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 113: Final Fantasy 6 (Part 8) - Odds and Ends
Whew! After two long months of scouring Final Fantasy 6, we've reached the final episode. On this culminating edition, a wide variety of my FF6 friends share random thoughts, stories, and opinions that didn't make it into the main episodes. An Emperor Gesthal's banquet of content, if you will. Enjoy this last foray into the game!
STARRING (all handles from Twitter)
Aiden Moher (@adribbleofink)
Chrono Katie (@ChronoKatie)
Greg Sewart of the Player One Podcast and Generation 16 (@sewart)
Julian Titus (@julian_titus) of The Stage Select Podcast (@StageSelectPod)
The Lets Play Princess (@TheLPPrincess)
Mekel Kasanova (@MekelKasanova)
Mike of the Distorted Illuminations YouTube channel (@MadMonarch_DI)
@Mustin
Nate McLellan (@natedoescomedy79 on TikTok)
Ryan aka @GameswCoffee
Ryan Lindsay of KISS 105.3 in Ottawa (@THERyanLindsay)
Seth Sturgill (@twodollarhero) from @allnpodcast
Tim Knowles of The Leetist
Trey of the NintenDomain Podcast (@Ninten_Domain)
Xerxex
Yurik (@YurikArkady on TikTok)
SONG COVERS
Kefka's Theme - Final Fantasy VI - Mandolin and Guitar Cover (Feat. Chalmers Croft) by Tommy Norris - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5d8-cZu0go
Epitaph (Final Fantasy VI) | Classical Guitar Cover by John Oeth Guitar - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gltRvu-Zd8U
My Website: agamerlooksat40.com
My Discord: https://discord.com/invite/SdaE4atGjC
My Twitter: @agamerlooksat40
My TikTok: @agamerlooksat40
My Facebook: facebook.com/agamerlooksat40
My Insta: @agamerlooksat40
My Patreon: patreon.com/agamerlooksat40
My Email: agamerlooksat40@gmail.com
My Phone Number: Ehhhhh, not gonna happen. :-D
you Hey everybody welcome to episode 113 of a gamer looks at 40 on bill and we made it through two months of Final Fantasy 6 when I first started this journey way back in was it March or April I don't even remember at this point I didn't think well I should put this way I knew Final Fantasy 6 would probably be the longest it's the not only is it the one my guests had the most connection to but it's one I have most connection to. It's a very personally important game. I figured it be about four or so episodes. I did not foresee eight, but that's just how the cookie crumbled in this one. That's just how it worked out. So here we are at the end of this very long road, and I hope you enjoyed this road. I hope you enjoyed really diving into these personal stories. And what I like to do in these long series is just include one episode of all the other stuff. And since Final Fantasy 6 ended up being its own mini series in the larger Final Fantasy series, why not do an odds and ends episode for this game? Because there was lots of comments and lots of opinions and lots of thoughts that didn't quite fit into the narrative based episodes. So let's just culminate them all here. and have a big ol' schmorgasbord of thoughts and opinions. But let's do something a little bit different than I did with The Legend of Zelda series, which I think is the last time I've done this, and other side quest episodes where I just kind of throw everything in the blender and see what happens. When I put everything into my editing software, everything went in alphabetical order by name, and the way I organize these files are by people's names. And I thought, huh, maybe this'll be not easier. but why not just do them in alphabetical order? So that's what we're going to do. Rather than throw it into big blender, we're going to go person by person in alphabetical order. That way there's no favoritism or anything like that. That way you get to hear a concise series of opinions and thoughts from each individual person and each individual guest that may not have made it onto the main episode. So trying something different. just for the sake of doing it, so I hope you enjoy it. This is a long episode, as you can see, so let's jump right in. Starting off with Aiden Moore and Chrono Katie on Twitter. You may be asking yourself, why is a Chrono Trigger fan on a Final Fantasy 6 episode? Well, can't they be fans of both? I don't know. You'll just have to wait and see for another episode. Let's join Aiden and Katie. as they share some thoughts and opinions about Final Fantasy VI. I think that it changed the series in a lot of ways, like as dramatically as some of the other, you know, more famous entries did, you know, like Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X are regarded as the ones that really, you know, like shaped a lot of people's expectations. And I think your first experience with Final Fantasy shapes your expectations of the series a lot. Sure. I think somebody that started with Final Fantasy 7 and somebody who started with Final Fantasy 10 are gonna have very different ideas of what Final Fantasy is. And that's like key to the experience, right? That there is no one idea of what Final Fantasy is. But I think Final Fantasy 6 has some really interesting aspects to it that like I actually think you can look to it as sort of the start of what we saw kind of crystallized with Final Fantasy 7 in terms of its like more cinematic structured narrative and like narrative pacing that became more like a little more film like it doesn't look film like the way Final Fantasy 7 does but the way it sort of like dropped you know like up until that point a lot of RPGs console RPGs had that like town dungeon town dungeon structure right? Yeah. And like every dungeon and every town was sort of like a Final Fantasy, it's not a Final Fantasy but like everyone just felt like a know like a Dungeons and Dragons map with a different you know skin applied to it. Whereas final fantasy 6 took the idea and threw it out like it doesn't have that town dungeon structure But it also started to apply like more rigorous like world building elements into its set pieces and they from being like, know Explorable maps to actual set pieces that had like, know narrative impact on how the story played out in that environment like the phantom forest you explore that and the way that you explore that is very different than like the you know, the volcano about halfway through the first act, which is very different than, you know, when you're exploring the floating continent. And the way that you explore those, not only do they look different, but the maps behave different because the environments are different and the story that they're telling in terms of like sort of narrative world building is different and more important. It becomes set pieces just as much as like the Forgotten City is a set piece in Final Fantasy 7. And so I think Final Fantasy 6 really took that idea and like... You know, a lot of people look at it as like, it's so open -ended and that's the thing that it contributed to the series, right? Like the nonlinear second half. But I really think that it set the, it was like a blueprint for the cinematic ambitions that we saw sort of realized in seven. That's really cool. I think there's a lot of really interesting things that I kind of jotted down as you were talking. One of which was, I love the idea that Final Fantasy VI was basically the video game version of a novel for you. It basically was a novel that you could experience and play. It's what it sounds like. It sounds like it's something that you were able to be involved in personally as opposed to just reading and taking that step into that interactivity. Sounds really formative. The interactivity is really interesting because I think giving... People agency within a story is so unique to video games, right? Movies can't do it, books can't do it outside of like choose your own adventure stuff. Like video games are like the medium that is so good at giving the player, the reader, the watcher agency within the story. And that's something that I really felt in Final Fantasy 6 for the first time, which was intoxicating. And I just couldn't get enough of it. Absolutely, and I really think your next book whatever it happens to be should be entitled punk rock and JRPGs because that that is a book title like right there Yeah, punk rock and Japanese RPGs. Yeah, I like it's so funny because that's like the two things that like my agent Eric Smith and I bonded over before Before I was ever his agent like we became friends on Twitter cool. He's a Japanese RPG fan He also he and I both love ska so like less than Jake and mad cow Like we like we just like geeked out over that kind of stuff. And so was yeah, it was like, you know, like late 90s, early 2000s sort of pop punk and ska and Japanese RPGs is like, literally the like, foundation of our friendship and then our professional relationship to I listen, I need to tell him for sure. I listen I I grew up in northern New Jersey and during the the summer of ska so I was a big yeah, my first my first radio show in college was the skank and hepcat show was a ska punk show and then I had to turn that into a podcast in 2005 and Yeah, so it's So I'd say I knew I I liked you for a reason. I we had a kinship without even really meeting you first hand Six blew my mind when I first played it. Yeah. Any thoughts on six that you wanted to kind of share? I'm in the midst of gathering stuff for that episodes that serious. think, I like people always, I think like how much you like six is dependent on how much you like the world of ruin. That's how I see it. because it's really fair. It's such a wildly crazy structure. That's so different from most final fantasy games. But when I first played it, I was like, this blows my mind. It's like a full It's like an open world go anywhere game on the SNES. Like that's really what it is. So that was to me the moment where I was like, yeah, this is absolutely one of the best Final Fantasy games easily. It's funny. Before you get to the world of ruin, Final Fantasy 6 is a roller coaster and it just doesn't stop. It just keeps going and going and it's got some linearity. And once you hit the world of ruin, the brakes are on. yeah. And now the rest of the game is just preparing for one thing. And it's like that theme of, you know, like having to overcome despair is, it's beautiful how like, like how well of a chance you have against Kefka is based on how much you unite your team together. It has these beautiful themes of... The world is always going to be worth saving no matter what state the world is in. And Chromantrucker has a lot of that too, especially when you get to, you know, post -post-lavos. And I like that idea. I love that theme of getting the band back together to do one final good thing. It's very satisfying. As a kid, when I played it, I always, I played obviously all the way through and then I would do replays and I would just play the world to balance and I would stop at the world of ruin because I'm like, this isn't fun anymore. I'm not having fun. yeah? And now as an adult I'm like, no, no, this is actually the beautiful part. Like this is the beautiful part. Do you have any characters in Final Fantasy 6 that you've kind of connected to? You'll see a theme in the end. There's a bit of a theme in my the episodes I'm going to do. The characters are the heart of the story. I totally get it. Gosh, do I do I really connect with any of characters of 6? I really like them. My favorite is Edgar. I always liked Edgar. OK. think on some level I relate to his story. But there's just, you know, there's a lot of good characters in 6, but I I particularly relate to any of them. Do you have one or? I it's interesting because it's changed over the years. Always like saving for some reason. But I had a connection with I connected with Edgar pretty well too. But as I grew older, I definitely have a cyan. I definitely connected cyan because you know, I have kids and so I find it interesting question because Final Fantasy 6 like Chrono Trigger and like X as well, like all the really good Final Fantasy games. ages with people and changes as you as you age and mature and grow. So that's why I like to see then then and now because it's usually different. And for most people I've talked to about six at least now it's been it's a different answer when they were kids and then when they were as adults. love that. That's a brilliant point. Next up is long time friend of the show Ryan aka games with coffee. Now he was an amazing guest and we talked a lot about Final Fantasy not just 6 but all the other Final Fantasy games. He's one of the biggest fans I know of the entire franchise and he's going to be on a lot of episodes going forward but he's really chomping at the bit and you know what I'm going to say if you know if you know coffee he is chomping at the bit to talk about Final Fantasy 6. Doubt I'll be able to get through the conversation in an hour and a half and I usually do hour block Conversations, there's no way Final Fantasy 7 is gonna be just an hour with coffee It's gonna be an impossibility and I can't wait because I'm sure his story and his recollections and his opinions are Going to be just awesome. So I can't wait to share that with you and I can't wait to have that conversation. So Let's join coffee as he talks a little bit more about the game mechanics of Final Fantasy six, the music and some more personal recollections about going back to six a little bit. I don't really talk a bunch about mechanics and how it feels in your hands, but I sometimes feel like it's a neglected part of the whole the whole thing. Six is actually very fun and it's a fun game to just play. I, what's your take on the mechanics and just like kind of the inner workings of how that game, combat systems and all that fun stuff. In a word, it's very distilled. I think that's the word for it because it takes everything that came before it and makes it really user friendly and just it's just snappy and it feels quick, know, right? Like stick snap snap my fingers. It's just that it just that's just how that feels. It just it feels so clean. It feels so it feels just it just feels fluid and. Like I said, takes all of the good things that came before from the first five entries and then six just puts it all together in such a masterful way that it feels like it doesn't hold your hand, but it gives you agency to say, you know what? This is Final Fantasy VI. You get relics, you get aspers, you can learn magic, and all that's distilled into at least four lines of commands. have at it. I don't know, it just feels really good in the hands when you're playing. I agree with It's very distilled. Yeah, and I think it's also, what I like about it is it can be as simple or as complex as you like. I know a lot of people who play, when I was younger and I played it, I just used espers to get magic. That was my magic editors. But if you really want to, you can make sure you have the right ones on right before you level so you can buff a certain stat and... Because when you level, the S3 you're wearing