Where It All Began | Final Fantasy (Ep. 140) - Pixel Project Radio: A Video Game Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio, the video game discussions
and analysis podcast. My name is Rick, I'm your host,
and today we return to where it all began, Final
Fantasy One. Very excited to talk about what will technically
be the oldest game on the show that we've covered.
Of course, up top, I've got to thank the patrons.
The patrons are a wonderful group of folks who support

(00:35):
the show. And they're not wonderful because they support the show,
although maybe who knows, they're probably they're great independent of that,
but it doesn't hurt you, know what I mean. We'll
like you a little bit more if you subscribe at
patreon dot com slash pixel Project Radio. In all seriousness,
if you like the work that I do here, consider
stopping by and taking a look around. We'll talk more
about all of the plugs later on. For now, I

(00:58):
want to introduce my guest returning guests, Ryan from list Off,
a veteran of this show, a veteran of podcasting, and
as we'll come to find, a veteran of Final Fantasy One. Ryan,
Thanks for joining me again. How's it going.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
It's good, All is good. Thanks thanks for having me on. Rick,
as always always happy to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
And I'm always happy to have you here. I'm looking
forward to talking about one of the most important JRPGs
in history I think it is. Anyway, I agree before
we start, if you're new to the show, which I
suspect some people might be considering, you know, Final Fantasy,
first of all, welcome. We're glad that you're here. The

(01:37):
way things normally go here at Pixel Project Radio is
we start with a general discussion on our personal histories, mechanics, music,
things of that nature, and then we get into the
story and analyze it from a narrative perspective. With Final
Fantasy one, obviously, this is going to be a little
bit different. We're not going to do a beat by
beat analysis, but we are going to talk at length

(02:00):
about the history of the game, about what we thought
of the game, version differences, whether or not this is
worth playing in twenty twenty five, and so on and
so forth. We'll get there in a little bit. So
first off, let's talk a little bit about our histories
with this game and with this franchise. Why not Ryan,
I understand that you have a long history with Final

(02:21):
Fantasy one, in particular, why don't you tell us a
little bit about that.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, this is one of the first impactful video games
that I played as a kid. I had a neighbor
who gave it to Wow, which is crazy to think about, right,
because people don't just like give people video games anymore.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
We used to be a proper country.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, what happened to us? When did we go astray?
But it was you know, I don't want to get
into my personal feelings on the game, but it was
a huge moment in my personal gaming history, just because
I never really experienced anything like this. And you know,
if you listened to my show or have maybe even

(03:02):
heard me on Pixel Project Radio, I'm not the biggest
fan of JRPG's to date currently, but I was definitely
an early adopter, I'll tell you that much. And Final
Fantasy for the NES was a big reason why.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Now you have told me off Mike that you at
one time were playing this game roughly yearly, so you've
got a lot of experience with this game.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah. So up until maybe about a decade ago, I
was playing through this game every year. Yeah, pretty much
made it a point to play it through it every year.
It's not a particularly long game, so it was an
easy playthrough, and I think it was really just that
nostalgia poll that that brought me back every time. It
was like if I ever wanted that comfort food, you know,

(03:46):
that comfort game where I could just kind of turn
my mind off and experience some relatively easy turn based combat,
you know, this was the game for me.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, that relative e of combat, that lack of a
super deep and intensive story. A lot of things contribute
to this game, I think, being pretty palatable, and it
does promote replays in that way. It's a highly well,
I don't know if i'd say highly replayable game, but
it's a pretty replayable game, especially with you know, party

(04:20):
composition and things like that. As for me, I had
never played this game before. I'm not kidding. Twenty twenty five.
This was the first time I played this nineteen eighty
seven n Ees game. Pretty crazy. I had put this
off for a long time, just because being in the
gaming sphere, you know, just being involved in reading about

(04:41):
video games, playing other video games, you kind of pick
stuff up about the classics, you know what I mean.
So there came a point where I kind of knew
what was going on with Final Fantasy one, and I
sort of kept putting them off, like, yeah, you know,
I've played eventually, but you know, I've got other stuff
going on, not right now, I don't really feel it.
I'm glad that I did. I'm glad that we put

(05:02):
it together for the show. I think this is going
to be an interesting conversation, even if it isn't quite
as narratively rich. There are still some things in this
game that really surprised me. One in particular that I
was really excited to see. But we'll talk about that soon.
In terms of oh yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
I will say in twenty twenty five it's not narratively rich,
but at the time it definitely came across that way.
This was an era where games were prenominantly linear and
stories were all surface level, and you know, compared to
your Super Mario Brothers or a lot of the games
coming out at that time, this had a pretty deep story,

(05:39):
pretty big world.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Oh absolutely, There's one thing in particular that I have
noted a little bit later. I'm going to save that
for now for this episode. Of course. I never asked
the guests to play for the show. Ryan, you're obviously
very familiar with the NES version, have you played the
GBA or the PSP or the Pixel remasters at all.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
So I haven't played the PSP or the GBA versions,
which to my understanding have additional content. So I've actually
never experienced the additional content. But I did play the
Pixel remaster for this show. As I said, you know,
I used to play it annually, and it'd been about
a decade, so I felt like I had to play it,
and I don't have the native hardware anymore. I don't

(06:23):
have an NES anymore. So the best option for me
was picking up that Pixel remaster, and I'm glad I did.
I'm glad I did because now it makes me want
to play all the old school Final Fantasy games that
and some of them I haven't experienced.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
It has that effect. Yeah, there's something very comforting about
this era of JERRPG. I've also never played any of
the other versions. Obviously, I had every intention to play
the NES version for the show after I completed the
Pixel remaster, which by the way, took me roughly twelve hours.
More on that in a little bit. Now that being said,

(06:58):
there are some hefty version differences that I think we
can maybe save for a discussion in a little bit.
But before we get there, let's talk community forum. If
you're new to the show or if you've listened and
tuned me out, which, let's be honest, I think most
people recommend doing that. The community forum is a channel
in the Discord server where our discord members can contribute

(07:21):
their thoughts, feelings, ideas, hikups about any game or topic
that we're talking about, and provided it's not overly long,
I will read it on the show. And we've got
a couple of responses here for Final Fantasy one, starting
with Chris Physics, Discord regular streamer on Twitch Twitch I believe.

(07:42):
Here's what Chris has to say. He says, ah, yes,
the first game to ever make me cry, not because
of moving narrative or relatable characters, from the sadistic punishment
I received for playing this game as a kid. I
distinctly remember having any party become paralyzed, watching their health
slowly dwindle, and watching their health slowly. Occasionally I'd be
given hope as one of my characters would regain control,

(08:04):
but as quickly as it came, it went they were
paralyzed once again. I tried and tried to muscle through
this fight only to lose thirty minutes later. I haven't
picked it up since I was a kid. I turned
the NES Classic off and have been crying ever since.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Ouch.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
That touches on something that I was a little surprised
to find. This game is more challenging than I think
I was expecting.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, and you played the Pixel Remasters, so.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
I played the easier version.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
By all accounts, the NES version is it can be
very punishing, and I've lived the very thing Chris is
talking about many a time myself.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
So have others. Others find it challenging and it might
dissuade them from playing it, such as our next contributor,
Matt Storm. Matt Storm again, and here's what Matt says.
I'm just not a fan of this one. I recognize
how important it is for the genre in establishing both
Final Fantasy and Square, but I have the same issue
with it that I have with a bunch of old
school nesames. I just hit a wall difficulty wise, and

(09:02):
it becomes a drag. I am curious to play the
Pixel remaster at some point, just to see if any
of the quality of life improvements help. I think we
could safely say that they do definitely do.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
I would echo that one hundred percent, Matt, you should
play the Pixel remaster.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
There's a lot about this that is very, very nice. Absolutely,
maybe it'll change your opinion. Lastly, we've got Nomad from
the Retro wild Lands. Here's what Nomad has to say.
I played this game on my PSP for a while.
Nomad is a big PSP guy. I'm very jealous of
Fixed Collection. He goes on. It wasn't until the Pixel

(09:40):
Remaster that I finally finished the game. The quality of
life improvements made the game very enjoyable. I can't imagine
playing this as originally intended, but despite all that, I've
always been drawn to its most simple premise. Pick four characters,
choose their classes, and off to adventure with you. The
journey is what makes this game even somewhat memorable, and
as old school RPGs go, I stand by the idea

(10:03):
that experiencing this game at least once is borderline essential.
That's something that I wanted to touch on too. Let's
talk version differences for a sec. Ryan, So we had
both mentioned that the NES game is significantly more difficult.
I had mentioned to somebody else before I started reading

(10:24):
into this that I kind of wished that I could
play it on an NES. You know, there are difficulties
with that hardware. Most ness that aren't the top loaders
at this point, if they haven't been repaired, are very
prone to failure. It's a very finicky console at this
point in time. I have outright been recommended by my
local store not to purchase the original, cooler looking NES

(10:48):
and to just get the weird top loader, just simply
because it's there's less moving parts, it's more reliable, it's
easier to repair. But that aside, I would love to
play This's on a CRT, but the version that shipped,
the NES version has a lot of issues. And being
that you are very intimate with this game platonically, I

(11:08):
would love to hear some of your thoughts after experiencing
the Pixel remaster.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah, so I would say, I don't know if I
can say it's essential to play it on the original hardware.
I definitely think the Pixel remasters the better version. The
original version is very punishing, but in a way, I
don't know, it taught me a lot, you know, it
taught me a lot about what like it's funny to say,
but to not get discouraged, right, like in any video game,

