and again, my dad would rent something because of Monday night, he would rent me a game for Monday night football. So I would basically leave him alone to watch football. And I saw this one that had like a little axe and sword and stuff on the front. And I was like, that looks cool. So I get it. And... Yeah, it was it was nothing like really that I had played much before You know my original like JRPG an introduction was was Dragon Warrior from a neighbor But you know, this is the first time where I had to I had the choice I had to I had to choose like who's gonna be in this party and Even harder even a more difficult choices. What are their names gonna be? Do you remember how it felt when you first? started off Final Fantasy and started playing it because you coming from Dragon Warrior had a very specific style. Why was it like a traditional of the time role playing RPG style? Final Fantasy is very different in a lot of the ways you just stated. What was your kind of your first take on it when you first popped it in? I felt like, you know, I was, I was, I'd say enthralled by the soundtrack first off. I'm a huge sucker for music. And we'll talk more about that as we get into some of the later entries as to really why that ends up going. But with Final Fantasy I, the soundtrack got me the lush greenery. And then seeing when I saw the back of the box, I believe at the back of the box had a picture of the Sahagin fight when you get the boat. And I believe it had a picture of that seeing how many enemies there were at the same time. And I just thought that that was just, I was like, this is chaos. There's so many enemies. Cause I came from Dragon Warrior. You only fought one enemy at a time. It was one. Final Fantasy, the very first time I experienced Final Fantasy was on the NES with Final Fantasy 1. None of my friends had it. I got an NES late. I got an NES in 1994, Christmas in 1994. So very, very late. I was in sixth grade at the time. And my dad took me to Toys R Us. And at this point, they had very few NES games left. Like it was... And that just happened to be one of them, Final Fantasy, because it came out later. So it looked cool, you know, back then, you know, judged by the box. I didn't have a Nintendo Power subscription, so I was trying. And it was different. It was unlike anything because prior to that, it was mostly text adventures that I played like on the Atari. You know, I hadn't really done an RPG like this and it was something surreal and it kicked my butt. And I was like, oh, you know, I would have the manual, the big manual. I had the pullout map with all the enemies. And like, I had that laid out in my floor and I'm like, I'm going to do this. And I would sit home every day. I would come home from school and I would just work on it slowly because the first Final Fantasy is very archaic by today's standard. It is very, very archaic. It's hard to go back and play. So there was a lot more strategy than you needed. You had to plan attacks first. You know, if a character died, you better get yourself back out of that dungeon and go back to raise them. It was grueling, but it was rewarding. And the funny thing is, after I played Final Fantasy, my uncle took me to a store and they just had some games by the kiosk. Not the kiosk, but the cashier. Like, you know, just here it is. And they had a couple of games really cheap and one of them was a game called Dragon Warrior. It was like five bucks. So my uncle was like, here, I'll buy it for you. And I took it home and I played it and I'm like, this is a Final Fantasy knockoff. What is this? Little did I know Dragon Warrior or Dragon Quest came before Final Fantasy. But in my mind, it was like, oh, I experienced Final Fantasy first. It was pretty funny. I love that. I love that. I love that you got it and you experienced it. And it was something it was unlike anything you'd experienced before. Because if you have no I can't imagine now I had the power Nintendo power. So I kind of knew what I was getting into a little bit, based on like screenshots and the articles, but I can't imagine just popping that in. There's no warning. The manual for Final Fantasy is impressive. It's like 82 pages. I think I looked at the PDF the other day doing one of these and it has like half the game, a walkthrough, where it really does kind of walk you through half the game, which is great. Because if you just do that with, I can't imagine renting that game. Can you imagine renting Final Fantasy 1 with no manual, turning it on? But you know what? Here's the thing. I mean, back then, that's how we played games. I mean, The Legend of Zelda, you know, it had a map and it had just the beginning portion of the map and it had, you know, some information in the manual, but it was you pop it in and you just explored and you played. And the same thing with Final Fantasy 1. You know, you were, where do I go? Oh, and what I loved about Final Fantasy 1 is it set you up with Princess Sarah has been captured. You need to go rescue her from Garland and you're like, Oh, I'm going on this epic quest. And then you go right to Garland's lair and you're like, wow, this was easy. And then, you know, you all now go north and you cross the bridge and then the title screen happens. You're like, wow, like that was just the beginning. Yes, it's amazing. That beginning, that beginning moment with. With again, after you go through that first area, Garland, you get the basic tropes of an adventure game like that. Once you get that title screen, the official title screen, I remember being like, let's go, this is it. I am in, what is happening? It's a very bold move for a game to kind of put you in that scenario, in that situation. I love that. That's really cool. It definitely circumvented all my expectations and it dominated my after school time for quite a bit. I love it. which is where we always went and they had a Toys R Us. And my brother and I, we didn't have a Toys R Us back home in Halifax. And my brother and I, we used to love to go to Toys R Us and just stare at the video game wall. And we'd normally buy ourselves a video game, right? Or me more than him, because I was more into games than he was. So that was the game that I wanted to buy that year, Final Fantasy. So I bought it at the Portland mall, Toys R Us, and then had to wait until we... ended our vacation and drove back home before I actually got to play it. So I remember there was a small strategy guide as part of the pack -in material as well as maps. I think there was a world map and there was like a bestiary on the other side of it. I had that thing committed to memory before I ever turned that game on for the first time. Because you had it all through your vacation, so you're probably poring over it. Oh, just staring at it. I think the original manual had that guide and it takes you through the first two. I think it takes you up into the point where your characters evolve into warriors and whatever, and wizards, I think. I had the same thing and I poured through that manual like crazy. That thing is probably in tatters somewhere, in a drawer somewhere. I distinctly remember that. favorite game on the NES is Final Fantasy 1. Interesting. I love that. It just hit all those right buttons for me. I loved like Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer and like Beast Master and like all those, you know, sword and sorcery movies from the 80s. Like that just gelled with me a lot. I love the movie Krull. for all the Krull fans out there, all five of us. You know, early Liam Neeson there and Hagrid. I can't think of that guy's name. Robbie Coltrane? Is that it? Who played Hagrid? I'm not 100 % off time ahead, but. Yeah, anyway, he's in it too. And a bunch of other people that no one knows. And so that mixed with the soundtrack just really was magical to me. and it was the first and only game that I was so proud of beating. I had my mom take a picture of me next to the screen and I was gonna send it into Nintendo Power and I never did. If I can find, I think I still have that picture somewhere. I will take a picture of it and I will send it to you if I would be so good. If you can find that, that would be amazing. I would be so good. I love that. I love that. I mean, to me, it was such an accomplishment. I felt like that was like I've been a bunch of games at that point, but I really felt like I accomplished something beating Final Fantasy the first time. I think I had a party of fighter red wizard, black wizard, white wizard. I think that was my party. And of course, I've played it. countless times since then. And just about any time I can play a new iteration of it. I'm all about it. But not all of my guests are, well, old like me. Some of these Youngbloods first experienced Final Fantasy in one of its many remakes, re -releases, and remasters. Let's join Julian, content creator Michele Casanova, and then Jody aka Bakwael on Twitter as they share those first impressions. and then you first played four, then you played six. When did you finally go back to Final Fantasy I and play it properly on the NES, if you did? Well, besides that rental, it would have been years later. I've actually never finished the original Nintendo version of Final Fantasy I. Really? Okay. I own it, and I've owned it a few times, but a lot of what stops me from wanting to... Attempted is the hardware itself is I always I'm always scared of accidentally deleting my data because the chair You know the cartridge was like it didn't it didn't fire up that time and so you take it out to like kind of I mean, I know you shouldn't blow on it, but I also do the thing for art for the top for the the front loader system where you kind of just like Barely leave like a lip of the cartridge like kind of jutting out and then you kind of force it down and that Yeah. So I'm always worried that like one of those times it's just going to be like, oh, your data is gone. And like I that that that game is already so tough that I just couldn't deal with it. I I want to play it on the Nintendo Classic because I do own that console and it's on there. But like I I probably, you know, I wouldn't have bought it until I was working at Game Fellows and I was like, oh, hey, like Final Fantasy one. Sure, I'll buy that. I think I messed around with it a little bit, but by that point, you know, like we're well into PlayStation days. So it was more of like, oh, this is this is cute. This is neat. You know, yeah, exactly. Little diversion. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't I didn't finish Final Fantasy one for the first time until the Origins version on PS1. And I played through that a couple of times and I played through the Dawn of Souls version a couple of times on the GBA. And I've played it on mobile. So I've gone through the game quite a few times, but never that that original one, which. is extra brutal. So the first time I touched Final Fantasy one, I want to say I did that 97. I want to say it was 97 and that was right, right after I beat Final Fantasy seven. I was like, okay, I need to dive more into some of the older, cause I remember reading, I think it was Game Pro magazine. One of the, um, where they're, you know, they were doing like an article on like the history of Final Fantasy and they did one, two, three. Then seven and I was like, wait, that math ain't math and right. So I'm like, all right, let me go see. And then I was like, oh wait, we do have Final Fantasy one. You know, my brother's had it. So I went and popped into NES and I was like, yeah, this is a little rough, but okay, I played it. And I'm like, it was, it wasn't bad. It was just by the books. I guess at that point we'd reached a point where, You know, game story narrative. Everything was just, Oh, totally. Yeah. You know, astronomically beyond what it was. Yeah. Yes. But it was good. You know, it was grindy and I didn't mind how grindy it was because I'm like, Hey, it just means that I can perfect the battle system. And I can, I used to be the kid that would like, you know, I'd write down how much damage an attack does. And then when I would figure out how much HP a boss had, I would just sit there with my calculator and be like, okay, so I, this is how much they, How much HP they have this is how many times I need to hit them because I also would go on game FAQs or a game facts I know I'm gonna go ahead. Hey anymore. I Love it. I love it game facts. Yep still kicking. I know right in facts Yeah, I know so like I would go and like figure out how much HP and then calculate Okay, so this attack does this much damage on average and so if I do this X amount of times I can get here if I You know, if they hit me, they might do this much. I'm doing these calculations. I remember I was just sitting there with a pen pad and with the calculator. My mom came in. She's like, what? She's like, are you doing? Cause I hated math. So she came in and she, she looked at me doing that calculation for Final Fantasy one after I was looking up stuff on game FAQs. And she's like, are you doing this for schoolwork? I was like, no, no, I'm trying to figure out this, how I can go about doing this. to beat this boss and get here, how much I need to grind to get this amount of experience and such and such. And she's like, you hate math. I'm like, look, this isn't math. This is for all fancy. This is better than math. This is application of math. I don't like abstract math. Yeah, I don't need to know the cosine of one half. That doesn't mean anything. I need to know how many hit points I need to take down. you know, the lich in the Earth cave. Yeah, no, no, no, I totally get that. And I love the fact that you can also connect to some learning too, which I see that with my son. If he's like me, if he's not interested, he won't do it. And I'm the same way. If I have no interest in it, it's very hard for me to do it, to get myself to like, all right, come on, let's go do this thing. But if you put it into like a game or gamify it in some way, he's definitely more interested in it. And so following his natural paths of learning is really fun. And that sounds like what you were doing too. This isn't math, this is Final Fantasy, this is a game. And it's like, all right. So you played it on, so you tried it on original hardware. You popped it into an NES. You weren't messing around. You weren't doing Dawn of Souls on the Game Boy Advance or the Pixel Remasters with all the amenities. Did you finish it? Were you able to finish? I did I did. Wow. It was so crazy. So as a kid, I was a tinkerer, you know, we had the G .I. Joe toys and all that stuff. So I used to take the G .I. Joe toys and I'm gonna get around to back to Final Fantasy. That's fine. That's cool. This is all worse. Yeah. So I used to take them apart, you know, if I wanted them to have different outfits, put them on, you know, piece them together on the cart like that. So the NES we had wasn't working. I took it apart to try and fix it so I could play this game and I got it to work and My brothers and my mom and my dad came in there like what are you doing? I'm like, I gotta get this to work. They're like why it's old just Play something on your PlayStation or your Sega Saturn. I'm like, no We're talking Final Fantasy here Did they know you at that point like as soon as you said the words final and then fantasy we're like, oh then leave them to it leave my dad my dad my brothers did my mom didn't because You know, you know like when back in the day like how folks they were like super like religious with anything Gaming that I had like demons or devils or my mom was that type of person? mm -hmm, and she just couldn't keep me away from Final Fantasy and just RPGs in general because I was just so caught up in it so if I wanted to play an RPG and everyone knew He knew too, but everyone knew that if I wanted to play it you weren't gonna stop me and so with that I was able to like get that to work and then I started playing that and then after I beat that Then I started playing the Dragon Quest games. Mmm, cuz I was like, oh we got that too I mean and I get it Dragon Quest 1 Final Fantasy 1 Similarities sure um child fantasy. I kind of feel is better Final Fantasy 1. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Yeah, so like As far as Final Fantasy 1 I loved it very simple It but it works, you know, it's not a super long game and you can complete it compared to everything else now I mean, yeah fairly quickly memories dude. Before we got on together, you also wanted to share a quick story about Final Fantasy 1, the very first Final Fantasy. I have a lot of history with Final Fantasy, the first one. It was my first Final Fantasy, my first RPG. I played a little bit of Dragon Warrior at a friend's house, but really it was Final Fantasy was my first foray into it. And I'll get into it during the actual episode. But so I'd love to hear a bit about you. You have a story about Final Fantasy. I'd love to hear it. Yeah, so yeah, I was a Dragon Warrior kid. Dragon Warrior is the game I say has got me into JRPGs. And that was my love for a long time. And I still love RPGs in general. So. I remember in high school they were going on about the new Final Fantasies and one girl I went to school with had the Final Fantasy NES cartridge. So we traded Dragon Warrior for Final Fantasy. And I played it for a weekend and I enjoyed it, but then she wanted it back. So I never touched it again until I bought my first cell phone. I was around 23. I bought a BlackBerry Pearl, which is those red BlackBerrys. They had about half the size screen of a regular BlackBerry. And I had 50 megabytes of data. I remember that. Ah, yes. First time ever. 50 megabytes. Yeah, I could get my email on this thing, right? Yeah. And so I decided I was flicking through the apps that were on it and they had Final Fantasy, the first one. That's wild. That's wild. Yeah. So I, yeah, I bought it. I was 23. I spent a summer. It was my first summer I ever spent out of Newfoundland by myself. I spent it in Toronto for two months. I was up there doing a course and yeah. That's what I spent my spare time doing, was playing Final Fantasy. And I never, I didn't beat it all. I did beat Chaos because there was a save file