will buff certain stats and you can really break the game if you know what you're doing. Yeah, you can really optimize your stats for min maxi and stuff like that. It really... It really tailors to the person. And I know I don't like customization in video games much, but I've come to learn to appreciate it in 6 because then can optimize your characters in certain ways that they fulfill a certain job. they fulfill a certain role in your party. And then when you get to the end parts where you have to split into three different parties, having that kind of well -rounded approach for all of your characters in each of those three parties makes that last gauntlet so much easier. totally. And I remember the first time I played it, I was not ready for that. no. I was like, no. have to write. Gao has to be involved? Gows been sweeping the airship for the last 15, 20, 80 hours. He's not ready for to use Amaro now? Like what? I can't even control him. Yeah, it's so like, I like the, it gives you just enough customization. I do like the fact that you can, I think relics are nice. Something that has a nice touch. It's like a, Kind of like a Goldilocks middle porridge. Yeah, exactly. It hits that sweet spot, right? It's just right there in the middle. It's not too complex. We're not getting to Final Fantasy 8 levels of complexity, but we're not at Final Fantasy 1 levels of simplicity as well. Like, we have just enough customization, and each character having their own unique ability just allows them to have that much more freedom and that much more intrigue as well, I think. Yeah, exactly. And then... The game tests you on the mechanics in certain scenarios and one of the most interesting ones is the Tower of Zot in the World of Ruin. Where that one where you only have to use magic. So if you don't level up your magic and you don't level up your magic stat enough, you are not getting through that tower. But if you do, get one of the best relics of the game. So it's like almost like... mandatory that you have to go through that tower, but it's tough. But it's beautiful. Just a beautiful display of how the mechanics work in Final Fantasy 6. No, it's great. I love that whole tower. the game is very good at also giving you challenges as needed and rewarding you for taking on challenges. That tower... What's the tower called again? The tower Zot or whatever it is? Yeah, it's the tower. Yeah, tower Zot. think was the tower Zot. The tower Zot. It's brutal. But at the end, you get a really cool item that makes the game much easier. Let's be honest. It makes it almost breaks the game. Let's be real. Almost breaks the game. But you have to go through a lot to get there. And it's a really challenging situation where you can't use you have to use magic. So you know what? I can't I can't get through a conversation with you about Final Fantasy without talking about music. man. man. Let's let's let's deep. Let's dive into the music because the music is probably the best part of Final Fantasy 6. I would I would argue I would say yes is I don't think there's this is not just a sign hyperbole but man I don't think there's a bad song in the group. absolutely. I don't think there is no bad songs in Final Fantasy 6. Each one of them is memorable. Each one of them is just crafted to perfection. This is Nobuo O -Matsu at his peak. And I mean, not discounting seven because seven was also fantastic. But like for the 16 -bit era, no one could beat Nobuo O -Matsu at that point. He was the king. He was literally on the top of the mountain when he composed the soundtrack for Final Fantasy 6. It's just that amazing. No, I agree. Like Dancing Mad, the final boss music. The lead up to Kefka at the very top of that screen. Just, I mean, it's a harbinger for one wing angel, but it is still so epic. It's glorious. It's glorious. It's film score good. Yeah, that freaking deserves an Oscar, man. Come on. What songs do you, what under, I would say what? Deep cuts do you love from the soundtrack? deep cuts. Deep cuts to me, like, underrated songs that you, like, would kind of overlook. Yeah, songs you'd overlook or... So, realms theme. Realms theme. I love, love, love realms theme. I don't know why. It's just, it's so gentle and so captures the innocence that is realm. I feel like it's a really underrated song. Hearing it in an orchestra is beautiful. Not gonna lie. remember that was one of my favorite songs when I was like around 16, 17. Just the orchestrated version of that, orchestrated version of Tara's theme. could listen to those forever. They're absolutely gorgeous. And the fact that they still hold up well in 16 -bit chiptune is like I said in like... Like Arnie Roth said in that interview, it's like a miracle. Yeah, it is. It's miraculous. miraculous that it works, and it works as well as it does. The music is so important in Final Fantasy VI. I would argue more than... Because once you get to the world of VII, VIII, and IX, and especially X, that the characters' voice, they can actually convey emotions vocally as opposed to just reading on text. As the games go along, the music's still great. but it's not as tent pole as it is in the earlier games because they had to carry so much weight. Yes, and I mean, I hate to admit it because 7 is my favorite game, but it is the truth when it comes to 6. Like 6 is arguably the most superior soundtrack in my opinion. Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. mean, and 7 is no slouch, obviously, right? But yeah. Yeah. But it's exactly as you said, because they have to, it has to carry so much of the emotional weight of the characters. and the music just helps you feel in the moment of their plight, their struggles, of their joys, of their sorrows. It's... man, you just... you just can't beat it. Honestly, you just can't beat that soundtrack, any final thoughts on Final Fantasy 6? Let's put it this way, where would a place for you in the pantheon of Final Fantasy games as far as personal connection? I try to avoid best and worst and list and favorites. Personal connection, yeah. That's a good way putting it. man, let's see, because it's funny, each of these Final Fantasy games has a special connection to my heart. One being, seven being the number one, eternally, I don't think anything will ever replace that. No matter how good 16 is, still can't nudge seven out of that spot. So it's basically a battle for second at this point for everything else. man, would, I don't know, would say six would probably be second or third because I feel like 10 was really, really impactful to me. And I mean, of course, we're going to have a discussion about 10 as well, too. But 6 just, I I've hyped it up enough as it is during our entire conversation. mean, it's at least got to be top three, of the least top three, easy top five, but definitely in the top three on my list. Awesome, Cool. Any final thoughts on Final Fantasy 6 that you want to share on the other memories? Memories, recollections? things you want to gush about? maybe there's a message. Maybe just a message to anyone listening right now and who hasn't played Final Fantasy 6. Go play Final Fantasy 6. You will change your life forever. And then play Final Fantasy 7 and that will also change your life forever. That's the one -two punch, right? That's the one -two punch. If you're one of those people who look at Final Fantasy 6 and say, that's an old game. I don't want play the old game. Play the old game. I'm literally going to teach my kids off of Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI. The moment they are able to read, it's like, alright, we're going to crash course. We're going to play Final Fantasy IV first. You're going to get a crash course on how serious and how bad things can be in the world. And then you're going to play Final Fantasy VI and And just enjoy the story. It's even more brutal, but it's just fantastic. And you'll write essays about that and you'll be experts in this. That is my sworn vow. That is my vow for you, child. My vow for you. Get away from Mario Kart. Go away from Call of Duty or Fortnite and embrace the drama and majesty that is Final Fantasy 4 and 6. Exactly. I love it. Nicely said. Next up is Greg Seward of the Player One Podcast and Generation 16 series of videos. Another huge Final Fantasy fan and really RPG fan in general that I absolutely had to have on the show and I'm so grateful that he took so much time out of his day to chat with me about Final Fantasy 6 and basically all the Final Fantasies at this point and grateful again for him just being a part of the show in general. In our odds and ends episode, he talks about writing guides, some more conversation about the mechanics of Final Fantasy VI, and some final parting thoughts. I wanted to ask you a quick question, because you mentioned, and this is gonna be kind of off topic, but maybe not really, and who knows, I'll throw it in someplace, you wrote a guide for Final Fantasy VI for Expert Gamer. How? Whenever I hear about people writing guides, A, it sounds like the most tedious thing on the planet. It is. And B, the most daunting thing, like, how does that work? Well, the nice thing about Final Fantasy 6, and it's funny because the first two guides I wrote for Expert Gamer, one was Final Fantasy 6 and one was Grandia. So they were both huge RPGs, but they're linear. And so, and I had a very minimal amount of space. So literally, you're telling a story from The word go from the first opening cut scene, it's really a description of what's happening without spoilers if you can help it. And just saying like, okay, now you gotta go to Damcy Inn. I know this is the wrong game, but you know what I mean? And it's to the northeast of wherever you just were, or it's to the, actually it was I think southeast of wherever you just were. And you go in there and here are the important spots you gotta hit. Here's the stuff you need to buy. You're gonna go east to the mountains. You know, the monsters you're gonna see in there are susceptible to magic. The dark sword can't affect any zombies you come across. Your dark sword's not gonna hurt them. That sort of thing. And if you look at them, they're literally four columns of text with a few screenshots here and there. But the nice thing was is that for both of those games, they were games that I'd actually finished already. That I'd played on my own time. Obviously Final Fantasy VI I'd played back in the day, but I'd also played through Grandia on the... saturn somehow without speaking japanese and so i knew where i had to go and what i had to do and it was it was it was literally again playing a section typing a paragraph then going to the next section typing another paragraph and that yeah that was it and it was tedious it is tedious i can't imagine yeah there are people who love doing that stuff and they're really good at it i am good That job was a foot in the door. That's all that was. Yeah, because EGM, weren't writing. There was no... EGM didn't do guides and stuff like that. No, that was not a... As a magazine, y 'all didn't do that stuff. No. I mean, some tips and tricks and things like that. Yeah, but that's a different But that's hugely different. I just can't imagine life writing... Here, write a guide for Final Fantasy VI. really? That's what you want me to do now? 80 hours of the game. Distill it into... Yeah. I don't know a magazine article. Yeah, here's four pages. Good luck I haven't talked too much about mechanics with my other guests, so maybe we can go through that a bit. Final Fantasy VI is, I think, a lot of fun in your hands. I think it has a good balance of, again, it's basically the ATB system that we know, knew and loved from Final Fantasy IV. But of course, the extra addition is the Esper system. Do you remember diving into that really heavily? How did you feel about it? the game in your hands playing it. think with the Esper system I found ones that I liked and kind of focused on that, but I really liked the relic system in this game a lot. I was more excited about that, to be honest. I loved sort of setting up characters to protect other characters or to be able to double fist weapons and that sort of thing. Some of the relics were a little less exciting, you know, you can keep from getting poisoned, although that was important in various parts of the game. But yeah, the relic system, I think, did it for me. I mean, the Esper system, I mean, it's basically the beginning of the summoning system, was it not? mean, that's where we... Basically, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you equipped a... Yeah, you kind of equip an Esper, and then not only do you learn their magic abilities with a multiplier as you get AP points, But you also, when you level, you can also get certain buffs based on what you're using. I never did that as a kid. I was just Mr. I want to learn the magic spells. So let's equip this thing. But if you knew what you were doing and said, I'm getting close to leveling. Let me equip Carbuncle and I got plus two magic. My magic user. can really break the game, but you can do some damage. Yeah, I never got I never got that into it. Although I will say that I think with the Esper system as cool as it was. if I remember correctly, anybody could learn any spell. Yep, that's correct. And I feel like that, I wasn't crazy about that. I think as much as I loved how unique each character was, especially sort of the core group, I didn't like that the magic was homogenized at that point where it's like, well, anybody can have cure. Anybody can use a strong black magic spell if they have the right Esper equipped. Made it easier. Yeah, just make sure everyone has Ultima and you're good. But I agree, because it kind of lessens the... If you really dug the class systems of the previous games, this one's not going be for you, because that's actually nowhere to be found. Really at all. They went very far away from that. And we never really returned to it until like, tactics, I don't think. Would you say the junction? don't remember with I don't remember Final Fantasy 8 well enough to know the junction system really Comprised the same idea, but no Junction system. I have funnier because you're saying the class system and that's a great point like I personally am NOT I wasn't crazy about the job systems same as me in Final Fantasy 3 and sit and 5 I Didn't want control over those. I didn't want free control over them but I did like the different classes. And I think that was one of the reasons that Four worked so well with those characters. mean, those characters were just basically a grouping of the various jobs from Final Fantasy III. But it was good, because it dictated who they were as characters and what their uses were in battle. And yeah, there were enough other... unique elements of the characters in Final Fantasy 6 that it didn't make a big difference, but it did kind of take magic out of the equation