(11:34):
you're gonna come up against hardship, you're going to hit
a wall, Like there's always that moment in a game
that's a challenging game where you just don't think you
could get over the top of the hill. And I
feel like, having experienced Final Fantasy from a young age,
it just kind of taught me a lot about not
being discouraged about a failure. Just try again, you know,

(11:56):
and it could get mind numbing if you're trying the
same exact moment in the game over and over again.
But there was always enough variety in the original version
with you know, character models and enemy types, and I
just never experienced a point where I was bored trying
to push forward. Now in the Pixel remaster, there's a

(12:18):
lot of corrections they do. There are some enemies that
in the original NES version, they'll just turn your whole
party to stone, Like almost every attack will turn a
party member too stone, and as soon as all four
of your members are stone, that game's over. And that
happens in certain fights if you come against like eight
of a particular enemy. But in the Pixel remaster they

(12:39):
tweaked all of that, so it's just not going to
happen as often as it did in the original, and
the biggest change which I took in the original version
almost as a strategy, like trying to gauge your opponent's
hit points and selecting your targets importantly, because in the
Pixel remaster you could just attack the first enemy and

(13:01):
once that enemy dies, it automatically targets the next one.
But in the original NES version that was not the case.
If you had targeted an enemy with multiple heroes and
that enemy died, let's say, when the first hero attacked,
your next three attacks were just null and void, like
they just don't register on a single thing. The original

(13:24):
NES version almost had another layer of strategy there because
you had to say, Okay, I think this one's low
on hit points, so I'll use my second guy and
third guy and fourth guy to attack the next enemy
character and you don't really have to worry about that.
It also has like auto moves in the more recent version,
so if turn based combat is not something that tickles

(13:46):
your fancy, you could just hit square and it'll auto
attack all the enemies. And that's good if you're ever
at a point where you have to grind that kind
of eliminates some of the button presses, and it also
makes it a little more mindless in my eye, and
I know it's already kind of mindless to begin with.
But yeah, those are our quality of life improvements, I
would call them. Overall, I think most people would see

(14:08):
those as improvements.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah. Absolutely, I'm glad that you touched on the enemy
targeting thing. That was one of the three biggest things
that I was hoping we could talk about. I do
you know, I've been on record as saying that I
feel like a lot of modern JRPG quality of life discussion,
I have been on record saying that I feel like

(14:31):
a lot of that is synonymous with making the games easier.
The example I always go back to, and I remember
thinking this when this game came out, is in Pokemon,
when they made the exp share just kind of something
you got automatically, and so even if you fought a
random battle with just your starter, your whole team would
get some experience. And I distinctly remember, even as a kid,

(14:54):
thinking that that took some of the strategy out. You know,
of course, like grinding, there's there something meditative about grinding,
There's something very zen about it. To get into that routine.
It's you know, mindless, you could say if you're feeling cynical,
but I think it is strategic. You know, how much
time do you want to devote to getting this pokemon

(15:15):
up a level or this party member up a level.
That's because that's the strategy of JRPG's right. It's the
difficulty isn't in pressing buttons. The difficulty and the strategy
is in the numbers game. It's you know, it's it's
a Microsoft excel in maxim Yeah, exactly exactly, and the
EXPCHA I remember thinking like, oh, that kind of spoils that.

(15:35):
But there are some quality of life improvements here that
I would say almost unilateral, like universally. I think folks
would agree that it makes the game better that auto
not auto attack. I mean, that is convenient, but I
I would lose. I would think that the targeting of
a of a dead enemy and then missing. I would

(15:57):
think that was cool and strategic for the first two hours,
and then it would drag me insane afterwards. Yeah, and
I would be very mad the rest of my playthrough.
I can almost guarantee it. That is something I'm glad
that they took out personally, I.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Think most people would agree with you absolutely.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
Oh for sure, especially if you're you know, wasting some
of your magic, which you know, magic works differently differently
in this game than it does in later installments. That
would be very, very annoying, especially because, like you said,
you kind of have to guess, you have to guesstimate
your enemy's HP.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
And but it almost made some things more meaningful because
when you'd get those second level spells that can attack everyone,
it was like a bigger upgrade. It had like it
was like more of a moment to get those spells,
you know what I.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
Mean, Oh, totally, totally. Even if we can even if
we can agree that this QOL improvement is a net positive,
you know, there's still some stuff that you lose, and
that sense of satisfying strategy that will always be there,
even if it's a really annoying mechanic, you know it.
It feels satisfying if you just guess, like, Okay, there
are three enemies left, I'm going to attack three of them.

(17:07):
Like not, I'm gonna have my three guys attack the
three enemies and boom, boom boom they fall in a row.
That's so satisfying even in later titles where you know
you would just auto refocus your attack, right, it's still
very satisfying, even more so in these games where they're
where the stakes are higher. That's one that's specific to combat.
There's another that's specific to combat, and that is the

(17:30):
party formation.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
Now, I remember playing this game when whenever I was
first starting out, I sent a screenshot in our discord
and you had commented something to the effect that you
were you were shocked that I had my white Mage
on the front lines.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
Yeah. I was like, what are you doing with your
white Mage up there, buddy?

Speaker 1 (17:48):
And yeah, you were like, has this guy ever played
a Final Fantasy before? What's his noble? What's his deal?
It's like, geez, get a load of this, change the channel,
get this guy off the stage. Well, and you would say,
and I was like, what is he talking about? And
the first thing that I thought of, I was thinking,
does he mean like the row? You know in later
games you can put them in the front row of
the back row? And I was like, did I miss that?

(18:09):
And I played around with it and no, no, there's
no rows in this What I learned that you had
already known was the party formation in the original really
dictated which of your party members would get hit would
get targeted by enemies. Now I didn't. I'm sure there
exists stats out there on this. But if your fighter,

(18:31):
let's say, is in the top position, closest to the
top of the screen, he's significantly more likely to get
targeted by enemies. You know. Let's say, just to throw
out a number, let's say fifty percent most likely to
get targeted versus the person that's on the very bottom.
They are least likely to get targeted. And you can
strategize in that way. So your tanky characters like your

(18:52):
fighter should take that top spot, and the more fragile
characters like I think it's the Ninja that has the
lowest HP stat in the game, the white Mage should
be closer to the bottom, and it's strategic in that way. Now,
I don't think the Pixel remaster has this feature because
I played with this over and over. First of all,
I didn't notice that pattern. I feel like that's something

(19:14):
you would notice, right and I didn't notice it. But
I played around with it to see if the damage
scaling was different, and I really don't think it is.
If I'm wrong, I'll put an edit in. If I'm wrong,
please correct me in the discord, et cetera, et cetera.
But I don't think this is in here.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
So you're saying that the person being at the head
of your party didn't get attacked more often, you didn't
run into that, I don't think.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
So maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I did miss this pattern.
I really don't think I noticed that.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
I played two play throughs for this, actually, just because
there's a challenge I've always wanted to do where like
you could play as they call the monks in the
Pixel remaster, but in the NES version they were black belts.
There's like a challenge where you could play as a
team full of black belts. And that was my second
playthrough that I did. My first one, I had like
a standard crew, But I in both those playthroughs it

(20:09):
felt anyway, And who knows, right like this might just
be because I have such a history with the NES
version that I was seeing something that wasn't there. But
it did feel like the head of the party was
getting attacked more often. But I mean it seemed like
it was better spread out in this version. I will
say that, but I didn't notice it as though it
wasn't happening at all. It seemed like maybe instead of

(20:32):
fifty percent, it was more like thirty or twenty percent
more likely, but or twenty percent of the time, but
it was more than twenty Who would it be twenty five,
I guess, so never mind, it was like two one
hundred and twenty five percent. Whatever. You do.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Get what I'm saying, right, math, I get what you're saying.
Let's have future Rick step in for a second and
see what he could find on this topic. I was
indeed mistaken. It seems that this is in the Pixel remaster,
although I could not find any official sources stating this outright,
but everything that I've seen online shows that this is

(21:08):
in fact in there. And the way it goes is
that the first party position, that is, the person closest
to the top of the screen, has a roughly fifty
percent chance of getting hit by an enemy's single target attack,
the second party member twenty five percent chance, and the
third and the fourth twelve point five perchance chance at

(21:29):
beat me at sacrifice, You're chance of winning trist to
go down the way I've seen it explained online, and
again I can't verify this But the way that I've
seen it is that an enemy will generate a random
number from one to eight if their ability is a
single target spell or attack. Slot number one, the top
party member, coincides with numbers one through four. Slot number

(21:51):
two coincides with five and six, three is seven, and
four is eight, breaking down into those as Scott Steiner
would say, perchance chances from above. But I'm a genetic
freak and I'm not normal. That's how it works. Apologies
for miss speaking. Let's get back to the show. The
numbers don't lie. Thank you, Future Rick appreciated. You are welcome,

(22:14):
and if I may say so, pretty handsome. Now that
he's gone, let's talk development. Let's talk some hard figures.