that was after the four, why can't I remember what they're called, the four beasts. Yeah, the four elements, the elementals, yeah. The four elementals, right? Yeah. Like after that, there was a save file that had a knight, a ninja, a black, or not black belt, because that's the regular one, but his. bigger form. Yeah, it was the yeah, I just played this game too with the black belt. They called the monk in the newer games. It was never called master. That's right. Yes. Yes. Masters. Black belt is a master. Yes. And had a white mage, white wizard. That's what the same file had. But that's not how I played. I did. I actually still remember. So my name on Twitter is Baku Wheel. My fighter was Baku. Okay. My thief was Bade, which is still the name I use for thieves. Kulu was my black belt. And I had a black mage named Kale. Nice. Who has since become my shadow run character. Oh, cool. That's awesome. These characters actually still I base characters I make now for D &D off these four guys, the personalities I came up with for Final Fantasy. That's really cool. I love how you've kept this going all this time. That's really neat. Yeah. It meant that game meant a lot to me like even though I was in my 20s when I played it and I played lots of RPGs before there was just something about creating that team for hmm and Going through and I remember beating the vampire. I beat the Lich I beat Marloth or I think it's Marloth pronounced. Yeah, so yeah, they're the fire. No, Lich is it yeah fire And I beat I never beat cracker or Tiamat I got lost in the world. I could never find my way around well enough. It's so the TMI one is so ridiculous at that dungeon is Ridiculous, but yeah, and I've since played it on GBA and I have okay I don't think that's the best version honestly. I think that game's too easy Look yeah, if you get bored with that one whereas I never got bored with the old one Keeping the airship flying is comedian Nate McClellan, author and gaming journalist Aiden Mower, the one and only Games with Coffee, and then finally Kyle of the RPG show and Games My Mom Found. Yeah, so what was, let's start with one. When did you play one for the first time? That was in 2020. I played the Game Boy Advance version of that. The Adonis Souls? Yes. Nice. I tried. I tried playing the NES version, but I just I was like, I have to save it in in. I was like, I was like, I'm just going to get the one that has more convenience for me. Yeah, I got the first one was my my my my first one. I grew up with that one. That was my I started with the first and the NES. Oh, boy, is hard to go back to. I've tried. Oh, yeah. What what did you what was your take on the game when you played it? What was your? Kenny, what was your thoughts on like as an introductory, as the first game in the series? Like what was your kind of take on it? Honestly, I was blown away by like, and again, you know, maybe it was just the Dawn of Souls version, but just like the story in it, you know, where it was like, oh, this guy, Garland used to be in the King's army. He's kidnapped Princess Sarah. Like we have to go save Princess Sarah. And then just from there, like it just it builds up to like, OK, now we're fighting for fiends because chaos is using that to, you know, come back. Oh, crap. Killing the four fiends kind of let chaos come back in the past. So now we have to go into the past. Like I was I was very surprised at just how much how much it set the standard for Final Fantasy in terms of like. Medieval fantasy meets sci -fi because you go to like Tiamat's airship or whatever and that is like kind of like you're fighting robots Yeah, it's in space. It's literally in space. Yeah. Yep. So I was just like wow, that's that's Amazing, you know that they it wasn't just like I don't know. Here's like an ogre fight that thing Yeah, it starts that way But then of course it starts evolving and going further and further on. So I discovered Final Fantasy 1, 2, and 3 with the remakes. So Final Fantasy 1 and 2 on the Game Boy, Dawn of Souls, and then Final Fantasy 3 with the DS remake. I think Final Fantasy 1 is fascinating. I think the way, just like, especially when you look at it, in comparison to Dragon Quest, and you see Yuji Horii create a Dragon Quest, and Hironobu Sakaguchi went, let's do that too. And they had the same inspirations, but they went in very different directions. I think the fact that Final Fantasy from the very beginning, like Dragon Quest did this sort of like faux medieval super tropey story and world because Uji Horii felt like that was sort of exotic storytelling in Japan because he was creating for a Japanese audience the same way we might or Western creators might take Japanese tropes and be like, you know, spice up their spice up. I'm doing air quotes. They're by like. haphazardly throwing, you know, an Asian motif over top of that. So he went very traditional, I think it's fascinating that Final Fantasy implemented science fiction, like from the get -go, and they implemented like more cinematic storytelling in terms of like, you know, the opening scroll was dramatic. And then you have the time travel element and stuff. At the end, like the fact that it was already like from the get -go, playing with narrative structure was makes it really interesting. I find it, I find the original, Hard to play on the Nintendo, but I think the remakes are all fun The pixel remaster version is a great great way to experience a game like I think it is a really fun game and so much of that If I'm fancy experiences there already like it's wild to me how much it feels like a Final Fantasy game So Final Fantasy 1, you first played that, it sounds like you first played that on the PlayStation with the Origen series. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. How was it going from the PlayStation iteration 7, 8 to that term based on? Because I think that sounds like that was the first one you played of the original kind of 6. We'll call them like the pixel remaster, you know, the pixel era of Final Fantasy. The pixel era, yeah, that's right. Yeah, that was the first. OK. Fairly, fairly sure that was. What was your take on it? Yeah, go ahead, I'm sorry. I feel like I dabbled in original OG Final Fantasy, but that was, like, again, back when emulation was in its absolute infancy. And I don't remember the emulator I used for that, but it was an NES emulator that I was using. And I tried playing it, and I remember it was just, it was so clunky. I'm like, really? This was what Final Fantasy was back in the day? I couldn't wrap my mind around. I was like 14, 15, 16 years old during that time. So I was just like, okay, that's what it is. I put it down. Then I got Origins and then I think what really helped sell it to me was the updated graphical style. Gone were the blocky pixels, was nice, nice, smooth, streamlined sprite work. Backgrounds were nice and they took the... They fixed up a lot of the issues that were prevalent in the first Final Fantasy, such as automatically targeting the next enemy once the first enemy has been defeated. That sort of thing. That I felt like that was an important part. What's neat about Origins is that they had two difficulty modes on it. You had easy mode, which you can raise each character's level past 50. and you get more spell charges to use and stuff like that. So that made the game a lot more accessible when you start out. And then you have the, I guess what they call hard mode, which is standard Final Fantasy I, where you max out at 50, you max out at nine spell charges for your mages. And that's that. That's where you go from there. So yeah, so Final Fantasy I on Origins, that was kind of, that was interesting. I mean, it wasn't... Entirely forgettable, but I didn't understand the story back then and I could attribute that to age Because when I'm when I played so I mean I when I played you the og just recently those was a couple months back now I actually have it. I actually have a picture of it on my phone. I'm pretty sure it was about three months ago that I finished that I finished it off, right so I I'll look it up later. But three months ago, I finished off the OG, right? And this time around, I actually understood the story a lot more, because you know, you're old, like age, age begets wisdom and stuff. And I started to understand the whole time loop, the whole time loop plot device that, you know, that is pretty much prevalent throughout the entire series, the cycle, so to speak. Right, the cycle of the fiends coming back off Garland, dying and coming back over and over and over again. Now the world's stuck in this 2 ,000 year time loop. And it really opened my mind to it. I was like, okay, now you know what? I understand this game, I understand this story, and it has become a timeless classic in my eyes. Sure. The very first game. Yeah, it's definitely one of those games where I think playing it on the modern pixel remasters shaves off so many so many edges it almost makes it not as good as the originals because part of the originals was the insane challenge. Just the absolute. I played the first Final Fantasy