because it was so, it was, again, anybody could learn anything. You just had to do it. Also, any other final thoughts about Final Fantasy 6? Because I actually want to talk a bit about Final Fantasy 7 as well since we have a little bit of time. Any other thoughts, though? Just like kind of sum up situations, sum up type stuff? Again, it was really one of the drivers for me to get my Super Nintendo. I remember just adoring it. from start to finish, it was so epic, it was so much bigger than anything else that I'd played at that point. In hindsight, realizing it was also the swan song for the series on Nintendo platforms for the foreseeable future, even though there was that infamous 3D character demo for Project Reality that never came to fruition. Yeah, I it's just, I look at it as a masterpiece. It's my favorite Final Fantasy game. I'm such a big fan of the 90s, but especially the first half of the 90s as far as games go. They were such a formative time for me as a video game player. And I mean, this one just sits at the top of the heap. I was so completely sold on role playing games at that point. And Final Fantasy 1 was what made me fall in love with them. And Final Fantasy 6 was just the ultimate version of the kind of role -playing game that I fell in love with. cannot be a Final Fantasy episode without the great Julian Titus of the Stage Select Podcast. I'm going to say it again. I say it all the time. If you haven't listened to Stage Select yet, please do that. Please turn this show off and listen to Stage Select. I'm actually OK with that. I'd love when my friends do good work and he is doing him and Justin are doing a great work there on the Stage Select Podcast. So be sure to check that out. Let's join Justin as he discusses leveling, gameplay, miscellaneous thoughts, and some final opinions. You know, any other kind of odds and ends, any other thoughts on Final Fantasy 6 that you want to share, any of the memories or recollections, maybe people you've talked to about it or played it with. I it's not the kind of game you play with people with, but I have found a surprising number of people who had personal connections through these games, which is interesting, considering they're mostly solo. Yeah. Yeah. Any other thoughts or just, yeah. Well, one real quick thing. Again, I will never not take an opportunity to point people in the direction of no one can know about this. But when they did their Final Fantasy six season, that was the first season where they started to do voices for the characters. And the voice they came up with that they decided on for Kefka ended up being Dale from King of the Hill. And so to this day, I cannot not hear that. when I read it, when I see a Kefka line, because it works just surprisingly well. I'm gonna build a monument to hate. It's real good. that's really funny. Which podcast, you've mentioned this show a couple of times now. No one can know about this, a podcast where they play every Final Fantasy. It is a podcasters podcast build, because they record themselves while they're playing the game. Then they record themselves in the editing bay, watching back the footage. And so you get this really amazing like dual narrative of like what happened in the past, which is oftentimes like months ago, you know, and then like they get to, know, then they have like when they're editing, like they know what's happening, what's coming up, but their past selves don't. And you know, it's a lot of fun and they get a lot of shenanigans. I got to that out. I might want to reach out to those guys because you mentioned a bunch and I. the just as you were talking about that, I want that clip of them doing it and I'd want to get the permission to take it. So that may be an excuse to reach out to me like, Hey guys, I'm doing a thing and can I get your permission to steal like one bit of you doing Kefka's voice is Dale from King of the Hill. Cause that sounds amazing. It's so wonderful. That's cool, man. And then the other big thing that we haven't really touched on, mean, there's so many things that we could touch on, right? Like we barely addressed like the characters or the overall story, but the music. It is one of, in my opinion, one of Uematsu's best. And, you know, I think it's one of those things. So much of Final Fantasy VI, and they couldn't have known this at the time, but it felt like they knew that it was... like the end of an era, right? Because it's the final, you know, of what I would call like the early days of Final Fantasy, right? Final Fantasy VII is a very different thing. And the series goes on to be a very different thing from that point. But VI is so much the culmination of those previous five games. this felt like if they weren't planning on it being the final game, like it sure feels like that's what they were, that's what their mentality was going into it because it's like we're gonna end the show with a show stopper. and you know, like, we want to, like, he was actually at my first Distant Worlds, which was really cool, so I got to see the Q &A with him. And, you know, his opinion may have changed since, but he did say at that time that his favorite piece that he'd ever composed was the ending theme to Final Fantasy VI, which is basically that really amazing blending of everybody's themes, right? along with an overarching ending theme. It's like what, like 25 minutes long and just incredible. And so much of that game's music is just indelibly etched in my mind. And I think it really takes it to new heights and especially, you being constrained by the Super Nintendo, right? Like a 16 -bit setup, and it doesn't feel like it. Like it never felt like, like when I heard the opera, right? Like in my mind, in my 15 -year -old brain, it was an opera, right? Like it didn't take any really like finagling on my part to get the extra part of the way there. It just continually impresses me. And it was actually one of the first soundtracks that I ever purchased. at Gamefell is the store that I ended up working at. They had import soundtracks and that was one of the first purchases that I made there. It was a three disc soundtrack and I still have that actual purchase I still own to this day. That's cool. What a cool piece of history there. That's really cool. Yeah, and it's funny because you mentioned that we really didn't talk about characters. And again, if there's more character stuff you want to talk about, I'm happy to. We didn't talk about mechanics. And there's a reason why, because again, this can't be eight episodes. I want to focus more on those personal stories on the connections as opposed to the nuts and bolts, because we could talk all day about Esper systems and material, material, obviously, Espers and leveling and all that. But I think for a game like this, there's so much richness in the story and the way it affected people. I kind of want to center on that. Well, let's talk about that stuff because For me, personally, that's kind what this show tries to do, as you know. This show tries to get to that stuff, which I think sometimes I have guests on that are a little surprised that we're not talking about leveling systems and where to get the most, you and this stuff comes up and it's not a bad thing at all. Trust me, it comes up and we'll have sprinkled that here and there. But people kind of come on the show and they're like, you're talking about personal stuff. It's like, Yeah. It's a personal thing. Although I will say, you know, on my first playthrough, like I, you know, cause again, didn't have any games and what else am going to do, right? Especially like on a summer break or something like that. But I did actually level my characters, you know, until I didn't get them all to 99, but I did get them all to max hit points and I did most of the stuff that you could do in it. you know, once you get the Genji glove and the offering and you have a character that has like two melee weapons that attack for max damage eight times in a turn, like that's some good fun. Kefka didn't really last that long in my, like the first time that I fought him. No, yeah, it's really fun to power level and just get everyone to 99. I think I've done it, I've done the everyone to 99. I think I did it once in one of my many playthroughs and I haven't played through Final Fantasy 6 in many years. Just because I've played so much as the young, I've probably finished that game at least 10 times in different variations. So it's one of those things I don't need to replay for this. I don't need to replay this for this podcast. Yeah, like other things I do, but yeah, there is something very fun about power leveling or taking one person into one of those where you can actually pick your party. putting them into one of those caverns and letting them get all the experience. I used to do that a lot where I would get someone to the point where they could, one person could take on an entire battle at a time and then just let them power level like mad. was very, very fun. I would do the buddy system. would have one high level character and pair them with a lower level character with the experience egg on there. And the higher level character did all the killing and the lower level one would get the levels and then they would become the new mentor for the next lower level character. Yeah, I kind of did a similar thing. Yeah, it was similar to that. And then at some point I would get like the really high level characters like you're saving who can just destroy wipe wipe an entire field with one shot. Yeah, once he gets to a certain point, you just power level that person. It's really fun. Did you try to get General Leo back? No, I remember the rumors, right? And you know, you would see things here and there. But I think I don't know. I've always been like a pretty like logical guy. And even at the time I was like, that doesn't really make sense, you know, from like this point and this point and this point. Like there's no room for him in the roster for you know, like, there's no, there's no place for him to be. But man, like I It's really cool you get to use him for that one battle and it would have been if like he could have been like a tag along character for a little bit longer, right? Where you could actually play around with him for a bit. I feel the same way about a certain character in Final Fantasy IX where it's like, why aren't you in the party? Like it's so clear you should be in the party. Why don't you join the party? but that's discussion for another day. Indeed. I, I, well, you could at least give him as more time than Bannon. All right. Bannon got to at least roll around the river with you a bunch. Like that was cool. At least give me a little bit of time. No, that's cool. I totally. Yeah. I love having, like guest characters that show up in your party. Especially, you know, even in a game where you have so many party members to begin with, but it's still cool to be like, wow. Like for this one part of the game, I get to be like, pal around with this person, see what they can do. That's cool. Yeah, it is cool. And I, I totally tried to get him back. I, I, I scoured every early internet site, every game facts I could find, bring every rumor I chased. Yeah, yeah. All your characters to 99 go to the grave, dressed as Salas and then walk around in a circle five times. All that I did. I tried everything I possibly could to resurrect General Leo to no avail. That's a thing that I missed from that very specific time frame where the Internet was just starting. And also you still had like people like friends just kind of like passing around rumors and stuff like that. I forget where I was talking about. think, was on our show. had James and JJ from Retrofits on, and before the show we were talking about certain things. And I brought up like Mortal Kombat 2, right? When they were doing the tests, they were rolling out like the revisions of the game, like two arcades. You know, so like I played a version of Mortal Kombat 2 where Sub -Zero's deep freeze fatality was only half implemented, where you could do the deep freeze move that would cause them to basically not be able to do anything for the rest of the match, but it was outside of the context of the fatality part of it. And you know, little things like that are what gave way to so many amazing rumors about those games, because people would see weird things in weird versions of the games that... only happened like once or whatever. then you have the internet kind of starting to fuel into that. And yeah, it made you feel like anything was possible. nowadays it's like, well, people can just like mind the code so they know exactly what is possible and what isn't possible. And it's like, man, but I miss that. I miss that part of part of things. The goose, the goose egg chair, not goose egg. The wild goose chase wild goose goose egg chase. The wild goose chases. You know what? There's something kind of charming about it in retrospect. Absolutely. Yeah, man. Next up, let's join Mikhail Casanova and then Mike of the Distorted Illuminations YouTube channel as they discuss themes, how certain characters can actually break the game completely, and some other miscellaneous thoughts and opinions. So, so I have a question for you because typically when I ask this question, it's either one or the other and not technically both. Do you view Final Fantasy six as high like dark high fantasy or as steampunk. I view it as an amalgamation of both. It is. I if I had to pick one or the other, I would probably lean towards a dark fantasy, but by a by a hair. But I agree. It's an amalgamation of both because it has so much of the fabric of especially the first half of Final Fantasy is rooted in this idea of machines versus magic. We no longer have magic, so we've invented machines to do these things and that kind of steampunk idea. And then when magic starts introducing itself and reforming itself, towards the end, you are in full, I think, dark fantasy territory. So I think it really is a tale of two genres. If I had to pick, I think I would say dark fantasy, but again, like, by a hair. I think it's a beautiful melding of both. Early on, especially, especially in the first 20, 25 hours, it is definitely a steampunky story. Yeah, that's where I would learn with that. That's a good question. I steal that. Go for it. will credit you. I always credit the questions I steal. was for Final Fantasy VI, do you remember being really impactful? These early Final Fantasy games had amazing introductions to the world. totally. The Moogle, like the split of the Moogle parties. That was immediately interesting because I'd not seen anything like that before. But then you got so many characters you can build your party out of. Like, of course you had like Breath of Fire II, which had like eight characters, but you're looking at like 14? I wanna say Six has. Something like that. Yeah, like 14 or 16. I know it's in the double digits. So I love that there was so many options that you had for making your party. The way you could teach all of your people all of these different stuff with the espers. There was nothing else like that that I was playing. No, no, the customization was a big part of it for sure. And of course, how can you forget World of Ruin? Like, I mean, yeah. This is one of those things that I think we brought it up in When we talked last time too, but I am sad that the modern audience is never going to get to experience that twist with Kefka becoming the lead villain Years of knowing that it's so easy to forget like this whole time is it seemingly setting up Gestahl Because Kefka's just Gestahl's lapdog the plans were all Gestahl's But at the end of the day the threat is what happens when Gestahl's little monster gets off his leash That's just a twist that's lost on everyone because it's so ingrained Kefka's the villain. It saddens me a little bit to know that. don't get to ex - cause no one who's going to get to experience that. They're going to go in just knowing, yeah, it's Kefka. Just because it's so ingrained in the culture at this point. That's true. That's a good point. Yeah. I mean, it's not, yeah, it's hard to escape the story of Final Fantasy 6. Like even people who grew up playing it. I think a lot of people until that's pointed out, they tend to forget it because it's been so long. I didn't realize it until I kind of realized I had that problem with Persona 4 Golden and one of the twists that ruined from Persona 4. I don't want to get into here just in case someone avoided the twists of Persona 4. Play the PS3 version before Golden. That's all I'll say. Exactly. 