(22:43):
This game was released in December of nineteen eighty seven.
You can find the full credits on the wiki, the IMDb,
or you could beat the game, but of note, of course,
developed and published by Square, not Square Enix Squaresoft, Directed
of course by Hiranobusaka Gucci, produced by Masafumi Miyamoto, art
by the legendary Yoshitaka Amano. Sakaguchi was one of the

(23:07):
writers along with Kenji Tarata. Obviously, the composer Nobu Umatsu.
This dev team started and this blew me away with
only four people.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
Four.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
That's incredible, yeah, right, absolutely incredible. Can you imagine a game?
I mean, yes, we do. Of course we do see
indie games coming out that are done by a tours today.
You know Lisa the Painful Undertail Animal. Well you see
it a lot. But times are different now, you know.
Back then things were a little less certain. There wasn't
like a rhythm to this. It was the wild wild

(23:41):
West as they call it. That's how they referred to
it back then.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
You know what else is interesting? The coding on this
game was done by a fella named Naser Gabelli possibly Jabelli.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
I think Gabelli, Yeah, I would say Kabelli.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
I don't often single out programmers on this show, which
you know, maybe this is a shortcoming of mine, but
this is a fascinating story. This guy is truly fascinating.
He was, by all accounts, something of a wonder kind
with programming. Have you heard of this guy before?

Speaker 2 (24:12):
No, never heard of him, Never heard of Jabelli.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
It is a cool wiki dive is it is a
cool rabbit hole to go down for forty five minutes
or so. He worked at a company called Sirius Software.
His first year, he did twelve computer games, and he
would just code in his head and then write the
code down before he forgot it. He was that kind
of guy, like his brain was working on the same
computing level as these computers faster. Even He got multiple

(24:40):
award nods, like six of his games were nominated I
think three to one, or were featured in a magazine.
He was a big deal. He did have his own
company briefly. It was a victim of the video game
crash of nineteen eighty three. But he got hired after
a chance meeting. I think one of his friends set
him up with a meeting Square. He got hired by

(25:01):
the president of Square himself, Masafumi Miyamoto, partly because of
his ability, partly because he had a positive reputation, like
people there knew who he was. Saka Gucci in particular
was a big fan of his work, like I and
you know what's criminal is I had never heard of
this guy before. This is like an unsung hero if

(25:22):
I've ever heard of one.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
To have such a rich history with this game, and
it's the first time I have ever heard that name.
So yeah, I appreciate you shouting him out. I feel
like I'm learning something. That's what we do over here.
We like to educate the young people. And you know
it's we just got done.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
Talking about how this game shipped with a lot of
bugs and inconsistencies. Yes, that is true. But at the
same time, this was a different point in history, right,
I mean, QA processes were not nearly as refined and
in depth as they are now. Things were brand new.
Just doing this stuff alone is was monumental. And the

(26:03):
fact that this guy pumped out so much work and
did it in his head and just wrote it down
as quickly as he could, that is really phenomenal. And
you know what's funny is I found a quote of
him from him, I should say, where he was talking about,
you know, the process of coding, and he was talking
about how he didn't think it was very difficult at all.

(26:23):
He said, quote, I thought it was pretty similar to
what I was doing for Apple in the same processor.
I already knew just about every machine code for that processor.
So as far as coding, it was pretty simple. There
was no learning curve.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
But I'd never seen any role playing games until final
Fantasy end quote. And then I have a link to
a game Fax article that has all the bugs.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
That makes it even more impressive. You know that it's
true there was no like blueprint to go off of.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah, that's something you know. Recent You always have to
be wary of recency bias, right, and we all fall
prey to this. It's natural. We have things so easy
now that we don't think about what it was like
in the early days of building this stuff. You know,
when our phone doesn't work for a minute these days,
it's maddening. But back whenever phones were first transitioning out

(27:14):
of flip phones into smartphones, it was like if your
browser loaded within forty five seconds, that was incredible, right.
And you know, even further back, whenever flip phones started
to become very cool and had T nine texting, you
were like, oh my god, this is revolutionary. Right. We
stand on the shoulders of those who have come before, right,
is ultimately what we're saying. And this is the guy

(27:35):
on the ground floor, or one of them anyway, And
I think that's really impressive. And you know, we would
be remiss not to mention him and celebrate this guy.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's true. Can I mention
something about the pixel remasters unrelated to Jabelli?

Speaker 1 (27:51):
Oh, I guess I'll allow it.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
Oh well, thank you. So someone who worked on the
original NES version was responsible for bringing the picks assets
to modern displays, Kazuko Shibuyah. So she actually worked on
the original like pixel models of the characters, and they

(28:13):
are almost identical in the pixel remaster. But they actually
had to build the images from the ground up for
the pixel remaster based off of like how people think
they would have looked because of a large range of
larger range of colors and how crttvs distort an image.
So I thought that was really interesting. They brought in

(28:34):
like the ogs to replicate like how it would appear
on like a CRT display. I thought that was pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
That is very cool. I'm going to put a pin
in that because that's going to relate to a conversation
I'm excited to have here in a little bit, so
pin inserted. Of course, this wouldn't be Final Fantasy one
a discussion about Final Fantasy one if we didn't have
our dokey Dokei Mario two fact in the episod. So
I think most people know this by now, but just

(29:02):
in case you haven't, that's okay. Squares Games had a
lack of success. You know, they were not in the
most amazing of financial straits at this time, and they
were going to take one more stab at it with
Final Fantasy, and there was this rumor that, you know,
this was their last hurrah, and Final Fantasy was this
romantic title, and you know it was their final go

(29:25):
and it was so successful. It's a true underdog story, right.
We love underdog stories. It's it's almost natural. But this
is simply not. So this is from the Guch himself.
Here's what Saka Gucci says. He says, quote, there's an
urban legend that the final in Final Fantasy meant that
this was our last project while we were having some
hard times back then. The truth is that as long

(29:46):
as the title could be shortened to FF, any word
would have sufficed. It was initially going to be Fighting Fantasy.
But there was already a board game out with that
same name. End quote, So it was a rights issue.
What would you have named it with FF? What are
you going with?

Speaker 2 (30:03):
Oh man, I don't know. Flog in Fantasy.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
I like it flog and Fantasy that's a good one.
I'm more partial to Firestone fantasy. But they didn't consult me.
I would be a rich rich man if that were.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
They really should have brought in on.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
That flog and Firestone, that's what they would have called me.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
So like, I actually believed this urban legend for for
some time. I think many people did, right, and oh,
me too, of course it is it's such like a
romantic idea, like this company was, oh, here's our passion project,
and it's we leave you with this, and then it
succeeds beyond their wildest dreams. And you know, it'd be

(30:40):
kind of cool if it was true.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
And it fits into the I don't know whether this
is true. Again, disclaimer, I am not a Japanese scholar.
I don't live in Japan, et cetera. But it fits
into what I have heard is the difference between the
Japanese and American sort of internalized work ethic right in America.
And to be clear, I'm not saying there's anything wrong
with this. We think it's healthy to know when to quit,

(31:03):
you know. We see that as a way of like
treating oneself with respect. But I have heard, and if
I'm wrong, I apologize. But I have heard that in
Japan it's more the culture there is more so respecting
yourself is seeing it through and proving to yourself that
you are worthy of going through. It is that true.

(31:23):
I have no idea, but it adds to that underdog
sort of narrative. It would be so cool if that
were true. And you know, if I were Saka Gucci,
I would probably you know, if somebody didn't ask me
in an official interview, if they were just chatting at
a bar, and be like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
Of course that's true, right exactly.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
Oh yeah, man, we thought it was over, we thought
we were done for, and then that paycheck came in
and now we're on Final Fantasy sixteen and so many
more so, so bad anymore? Yeah, I just I had
a dream that one day Clive would be in Techan
and I said to myself, I'm going to get Clive
in Techan and Harada said, what's tech And he said,

(32:01):
don't worry. I in sixteen years you'll understand.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
So a little more than that.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
But yeah, yeah, that's true. Final Fantasy. A lot of us,
especially in the West, might think of Final Fantasy as
the granddaddy. This wasn't true. It's it is a progenitor,
but it's not the progenitor. Dragon Quest was already really
quite successful in Japan, and ultimately that was part of
what ended up giving convincing Square to give Saka Gucci

(32:27):
permission to make a j RPG. This was something that
he wanted to do for a long time, but they
kept saying, you know, this isn't a good business move.
Look at where our finances are now. It's not a
great idea. And to that end, when this game did release,
it didn't do like amazing, but Sakka Gucci was out
there promoting it himself. He was doing a lot of

(32:48):
the pr he was hustling early grindset.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
Yeah, you got to go out there and take it sometimes,
you know. I wonder what Soka Gucci's morning routine.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Was, Ice bath, ice plunge, you know, a cool twelve miles,
you know.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Email miles with my weighted vest.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
Of course, the battle system, it's now classic, was designed
by Hiroyuki Eto, who had never played a JRPG prior
to this. Incredible American football and pro sports were an inspiration,
you know what with the lineups and calling the plays,
which I think is just so cool.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, that's an interest. I had never heard that either.
I could see it, especially with the turn based combat, right, Like,
it definitely relates to calling plays and like seeing how
it goes. You know, it is incredible from today's standards
to think a lot of these, you know, people who
worked on the game had never played a j RPG.
But it's it was a different time, yeah, you know.