game of its time like I played it on the NES when I was in second third grade and I you know those games were impossibly first Final Fantasy is an extremely hard game because it was just any as hard. It wasn't, it was just a pain in the neck. But I think when you play it nowadays, I always see it as a very interesting artifact to see what became of it. Like what grew from that seed is very interesting to me for the original Final Fantasy. Yeah, and that was pretty much the reason why I wanted to play the OG in the first place. I wanted to see just... I kind of wanted to peel back all of the layers that have accumulated over 30 years, 36 years, because let's face it, 1987, that's when Final Fantasy came out. I was born in 87, so it's as old as I am. Let's put it that way. Yeah. So I'm peeling back the 36 years of accumulated ideas and stripping it bare and just looking at it as the product of its time and really appreciating, yay, this is... This is where it kind of started out here. It says this was the final gambit for Hironobu Sakaguchi And you know what what a gambit was and what a risk what a risk and he paid off It was it's a it's a classic for a reason What's your take on Final Fantasy 1? I grew up with it. I was my first Final Fantasy game. I played it of its era. I was 8 or 9, I think, when it was released. So I'm curious what your take on it was when you played it for the first time. What's your take on 1? Yeah, so I did enjoy it, but it was at a clearly different time for me. Like I said, I was 19. I played a lot of the other games then. So for me, it was more of just a check mark on the list. Unfortunately, I did have a good time with it. It was kind of nice to see where the origins were. But at the end of the day, it wasn't as. I mean, it's not it's not a deep game. Like no, not trying to be mean to anyone or anything, but comparatively to the others, it was, it's just, you know, go to town acts, do mission Y level up, get some items, get your new spells and continue forward. Um, I liked that it was harder than a lot of the other games that I had played. Uh, that was pretty interesting. And I would say in ways, um, I did like the, the difficulty of one, two and three. does make me play some of the later games in a more difficult manner to make up for the lack of difficulty that the newer games have. Yeah, and I think if you play like final play one, two or three on the on the pixel remasters, you realize very quickly given modern updates like, you know, high potions and things of that nature. There's not much to Final Fantasy 1. A lot of that time, a lot of that wandering I remember as a kid was because I didn't know where I was going and I was constantly dying. That is very interesting, you put it that way. There's not a lot there. It's a good foundational game. And I love Final Fantasy 1 because it really shows the bones of what the series was going to become. And I think 2 and 3 do the same thing and they kind of culminate in 4, which is world class. as a world -class adventure. But yeah, so it's funny that you mentioned that it's like, there's not much there in Final Fantasy 1, which is probably why the early 8 -bit episodes of this show will likely be combined. I don't think I'm gonna do a full episode on two and a full episode on three. I don't think there's enough there to... Especially considering people didn't play it up its time, because it wasn't available here in the US. Just wanted to take a moment to thank my wonderful patrons for their, well, patronage. Starting it off with the aforementioned Greg Seward of the PlayerOne Podcast and Generation 16 series of videos, the Let's Play Princess, Tim Knowles, Seth Sergel of the All -In Podcast, Julian of the Stage Select Podcast, BT Gobbles, Games with Coffee Terry Canare, and the one and only, sensationally fabulous, and tender-hearted gentleman of leisure, Pete Harney. I kinda went all out for that one. If you'd like to join these wonderful people, go to patreon .com forward slash agamerlooksof4040. Check out the tiers and if anything strikes your fancy, please sign up today. Your patronage is always greatly appreciated and if not, tell a friend or leave a rating and review on your pod player of choice. However you choose to support agamerlooksof40, the feedback is always greatly appreciated. Back to the episode. Now it's one thing to pop in or install Final Fantasy and give it a try. It's quite another to play. To kick off our conversation about mechanics and gameplay, Major Rage followed by Skinny Matt of the Backlog Busters and then finally Dan Karnit returned to the show to utter one of the most frustrating words in the entire game. When you played the first Final Fantasy, What were some standout moments to you during that experience? And by the way, have you finished? Did you beat it since then after you started playing the other games? I've completed versions of it, yes. The PlayStation version. I want to go back and do the NES original when I can manage to do it on some original hardware. You're brave. I want to work on... You have to work around the attacking thin air mechanic where you will miss if your character acts after an enemy gets destroyed. And they're attacking the target that was destroyed already, they attacked the thin air. So you have to work around that, kind of get a feel for your party speed levels. And kind of work around all that stuff. And I enjoy the tactical aspect of those early titles like that. It's cool. It's cool. When I played the first Final Fantasy when I was nine, I think that's eight or nine. And so I played it when it was current, like when it came out in 1990, I guess I was 10 then. And I played it of its time originally. I don't think I knew what the word ineffective meant, but that word is now stapled to my brain because that's what it says when you hit the air, it just says ineffective. And that's how I think I learned that SAT word. through Final Fantasy. That's so funny you brought that up. That's such a good memory. I love that. So good. Is that why that word makes me so angry? Maybe. It's a terrifying word. Ineffective. That's what I'm telling you. We've been condition. Yes, we've been conditioned to loathe anything ineffective. That's just not good. Not a good situation. I'd love to hear your recollections of Final Fantasy 1. So you played it on the original NES, I'm assuming. Yes. And I attempted to go back to it on the NES classic. Hard to do. Hard to do. Yes, it is. There's major quality of life issues, but back when it came out, it was a different story. What was your impressions of it when it first came out? Well, it's one of those things like I remember. It's one of those ones where like my sister's boyfriend, he did eventually become my brother -in -law. But if I was watching him play it when he'd be over at our place, and I'd kind of help him and then eventually kind of recollect and redo what he did. The biggest thing I can think of right now is still odd to this day is one which people don't remember on those turn -based RPGs. You if you have three different imps, say you have two imps and a creep on the screen, you know... Your one guy's slated to attack the creep, but somebody else took him out. Your person's gonna attack at nothing and just totally waste a turn, which is just very hard to deal with, which I'm assuming they fixed that in the pixel remasters. I honestly don't know. Yeah, I just finished a pixel remaster a few weeks ago, a Final Fantasy one. I'm still waiting on my physical copy from Play Asia, because I ordered it through them, but they did, they're doing, they ship some out and then some come out with the next second print. If I ordered mine a day earlier, I would have got it on the first print. I just happened to get the first day on the second print, so I'm waiting on man. All right. They're really good. You'll be surprised how easy Final Fantasy 1 is with all the quality of life improvements. Yeah, cranking up that gold so you can actually buy your spells. Yes, you can actually buy them. And it's interesting, just to get out to Final Fantasy 1 a bit, the term they would use would be ineffective. That's right. Ineffective. I just remember they would swing it. Yep. I just remember watching them swinging their sword or the black belt using this fist and it's like, yep, and thank you. It's been a minute. Now it's fine. I played a lot of Final Fantasy one as a kid, so it's very much so ingrained in my brain. Do you remember what your party was? Who did you go out with? Who'd you roll out with? It's what everybody always rolled out with them. You had your warrior, you had your black and white mage and you had the black belt. Yep. That's how I rolled. People like to roll with thief. I was never a thief guy. I was always the black belt. The black belt just was a nice counter to the warrior. So he didn't he wasn't the gold sink. You didn't have the gold sink on the character. Yep. Exactly right. He just kind of hanged there and do his thing, especially when he they evolve. Yes. There was the rat's tail. All right. Is that what you get? It's a rat's tail for the dragon