6 had an interesting thing about it you wouldn't see in a lot of other games and That was it was one of the buggiest Super Nintendo games you're going to find There were a lot of little things that could glitch and wipe the whole Just all three files out I don't remember it being super buggy when I had it, again, I owned it. It wasn't going from system to system. So maybe, yeah. There's the whole thing, like you could break your game sketching invisible enemies with rich. was realm. Combine those two names together. Very nice. Sketch and realm. Yeah, so you can do, I've heard of this. So you can actually... you can actually just completely break the game by sketching invisible enemies. Imaging, huh, which makes sense. There's a really weird one I found out because if you sketched a T -Rex with the rainbow brush, you could potentially glitch your game just doing that. Really? had the wrong brush to quit. The US release of Final Fantasy VI was horribly buggy compared to other releases at the time. Interesting. These days, I don't think it'd be considered all that buggy. No, of course not. mean, Bethesda has more bugs in probably one section of the game than anything in Squares released. But I never knew that. didn't know, because I never really played as Realm. I was never a fan of her. I just never played as her. So it's probably one of the reasons why I never ran into her. That's interesting. yeah, like I think 40 % of the glitches in that game revolved around sketch That's so in that's so funny and it says and it's a skill you don't get into the world of ruin You don't even have that for the first 60 % of the game. So Final Fantasy VI, I actually, for this series, start playing it again, but I've played it so many times, VI, I don't really need to play it again. So I found a ROM that's a fan translation, that's supposedly like the definitive fan translation that pulls from all these different... this is the one you sent me, yes! Yes, okay, yeah, you sent me that one, yes, okay, so there we go, perfect. You sent me that one, I played it, it is awesome. How good is that? How good is that script? It's fantastic. You sent it to me, that's right. it came up during the episode we did. Yeah, I do too many of these interviews, I apologize. You're good. I do too many. all the time. Yeah, you sent it to me. It is so good, so thank you, because it is awesome. See, I actually think, because depending on where you were online back in the day, a lot of people gave so much shit to Ted Woosley, who I don't know if you know the name, he's the guy who did a lot of the Square Enix translations back on the Super Nintendo. Yeah, he's like one guy who did all that. Like, for what he had to work with, because you couldn't, because Japanese and English... are so different you can say a lot more in fewer spaces in Japanese. He had to somehow get everything across with less characters or a lot less words than a full translation would have entailed. He was on short -rust jobs because at the time people didn't really put that much stock into translating the story of a game into English. And with what he had to work with, I think he did a great job. absolutely. I still think the script, the translate, because he did four and he did six, correct? Yeah, I think they're both fine. mean, again, given the time constraints and what he had to work with. reading it in, I don't want say a modern way, but reading that fan translation and just seeing, it just really shows how rich. this that story is and how rich that dialogue can be and it really highlights the characters really well too. It gives them more personality but no I don't think there's anything wrong with the translation of American 2 and American 3 but the French translation is really something else it's awesome. So thank you. man. They were smart to keep a lot of what Woosley did do though because they did what he was doing. Yeah, it's very faithful and it just has a the flow is a little better. The readability is a little better. It just the dialogue feels a lot more natural. It's really exceptional. So if anybody wants to play a traditional old school Final Fantasy six, but with some updated dialogue, that is definitely the way to go. I will say the pixel remasters are nice because I love all the quality of life improvements. I love the autoplay and all that, but I can't stand the washed out look in pixel art. That's the only, that is really, I think, and it's a big detractor, it didn't bug me too much for me. I played it on the Switch version. I'm sorry, not Switch, I played it on Steam, so I don't play it, I don't have it on the Switch, I have it on Steam. And I totally see what people are getting at when it comes to the washed out colors. It just doesn't bug me as much as I think it does others, but for sure, the vibrancy of the original and the depth of the original is really. choice. Next up is music producer Mustin and I gotta say Mustin came to the show through one of my casting calls on Twitter. He wrote I believe a very long and detailed explanation of how much he loves Final Fantasy and I knew I had to have him on and boy boy am I grateful that he joined me and he's been joining me ever since I started this journey five or so months ago. Let's join Mustin as he talks about the pixel remasters, the Nintendo Power players guide, which I wore out to death, and a final pitch to a new player if they had never experienced the game before. How was it experiencing it for the first time with people? You experienced it for the first time yourself, but then you had other people coming in after school, those poor saps who couldn't get out of school like you could. How was it experiencing it with people? It's great. It's like I was some kind of wizard. The best part of playing with people there is that I got to take a minute to read the gargantuan instruction manual and I saw that you could do two people at the same time. I was like dudes hold on and then went to the menu and then put in another controller and then set up Like, my god, okay, who wants to be this? Like, you could be two people, could be one person or whatever. So player two actually got to play and that was so, like, beyond my mental capacity. We were just freaking out. And then that made it even more chaotic because someone could choose to torpedo the fight, you know? much to the chagrin of whoever is player one. So it was fun. That's funny. I never knew until I started having these conversations that you could play this game to player. Yep. I never knew this and maybe I just didn't see that part of the guide, which is I just pulled it up to about 82 pages. Like this thing is like a tome of information. I must have missed that somehow some way as you could play this to player. Would it be like, could the second player pick which character they were controlling and then have the computer control the think player one picked everything, so you had to like, you know, you had to do some cooperation and some society, you know, because we live in a society, so we had to put some trust in that. But yeah, it was fun. It was just, it added that little bit of chaos and yeah, it was good to watch. other people get to where I was getting to. And then I think I was like, okay, y 'all, like, this is where I got to, so get the fudge off. But I think that I ended up just, it's hard to remember, but I imagine that little Mustin would have been like, yeah, keep playing and then I'll go back and then I'll do better than what you all are doing. You know, cause at least I'm here to experience it. So, it wouldn't be until I think it was like a later, like month, weeks or months later, that I got the actual official Nintendo Power Guide, which I have right here at my desk. it looks like something that Indiana Jones would have uncovered from some tune. It's so war and torn. I'll have to send you a picture. I went through and tried to dog ear the stuff. pages are out and had to find them all, but it is intact. I found out that I do have every page, but man, is it beat up. I used the heck out of that thing. Yeah, I had the Nintendo Power players got as well. And mine, it's probably somewhere still in my mom's basement someplace in shambles and tatters. I distinctly remember having taped pages taped together, you know, like to keep it to the binding. I actually a number of years ago got a wild hair one day and it's like, you know, I want that again. So I actually went out and got myself another copy of it that was in decent condition. It's not in great condition, but it's in decent condition. Just and I'm not a collector. It's not a thing I do. But once in a while I'll get that. like, I really just want this thing from way back in the day. So I also have a copy of the Final Fantasy three players guide, the Nintendo power version off the throat on Twitter or something. But. I'm curious to see what yours looks like, that well -worn tome that carries you through the game. It very much is. And I'm looking at the inside -outside page, or the last page, I guess. And it was very important because you could actually get the Final Fantasy soundtrack and Sigurd or Mana soundtracks in here. Get outta here! That's how I got my soundtrack, and that thing was treasured amongst me and my friends. I would be kind enough to pass it around and let people borrow it and stuff. It's just great, fantastic. I love it, Because I'm always playing this game. This game, they announced, I think recently, that you can do emulation on Apple phones now. I was doing that back in 2008 on my Android phone. Nice. I had an HTC phone that had a built -in kickstand. I was at some airport cafe, I had my Wii remote and plugged in the thing that makes it into a Super Nintendo controller and I'm sitting there playing Final Fantasy 6 and a wait person came by and they're like, is that what you doing? Is that on your phone? I was like, yeah. I was like, can I do it? And then they pull out their Apple phone and it was like a movie. I just closed my eyes and just shook my, I'm like, I'm sorry friend, I'm so sorry. You know and like so it's always on my phone. It's always in the the Wii I got it the pixel version on the switch and I remember one day I went to the bank a couple well after was like After it came out on the on the pixel version. I went to the bank It was cold and I have my hoodie and I have it set up, you know, it's got the built -in kickstand, you know, just like Everything should be go HTC Go switch. And then I have each Joy -Con like basically like folded under my arms and I'm just leaning on this thing and they were doing this. They had to do something with the check and it's gonna take forever. I'm sitting there playing it. I'm like this, if you could have told many me that this is how it was going to be, you're gonna be sitting here playing this at the bank and all you had to do is push this button and put it back into your pocket and it wouldn't lose your space and it wasn't gonna stay like, blew my mind. I'm always playing the game. What was the question? I love that image of airport Final Fantasy six on the HTC phone. I love that. That's that's great. It's it's cool. How many times do you think you've played this game? Like obviously you don't have an exact number, but no, but I would put it probably up there and 70 to 100 times. Yeah, yeah, that's and some are quick some are quick, but then sometimes I'm like into it and then like Yeah, and then like I'll like sitting with my son and plan and then another you know a couple years later sitting with my daughter and playing it and then you know and then with my former wife we went through a couple of times and I just I mean I've got a game going right now Yeah, I haven't played the Pixel remaster yet because I'm focusing on the the Final Fantasy games I haven't played yet. I've played I've probably gone through Final Fantasy six 30 times would be my guess. So I know the game very well, so I don't really need to replay it for this series, but I am definitely going to dive into it again once I get a more a little more time in the in the schedule for sure. It's great. It's great because you can set it since you are an old pro set it to the. four times the experience, four times the gil, and four times the magic points. It's great. Just go fast. Perfect. Just go fast through and experience it and pretty much friction free. love it. Yeah, and hear all the new arrangements, so the music and stuff. Yeah, that's what I'm most interested in, honestly, are those new arrangements. Are you a fan of the new arrangements in the Pixel Remaster? Some of them. Some of them, daddy's got to go in and click back to the original. It is really... it's very cool that you can just go back and click to the original soundtrack. It's very, very sweet. But some of them, I don't know who did them, but I am, you know, they have brought shame to their house. I do not, I hate to be so critical of something, but I do not understand how the arrangement of the floating continent made it into the game. It is so... not what the original was, and it is more noise than it is melody. And it's very, very, very unfortunate. But that is my critique. Okay, that's fair. That's fair. mean, and everyone reacts so