(33:47):
I mean, like you said, it's not the first j
RPG out there, right, Like, there were successful franchises already
in Japan, but at the time, it wasn't the plethora
of options that we have today, right, So I could
see some of the people who worked on it not
having that experience with the genre.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
Now, if you're like me, you might be thinking like, oh,
I would have surely they would have been inspired by
D and D, not football, Like, like what are you?
What are you talking about? Uh? And I am proud
to say that I read literally two sentences ahead of
where I was when I wrote that question, and I
answered my own question. That's how you do research, folks.
D and D was definitely a thing in Japan, and

(34:27):
they were inspired by D and D. Akitoshi Kouwazu, who
was working with Io on the battle system, did push
for a D and D influence, you know, things like
zombies being weak to fire, fire monsters being weak to ice,
things like that. They said that Japanese RPGs were ignoring
these kinds of relationships, and Kawazu found this irritating. Now

(34:49):
here's here's where I wish that I would have played
a Dragon Quest. I've never played a single Dragon Quest,
so like, I trust him obviously, I have no reason
not to believe what I read. But I had no
idea that they were just ignoring that kind of thing. Again,
I mean recency bias. I just assumed that was something
that came out the womb, so to speak.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
Right, So Dragon I think Dragon Warrior Right was released
in the US, and yeah, Dragon Quest existed, and I
don't have the experience with that franchise. I didn't play
any of the NS titles for it. But I would
have been frustrated if I cast an ice spell on
a fire monster and it didn't do extra damage. So

(35:31):
I am glad that my experience came from Final Fantasy.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
I would have started wearing out the word gas light
so much even all the way back. Then you're gaslighting
me to tell me that this monster made of literal
ice doesn't take fire any differently than it takes electricity.
Get out of here now, I will say that's not perfect.
In this game, especially with some of the fiends, you

(35:56):
would think, oh, okay, this is a water fiend, let
me hit it with electricity. Well yeah, you thought poo.
They're resistant to everything that that's still a thing here.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
It's cool to see it mentioned though, because it clicked
even as a kid. It clicked like the attack that
when you look at even the look at the design
of an enemy, the attack you think will work will
probably work better than like others, which is neat.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
That's true. It's not like it's a blanket of you know,
statuses don't matter, but it's not as intuitive as you
would think today. Weirdly, they kind of swung back that
way with Final Fantasy sixteen. They did away with a
lot of those elemental affinities, and I know it drove
a lot of people mad. It drove me mad from
day one. I was complaining about that quite a bit.

(36:44):
Oh that'll be wild if we ever talked about sixteen
on this show, man, I don't know if I can.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
I played through it, I'll say that much.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
I did too, and it starts so strong. I didn't
hate it. I just didn't like it either.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
You know, I'm I'm with you. I agree, I don't
hate it. I didn't like it, but that demo sold
me so hard on that game, and I feel like
I was lied to.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Yeah, it wrote a check that it just did not
have the funds to cash.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
Let's talk visual design. We kind of brushed up against
this a little bit.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, I jumped the gun. Rick, I jumped the gun.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
No, that's okay. We call that a tease.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
Oh yeah, no, totally planned.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
I think it would be more interesting to talk about
the original version. I mean the Pixel remaster. Don't get
me wrong, the Pixel Remaster looks beautiful, but it does
look pretty similar to the other Pixel remasters one through six.
Not identical, but pretty similar. You can tell that it's
of the same sort of family, whereas looking at Final
Fantasy one even versus four, certainly versus six, there's a

(38:09):
clear progression there. But even all the way back to
FF one on the NES, I think these just look
so charming and good. I love how these look. The
battle screen literally looks like a D and D table
put onto a screen, like the best representation of that
little dioramas of guys walking around of town. I will

(38:32):
always love this style.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yeah, no argument here. I find it very endearing and
the different kind of perspectives that you'd get, as you
mentioned in the town, in the battle screen, as you're
walking around the wilds, and as a kid, it felt vast,
it felt big because you would see the different backgrounds
based on the environment that you were traversing at the time,

(38:57):
and like, I just remember that hidden me as being
so cool to see and so like engrossing. It really
brought you into the world. And it's funny to say
that now because if you look at this game, it's just,
you know, it's a lot of black screen, that battle screen.
But it was those little details that really stood out
to me and just made it feel, you know, a

(39:18):
little more real.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
All right, I'm going to unpin that pin that I
had stuck in earlier. So you had mentioned that, you know,
it's a lot of black screen. You mentioned the pixel
remaster kind of amped up the color because of the
limitations of the past. Would you say when you were
playing this as a younger fella, younger kid, would you
say that your imagination played a large part in what
you were seeing? In other words, when you played this,

(39:43):
were you also imagining something grander in your head?

Speaker 2 (39:47):
Yeah, one hundred percent. I mean it's funny because this
is a by today's standards, a small game, but at
the time, it was a huge world. And those battles
there's not a lot there, right, Like if you attack,
your guy steps up and he goes like, moves his
arm twice and steps back. But you know, when it

(40:07):
was evaded, you'd picture the enemy like dodging it and
coming back at you, especially if they attacked you the
next turn. And so it was very turn based. It
was very like plotting the combat. But yeah, one hundred percent,
my childhood imagination filled in every blank. It was. It
was cool.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
Now, am I correct? And assuming that you like me,
kind of miss that.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
Yeah, but yeah, of course of course I miss that.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
Don't get me wrong. Don't get me wrong. Like Final Fantasy,
let's go back to sixteen. It's it's amazing what they
were able to do with that visual engine. That game
spectacle is that game's number one adjective. It's that game's
number one trait. But that being said, there is something
that's lost. Whenever the game, the movie or whatever is

(40:55):
presenting you with everything that's there and just saying you
don't need to do anything else, just observe and this
is it there, you lose something. You lose that autonomy
of the fiction when it no longer lives in your imagination.
Right Like these guys on the field, your characters, they're
not actually standing in a line taking turns, and the

(41:17):
goblins across the field aren't standing in a line taking turns.
That's just the representation. But it's a representation of a fiction,
and it's inviting the player to use their imagination and
say like, Okay, this is what you're seeing, but the
adventure is up to you. It's the same as reading
a book or seeing a play. Right, Like, we know
they're not standing on a stage. We know that they're

(41:37):
not in the same space. Even though the background, you know, change,
we know they're not in a different space. Excuse me.
There's there's something to be said about the magic of
the imagination that has been lost now that games have
become so graphically intense and fidelity focused that we lose
that sort of theater, that theater of the imagination that

(41:59):
we had back then there was nothing, you know, I
used to do this all the time, man Like, even
with something like Final Fantasy nine, which by all accounts
looks really good, I would still imagine my head like,
oh man's the Dane's running across the field and he
jumped in front of Garnett to save her, and oh man,
they almost got him right there. Or even playing like
Smash Brothers, I would I would fight against the computers
and imagine little scenarios in my head like he's my enemy,

(42:22):
but I have to save my friend, and because he
just beat him in the last match. You know what
I mean? That imagination, that theater of the imagination is
not as prevalent anymore. And it's part of the reason
why I like this era, like pre two thousands j RPGs,
is because you can you can just immerse yourself in that.
You know. I love it so much. And you know

(42:43):
that's not to say that modern games are bad. They
definitely aren't. But I do miss it. I do miss
this this kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
I definitely think there's something missing. And it beautifully said,
by the way, and I'm glad you brought this up,
but I think you know, another good comparison would be
one of the things that inspired Final Fantasy Dungeons and Dragons, right,
like a lot can be filled in by your imagination.
I do think that there is benefit to that. I

(43:12):
absolutely agree with you. And I will say though, like
that right there, like what you're talking about is why
I played through annually. It was like I kept wanting
to get that back. And I feel like, probably on
some levels subconsciously, it was because more and more games
were those big in your face games. You know, you

(43:32):
had your show not tell kind of thing going on,
movement and dreaming, and it's more prevalent now than ever.
But also it was almost bittersweet because every time I
went and revisited that this game, it was like a
little bit of that was lost, right, And I don't
know if it was because I was getting older. I
mean this sounds pretty cliche, but like getting more and

(43:53):
more disenchanted and like losing that part of me right
to fill in those blanks and to really engross myself
in a world that like my mind had to fill in.
So I think that is eventually why I stopped playing
it like I lost a bit of that ability. But
you know, given the gap between playthroughs and playing it
for this show, it was it was refreshing and I

(44:15):
was able to really experience it in that degree again
in some ways.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
No, you're right on the money. It's you know why
it's cliche is because it's true, right, I say it
all the time on this show. Life's greatest truths are
the ones that are the least sexy and exciting. Right
as we get older, you know, I think of this
like a muscle. As you get older. If you don't
flex it all the time, it's going to kind of
wither and atrophy. It gets harder as you age, Like

(44:44):
I have a much harder time reading fiction now imagining
the scenes in my head. It's not a vivid, like
technicolor film in there anymore like it was when I
was a kid. I distinctly remember reading the second Harry
Potter book and practically seeing the film play out in
my mind. But now it's it's more abstract visuals and
visual representations in my brain. It's it's not the same.