king or something. Yeah. Right. Wasn't it? I think it might be Bahamut. Yeah, I think you might be right. It's been a while. I remember. Yeah, I just remember chaos. kicking my ass many times when you learn oh it's actually completely random on how tough he is it's like always fun randomness in games So I was like, oh, man, this is crazy. And then I get it. I get into the game and I start playing it. And then you get the, you know, ineffective when you're trying to hit things because because it doesn't go to the next thing. So, I mean, I attribute a lot of things to RPGs. My ability to read and my ability to do basic math well. And that was one of the games that that really tested the math portion of that. I totally can see that. I absolutely can see. I saw I was playing Final Fantasy the original when I was in second grade is think I think is when I was playing it and I could definitely agree. I knew the word ineffective way before anybody else in my class with the exception of the one other kid Ramon I Banga. I remember into this day who also played Final Fantasy. We both knew ineffective very very well to this day when I play an RPG. I know it's not going to do that. I still. and tempted to make sure my party is gonna hit something, even though I know the games have evolved beyond that, I still will sometimes catch myself doing that, like, oh, I know I hit that guy, let me make sure this person hits this person. Yeah, just because ineffective would be in my brain. I think that that has like trained us to now, and it's why you hoard all your items. You always use the minimal amount of force that you need to get through a fight. Because what if you need that extra MP or what exactly is even though you're sitting on 99 ethers, you're still going to use you're still going to like, you know, at least when at least when I play, I'm a I'm a miser with it when it comes to RPGs. I try to totally spend nothing. Yeah. You never know. You never know when that that character or that you're going to need. 18 Megalixers. You never know. Yeah. Yeah. And then the times that you actually do end up needing them, you don't use them anyways because you're like, I might need them in a more like dire time. Now in the same vein as ineffective, Final Fantasy is known for its crushing difficulty, especially in the late stages of the game. To talk about this RPG's brutal challenge is Matt, followed by Julian, and then back we go. Yeah, I also remember chaos being just impossible, but I'm not beating it. It was. I learned like I remember when I finally beat it took like six or seven tries. Oh, yeah, and then you find out I that's what I found out I think it's in that might have been that guide because I had access to it at some point and It was like, yeah, it's completely random. Thanks Yeah, it's it's so brutal and you have to go through that whole insane dungeon over and over again You get the one part where it doesn't have like when you hit that one off hallway It's just every square is a random every square is an encounter. Yep. Yep Just just insanity just insanity. I don't know how we did it. I don't know. Oh But look how awesome it was when you were like, like, wow, you get to the town, you fight the pirate, you get the pirate ship. Yes. And you're like, wow, this is cool. You know, you have a canoe. And then once you get that airship, it's like, oh my God, this is huge. I think most of the versions of Final Fantasy 1 are pretty brutal. And I was thinking about this recently, actually before I played the Pixel Remaster, where that's really like for old RPGs and not just Final Fantasy, but your Dragon quests and your wizardries and all that type of stuff. That's really what you've got going for you, because they couldn't really like tell a big sweeping story and write these very compelling characters. And so they very much were like about resource management, right? Like Final Fantasy one is very much, all right, load up, set out, go on this adventure, go into this dungeon, get as far as you comfortably can before you're starting to limp, then limp all the way back, rest, resupply, go back in, but now you can go deeper because you're stronger. Maybe you get a little further, but not all the way. You got to get back out. You know, you got to do that a few times for each dungeon. Like that's really where the gameplay is. Um, And that pixel remaster just takes that right out. And so then you just left with the most boring experience you can possibly have playing a video game. There is nothing in the pixel remaster of Final Fantasy one that is compelling. It's just like, oh, yeah, OK, I'm just going to I'm just going to I'm just going to press the attack button and fly through it. And the menus go by really fast. And you can just, you know, put it on autopilot and they put high potions in. I was shocked. I was shocked. I was shocked when I saw ethers and high potions. Like ether? No, you can't have an ether in Final Fantasy 1. You run out of this stuff and you don't use it until the end. I was kind of beside myself when I saw that. There are certain things from the original version of Final Fantasy 1 that are just like kind of like limitations of their expertise at the time, right? Like... Having to buy a potion one at a time is just ridiculous, right? So that's a quality of life improvement that I would expect to see. But the game was not built around being able to completely refill your hit points or completely refill your magic or completely refill the entire party's everything, right? The game was not built around that. It just, it feels wrong. It makes it... It makes it a real cakewalk, especially at points where it's supposed. And again, it's kind of interesting because the original Final Fantasy, like you hit on, is extraordinarily hard. I mean, there is a section, I believe, in the fire, might be, I'm not sure if it was Earth Cave or the fire one, where every step you take, you fight a Giygas, I think it's called. There are some of those monsters. There's a couple places like that. Yeah. And so in the Pixel Remaster, it's just like, if you talk to, there's actually like a monster represented on the screen. If you talk to it, you get into a tough fight. But the whole point was that those hallways were supposed to teach you, this is the wrong way, right? Like you're not supposed to keep going down this road. Like if you keep going down this road, you will die. Where in the Pixel Remaster, it's like, yeah, whatever. Just like explore the whole thing. You don't care. It's fine. You're just gonna put it on automatic. You're gonna run. You can run in the game. It's so interesting how the Pixel remasters change that game. And I mean, I change it to more modern and it was, I guess, fine to play. But as you said, there's not much there to really enjoy because it's a very barebone story. Yes, but you only really get at the end. They just throw the whole ending at you. Yeah, they hold the whole entire story at you at the end. If you think the Dawn of Souls version is easy, because I've played that one too and finished it as well, the Pixel Remaster Final Fantasy is such a breeze. It's almost boring. That's why I held off on it. It's real boring. Let me blow your mind. There's high potions, there's ethers, there. Oh yeah, you can dance through that game and it's level super fast. Yeah, even have the phoenix down. Nope. No phoenix down. No, you had to go back. No high potions. Yeah. You got a cottage. I think I don't even know if they had cottages in the very original one. Yeah, tent. And I think it was a house. Oh, house. I think you might be right. Yeah, I think it was a house. Yeah. Yeah. But it even didn't give you everything. Like it just got back your spell slots. That's it. Yeah. I think the tent. And slot system. Yep. And that still persists in the Pixel remaster. But when you have an ether, like it's not a big deal. It's. It's really interesting. And again, Final Fantasy one, with all the difficulty stripped away, all the friction of just being in an old NES RPG, there's not much to it. There really isn't much. That's what I found. Because like just getting the hype of getting the next weapon is nothing when it isn't just super hard. Right. Right. Like I remember playing on the Blackberry. It was like you were sometimes like, OK, I'm judging. Do I go those two steps further? Or do I turn around now? Yeah. You've got to pick and choose because once you start going too far, no, it's just over. Like there's no coming back once you start dying. Yeah, it's really. Yeah. Because in those days too, because there are sections in Final Fantasy, I remember where I think it was in the either Earth or Fire Cavern, whatever, whatever it was, where there's a level where every step you take, there's a you fight a Giygas every step. That's the fire. I'm pretty sure that's in the volcano. Yeah. I remember that. That was. Ridiculous. Why would you do such a thing? And it's a gigas. They're not easy enemies. They don't do that. That's gone in the remaster. They strip that thing out. And I didn't know this back when I played, but none of the