differently, obviously, but no, for sure. I think that that makes sense. I'm curious now to hear how that how they portrayed it. If you met somebody that let's say they played games of the era and maybe our age or even our age, right? and they'd said to you, you know, I've never played Final Fantasy VI. Like I just never was interested. What would be your elevator pitch to, hey, this is something you should check out as somebody who clearly loves this game? I would say... Would you like to play Steampunk Star Wars from 1994? If so, I've got the game for you. I like that. That's pretty succinct. I think it actually makes a lot of sense. Steampunk Star Wars. Yeah, I mean, that's a very great way of describing it. Totally. I dig that. That makes a lot of sense to me. I'm in. That makes it perfect. It is time as always to thank my wonderful patrons and in the spirit of bringing order to chaos I'm just gonna read the names in literally the order they're here on my screen. This is just complete total randomness. So order from randomness. Yeah, that's the theme. Awesome. Starting with Philip Becker, Terry Kinnair, Greg Seward of the Player One podcast and Generation 16 series of videos, Games with Coffee, the Let's Play Princess, BT Gold, goals. Next up we have comedian Nate McClellan talking about the music of Final Fantasy 6 and the opera scene. And then we have our good friend Phoebe, AKA the Let's Play Princess, talking about combat mechanics, leveling strats, and the mysterious idea of espers. so yeah, think, especially music, I can't get through a conversation about Final Fantasy without talking about music. I, more so than anything else, the music in... Final Fantasy is so important to not just the storytelling, but the emotion of it, especially in the early games where you don't have all the means of storytelling that you do now. When I played Final Fantasy VI in 2020, it was my first time through and I'd always heard the opera scene. It was like this hushed reverence towards the opera scene, I guess. And I was like... Okay, so I know there's an opera scene and like apparently it's really good and very few times in my life have I like heard about this one scene or like this one piece of media, and it lives up to the hype like I I always heard pulp fiction is one of the best movies ever made and I watched pulp fiction when I was like 22. I was like, yeah, it's okay, you know, like it's good, but you know, it's a little overhyped. but the opera scene in six. is so insanely good. Like it blows my mind that on the Super Nintendo there is a scene like that and where they give the character voices with the sound like it will make it sound like they're singing. Just beautiful. Like it blew me away. Like I was I looked at my wife, you know, and was telling her about it. I was like, you don't like this is so cool. You know, like I can't imagine playing through that is like a kid where the Super Nintendo is like the system. Yeah, it's out and just like experiencing that and not going like they're like nothing will ever top this. You know, it was it was I played the opera scene as a kid. I played I was it was 94. I guess it was was with Final Fantasy six and I was 14. I played it of its time. And yeah, I'd never seen anything like it. I remember feeling overwhelming emotion like I was watching a movie. As if I were watching, and I wasn't a big movie watcher at the time either, so it was probably one of the first real cinematic experiences. I dabbled in movies, but nothing serious, outside of like Star Trek movies. And I remember thinking, you're exactly right, that it's not gonna get better than this. making that singing work and just, I could actually picture the words as they were singing it, you know, because obviously they have the words of the songs, but. I can picture the words being intoned, you know, as they're doing the eight bit or 16 bit singing. Yeah, man. No, it's mind blowing. And can we all agree that the opera house, even though it does hold up, it's one big joke. Like the opera house is a giant joke leading up to one very emotional moment. Like that one cathartic emotional moment when she throws the... Even her going, even Sel's going through the opera house and sorry, going through the scene and... doing the play and doing the opera, if you mess up, you're allowed to like mess up some of the lyrics, which are funny, and you're allowed to like mess up the dancing part of it, and we get to restart it and do it again. It's all one big farce up until the point where she has this like connection of realization when she kind of throws those roses, and then of course it's kind of reverberated in the world of ruin. Yeah. Bye, that is a great moment. But people always remember as this big emotional thing. If you play it now, you're like, this is actually really funny. There's a purple octopus chasing me around an opera house while I'm to do this mad caper to get a lecherous old man to show up and try to kidnap an opera singer. Like it's weird. It's a very weird thing. And then like when you're on the stage fighting the purple octopus. the orchestra is just like, right, I guess we have to ditch this scene now. They don't even question it. They're like, sure. Let's go. It's a very silly, very silly and funny. And again, it's one of those things where we always talk about the emotion of it and how amazing and dramatic it's like, had that one moment where it all comes to a head for Selis and she has that kind of moment of realization where she kind of connects with the character. Beautifully beautifully done, but the balance of it is a lot of fun and very goofy from a purely mechanical standpoint as far as play goes. I've been talking to lot of people about the different aspects in play and, I'm sorry, different story aspects and characters, but sometimes we forget that we have to play this game. It has to be fun in our hands. no, I think the gameplay is fantastic. Yeah, cool, cool. What's your take on it? It's... I'm not gonna say the word perfect, but it's definitely one of the most... One of the most... one the best mechanically playable Final Fantasy games. Each character having something completely different and unique about them and the way they do it. Sov and having these fighting game mechanics to do silly things like suplex a train. You have Edgar who is actively that game's version of the Machinist or the Gunner using the bio... chemical weapon or the chainsaw depending on which ones you find. Celice being the runite and you actually have the ability to absorb certain damage with her and instead heal it. I love how each character fits a Final Fantasy trope. Same with four. But they do it in a more unique way. where their gameplay actually changes. Like Cyan being the samurai and having to concentrate and build himself up before he does one of his Bushido strikes. It's perfect. I didn't want to say the word, but it is, it's perfect. Yeah, and what I love about it too is it's just simple enough to be understandable. but complex enough to be crunchy if you want it to be crunchy, which is, which is cool. Like the espers, when I was playing it, they were just for getting magic. That's all I cared about with the espers. Give me my magic stuff. And then it turned out to be a full leveling system with an extra stat boost. Yep. Extra stat boost. So if you're getting close to a certain thing, you want to make sure like, if you want to give more strength to Sabin, you can make sure you pop that Esper on for that one level boost and then take it off again. Like there's so much complexity in there that you don't need to do. Like I didn't, never did it. and I was perfectly fine. Yeah, I think mechanically I like the way how you say that it ties together the jobs, the typical roles in a Final Fantasy game with actual characters. Yeah, and it's a really pretty seamless, yeah, seamless kind of experience. It's really funny that you bring up the S -Fair system because in a way that gives everybody a subclass. Because sure, Settlest is the Rune Knight, but if you put the... specific Esper owner that would give her HP up or defense up, she becomes more of a paladin. And if you give her something more along the lines of magic damage going up or MP, she's going to become more like a red mage. That's a really interesting way putting it. I never thought of it that way. I never thought of it as you're low key creating these tip, traditional Final Fantasy jobs. That's interesting. See, that's why I talk to you. You have all the good ideas. What were some of your big gameplay tricks for like power leveling and things like that? Did you have any of those? Because I think everyone had their techniques for grinding. I don't remember my particular grinding spots. I don't want to say one of them was a peninsula. That might have been a different Final Fantasy game. I was big into the strat of whenever I had the opportunity to choose my party, you know, pick how many people I would always put a party of two together because the way Final Fantasy works with experience is it's a pool of experience everyone shares. So let's say, for example, you finish a battle and it's 500 XP. You share that amongst all four people. So it's 500 divided by four. guess I 125. Thank you. Thank you. See, I was like, I should have picked a math problem I can do, you know, on the fly. But 125 everyone gets 125. If only have two characters, it gets split between the two, which means everyone would get 250. And that's a great way of power leveling. So what I would do is I would go out into, you know, when you're first in South, first in Narsh and you can pick your characters to go to Figaro and then go to the Opera House and all that. I would send parties of two at a time to just level and power level in that area. I'd get everybody to level 20 until it didn't make sense to do it anymore. And now I was overpowered for the next four hours of the game, like just cruising through it. I remember one, but that's also because the boss in that area was so hard that I just power leveled in that area. I can't remember the name of the area, but it's that one super tall building and it's raining and just all types I think it's Zozo. Is that Zozo or? Maybe it's the one where you climb up and then you fight the boss. and there's the dying Esper and you actually watch it turn into the Magisite. okay. I think that's the, is that, yes, I think, I don't know the name of it, but I know what you're talking about. Yeah, it's some crummy town that's practically haunted or filled with vagabonds and you have to do the entire spiral staircase up and it's filled with so many hard enemies just to have to fight a vase at the end of it. So I remember just farming those enemies. Is that the one where you have to use magic too? I think so, yeah. You're not allowed to use you can only use magic so you have to have reflect rings on everybody to... Yeah, that sounds right. yep. I forget, I think it's like Mount Gulag or something. Mount something, yeah, something like that, but I what you're talking about. Yeah, that is a pain, that is a royal pain. It's optional though, you don't really need to do it, but you do get some really great... You get a really great... We can get the offering at the end of that, if I'm not mistaken. I remember you get a Magisite from it, because again, you watch that one Esper die and actively turn into a Magisite right in front of your eyes, which again, was also pretty shocking for a teenage me. The whole concept of Espers, I think, is really interesting and really good. I really like the Esper system as far as mechanics go, but even from a story beat, I think it's really good too. I think just the idea of these magical creatures that... that were living harmoniously until humanity does humanity things and decides to take it for their own gains. It really does hit when you watch those espers turn from little sprites and creatures and characters to, you know, little jewel. It's like, this is like dead Esper. I'm like putting in my pocket so I can learn fire too. This is it's weighty. It really is waiting. Just thinking about the idea. What are you carrying around? it's this diamond. It's the cremated ashes of my buddy. Yes, it's my kids, the cremated ashes of my my pet, my little Pokemon pet. I catch them all. I catch all the others. is my father. Now he's dead and I keep him in my pocket and he teaches me Ultima. Wait, what? Yeah, I like that. Yeah, that's that's good. Yeah, that's that's this is normal. This is totally normal, right? Absolutely. Continuing the conversation is Ryan Lindsay of 105 .3 kiss FM in Ottawa another person who came to the show through the big old Twitter casting call and boy boy, am I glad I kept his information and reached out to him for Final Fantasy 6 I was one of those I had a bunch of those where I asked for a casting call and then reached out five months later because that's kind of how this show works I wish I was more organized than that, but he responded and he was like, yeah, let's do it. And we had an absolute blast. Ryan joins us to talk about his kids, party customization and some final thoughts. Seeing unique about them that you're like, huh, okay, I get it. Yep. There's little pieces of this one's emotion and this and this and the lost boy syndrome with gal and the doting grandfatherly stuff with Strago. And I also like to draw. I don't, but I'll pretend to and with realm. I like to throw things. Big fan of Shadow. I have a dog. My kids, it's the only thing they ever want to see when I'm playing. They're like, I hope he does Interceptor. I'm like, you learned so much. I'm so proud of you. While they're also working on the graphics. It is what it is. But it's cool. And it's cool that your kids seem to get into it, too. That's cool. I've yet to expose my son to the Final Fantasy 6. He's eight. He's gonna be eight in like a few months, and then in a month. So he's still a little bit Make sure his reading's at like a high level, I would say, because if you were like me, you're gonna pound through the dialogue very quickly because you've read it so much. My son, my eldest son, will read through the dialogue so my seven -year -old can actually understand what's going on. And the two of them both get so wrapped up in it, like they love the story, they love the idea, they're like, wow, this is really good. And I love that. But then the youngest will be like, yeah, but these graphics look so dumb. I'm like, yeah, because it's not Fortnite, buddy. There's an actual story. Yes, and other people are going to kill each other, which is super fun. But this has emotion and he's like, I don't care, dad. I know. It's one day it'll hit. That's going to be one of these like one day he's going be like, he's going to be sitting someplace, you know, completely away from a TV on his own. And all of a sudden, sell us again. I'm going to say sell us because that's how I pronounce