(45:06):
I It does get harder, absolutely, and I can relate. Man,
It's it's every year it gets a little tougher, But
that's all the more reason to to embrace it and
try to work that muscle because we can keep it.
You know, we could keep it as we get older.
We just have to work a little bit. We have
to work to maintain that childlike innocence and wonder right
that gets handily gets beaten straight up. Yeah, Like, I

(45:32):
know we're laughing, but it's it's true like that. That really,
especially in Western cultures America, it gets beaten out of
you pretty hard.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
It does, it does, and I am laughing about it.
I'm laughing because it's more of a nervous, sad laugh.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
It's else self preservation. If if we don't laugh about it,
reliable to completely unravel, right, And that's not good.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
True, absolutely true.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
So we talked a little bit about mechanics. We could
talk about them some more. Here you've got your four
party setup, and I am very curious to hear what
your favorite party is because I did not make good choices.
Here here is your here are your choices. Starting out,
You've got a fighter, a thief, a monk aka, a
black belt, a red mage, a white mage, and a
black mage. And each of these can level up to

(46:30):
a Warrior, a Ninja, a Master I think it's called Yeah,
I believe so, and then red, White, and Black Wizards.
So what is your go to party? You mentioned that
you did a challenge run of All Monks, which I
understand starts out difficult and can end just out of control.
But what is your go to party for this game?
Do you have one? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (46:50):
Oh, I absolutely have. When when I was a kid,
a dumb child who didn't know better, I would pick
a fighter, a Red Mage, a White Madge, and a
Black Mage. But then I slowly learned that the red
Mage is actually kind of garbage. So I went fighter, Fighter,
White Mage, Black Mage, and that is a pretty easy

(47:12):
playthrough compared to most party comps. I will say the
All Monk party was not easy. They are the epitome
of a glass cannon. Even if you scale them properly
without using like weapons and armor, they are very much
a glass cannon. And while you can dole out some
pretty incredible numbers, you can't take a ton of damages,

(47:35):
especially from the bosses.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
So what did you say that garbage party was Red Mage,
White Mage, Black Mage, and Fighter.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
I didn't say it was a garbage party. I just said,
I found out that the Red Mage, while it's a
kind of an all rounder, it's not a good pick.
A red Mage, in my opinion, is not a good
pick for any party.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
Well, I'll have you know. My party was a Red Mage,
a White Mage, a Black Mage, and a monk. I
did a monk.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
A monk is like a bad idea as your physical
attack dealer.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
Yeah, if you're only going to have one, this was
not a good party composition. I mean I chose the
Red Mage solely because I think they look really cool
and in theory I think they're very cool, but they
aren't like very good at anything. And now I will say,
towards the end, I was able to like have them

(48:25):
cast saber and haste. Yeah, and you know they were
dealing okay damage. They were pretty good and they could
cast you know, cures in a pinch. But this was
a really difficult lineup. I should have went with a fighter.
I I don't know why I didn't pick. I picked
a Red Mage because I like, I think they look cool.
White mage is just my favorite class, like period black Mage.

(48:47):
I mean, how are you not going to pick a
black Mage? Right?

Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yeah, And it's like sacrilegious.

Speaker 1 (48:52):
I think I just picked monk because, like, I didn't
want to be basic and pick a fighter. But that's
kind of the strategy because fighters are broken in this game.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
Fighters are great in this game. They really are, and
they could learn some magic even later in the game,
which is like forget it.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
Yeah, they functionally can become a paladin basically. Yeah, yeah,
I had trouble. I had to grind much more than
I thought I was. But weirdly, what that did was
create an inconsistency in the playthrough where bosses would be
pretty challenging and then everything else around it was just
like auto attack and I'm good. You know, if I

(49:28):
were to go back and redo this, I would probably
honestly just either swap just the monk or the Monk
and the Red Mage with like two fighters, or maybe
like a fighter and a thief or something. It was tough.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
It was tough. Thief is probably the class I have
played the least of. I just never messed with a
thief because I was always like, man, if I'm gonna
go thief, like the Red Mage does some spells, and
like the Red Mage does do decent damage, they don't
do terrible damage right, if you have a good weapon
equipped to them.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
It scales off pretty co quickly though, Like in the
beginning of the game, early middle like pretty solid, and
then the farther you go, it's just like, well everybody
else can just do everything better than them.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Yeah, once you get to like level four, five and
six spells, he's just not learning him, Like he just
can't learn him and his attack is not near what
a fighter would be. Yeah, I agree, he does a
kind of sink in that middle game.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
I will say though, they did attempt to do some
balancing with the warrior, the Warrior the fighter, being that
they're so powerful, their equipment is significantly more expensive, which
was funny to me. I was a millionaire in this game.
I had more guilt than I knew what to do with.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
I got to the point in my second playthrough, my
all Monk playthrough, because like, they don't use weapons or armor,
so what am I going to buy? They can't use
magic spells, what am I going to buy? So I
literally got to the point where I was opening treasure
chests and it's like you can't carry any more gill.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
I will say, though, I did read plenty of Reddit
posts where folks were like, yeah, it wasn't like this
in the in the early days, like on the anti
am like this is all the remastered stuff the GBA
PSP Pixel Remaster, it's just not the same, Like it's
so easy you could just buy ninety nine potions and
high potions and ethers, and so I don't think this

(51:13):
is how it would have been back well, I mean,
why am I speculating you're here? Was this how it was?

Speaker 2 (51:18):
I mean later in the game you would be able
to buy ninety nine potions, was not something I never
achieved on the NES version, you know, Like that's definitely
a point I got to. Now in the Pixel remaster,
you could get ninety nine of every single item, like
literally ninety nine antidotes, ninety nine gold needles, I mean everything,
Phoenix downs like I did that in my second play through,

(51:41):
and that's that is ridiculous. So no, it was never
quite like to that level in the original NES game.
It was definitely like eventually later in the game you'd
have enough where you could have ninety nine potions. Sure,
that's not a problem, They're not that much, you know, Gill,
But it's very much pronounced in the Pixel remaster. How
much money you are making.

Speaker 1 (52:03):
Yeah, it's definitely a lot. It took some challenge out
for sure. That's that's one thing that I would be
curious to try a different version of. But you know,
maybe we'll see. We already talked about party lineup. That's
well future Rick informed us of whether we were right
or wrong. You all heard him, We.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
Heard him, We heard him.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
Thanks to Rick, there's just no reason to say what
he already said. You know, MANA works differently, MP works
differently in this game, which outside of this, I will say,
outside of this, at the core of this, this is
like the Final Fantasy DNA pre ATB. Sure, but this
is what the genre always was. It's yes, it's pre ATB,

(52:43):
but you've got your fight, you've got your magic, you've
got your items. Now you don't have special skills like
you do in future titles. But this they kind of
got into that rhythm early on and they knew they
stumbled onto something good here. And I mean again, D
and D. You know, D and D and football. It's
kind of a match bate in heaven. If you ask
me a great Saturday night, I guess that would be

(53:06):
Sunday afternoon.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
Really, I actually play football role playing games, so yeah, totally,
I'm the star quarterback.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
Yeah. Every once in a while you run into one
of those guys like, well, Madden's a Madden's an RPG
because you play the role of you know, John Madden
or whoever.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
Youst your stats, the role of John Madden. I love it. Yes,
that's what you do whenever you Matten game Rick.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
Yeah, you know, that's that's your protagonist.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
You know. I love that.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
He's the new high He's the new high schooler. That's
that's that's how every Madden opens up.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
What's up, my fellow kids?

Speaker 1 (53:42):
Are you the new guy John Maddenson. Anyway, MP works
a little differently in this game, and I kind of
like it. It makes strategizing much more interesting because you've got,
as you said earlier, Ryan, you've got magic levels. Cure
is going to be level one. For example, Fire is
level one, but level two might be thunder. Level two

(54:04):
might be a heel for your whole party. And you
only get certain number of uses for each of these
levels at a time. Those increase as your class increases
and as you level up, but once you run out
of uses, until you use an ether, which by the way,
only gives you one use back, so like, yeah, you're
gonna have ninety nine, but it's like Ether doesn't give

(54:26):
you a ton of mpback. Once you're out of uses,
you can't use any of those spells anymore. So, for example,
I think one of the last levels that I got
with my White Mage had Full Life, Holy and one
other thing. I don't think it was Kuraga. I think
it was Deaga or something Diaga, but at any rate,

(54:49):
they were all on a row and I had like
six uses of them. Once those six were gone, I
couldn't use any of those anymore, Holly, full Life, or Deaga.
So do you have to strategize? And that brings an
interesting wrinkle to like longer dungeons, because you have to think,
like do I really want to waste this strong spell here? Like, yeah,
my physical attacks are kind of weak against this enemy

(55:12):
or this mini boss. I could use a spell, but
then what if I needed against the big boss later?
Do I have enough time to get out of here?
You know, in the early days, you can't just turn
off battles and walk out, like what do I do?
That adds a really cool wrinkle that I personally love.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
Yeah, I agree, and and some of those dungeons are
pretty large and like you're in it and you got
to also, way can I make it out? Can I
make it out of here if I need to go,
you know, pop a cabin outside the entrance. I think
it's it's neat. I find it frustrating in other RPGs,
when you know, more recent ones, when you're left with

(55:47):
like four mana and you can't cast any spell, and
it's like why they do that? So I like that
this is like definitive right. It's like, hey, you get
so many uses of these spells too, you're not ever
going to have leftover or you know, magic points that
you can't use. I like the system a whole lot
from magic. I think it just fits really well, and

(56:09):
it's as you said, it adds to the strategy too.
And I don't think it was used after this spoiler alert.
I never played Final Fantasy too, so I'm not sure,
but I think this might be the only Final Fantasy
they used it in.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
I've never played too either. I'm very intimidated because all
I ever hear is how bad it is. One of
our Discord regulars, Whooper was trying to play through all
of the final fantasies at one point and too, just
like like they just did not want to continue. And
I'm sure the pixel re masters smoothed some of that out,
but even still, like I've heard that folks really don't