special weapons work in the original either. They're all broken. Oh, yeah. You're right. Not like the weir. Like this one's supposed to be at the weir buster. It doesn't work. Because the one on Blackberry was, as far as I could tell, a direct port. I don't think anything was improved in that game. It was just the Nintendo game. Yeah, I am doing my damnedest to search for Blackberry Final Fantasy games. I am having the hardest damn time. I'm even sure. I wonder if it was even official because Blackberry people could upload stuff. I wonder. I'm wondering if they somebody just took the NES ROM and stuck it on Blackberry and I ended up paying two dollars for it. I just I'm just I'm scouring and I'm trying to pay attention to you, obviously, and do this at the same time. So I'm sure I can figure it out, but. There are scant reports of this game that evidently was, it looks like this might've been the GBA version that was ported over, I don't know. Could've been unofficial, I don't know. GBA. Because the graphics weren't as good as the GBA ones. Interesting, so maybe it was just a, maybe who knows, maybe it was just a cracked version, but I think that's great that the old Blackberry played a version of Final Fantasy, and when you were in your 20s, you played it, that's cool, and you found a connection to it. And I love the fact that you've, maintain the usage of those characters in your role playing going forward. Like you maintain that. That's actually, I created them when I played the Nintendo one. I stuck those names for that one weekend I created them and just something about those characters stuck. Black Mage is still my favorite. I just love that Black Mage and it's probably why I fell in love with VV and Final Fantasy IX when I played it. Right, sure. Yeah, I mean that character design, the Black Mage is fantastic. Yeah, it's just, it's timeless. It's an absolutely timeless. And rendering. Of course, there was also 8 -bit theater, which I got into at the same time. For sure. Yep. Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, well, yeah. As we all did, as we all did, right, in those days. But yeah, man, I think that's a really cool story. I like the fact that Final Fantasy, for one weekend, got its hooks in you enough where, A, you were able to carry those characters forward, and then, you 15 or so years later, probably, you're playing it on your Blackberry. That's so funny. Next up, John, AKA B. Crohn's, and then finally, Greg Seward, return to continue our challenge conversation. Final Fantasy definitely feels streamlined. I think that's interesting. It's an iteration of what came before, because my frame of reference for Final Fantasy was Dragon Warrior. And again, I didn't play a lot of it as a kid. And again, I had the same story. Final Fantasy had the first one. I was nine, I think, or nine or 10, one of those. And I remember... thinking this was a leap from Dragon Warrior. Dragon Warrior seemed last gen compared to Final Fantasy I. So I think when you say that it's like streamlined, I think that's a big marker. Like they simplified, yet they kept complexity. Because Final Fantasy I is a hard game. It's not a cakewalk. Yeah, and I, you know, it's hard in a different way. It's not like Battletoads Hard or the first Ninja Turtles game or anything like that. It's, If you make the wrong choice during battle it can go very wrong very quickly Like oops, I just cast a harm spell on a bunch of enemies that aren't undead and I meant to heal my character not cast a spell that's gonna do nothing and now I'm dead so if you make those wrong choices either by accident or You think you're doing the right thing? But you end up not. It's still, you know, one of those things you got to kind of keep thinking like in a game of chess, you know, you got to know what are all the moves available to everyone that I can kind of start anticipating what it is I need to do. There's a lot of trial and error and I can see why that would be a turnoff for a lot of people. But I liked, OK, how do I beat these guys? How do I get out of this cave? You know, like the little uh, I guess there's not a whole lot of puzzles in the first final fantasy except for the The little number puzzle in the ship if you like hit the a and b button like 50 times or whatever the little slide puzzle What was the point of that thing by the way? Did that do anything? Yeah, like you could get like 100 gold So like 100 in that early game early game. That's a lot So if you can figure out how to do that puzzle and get good at it, you can get a bunch of gold pretty quick. And I got pretty good at that thing. Really? So it's like, oh, here's a bunch of free spells and armor I can buy now because I got stupid good at the dumb puzzle I could figure out and, you know, solve it in two minutes. Never. Never. I sat there for what felt like hours was probably just minutes until I got frustrated and said, I don't care. It's kind of like a Rubik's Cube. There's a trick. And once you figure out what the trick is, you can knock it out pretty quick. Interesting. So like I got really good at that stupid slide puzzle back in the day. Trying to do it now, I'd probably want to rip my little hair I have left out. And it would take me a while to figure out what the trick is again. But once you know exactly what it is you need to do, it doesn't matter where the numbers are. You can get it done really fast. So. I don't know why I like that stupid thing so much like It's like even the even like late game. It's like this is the eighth time I've played through this game I like I listen I think it's all very charming. I I yeah, I never I never got into this like It's so interesting though when you look back at those games and you really think about it like you said like you were only you can only save in towns You you're like you you couldn't you didn't have items to rebuild your magic and the magic was much different than it was You know you had X number of uses per spell and that was it It wasn't even a pool of magic points that you could draw from to cast whatever you wanted It's like you you want to use cure. Okay, you've got five uses and that's it, right? No more. So, you know, it's funny because when you would, it added this layer of tension that I'm not sure I miss, but at the time was exhilarating where it's, I see the entrance to a cave. It's like, all right, am I ready? Because the whole process at that point is every step you take is one step further away from safety, one step further away from. sort of the salvation of that cave entrance that's like, okay, if I can get back up there, I'm all right, because my ship, my airship is landed right next to it. Like, but you know, my God, this dungeon's got four levels. It's still going. It's so huge. And oh, some of these chests are booby trapped too. So that's awesome. You know, like it's like, oh, am I going to make this? Plus, you know, there's a boss at the end. So like you said, you're, you're trying to play conservatively the whole time, but you're just like, I don't know. It was just, it was such an intense feeling that I think, was one of the things that I absolutely loved about it. But like, yeah, today I'm not sure. I guess maybe that's what people who love Souls games are kind of in that same boat. But yeah, back then that was one of the things that really drew me to that game, I think. Yeah, and I think for me, I definitely leaned on the player's guide for the assistance to find that critical path so I didn't have to wander around. And for example, there's that section in the fire level, maybe volcano, I can't remember. where if you step on lava, it takes away hit points, which again, I mean, just stock up on potions, buying potions one potion at a time. Like you can't up the... So So mean, just sitting there jam on the A button. Like I'm just listening to other music and just jamming on the A button, trying to buy potions. It's, yeah, there's lots of friction, but again, I can't blame the game for it because it just wasn't evolved yet. And I think as a template for future iterations, I think it's very good. And I think it's still a pretty good adventure now. However, I will say on the remastered as I said earlier, it is a cakewalk really. I mean, because they add all the traditional new trappings of the game to it. Yeah, it definitely makes the game feel small, smaller than much smaller and a lot easier. I walked away with tons of cash. You have ethers, you high potions and even though you still have and I think it even exceeds nine uses. because in Final Fantasy, the original game, you would max out at nine uses of a particular spell. And I think in the remasters, it allows you 13, 14 again. So it really, once you play it on the remasters for me, you realize there's not much to this game. But I think the challenge of it is what really sticks in our brains as kind of making it a classic. Right. And I mean, that's why it was so, one of the reasons why it was so challenging. I mean, that was standard practice back in the 80s and 90s where, I mean, they had to fit the game in this relatively small memory footprint. So there's only so much space for the content, like the different character graphics and the size of the world and the music, which, by the way, another thing that the first Final Fantasy stood out for was its soundtrack. So how do we make this game longer? Well, let's just make it hard as balls the whole time. Right. Yeah. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the dynamic duo of perfect storm gaming. Join hosts Joey and Vito as they explore the games of yesteryear on a custom arcade cabinet yet sell every drop of blood in your body to own. If you get the reference, you get the reference. The pair hosts a community -focused YouTube stream that's a ton of fun to join, entertaining shorts, and basically anything else their collective minds can conjure up. If you want a good starting point, check out Joey's arcade in a storage locker. Not a big storage locker at that. Your mind will be blown. Get in on the good times by searching Perfect Storm Gaming on YouTube or simply clicking the link in the podcast notes below. Now as I alluded to in the open, Final Fantasy felt like freedom from the daily mundane. A place to literally spread my wings and explore. Let's join Matt and then Greg as they share similar stories of being unleashed in this 8 -bit playground. I remember, do you remember how you felt when you first got that airship in Final Fantasy 1? It was like, wow, it just like, like, it, I don't know, it's like, wow, I'm flying, I can go anywhere I want. I mean. could land I did I did nothing but screaming scream around the skies for 20 minutes just go as fast as I could and like just marveled the fact that I could go back to you know Cornelia you know and oh yeah that was that was look at links tomb yes he has links tomb of course I yeah man I it was a lot of freedom in that game and I we play it now though especially on the pixel remaster it's a neat artifact but there's not a lot there but it's really interesting to see the bones of what would become the bigger monolith that is now the Final Fantasy franchise. I think that the first Final Fantasy was more difficult than the first Dragon Warrior, but you kind of had to It kind of depended on what you chose as your party, right? Because that was the big difference with with Dragon Warrior I mean you had you were playing as The main character and that's it you you only had to worry about them But you know with with Final Fantasy you had what seven different character classes to choose from I think? And some of them were much stronger than others and some of them were more suited to different things than others and you know the magic system was a lot different where you had very limited magic early on so I Think overall though in general. I remember having to grind more in Final Fantasy than I ever did. Oh absolutely first Dragon Warrior. Yeah, absolutely Did you ever have that playground experience where you and your friends maybe chatted about like oh, here's a place to grind here's a place to because again a lot of the game was Little Leptuce and you mentioned you had that experience with Dragon Warrior. I'm curious if you had that with Final Fantasy. I didn't actually. I don't remember a lot of people that I knew playing Final Fantasy. I had the one friend who owned Dragon Warrior, but I really don't feel like Final Fantasy within my circle of friends took off until Final Fantasy 2 on the Super Nintendo came out. Yeah, it was kind of a, again, kind of a lonely experience from a gaming perspective because... up until that point and ever since we had gotten our NES, I mean, gaming was such a social thing. I think on previous episodes of your show, I've talked about how I got my NES and all of a sudden I had an instant circle of friends that I didn't have before. But yeah, I don't believe any of them were really playing it. And for some reason, it wasn't a frustrating situation. It was more like, oh, OK, not supposed to be here. Let me just turn around and reload the save. You learn to save often as much as humanly possible. And you just play and explore. And again, I think that's something that's really endearing for kids and adults as well, obviously. But we have less time as adults to do that exploration, right? So we kind of need the hand holding a bit more, at least for me personally. You know, time is a factor in everything. And, you know, I love exploring and pushing at the edges, but the game has to be really special for me to do that. Like Fallout New Vegas. I'll spend 100 hours in Fallout New Vegas, no problem poking at the edges. But for other games, I just can't. I just need critical path and I just need to know like horizon. I don't I'm not really poking at the edges in the horizon. I'm just going to kind of follow the map markers and have fun. So I think early on, especially in those Final Fantasy games, you really had that sense of exploration that was different than a Zelda. You know, it felt more intentional, if that makes sense, and more story driven as opposed to a bunch of different areas, at least for me again. Yeah, I mean, it was Zelda was. Back then, I would call that much more analogous to what we have in open -world games today. Where it's just like, seriously, just go anywhere. Do whatever you want. And hopefully you'll survive it. But when you look at something like the early RPGs, you look at the first Final Fantasy, it's quite linear. As much as they open the world up and let you tackle whatever you want to do, you're going to do things in the order you need to do them in. There's no way around that. Whether you take a circuitous route to get there is kind of up to your play style and up to how much exploration you want to do But at the end of the day, you know when you go across that bridge The next major event you're dealing with is going to that town that's been overrun by pirates and right and getting the pirate ship There's really nothing else to do right? So, you know It was, yeah, I think that was the major difference. It was still quite linear, which I was happy with and I always have been. Like you said, critical path, that thing, great. I wouldn't have said that back in 1990, because I didn't know what a critical path was. But that's exactly how they were built. Now as any fan of the Final Fantasy franchise will tell you, looking pretty isn't the only thing, but in the world of this series, it's still pretty important. So to talk about the presentation of the original title, let's join Julian, then John, and then finally Dan Karnet to hear their thoughts. So that's really interesting. So. If you can think back to that first touch point with the original Final Fantasy, because we're going to kind of jump off that point and talk a lot about it, but as more of just kind of general setting, something if for something to have hit you in a way where you played it for a bit, you didn't get much farther than the Marsh Cave, but it left the impression. What about Final Fantasy left that impression to where then, you know, down the line Super Nintendo era, you see Final Fantasy 2 and you're like, Oh, that's that's probably going to be cool, even though you didn't have a ton of experience with the first Final Fantasy. What do you think about it struck you in that way? I really think a lot of it comes down to the sprites like they were so big and colorful and like well animated for the time and like very, very recognizable, like even without having any knowledge of like D &D or anything like that, it was like very clear to me like. Oh, this is clearly like a warrior. This is clearly like some sort of wizard, you know, like it was it was very readable to me. And also, I think the music like, you know, music is a big thing for me in video games in general. I think if we had, you know, talked more about the Zelda, I definitely would have told the story of. making my own Link's Awakening soundtrack by like holding up my tape recorder to the Game Boy speaker. Wow. Love that. Like I did that type of stuff. So yeah, cool. Like that's always been a big thing for me. And you know, you pop in Final Fantasy for the first time and like the crystal theme is just like an instant like, oh, oh, you know, like, exactly. Yeah. And it's kind of funny because I think I read somewhere that Uematsu like he, he did that thing like almost like as an afterthought, like, oh, we need a title screen thing. And he, he was, he kind of resented the fact that it became like the main theme when he was just like, I didn't put any thought into that. It's just, it's kind of like, it's just really like a, like a chromatic, I'm gonna say it stupidly, but almost like a scale, you know, it feels like a warmup, you know, like, yeah, like a choir warming up or something. say what are the other things that always stands out to me that I always loved in those earlier games like you know like basically 1 through 6 and really any of them it's like when you get a new weapon what's it gonna look like when I use it in battle like that always stands out to me like oh oh I've got this axe that I'm gonna use for like four battles before I get another thing but it's a