it. Sell us, man. Sell us. Celis, he's gonna have that image of Celis on the parapet doing the opera and go, that was actually beautiful. It's gonna trigger, you're planting seeds. That's what we're doing, we're just planting these seeds and hope that Fortnite weeds don't destroy them. That's what we're hoping. That's the whole goal. So anyway, but yeah, man, it's cool that you're letting your kids experience it. That's neat. I wish they'd wanna play it, I'm so sick. hoping that seeing this, my eldest in particular, because he, I see things, you'll see this too, in your own kid you see certain things that are very you when you're younger. And I see it in him and I know that if he was to play one of these, if they both are, I don't know if the youngest is ever gonna be really into that side of it, but the eldest, I'm like, man, I'm telling you, if you actually played this, the storyline's so good, you get wrapped up and he's like, maybe, dad, maybe. I think this is gonna be one of the ones that they dig up a copy. or take one of the 48 different ways to play it that I have in the house and play it at some point and go, you know dad, that actually really was good. I'm like, yeah, good. Here's another one. Play this one, play this one, play this one. that's awesome, man. Now, when I do the Final Fantasy episode, the Final Fantasy six episodes, and I do put a plural on there, because there will be more than one. There's no way, because I don't do four hour episodes and there's gonna be so much Is this like a groundbreaking game that so many other games have tried to copy over the years and use mechanics from? No! Yeah, yeah, yeah. this not one of most important games I've ever played in my life and cemented me as a fan of the medium for I don't know life. No, of course. So of course I've spent a lot time talking about Final Fantasy 6 and I don't think anyone's gonna care. Everybody's got a different perspective though. you're - That's why I love about it. Realm is the most important character in the game. some people think, what? Hold on. What? I didn't even touch her. Are you kidding me? It's so easy to divide people on this too when you ask them, you were to tell people you have to narrow it down to just one character. that you're gonna pick to actually run the game as a solo, who are you picking? That is the hardest question you can ask. That's impossible. That is so hard. That is a ridiculously hard question. And it gave you the option to not do that. That's the other little thing, by the way. The ability to pick your party in so many portions of the game where you're like, you know what, that's not who I want. I wanna put this person, this person, this person in the back line and this person here. This is what I'm thinking is gonna be my four. that freedom was something that was unmatched in so many other places in games. You didn't have an RPG where you could legitimately pull in one of 14 characters, surround them with who you wanted to and buff them up from there. My God, what a point system. It's incredible. Yeah, it's incredible. And what I love about too, and it's funny, every conversation I've had so far about Final Fantasy 6, we don't really get into the mechanics of it because all the other stuff is so interesting, I've always loved the Esper system. think it's, I love that system. actually can make arguments that a material system is better in seven, but I love the idea of not only are you building up your magic and you're learning magic through these Espers, you're also doing bonuses and buffs. So if you're really adept at using those bonuses and buffs, you can really, really customize your party in a variety of ways. Again, no one really talks about Final Fantasy VI mechanically, but mechanically it's still awesome. It's a great RPG. Mechanically, it's the real precursor to the brilliant things that we see in all the other ones. And I've said this, thank you for bringing this up, by the way, because I've tried to say this to a few of my friends who are 7 nuts, and I love 7. 7 was the one where I was like, am gamer, hear me roar. This is it. 7 is it. I have spent, I want to say, an equal amount of time playing 7 as I have played in 6. For real. But we don't have the Materia system without espers. totally. Totally. Because you do. You're trying to figure out how many times did you go in and swap one just because you knew you were right at a level up and you wanted that stat up specifically. Yep. And it was... And again, as a... When I was younger, I never caught that. That wasn't the thing I caught when I was playing as a 14 -year -old. That was more of like as an adult thing. It's like... wait a minute. If if I want Sabin to be a big damage dealer with attack, I'll put on this Esper just as about to level that'll plus two him on strength. And man, like that just opened up a world of possibilities, you know, 20 years later. And it was so cool, though. And like that feeling of getting all of the ones that you were going to actually care about and building them. So you're like, everyone's got this. Everyone's got this. I've made sure they've all got this spell. I pushed up this power. I pushed up magic power on this. It felt amazing because you really did build a custom team that was exactly to your own specifications if you were paying attention. Now, I said I had played with my friend Neil when I was younger. Neil was one of those stats heavy focus people. So that concept, the very first time we played through and we did use the two player option. So like he'd control two of the characters. Usually Cyan, I'd have Sabin. And then we'd leave the other two to whatever it was going to be usually mugged for me. And I think he took Edgar for most of it. But when we were making our way through, he'd be like, no, we got to bring up this stat. And he was phenomenal at almost showing me what could be done with it. And then when I went and played through it as myself at the billion times that I have now, I'm so cognizant of it. Like I pay so much attention to it that I know what I want pushed up. Yeah, that's awesome. I love that. It's such an elegant system. And it's It allows for lot and it allows for not only does it allow for a lot of customization, it also allows 14 year old me to still have a really good time and not engage with half of it. You know what I mean? Like just say, I just want to build up my magic and just use this as my magic getter. That's fine. And the game is perfectly fine with you tooling it the way you want. I think it's again, a very elegant way of approaching it. I love that they gave us that. That ability to customize to your own nature. is it means so much more on replays than it did to me as well in the first run, knowing how to do it and knowing what I wanna build with it, or just going, you know what, I'm gonna make something crazy this time around. Every single, like, I'm gonna max out this on every single person that I can is a weird way to do it, but it's kinda fun. Next up is a guest that requires no introduction, the one and only Seth Sergel. There are a few people in my podcasting circle that have literal open invitations where if I have a topic I'm talking about and you want to talk about it, you have a spot. I'm kind of reserving those. And it's not because they're better or more interesting or better interviews. They provide unique insights every time I talk to them. And a big part of what I try to deliver on this show is unique insights. And some of these people are also very open with their personal stories and personal histories. And those are the types of stories I like telling on the show. And Seth has been incredibly gracious over the years in sharing his stories. He was a huge part of the Legend of Zelda series, not so much the Final Fantasy, but his contributions. have been incredible and they will be incredible. He's got some pretty amazing stories to tell that you're going to hear later on in the Final Fantasy series. So thank you, Seth, for being a part of the show. And also for those of you listening at home, please check out his work at All End Media. As of this recording, the All End podcast is no more. And as of this recording, there's a lot of things in the air. I don't think this is getting released for another two to three weeks after this recording. So who knows? Maybe it's clear. So please support Seth in all of his endeavors on the All -N Media Network, if that's what it's called by this time. Again, I think that was a working name. That's what I've been going with thus far. Let's join Seth as he talks about sharing the experience of Final Fantasy VI with a friend. Now, some people think it's kind of cool to dunk on Final Fantasy VI these days. I don't know how that happens, but evidently that's a thing. And finally, the game as an extension of reading literature. It sounds like you had a shared experience with Final Fantasy 6 with your friend Justin. Did I get that right? Yeah, yeah, Justin. was that? How was that? Because Final Fantasy 6 and RPGs in general are typically not things you share with people, They're the kind of game that you sit and there's grinding and there's lots of time investment. How was that shared experience with your friend going through this? It's interesting because I so I'm the oldest of I have eight other siblings across various, know, my parents have both divorced and remarried and had kids from both marriages. So, but I was the first, I'm the oldest of all of them. So my friend Justin was sort of the, sadly we're not friends anymore. We haven't been friends in many years now, but he was my best friend for, you know, like 17 years or something like that. And he was kind of my older brother, you know, in a lot of ways, like he, He was a few years older than me. He's like four years older than me and so he kind of shepherded like kind of Sherpa'd me through a lot of games and nice Again, I'm you know, I'm young playing playing this with him and he's kind of at this point a teenager properly and so I think there was an element of it of like kind of passing the controller back and forth. I do remember When we started playing some of these games together be it Legend of Dragoon or yeah, any of the Final Fantasies or Chrono Trigger or whatever, we would typically like pick characters to like read the text of. not fun. We'd kind of like trade off. And so that that's kind of cute. But with Final Fantasy six, like it would get to a point where something would be so intense that like neither one of us were talking. We were just silently reading and moving on. I remember that. remember especially like some of the moments like with Kefka and like the big like plot twist with Kefka, you know, kind of at the midway point of the game. I remember we were both just silent. Like nobody was voicing the characters in that moment. And yeah, so that was kind of a special experience, kind of having that little like younger brother experience with somebody who was not actually my older brother, but he was maybe a bit of a surrogate older brother and it's our dichotomy was interesting because neither one of us had excellent home lives or anything but him like even worse than me so like he would kind of come to my house to escape and i would go to his house to escape and like we would kind of just you know create these little safe harbors for each other and video games are always kind of at the the heart of it if it's final fantasy when we're younger Growing up that would then become like a ton of World of Warcraft So yeah video games and what was a real real corner of our friendship for a long time and It was yeah, it's special memories playing some of those RPGs with him That's really special and I love the idea of games in general But you use Final Fantasy 6 because this is a game you can lose yourself in this is a narrative you can get lost in and a lot of times when I talk to non-gamer people in everyday life, sometimes I get the feel or the sentiment that it's not okay to lose yourself in things like this. Like it's almost too interactive. And when I hear stories like that where people, young people who are trying to escape some realities or find other things to maybe distract if nothing else. from what's going on personally, I think that's actually very valuable. think that's, I think video games are one of those things that you can really get lost in because you have so much agency, you can be in this world. And there's a downside to that too, right? There's, you know, too much of anything is not good, but I really appreciate hearing that kind of story that, yeah, things were rough and this helped me get through stuff. Like this game got me through it because it was so interactive, it was so engaging. it was doing as designed. You know what I mean? Like I think there's something special to that. When I see people online, I think it's like, it's cool to say that Final Fantasy 6 is overrated. You know, now, now that it's all this time later, a lot of people are like, Final Fantasy 6 is overrated. I'd rather play five or four or whatever. Like it's like cool to hate on it now. But there's still, mean, like so many things, especially for the time, totally unprecedented. Never played anything like that before. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I had never played anything like it and I played it up its time. I was 14. They're right in the pocket for that. Like I was starting to read real books. I was like reading Stephen King books in the high library and starting to discover like, like literature and, and, and just having that as a, as a, as an extension of that was, was just stunning to me. I totally agree. You, you talking about Stephen King books, like I just had a Jimmy Neutron brain blast when you say that. I had a little ratatouille moment just now because I relate to that so much because I was reading, like I remember the first time I read it, like for the first time. I did too. And I was also like too young to be reading that. I remember very distinctly being like, I should not be reading this. there's, you enter a moment at a certain point in your life where like you're not a kid anymore, where you're not like, you know, whether it was a moment that was forced upon you or you stumble into it by accident, you have that realization of like, like, like I'm being exposed to like real stuff. Like I'm not being sort of like sheltered or protected by the art that I'm consuming anymore. Like this is almost, like this is almost what the world really is, you know? And something like Final Fantasy VI, something like Stephen King's It is really... Those two things occupy very similar space in my mind and in my childhood. I love that. I really love that. Yeah, I was the exact same way my mom read a little bit of Stephen King and it was... We had an attic in the house and it was always sitting on the stairs of the attic, just glaring at me. And I grabbed it one day and just started reading it again at like 14 or 15. Should not be reading it. book too. A huge 800 pages, huge book. And I'm just enthralled with everything going on. And yeah, man, I've kind of rediscovered reading lately. I forgot how fun it is to read. This is completely off topic, but I'm reading Laird Baron right now. If you're with Laird Baron, it's like a cosmic horror, very Lovecraftian, old mythos and... You know, monsters from the depths, stepping around for millions of millennia. And the prose, I cannot recommend him higher enough if you really enjoy. His prose is stunning. Like it's gorgeously written. It makes Stephen King read like a fifth grader. It's really, it's and he's short story. He's mainly short story writer, but he has a few novels. So I've read two of his collections and just finished one of his first novels. If you like like Lovecraftian style cosmic horror and weird fiction. I just Google. I just Googled this guy and it's a picture of him with like an iPad. Yes. He's a strange Alaskan with an iPad. She writes these absolutely gorgeously gorgeous slow burn scary. All these characters have very young. It's it's very it's there's almost like these hardboiled hardboiled film noir. male stereotype characters that find themselves in situations they're not mentally equipped to handle because it involves creatures and cosmic forces that they can't deal with. And so there's a lot of - my alley. and it speaks a lot to like, not toxic masculinity, but the nature of masculinity and it's- That's amazing. Where's a good place to start? Like what should I I would say, I probably would start with the Imago sequence, which is a short story collection. And the Imago sequence is probably where I would start. That's where I started. And by time I got to the third story, was like, this is... It's like one o 'clock in the morning and I'm reading it in bed. Like, I should not read this stuff right before bed, but I am. Stuff is him knows formally of the lead is you can still listen to the lead us by the way if you go on to your pop player of choice look up the lead us they're all there please listen to them even though the show is no more the backlog is incredible they have a lot they have so much fun on that show my guest appearance on the lead us was some of the most fun I've had doing podcast stuff so I definitely check out him knows work even though the team is not doing work as we speak. But who knows, maybe in the future, maybe if we all just will it enough, the leadist can make a triumphant return. We can all hope. Tim joins us to share some personal connections to Final Fantasy VI, some of the mods that he enjoys most, the weird world of espers, and some final summation. You did mention having, and if you don't want to get into this world, that's fine. I have no problem, but you you know the show. I will walk into these areas. You mentioned having ADHD. as a kid and my son has ADHD, he's eight. And he, so I'm curious, you mentioned how you were able to focus and level and get through that. And it feels like Final Fantasy would not be the kind of game a kid with like an ADHD would would lash onto. So I'm curious if that helped or how that kind of worked for you. It was kind of like the hyper focus in the opposite direction. So, you know, on some things you couldn't keep my attention for more than a few minutes, but for the things that I was into, couldn't pull my attention away from. And Final Fantasy VI definitely fell in that category. Chrono Trigger, which I didn't bring up before, but Chrono Trigger was absolutely one of the same games that I poured all of my mind and energy into. I could just sit and maybe, I'll tell ya, Mario Kart was a game I used to play a lot with my brother on Super Nintendo. And we could sit and just play that for hours, and I had a talk boy and we would just record us talking to one another while we were playing Mario Kart Battle Mode together. Battle Zone 4, over and over over over over again. mean hundreds and hundreds of these battles. I was really good, even for a little kid. Yeah, anyways. And the same thing would happen with Final Fantasy VI. My brother and I were really close and we would just kind of sit in the room and talk and I would... go back and forth or I would have something on TV and I would just, you know, left, right, back and forth, back and forth, over and over, power leveling, grinding things out, getting all the spells, getting all the abilities and everything. The same thing happened to me with Final Fantasy VII. I think I was in eighth or ninth grade when that game came out and I spent, I think, the entirety of a summer getting master materia for my entire party, you know, fighting magic pots until my fingers were gonna bleed. And... And it really worked for me. Like it was just something that I wanted to spend my time doing or at least, and this is something that still happens to me as an adult when I am consuming media, for example, most forms of media, I'll tend to consume two different types at the same time. Like if I'm watching something on TV, I've playing a game on my phone. If I'm playing a game. I've got a YouTube video up on my phone playing, you know, and doing a lot of music exploration back in those days. mean, it was the 90s and, you know, having an older brother who, you know, was in tune with all of those things. can I have have have music association album association with certain games like Donkey Kong Country and Metallica's. and Justice for All are inextricably linked. The same with Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill and Yoshi's Island. Those two remind me of each other every That's a cool, that's cool. I have one of those. have a, used to, I didn't do that as much as a kid, but I would listen, if I was playing like Mario 64, for example, I always had something on in the background. I have inextricably linked Mario 64. And remember when they released those Beatles box sets? Like the 25th anniversary Beatles box sets? Those box sets. I used to listen to, I was like really into the Beatles. I think everyone's into the Beatles at least once in their lives. Everyone has a Beatles phase. I had a Beatles phase and I had a Rat Pack phase. Like everyone has, I think those two phases at some point in their life. And I inextricably linked Mario 64 and those Beatles compilations. I've got a weird one for you. I've got Deltron 3030. AKA Delta funky homo sapien and Wario land for virtual boy. That's wild. That is absolutely that's bonkers. That is out of bounds, my friend. That's that's weird. That's cool, though. That's awesome. To kind of bring it back on that one. Yeah, I don't know what it was for sure. But, you know, I probably I was very hyperactive. Like the age was a very big age for me as a kid. So, you know, it never got any really gripe for my parents if I would just sit quietly. you know, for hours at a time in front of that game and just pour all my attention into it. So that's interesting, man. It's interesting because it's one of the things I see in my son as well. If he's into it, he's in. He's like dialed in and he can stay dialed in. And I just found that so that that sounds like Final Fantasy six was that thing you could dial into or Chrono Trigger RPG is the repetitive nature of leveling and. that feedback loop probably was really good for For sure. And there were plenty of things to collect in that game. there were, you know, totally there was, know, getting all of Gaw's rages and, you know, just even getting the characters themselves, you know, was like a fun, just, you know, keep you busy activity. didn't need to have you didn't need to get all those those people back after the after the floating continent. But, you know, right. You just you just do it because you do. You got to get the band together. You got to get the band back together. That's it. Yeah, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say that, and as I've gotten older, I've still stayed very connected to it. I've played it on an emulator several times. One of the things I definitely looked up was, or that I stumbled upon was Brave New World, which is a modded version of Final Fantasy VI that they revamped the translation. They changed a whole bunch of the gameplay mechanics, the leveling mechanics. They make each character who has like kind of flaws in how their abilities work. They improve upon those. It's a much less forgiving game. know, each, you know, the first enemies that you meet could petrify you, you know, so you got to be careful on that. It's that sort of thing. It's much more brutal. But, you know, they revamp things like sword texts. You know, you've got a total revamp on that one. You know, they make some tools. better and more necessary in order to survive certain fights. So like you really have to strategize how you're using what in each fight. I got, probably put about 15 to 20 hours into that one, but it was really hard, really frustrating. Wow. But I'll casually watch speed runs of it, Puexel speed run of it. I've watched several times. mean, I just, I still love it. I've never gotten over it. The Magisite system and everything was relatively simple to me. You just put it on and then several battles later, your character will get all these cool spells. And so naturally when I started doing the power leveling, you'd always work top down. So I'd give Ultima to everybody first and then eventually we'd make our way down to Rasp and Osmos. Just to complete it, because you've got to have it all complete. What's interesting about Magisite, though, is that when I was younger, I never understood. I knew it was there, but I didn't connect with the idea that when you level with an Esper on you, there's additional buffs your character gets. So what I love about the Magisite system is that if you just do it like I did it, which was just a means to get spells, fine. That works. Or if you were more seasoned with RPGs, you could time it so, this character is about to level and this is a save in and I wanna make sure he's super fast. Let me make sure I put this Esper on him as he levels. Boom, he's gonna get a plus two on his speed, take it off and put, I never did that in a single run of Final Fantasy VI. Nope. But I think that's a really elegant system because it's very approachable. You can either really dig into that or ignore it completely and be. Generally just fine. Yeah, absolutely. You just kind of get what you want and you know finish the game that way You know, I actually a couple About a month ago. I went on a road trip with my brother we went from Nashville to Louisville for this festival and On the way there and on the way back we listened to this Four or five hour long retrospective on the Final Fantasy series. It was just it was just interesting. It was you know fun to to kind of get somebody else's take on Final Fantasy 1 through probably 10 and then it lost our attention a bit because we didn't really play anything after that. But when the guy went back at six, I mean he lauded it of course for all of its accomplishments and everything and how great it was, but he pointed out some things that I just never really thought about before. That was one of them, how apparently that was something that he considered annoying, that you would constantly have to check your experience to make sure you had the right... Magisite equipped when your character's leveling up. like, I never thought about that before in my entire life. But the other thing he brought up that I just, I'd never thought about it, and now that he's said it, I can't unthink it, is how many caves are in Final Fantasy VI. There's a massive amount of caves in that game. And now looking back, I'm like, my God, there's so many caves in There's so many caves. That's a very good point. I never would have... There are so many caves. Everything's a cave. Sprinkle in some mountains. There's a couple of mountains. There's a couple of verticals. Don't forget that the mountains have caves in them. The mountains have damn caves. Why do the mountains have caves? is, Umaro is in a cave. There's so many caves. That is a really funny, funny thought. I never thought of that. That's really good. Really, really good, man. That's funny. next speaker is Trey Johnson of the Nintendo main podcast. He does great work over there. So please support that show. Give it a listen. If you dig all things Nintendo, which if you're listening to this podcast, you probably do. So it should be a perfect fit. Trey joins us to talk about the first time he experienced Final Fantasy six and how it felt to be in a real story, how the games of the day respected the players. Imagine that. And finally, playing Final Fantasy six multiplayer. So Final Fantasy six playing in the back of the back of the van on this. I still can't get over that. That's so great. But what was were there any big moments that you remember playing the game? The moments that connected with you that really like got its hooks in you from Final Fantasy six? I mean, like I said, the. just like the story and the pacing of it just blew me away because I never really Saw anything that was like that like, you know, I basically I showed it to all my friends afterwards I was like, you got to see this game, know, I'm sure many people like saw like the first like hour or whatever of the game You know just to be like, dude this and everybody's like, my god. This is like a movie This is crazy, you know like this I wasn't really used to because I probably mostly played like I don't might my early video game Stuff was mostly like really bad license games, you know, I played a lot of like movie games and stuff like that You know before I actually understood like I didn't even care for mario until like mario 64, you know, I had and I was a big super nintendo person, but I wanted to say, know I wanted to play like mortal combat and like super star wars and stuff like that, you know really I don't really care much about the licensed nintendo stuff or whatever But I heard I collected Nintendo Power and Nintendo Power told me that Final Fantasy 6 was great. So yeah, that's kind of where they But I didn't know I didn't know how good it was gonna be because yeah, it really did blow my mind like with the characters and and I felt kind of bad because when I rented because I rented the game before I asked for it and I named my characters like cuss words and stuff like that and then they like and then later like inappropriate names, know for them and then later realized that the game was written really well, you feel really stupid that you named these people these names and You know, it was there's still some characters that I can only remember as their names that I named them as when I was a kid. So I was actually playing I was playing the game last night was playing Final Fantasy six, the pixel remaster on Switch last night just to kind of remind me of a little bit