(56:43):
like how the stat levels increase or the ability levels.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
I plan on playing through it, but we'll see how
that goes.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
I do like this MP system, though, it reminds me
of like I mean, it's it feels more tabletop inspired,
to be sure. It kind of makes me think of like,
you know, maybe a mage has to use like consumables,
like a consumable object of some sort that helps transmute
their power in some way, you know, and they just
have to refill it. I don't know. It kind of

(57:12):
makes me think of that. The trade off is though,
like you know, with an MP, with MP, if you
pop an ether, now you've got seventy five MP and
you could use Thundaga like twice, or you could use
you know, fire like twelve times right.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Right right, But it does you know, when you come
across a big group of enemies too, It's like, man,
I could just wipe all these dudes out if I
use one, you know, thundoga, right, And it's that sort
of extra level of thought that adds some depth to
the combat where you're like, well, I want the XP.
I'm not just gonna run from this fight, but I

(57:48):
might need this for the boss. But you know what,
screw it, I'm using it and I'm gonna wipe these
twelve dudes out in one turn instead of taking the
damage and then using all my heels. And you know,
it's good. It's good to have that sort of Yeah,
that just that extra level of strategy in the game.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
And even though it'll it would be looked at today
as like primitive, it does give you that satisfaction whenever
things line up. You know, you're down to your last
flare and you're you're at the spots and you don't
know if it's gonna do it, but it does. It
takes him down and you don't have any ethers left.
So good thing too. It gives you those really satisfying
moments that you know, QOL quality of life improvements give

(58:26):
us a lot of pleasure, but we lose that last
like five percent that really that really lets you feel
it in the face of that kind of adversity.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
Yeah, it's like your fourth and goal on the one
yard line and all right.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
Enough football and John Maddenson comes down and kicks a
field goal.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
Damn it, Johnny.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
One thing that I think is good even for today
in this game is the music and the sound. The
Pixel Remaster's done away with some of the sound things
like in the NES version. Again, I didn't play it,
but I did watch as much as I could. Every
time a dialogue box popped up, you would get this
little kind of sound. You don't get that anymore, which

(59:27):
is a shame because it's it's super annoying.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
Yeah. Yeah, I have fond memories of that sound effect.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
The music in this game, which, by the way, I
was preppering in both the remastered version from the Pixel
Remaster and the original NES tracks. If you haven't noticed
throughout here, I am a big fan of this soundtrack.
I think it's really terrific. When you played through this,
do you prefer the NES or the Pixel Remaster?

Speaker 3 (59:53):
All right?

Speaker 2 (59:53):
So when the Pixel Remaster came out, there was a
big to do about the font. Do you remember this?
The font and the music? I don't know if you're
oh yeah, And I have to say I didn't pick
it up day one. I picked it up maybe six
months ago, so I was, you know, I was aware
of that whole conversation happening, and I was like, man,
how silly for people to get like and I, you know,

(01:00:13):
I'm a big fan of the original. I was like,
people getting bent out of shape over that. That's weird.
And then I turned it on and I saw the
font and I was like, ooh, this doesn't feel good.
So I changed the font to the original, you know,
pixel based font because it really did stand out to me.
And I hate to say that, to pile it on right,

(01:00:34):
but it makes me feel like what people had to
say was valid and I didn't consider that in my
initial judgment. But the music, too, like the orchestrated music,
kind of threw me off and I was like, this
doesn't feel like Final Fantasy to me. So I put
it back to the pixel tracks, and my second play
through when I went to All Monk Team, I did

(01:00:56):
do the orchestrated music, but I didn't change the font back.
The font will not receive my forgiveness.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
I think the problem with the font is it looks
too like, it looks very lifeless. It looks too much,
like what's that one dog shit font that everything defaults to?
Arial arial a r I a l terrible font. It's
way way too rounded, you know. It doesn't have the
stature and the angularity that times New Roman has or

(01:01:26):
even Courier, like, get arial out of here. That's a
garbage font. I never want it. And every time I
open a freaking Google doc, it's it's Google's like Ariel
and I'm like, no, the only Arial I want, sir,
is from Disney's hit movie The Little Murmy.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Oh wow, oh Ariels a little Murman. Yeah, I was
thinking the system of a down.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Song also classic, also.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
Very good arials.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
Yeah, I was thinking of my ex girlfriend, just kidding.
I hadn't talked to her in decades. I agree with you.
There are a few tracks in here that work really
well with the re orchestration. And by the way, like
Uhimatsu oversaw the orchestration, so it's not like this was
done by some schlub. He did it. But this is
something that I talk about all the time on this

(01:02:11):
show is creativity is enhanced by limitations. Right when you're
when you're teaching a new jazz student to solo, how
to solo. How to improvise. You don't just say okay,
play whatever you want. You start thought, you start off small.
You say, okay, you're gonna play just the third or
just the root and focus on the rhythm. Okay, now

(01:02:32):
you can add the seventh in. Okay, now you can
add the full scale. Okay, now we're gonna add two scales.
It's a gradual process, but having that limitation enhances your creativity.
You know, you're forced to think within the box and
push up against the boundaries of it. That oftentimes, I
don't know if you've experienced this, but that, oftentimes to
me is where I feel the most creative, not just

(01:02:55):
when I'm dropped into an empty field and say, okay,
the sky's the limit, Like that's why Minecraft can oftentime,
Like oftentimes, when I would try to play when I
was younger, it felt really overwhelming because it's like, yeah,
you could do anything, but god, that's anything, you know, Like,
give me some structure.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Yeah, where do I start? Where do I start? No,
I get that, for sure. I do like that there
is some open end in this yere But yeah, structure helps,
for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
Uimatsu very famously composed the prelude in like an hour,
maybe like forty five minutes. He did it very, very quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
We just did an episode on our favorite title music
and spoiler alert. This was my number one for.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Good reason too. It's simple in the best possible way.
It's simplicity gives it a timeless feel, and even without
the orchestrations, you can kind of tell that it's meant
to be some sort of either a harp or a
keyboard instrument.

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
Yes, absolutely, thank you, because I feel like there's an
Eighties song in there right with like the keyboard sound.
I feel like it's that eighties fantasy. It's it's perfect,
It's perfect for this game.

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
It's funny you say that I can hear progressive metal
in this more more than I do like the eighties,
Like it's one of the Dungeon themes.

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
It's like, that's like rock. Yeah, that's that's some rock
sound right there. I know which one you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
I mean, even if you didn't know that Uematsu plays
in in the Black Mages and the Earthbound papas like
that are functionally final fantasy prog rock groups like you
hear that, and and I just think Liquid Tension experiment
or Dream Theater, you know, which I would love to
put side by side to this, but I just got
an email today about my Tony Hawk episode getting taken
off Spotify. So but just just imagine, you know, instead

(01:04:41):
of me going little literally like it's Acid Rain being
played by John Patrusci, uh, Liquid Tension experiment, great, great group.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
I was meaning the prelude specifically with that like eighties
fantasy sound to it. But oh, it's absolutely like there
are some pretty inventive songs on this soundtrack.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
And it's well, let's stick with the prelude for a second.
I think that one works no matter how you orchestrate
it within reason, Like it sounds amazing. It opened this
episode as the pixel remaster with the Heart, and it
sounds ethereal and serene and heavenly. It feels like home, right,
And there's nothing wrong with the NS version. It's a
little more abrasive because of the sound chip, but it's

(01:05:25):
not like it's like perpetual triangle waves. You know, it
doesn't sound that in your face, and it's just our peggios,
that's all it is. It's giving you the harmony through
v R peggios. There's not really a melody. There's kind
of a melody in there, but it's more about the
outlining the harmony like you would and in a keyboard
invention or something. It's very cool, I tell you what,

(01:05:48):
though I was, and I throughout my entire playthrough, I
kept the NS music I did not want. I'm not
really a big fan overall of the reorchestration, but the
main the main title theme where it's just two voices
in counterpoint basically with one voice low low low in

(01:06:09):
the bass, and that's it, and it's just this beautiful
melody that da da da da da du that's in
a different key than what's playing right now, but it's
I was astounded at This goes back to the imagination thing, right,
Like listening to the NES track of it, it's only
really it's just two voices in a bass, a basso

(01:06:30):
continuo and two voices, and yet in my brain I'm
able to imagine it as this full orchestral suite of sound,
even though I'm just hearing three sound waves, really two
of them, and then one that's really down in there
because it just doesn't come through very well as much
as the other two. But I could still hear it,

(01:06:52):
and and I mean Ulamatsu wasn't the only one doing
it that way. Everybody was. But it's it's a testament
to how well he was able to write for that
specific hardware, that you're able to just let it bloom
inside of you into this into a full orchestra just
just by hearing this simple melodic sound chip. It's really fantastic.

(01:07:14):
And the melody is beautiful. I love this melody. It's
I love it so much. It's so good.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean I feel like I can't talk
music with you with the same yeah, you can discretion
that you have, But I do want to mention that
the town theme too. I think it's a really good
town theme. You had posted a question on your discord
of favorite town themes, and I was like, man, I
really want to say Final Fantasy one.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
That's that's the one that's uh yeah right, yeah, that's.