purple axe or it's pink or something and so it looks kind of cool when you use it and that was always fun yeah you know just seeing those little things. That was a neat thing about that, especially compared to Dragon Warrior where you didn't see your weapon. You didn't see anything. No. Yeah. That visual flair was really fun and good. It's very empowering. You had a cool new axe head or a sword or something. Yeah, I totally agree. That was a cool bit. Or even like with the spells and oh, this one's like a different shade of yellow now. It's almost a gold color versus like the bright yellow of the lightning like when you know, when you cast nuke or whatever, it's just that slightly different color that looks kind of neat when you cast it. And then of course, when you get the character upgrades, the character changes. Yes, that's a big deal. Yeah. That totally does. Yeah. Yeah. When you go from the chibi looking characters to when they're adults. Now, here's a quick question. When... Your party wins and you do your little victory dance. Is it just me or does it look like the whole party is flipping off the defeated party? Think about how the sprites look. I didn't think about this. And as they're going up and down, like especially when the white wizard does it and she's got her arm out and she looks like she's putting her hand up and flipping either you or the dead party off of monsters you just defeated. It's gotta be the first instance of, yeah, I can't think of, I can't recollect. I have to actually look at a GIF of it or something or just look at a video. Wow. Yeah. For all the listeners out there, I kind of think so because I've seen it the whole time I've ever played the game is that when you win, even as a little chibi characters in their little victory dance, They're flipping them off. That's it. Flipping off the dead carcasses of their defeated ogres and creeps and whatever else was... Yeah, and giants and like, take that, goblins or imps or whatever. The other imps in the original game, that's right. Also the detailed sprites of those large of those big bosses, the big elemental bosses, which is was Kraken, Tamat, Lich and... Carrie. Carrie, right. And I remember how amazing those giant, because they weren't sprites, they weren't moving, but still those giant figures were now scary. I remember Lich is not a pleasant looking creature. And that was really the oh damn moment. Oh no, we're in for a battle. Yeah, Lich is I think my favorite character design. I got pungent with that I think. Possibly in the game. I think he's just very menacing looking. Although Carrie is pretty cool too. I like the whole like snake with swords. I don't know, it's just kind of cool. Very very cool. But Lich just looks like an evil character, you know. Oh absolutely. Considering Final Fantasy 1 was a template for generations to come, it's hard to imagine it being innovative for the time. But for those who came from older JRPGs, there were surprises galore. Nate and then Greg returned to close out this episode by sharing some thoughts on the title's unusual for the day gameplay. I don't remember in the Dawn of Souls version, the magic. I think it was still, you had... a certain amount of uses. No, they so was it back to points? It was magic points. Yeah. And then with the I haven't played the pixel remasters yet. I own them. But with the pixel remastered for one, I think one through three, whenever they went to magic points, they still have uses. You have to rest in between which. Yeah, like kudos kudos to you for finishing that game because like with with resting because like That just that gives me anxiety. Oh No, I can only heal so many times like, you know playing Baldur's Gate 3 I'm like I can't like you all are like sitting at 10 HP until I'd like, you know, the do heal you like I it's funny because the It definitely added a lot of tension to the game, but it also made it really annoying in that you couldn't use your tools and you really couldn't figure out what things did because you never, that's how I got into that mindset in a Final Fantasy game. You don't use your magic until the boss. Like don't use your magic because I only have five fire spells consumables ready here and three cures. So I better show up to the bungee with 99 potions because I can't use my cures. And the uses were like level like so if you had level one cure level one fire like it wasn't like each spell got separate uses right like it was four across the board. Yes exactly you're exactly right you only had four uses of the of the spells in level one. Yes. And it never went above nine. If that my first Final Fantasy game, I would be like, I'm never playing this game again. Like, I'm never in the scene. Sucks. We didn't know any better. I didn't know any. It was my first role -playing game. I don't know how these things work. OK, I just roll with it. I guess I can't use my magic until I get to the boss. Here's a question for you. Do you think it holds up? And, yeah, do you think it holds up? I really do, actually. I've gone back and played it so many times because the fact that it is quite short, relatively speaking, but no, I'm sure a lot of it is nostalgia. But any time it's re -released, I will pick it up and play it again. And I've had a few times where I've popped in or emulated the NES game and played it and played right through it. I mean, there's just something about that game. It does, it holds up in my mind. I agree. What's your favorite version of it? Oh, wow. I remember it's been so long since I've played it, I don't know for sure, but I remember really liking the PSP version. Interesting. That one, I don't know that one. It's got a bit of a different graphical style, which is, I think, one of the reasons I really enjoyed it. It's a... The PSP, they released one and two on the PSP and they were just really pretty looking. I remember really liking the DS version, the Dawn of Souls, I think it is. I don't remember if I played that version. Yeah, I remember really liking that. They had four extra dungeons and a couple other little things there. I like the remastered is fine. I think it's good. I think they're just it's a great way to experience it if you've never played it and you just want to get a feel for the flavor. I just feel like it's the looted experience because it is so easy and you kind of just cakewalk through it and then you don't get a sense of why why kids liked it. Yeah, speaking as someone who speaking as someone who, you know, has played it so many times and has played most of these Final Fantasy games so many times, I really like the remasters because they look gorgeous. They sound fantastic. Like I want the soundtracks more than anything else. But I also love that they're really easy because I can just. turn all the sliders down to zero and just power my way through it and sort of get that little nostalgia hit. You know, like, oh man, here it comes. I'm gonna go get the upgrades or I'm gonna get the airship and it's like, it only took me like three hours to get here, this is great. You know, but yeah, it's not the same. If you're someone who's coming into them for the very first time and you're trying to get a feel for why people like these so much, I still think they work pretty well because, They use more modern sensibility from a design standpoint and from a UX standpoint. But you don't want to turn all the casual modes on because, yeah, you just it's it's it's a carnival ride at that point. Yeah, I kind of lose the experience, but I agree. I think it's I think it's a fun game. And I think if you're if you're OK with the friction of an early Final Fantasy game, I'd encourage people to play those original ones, emulate it and just give it a try. Again, if you're okay with the friction of having to hammer on A to buy potions and only have nine Cure spells for an entire eight level dungeon, if you're okay with that friction, fine. If not, then I think the remasters are perfectly fine. and we are only halfway through our initial conversation about Final Fantasy 1. Next week come back to check out part two as we discuss some of Final Fantasy 1's big moments and some other aspects of the game that aren't really discussed all that often, but probably should be. If you haven't done so already, check out my website, agamerlooksat4040 .com for everything there is to know. and connections to all things social media, episode related, etc. The one stop shop for everything you need regarding a gamer looks at 40. My main social media is on Twitter and TikTok. I've been trying to release two videos a week on TikTok, so be sure to follow me there for some shorter versions and clips from these episodes. Many thanks to Kev and Pete Harney for their editing assistance. Last time I forgot to thank you and that is a grievous misstep. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your help in editing this show. This podcast would not exist in this form without your tireless help. So thank you so much to Kev and P Harney. Thank you for listening to this edition of The Gamer Looks at 40 and until next time, try to avoid ineffective.