for this. And I just got to the part with Cyan, know, where like Kefka like poisons the water, you know, of the of all that. And in my first playthrough, Cyan was called the tick. Remember the show, the tick from the night. My characters were basically mostly named after comic book characters or wrestlers. So so King Edgar was named venom. That was his name. I forget. I forget what Sabin's name was. He was probably like Jericho or something like that. Pretty much like that. I love it. I love that. I always love hearing how people name their characters. I for some reason I think it's like a little window into people's worlds. It's for some reason I, when I played Final Fantasy games, I never changed the names. I never changed them. I, and if I, if I, if I didn't have to, like if Final Fantasy one, of course you have to pick a name. I never changed them, but I had friends who always would. So when we would talk about the game, I'd bring up Sabin or Edgar and he'd be like, who? be like, the guy with the blitzes. yeah. I don't need, I wait, you kept that name. The name stinks. I named them such and such, right? That's so funny when I hear people talk about like how they named their parties. I think that's really fun and good. Yeah, that was pretty much. Yeah, I mean, it's in the long run, you you feel stupid because you don't know the actual names of the characters. And now I don't do that ever. Like if they have a name like the video game name, I keep it that, you know, because I want to know the name and all that. But yeah, when you're like, you know, when you're 15 or whatever, you're like, yeah, like like like Sally's was rogue. You know, I named a rogue from X -Men and like stuff like that. Like or like the big The the like Yeti guy was Wampa, you know, or like name was Wampa. Yeah, it's awesome. I love that. And they were like, they're like the one the one guy, the guy that changed the guy that could switch his form or whatever his name is more from X -Men and all that. I even know his real name. What did you what did you name him? I named him Morph because that was the X -Men Morph. Good shape shift. I mean, it was like I said, it was highly based on, you know, wrestlers and I love that. So yeah, very fun. I think the really very cool thing about video games being such a new medium relatively to any other medium really is that the people who enjoyed games grew up with it and grew up alongside of it. So though like some of us like our age who we were 14 when Final Fantasy six came out playing it at that formative age and we really are having those teenage emotions and everything is amplified. the nth degree. That was a game that respected that it respected the fact that the it did it. It had adult themes and an adult story and respected the fact that the people playing it likely would be able to connect with it more than goomba stomping and shooting spaceships. Right. And and I really love Final Fantasy for that, especially in that era, because that wasn't common. Like you said, you know, it wasn't common. It pretty much changed my life video game wise. I wanted just RPGs. was kind of will your mind. then it's like you listen to a great band and then you try to find stuff like it and then you just can't. That sort of thing. You play Final Fantasy VI then you go on and play Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Like I played through all that game. Not quite the same, but you try to get to that high that you had before. Actually interesting thing about Final Fantasy 6. You know, I mean, you remember from the Super Nintendo game, it was actually multiplayer. You could actually play with more than one person. Like you could have other people control your party members if you had two controllers. I don't know how many people actually played it like that. I never played it like that. I never played it like that. So like the final boss, when we got to Kefka, my brother -in -law actually helped me beat it. Like he basically did, he played Sabin and he just kept doing the Sabin moves with the second controller. while we were playing Kefka. And Kefka was playing the organ music and all that. My sister walks in and she's like, is this game satanic? She thought it was some sort of weird devil game because it was playing the organ music. And the way that it scrolls up through the kind of like stained glass looking sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah, she was creeped out by it. It's a creepy image. It's a it's it is a it's gorgeous. mean, the sprite work is just gorgeous. And to round out our conversation is the one and only Xerxes. He came to the show through Reddit of all the crazy places. I was very lucky and very thankful for the mods at the Final Fantasy Reddit page to allow me to do a casting call on there. They don't often do that unless you're an active member. I love that Reddit. I'm more of a lurker than a contributor, but there's so much good stuff on there and Xerxes came from there. So I'm very, very thankful that he was able to lend his opinions and thoughts to the conversation. then following Xerxes is new friend of the show, Yurik. You've heard his voice before the Kefka cosplayer. He rounds us out with some final thoughts about the other versions of the game, his upcoming cosplay and some final thoughts. Absolutely. For sure. For sure. Speaking of characters, what characters did you connect with? as when you were playing it of its time, what were the characters that you really latched onto in Final Fantasy VI? For me, it had always been Sabin. Okay, what about Sabin connected with you? Because with Sabin, was always, for me, he was the martial artist. Between him and his brother, Edgar, he always felt like the more sporty, less refined. version like the or less refined character because all the others I didn't really have as much of a connection to because they like they were most of them felt like they were less like me and I just never really liked Locke to begin with you know, it's just kind of felt like a tacked on character. Okay, well it's not so much tacked on character is just always for me always just kind of felt like Like you just always felt like he was like I was never excited. It's like, I got lock you like I already need lock my group kind of thing. But that but that might but again that could also stem from the from the fact that the my first my first time playing through I when we when you got to the point where you had to split into the three different parties, I chose lock first. Missed a lot of stuff. and ended up soft locking myself. Get out of here. How did that happen? I ended up in a situation where I was in the cave and I was fighting the boss and I had no sword for Selis to use her runic ability. Because she could only use her runic ability if you have a sword equipped. And so without that ability, I had nothing to absorb the magic attacks and I was getting killed every fight. So unless I wanted to spend like the next like three to five hours grinding to be just powerful enough to like finish it. Survive. Wow. I didn't realize. You're right. You need a sword equipped to use runic or else it's not available. And I guess she doesn't come with a sword. And you have to do that because that's part of the tutorializing when you get her. You have. You have to learn how to use Runic to get through that battle. That is wild. Wow, I didn't know you could soft lock yourself there. That's crazy. Yeah, so lesson learned and ever since that day, I've never taken lock first. I always start saving. That makes a lot of sense. That's a really good advice for a new player to like be careful. I didn't think that could possibly happen, but that makes sense. You don't have a sword for her. then she can't use Runic. That's really interesting. One more thing I want to land on when it comes to Final Fantasy VI. Do you have any thoughts on some small moments? Because the game has tons of great big moments, obviously. What about some small moments that you remember impacting you? Do you have anything in your recollection about that? yeah. It's like, let's see, just getting a hold of the... the offering for the first time, the one that allows you to hit four times in one turn. Yes. That was like, my God, it's so powerful. It's so overpowered. I can hit eight times with Sabin now, and it's awesome. And then later playthroughs, it's like, wait, I could just give this to Setzer, give him the dice, and everything dies. Wait a minute. I don't know this trick. What? is sensor's fixed dice where he throws three dice and based off of what he rolls determines what his damage is. so, Genji gloves, offering, and those two dice, especially at the higher levels where the base attack is just so high, you're pretty much rolling 9 ,999 eight times. Get outta here, I never knew that trick. Setsuro's a character I never engaged with a lot because I didn't like the randomness of the gambling, but that's fascinating. I had no idea. That's so cool. Yeah, I only use slots to get the Platinum trophy. DS and the Pixel Remaster versions of 6. I started the Pixel Remaster versions and I have the Game Boy Advance version of 6, yeah, OK. I think it's one of those, yeah. Which I really like, yeah. The Game Boy Advance one I have and I have completed and I remember liking it a lot. OK. It's been a while. And then I started it, played like about an hour or so just to get a feel for it. But again, I'm focusing on so many other Final Fantasy games right now. I don't need to focus on this one. I've played this game so many times. But I just did a little bit to refresh myself. What's your opinion on the updated translation and music? I like it. I think it's fine, but I like it. I think it's different. I think it's complimentary. I don't think it replaces the original. think as another take, it's fine. I think complimentary is a good word. I think they're good side by side, like companion pieces. I don't know which one I recommend. Actually, I do. I recommend Pixel Remaster for everybody who's starting for the first time. Because it is probably the best looking one. Because playing like original 6 now, depending on your monitor and TV, kind of doesn't look great. But Remaster, and especially the opera in the Remaster with the 2 .5D they did for that, looks amazing. yeah, that's like... pretty much a definitive way to recommend playing for new people now. And for everybody who I try and get to play it, that's the one I kind of like push them towards. Totally. There is a version of the Final Fantasy 6, an emulator, which is a Ted Woolsey. Yes. Yeah. It's fantastic. It's fantastic. I played through maybe a couple hours of that very recently because someone brought it up like, you know there's an emulator out there? That's like the Ted Woolsey. I'm like, let's go. Yeah. awesome. Kefka isn't Kefka without like son of a submariner and like all the weird stuff he says. My secret dream is to get him on the show. That's my get. I want him on the show. He is very hard to find. I it'd I think it'd be really cool to get him off of the music episode and just have him talk about how that kind of worked, because he presumably did the opera lyrics, right? I think you might be right. Yeah. We should reach out to... I should reach out to Arnie and see if he knows. I gotta use my resources. Anyway, that's like my little mini dream for this. That's like my big get. I'm like, I would love to get to Ticklesley on this to talk about the translation. anyway. You said you me. I'm sorry. No, dude, this is awesome. No, listen, man. I told you I wanted a Kevin Cosplayer. So here's, we'll end with the Kevin Cosplayer then. You're preparing a costume for November. I've already seen on TikTok you're doing some things already, kind of like showcasing that. And it sounds like that's going to be your costume for this year. What are you looking forward to putting that costume on again, becoming that character again? What are you looking forward to? The weird part is I'm actually more excited to see other people and that's usually that's usually how it is for me in cosplay is like I'm gonna put this on and I'm gonna go to a place that's full of people who like the same thing I do and I'm gonna be surrounded by like the community and I have a feeling that this year I'm gonna see probably more Kefka's and at the very least I'm gonna see more people from six like I'm sure certainly and that to me is like the the biggest deal because like A couple weeks I'm coming up on the two year anniversary of when I started like talking to Mama Terra and so that was like the first Final Fantasy 6 person like outside of my local friend group that I started talking to and to have that in person at like a big event here is like super exciting and KoopalCon is apparently like a massive event they've sold out of tickets and from everything I've heard from all the artists and stuff who come to our convention who are selling there. Everybody there is just such a big nerd for the retro games as well as the new stuff. And that's it. I like all of them, really. Even seven. Yeah. No, that's cool. So for you, again, think it sounds like, and stop me if I'm putting words in your mouth, but it really does sound like the community is one of the things that really drives you forward. Yeah. character just allows you to be in that in that mode and among those people that you have connections with. It's a role I don't think is being filled. That's cool. I will fill the space. That's very cool. That's cool, man. was it for this episode of A Gamer Looks at 40, thank you so much for hanging with me during this long Final Fantasy 6 series, it's been a wild ride but we're continuing, we're not stopping with Final Fantasy 6 y 'all, we're not even halfway through the games, I think this may go to next year, I don't know how this is going to work, this may be foolish but this is where we're at and I have to continue this roll out ride and I hope you continue going on the ride with me. Over the next couple of weeks we have a bit of a palette cleanser, some individual interviews, a couple of interesting shows you're not gonna expect but they're not gonna be Final Fantasy related at the very least adjacent, little bit of a spoiler. We're gonna continue with the Final Fantasy series in about three weeks with Final Fantasy 7 and boy boy people are excited for this one and I have people who are chopping at the bit to talk about this game. It's a game I have limited experience with as a kid so this is going be very much so interview driven and I can't wait to dive into those. Thank you for listening to this episode. Thank you as always to Kev and Pete Harney for their help in editing the core interviews that make up these main episodes. Thank you to my patrons once again for their patronage and thank you for listening to this edition of A Gamer Looks at 40. And until next time, just be kind to yourselves and each other.