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
That boom boom in the back, like you know, in
the background going to there's like that little like playful like, yeah,
it's really good.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
You can just hear the string pitzicado, even though it's
just the nes sound chip. It's it's really beautiful, and
I I love what Uamantsu was able to pull out
of his listeners because you know, it is the listeners too.
It's our brain and it's our ears and the thing
between them, right, the brain that is allowing us to
to to let this bloom in our in our minds.

(01:08:14):
But Uhamantsu is taking advantage of that, and and it's
really beautiful. You know what other tune I really liked
was the uh the Inn and the shop theme, that
kind of waltz.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
Mm hm.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
I'm I'm a sucker for a good waltz. You know,
I'm not not a I don't wanna I don't want
to give I don't want to give the wrong impressions
that I'm always listening to Strauss. All right, I know
that's what you're all thinking. And let me just say,
let me get in front of that. Let me clear
the record. I'm not always listening to Strauss.

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
That's exactly what someone who always listens to Strauss would.

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
Say, I know, right, yeah, no, Johann for me, Ricard
or nothing. Not really, I don't. I don't have a
problem with either Strauss, but I do love this. You know,
It's very whimsical and it doesn't take itself super serioubviously,
none of this music really takes itself too seriously, not really, Honestly,
the prelude and the main title theme kind of do

(01:09:07):
the most.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
Yeah, I would say too. I hope you like the
battle music because you'll be hearing a lot of it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:14):
Yeah. I mean it's it's you've got that one track
and like.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
It's a loop. It is a loop, and it's.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
Fine, like it doesn't you know, it's of its time,
but it's it's still classic, Like you get that bassline
all the way back back then, right that do do?
I like it? I like it just fine. I don't
fault them for not having more. They probably didn't have
the storage or the memory to have much more, right,
but it's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
I think the sound effects were tweaked for the pixel remaster.
We could we could talk about that later. I don't
want to interrupt your music talk, but.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
No, no, they absolutely were tweaked. I mean I don't
have a list of them, but I mean you put them,
pull them up side by side, and and it's clear
as day.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
There's more variety in the sound effects and the pixel remaster,
like it's registered differently. There's like squishy sounds to some
of them. And you know in the NES version it
was very much just like the one and that you
did it you hit a guy.

Speaker 1 (01:10:10):
Yeah. Overall though, this is a really I really like
this track. There's there's at least one other that I
think I referenced a little bit later. But speaking of later,
let's talk a little bit about our gameplay experience. Sure, So,
like I said up top, this isn't going to be
a standard episode. This section is going to be pretty
brief in all honesty. The story, and I say this

(01:10:35):
as as a pro this isn't a negative on this game.
The story does not involve a lot of thinking. They
do something at the end that kind of turns it
into one of those situations where it's like, Okay, this
is I don't need to think about this. This is
just a fantasy. It's about having fun. But by and large,
you know, you're essentially going on a series of quests

(01:10:57):
and dungeons and sort of puzzles. Right, you get one
item to give to somebody, they give you another item
that you give to someone else. They give you another
item that you can use to get through. It's not
a series of story beats. So I don't think we're
going to talk about it that way, but we can
talk about the opening, which I like quite a bit.

(01:11:26):
It opens up, and by the way, I took these
notes using the pixel remaster text. It's relocalized. It's a
little different in the old one. I have a comparison
here in a minute. But we open up. We get
our little scroll, which reminded me a lot of dungeons
and dragons. I could just picture a good DM explaining
this to the table. You know, as you says the scene,

(01:11:47):
you get your opening text. It says the world lies
shrouded in darkness. The winds die, the seas rage, the
earth the cays, but the people believe in a prophecy,
patiently awaiting its fulfillments. When darkness veils the world, four
warriors of light shall come. After a long journey, four
young travelers did at last appear, and in the hand

(01:12:09):
of each was clutched a crystal. You're right away kind
of set outside, like that's the background. You're four warriors
of destiny and you just kind of showed up together.
That's it, Like, you don't need this, This isn't a
story that's meant to be analyzed. You know, it's a
d and dent campaign that you would play with your
friends over a weekend. You know, it's just for fun. Yeah,

(01:12:32):
but you are the Four Wars.

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):
It's a little different than the NS version, though.

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
It is a little different. I did not do you
have it written down?

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
I do?

Speaker 1 (01:12:41):
Oh would you like to read it?

Speaker 2 (01:12:43):
I mean, if people want to hear me read it,
I can definitely so. I've never been a dungeon master
in Dungeons and dragons, so please bear with me. But
the world is veiled in darkness. The wind stops, the
sea is wild, and the earth begins to rot. The
people wait, they are only hope of prophecy. When the
world is in darkness, four warriors will come. After a

(01:13:06):
long journey. Four young warriors arrive, each holding an orb.
Orb is in all caps and I don't know why,
but that gets a chuckle.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
Out of me an orb. I should have said, yeah,
it's it's not so different that it it doesn't set
the mood like it does fine, you know, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
It's interestingly tweaked it at all, in my opinion.

Speaker 1 (01:13:28):
It does read a little more naturally in the updated one,
but it's I mean, I no points knocked off, you
know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
For sure.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
One thing that's interesting we had you had mentioned this
way at the beginning, and I wanted to make sure
I touched on it. You had mentioned Mario and like
stories of the day, contemporary stories weren't as deep or
sprawling as this one by today's standards. Yeah, this is
this is nothing special. But back then, stories and games

(01:13:57):
weren't doing this. Don't get me wrong, Like I don't
have the time to do a historical research on what
games were out and what they were doing, because I'm
gonna be honest with you, I'm thirty or forty years old.
I don't have time for this. But but one thing
this game does differently immediately is you know, the classic

(01:14:18):
trope is you save the princess or the damsel. That's
what you do in a story, and that's the final
you know, the game ends when Mario finds his princess
in the castle. This game starts with that, and that's
kind of subversive.

Speaker 2 (01:14:32):
Yes, no, it is. It is subversive. It frames it
as though this is the first thing you have to do, right,
Like obviously it frames it that way, but you don't
know the first time you play it that if it's
going to be the whole thing, right, Like if it's
going to be you arrive at that first place to
save the princess, and it is literally the answer you

(01:14:53):
get is your princesses in another castle. So it is
an interesting way to start the game, but definitely not
what the story of this game is about.

Speaker 1 (01:15:02):
And I think that's really cool. You know, that's something
that I took for granted when I first played this.
It's like, okay, yeah, sure, sure, let's get on with
the story. But trying to put myself back in the
shoes of you know, nineteen eighty seven, nineteen eighty nine,
I think that would have been not shocking. Maybe shocking
is not the right word, but it would have piqued
my interest right away. I would have been very invested
in where this was going because it's like, Okay, well

(01:15:24):
I saved the princess, What what do I do now?
You know? There's something grander, There's something more at stake
than a beautiful lady, you know, if you can believe it?

Speaker 2 (01:15:33):
What no way? I like that. And this is one
of the most memorable parts of the game is after
you save the princess, when you cross that bridge and
you get this like almost like cut scene, like this
still frame of your party crossing the bridge, and it's
such an epic fantasy piece of pixel art. And that's

(01:15:55):
when it really hit me. I think the first time
playing through it, that like, this is going to be grand,
This is going to be a huge adventure.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
Yeah, and it's you know, for the time, it really is.
You start out in Cornelia, the city of Dreams. The
King of Cornelia is searching for those from Lukan's prophecy,
the four Warriors of Light, and that must be us.
So he sends us off to rescue his daughter, Sarah,
the princess as we said, from this swordsman that used
to be the best in the empire gwent rogue named Garland.

(01:16:26):
He took her off to the Chaos Shrine to the north.
He says, if you save her, you know, I'll rebuild
the bridge to let you go to the northern continent.
We tried, obviously, but we you know, we're no match
for Garland. Go save him now. Whenever you get there,
it's like a mini dungeon. You can talk to Garland
and be done with this fight in pretty quickly. His

(01:16:48):
whole impetus is like yeah, now that I've got the princess,
he's got to give me the kingdom. And this is
where I took down some notes. In the NES version.
You talk to Garland and he says, no one touches
my princess. Light Warriors, You impertinent fools. I Garland will
knock you all down, and the Pixel remaster they remastered
it to the King will have no choice but to

(01:17:11):
exchange the kingdom for his daughter's life. Cornelia will be mine.
Who's there the King's lap dogs? Do you have any
idea who you're messing with? You really think you have
what it takes to cross swords with me? Very well?
I Garland will knock you down. And it's not better
because it's longer, just to be clear, and you can't

(01:17:31):
judge the full work just based on this one small instance.
That being said, just from what I've seen, I do
think the pixel remaster's localization is better.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
Absolutely not to mention like Garland wouldn't know you're the
Light Warriors right, like you've just arrived in Cornelia together.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
I guess we could assume he's familiar with the prophecy.

Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
I suppose, but I mean, maybe you're flaunting all those
crystals around, but not the best way to traverse the
wilds if you ask me, I do think obviously the
Pixel remasters better. No one touches my Princess as like, oh,
what's his motivation here? But yeah, it's clearly stated in
the remaster.

Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
Back at this time, we didn't have your Ted Woolsey's,
we didn't have your Richard Hunty Woods. We didn't have
your alexanderro Smith's. You know, we didn't have the heavy
hitters of localization that did this as like a full
time gig. You know, you Spoony Bard, You Spoony Bard.
When you're ready to confront him. You know, Garland is here,
it's not that difficult of a fight, even though he's

(01:18:31):
supposed to be this amazing swordsman. That brings up the
difficulty curve. The difficulty curve in this is kind of
weird and it's I mean again, it's largely dependent on
your party composition.

Speaker 2 (01:18:42):
So like, absolutely I had.

Speaker 1 (01:18:43):
To grind a lot, which made bosses manageable and made
everything else super easy, which felt very strange. But even
even with a good party, the difficulty spikes later on
in the game.

Speaker 2 (01:18:55):
Yeah, oh absolutely, I mean it's spikes, and it's not
a smooth increase. It's just really you run into walls
with bosses, right. Some bosses will give you more trouble
than others, but essentially, like your first wall that you'll
run into in any particular section of the game is
whatever the dungeon for that section is. And then once

(01:19:18):
you get leveled to where you could start dealing with
the enemies and the multiple levels of that dungeon, then
you run into the boss and you realize, oh, like,
maybe maybe I have a little bit more to do
before I could face this boss. Or you might. You'll
make it through him if with a good party comp
but it won't be like you're running all over them. Really,

(01:19:39):
I think the worst ramp in this game is the
final one. Like that's that's the toughest, toughest challenge, but
we're not there yet.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
Yeah, that was tough. Once you're back, you know, you
return to the king, he does rebuild that bridge for you,
and he he tells you of the prophecy again. He
reminds you of it. He says, when darkness fails the world,
four warriors of Light shall come. If they cannot gather
the shards of light, the darkness will consume all the
four crystals will never shine again. And this gives us

(01:20:08):
our four mcguffins in mind. We're going to do a
series of quests basically that result in us restoring the
light to these crystals. And that brings up a point
about this game. You know, this isn't plot driven, not
really like the story is the experience you get through
playing the game. The plot is what happens. This game

(01:20:29):
is not plot driven. This is very much like, you know,
you have to talk to everybody and they will give
you these little clues like, yeah, you know, I heard
that you can get this device that lets you breathe underwater,
and you know, I heard about this town where they
speak a different language, and they give you these little
hints on where to go and where to get things.
Very of the time. I like this quite a bit.

(01:20:51):
That being said, like, I'm not gonna lie and say
that I didn't play this with a guide. I did
mainly because you know, I wanted to make sure I
got through it. But I'm a big fan of talking
to NPCs and I love when they kind of give
you hints on where to go and what to do
in a way that makes sense, you know, I don't.
I don't like it when they say things like did
you know that if you press B you can run?

Speaker 2 (01:21:13):
I don't like that, right, yeah, exactly. That very much
takes you out. But no, it's all it's all very
useful in this and it's necessary, as you said, to
move the story forward, right, like, oh, there's a professor
in this town who can help you learn a language,
like he's he's a linguist, right, and like it sends
you there, and it's important for the quest, like you

(01:21:33):
wouldn't know your next step without that, And it was
cool at the time. It only made that world, you know,
suck me in even more as a child. But I
think it benefits from the scale of the of what
the EDES could handle. There's a handful of people you
could chat with in any given town, right, It's never

(01:21:55):
like overwhelming. And I think some newer rpg that kind
of rely on that, or even for side quests, it's like, man,
I can't go around trying to talk to like fifty
to one hundred people in the town, Like, guess that's
too many people.

Speaker 1 (01:22:10):
Correct me if I'm wrong too. But in the NS version,
if you tried to. If you press A or you
know a A or you know A to talk to
somebody and they move and they're not in front of
you anymore, doesn't a box come up that just says
nothing here?

Speaker 2 (01:22:26):
It does? It does?

Speaker 1 (01:22:27):
That would drive me bananas, That would that would make
me so mad.

Speaker 2 (01:22:31):
So I'm I'm because people move out of your way
in this as you're trying to talk to them, So
it does happen. I'm pretty sure that that occurs. And
there's another thing, and I can't, for the life of
me remember and this is how this is what happens
when you're forty, not thirty, maybe forty. When you're over forty,
I guess your memory starts going because even though it's
only been ten years since I played it, they had

(01:22:52):
that cut scene of the like Nights rebuilding the bridge,
and I don't think that's in the original version. I
do not recall having that at all. And there's a
few additional cut scenes in this version that like, I
just have no memory of from the original nes version,
So I'm guessing they're new.

Speaker 1 (01:23:09):
And you say cut scene, but it's not like an
animated anime cartoon.

Speaker 2 (01:23:14):
Right, Yeah, Yeah, it's not like the Chrono Trigger remaster
with the with the actual animated additional cut scenes. Right.

Speaker 1 (01:23:23):
I know some people don't like those because it kind
of does exactly what's in the game already and you
see the same scene twice sort of. I'm just such
a big fan of a curatory Yama that I love
every single one of those.

Speaker 2 (01:23:37):
Yeah, yeah, I mean we talked about that, funny enough,
we did, but we did, so it was interesting to
have that added in this version. I thought that was
pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (01:23:48):
It was nice with that though. Once that bridge is built,
we can go to the Northern Continent and we are
going to start our journey to restore light to these crystals.
In so doing, we're going to take down four fiends,
the Earth fiend Litch in the Earth Cave, which design
wise is my favorite by a lot, Carrie in Gurugo Volcano.

Speaker 2 (01:24:11):
Gurugo Gurgo, Gurgu Grogu.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
Sure in the Volcano, the Kraken in the Sunken Shrine,
and Tiamot, which is like a multi headed dragon, which
is also pretty sweet in the Floating Castle. We have
to destroy each of them to restore the light to
the crystal. That's your boss fights. Pretty cool but what
I figured is, you know, if we wanted to talk
about any specific location between there and the final boss

(01:24:38):
now would be as good of a time as any.

Speaker 2 (01:24:41):
Sure, gosh, I will say, Okay, you know Astose. You
remember Astos is kind of like a mini boss, like
a sub boss. When you go to wake up the Prince. Sure,
remember that you had to go to that other castle
that's kind of on like this northern peninsula in the marsh.
Thank god for the Pixel remaster when you face Astose,

(01:25:02):
because he had a spell that if you were under
a certain level, it was like a guaranteed kill. It
was called rub and it would say as dose was rubbed, erased,
and it would like erase your party members. It would
just one shot them, all of them. And it was
it was very frustrating to play that on the NES version.
So I was pleasantly surprised when I reached that point

(01:25:26):
in the Pixel Remaster and didn't have him cast that
spell a single time.

Speaker 1 (01:25:32):
Yeah, I don't blame you. That would drive me nuts.
That is a good quality of life improvement.

Speaker 2 (01:25:37):
Yeah. Yeah. And if I could talk about one more area,
there's the area, gosh, I don't it's kind of when
you first get the canoe and you're going through all
those rivers to find the ice cave and it's where
Mount Grogu is Gurgo Volcano. And I liked when you

(01:25:59):
got to that point because you kind of have a choice,
like after the TNT, like the nitro blows up, you know,
and you set sail into this area of the map
that you hadn't been able to reach. Right pretty much
from that point on, it just it gives you like options,
but it kind of smartly pigeonholes you into where you
can go, because like the boat can't pull in anywhere

(01:26:22):
unless there's a dock for it, right. But I remember
being a kid, and as soon as I had like
this whole area of the map that like I didn't
know existed prior to that moment, it was just so
mind blowing, Like the game was so much bigger than
I had ever envisioned, and it was just like so cool.

(01:26:42):
And then it was also cool to have the choice
of like, oh am I gonna you know what am
I going to do first? You know where am I
going to go first? Especially when you get the airship,
there's kind of a you have options, you don't have
to complete the game in the set order, there's not
that linearity that so many games dealt with at the time,
and like that was just so refreshing from a game

(01:27:04):
from that era, and I still enjoy it. I still
enjoy it even planning today.

Speaker 1 (01:27:09):
It's also why talking to NPCs is so important. They'll
you know, kind of help guide you where to go, because,
like you said, the story is the game, but the
plot is what happens. There's no plot, you just you
can go anywhere. One thing, I was surprised to see
a distinction between a ship and a canoe. The ship
is the first one you get. You get it after
going to Provoca where pirates have just taken over a

(01:27:32):
town and it's this it's a super easy boss fight
to take these pirates down and you whoop their asses
and they're like, they're like, I've had myself a change
of heart. Take my ship. I'm going to work so
hard in this town now, which, if you ask me,
that's the problem with today's society is that pirates just
don't work as hard anymore. Absolutely, they're lazy ever since

(01:27:54):
ever since they don't have to worry about scurvy. You know,
they've they've lost their moral code. That's the problem with
today's kids. But we get that ship and like you said,
it only docks, you know, in docks. But then you
get a canoe later on that lets you cross smaller
channels of water, and that one, I mean, you can't
cross the ocean in a canoe, right, that's just good
life advice. That's a that's a didactic little parable. That's

(01:28:17):
something your dad would tell you one day before baseball practiced, unprompted,
and you'd be like, what the hell is he talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:28:22):
That's like an inspiring quote. Can't It's going to go
on my office wall.

Speaker 1 (01:28:27):
You can't cross the ocean in a canoe, It's true,
you can't go, But you can't go down Niagara Falls
in a barrel.

Speaker 2 (01:28:34):
That's also true.

Speaker 1 (01:28:35):
It's true people have done it. Not me, though. That
is very neat that you get that little canoe and
it really opens up the map. You can go in
all of these little channels and hidden caves behind waterfalls,
or at least one of them. Very very neat.

Speaker 2 (01:28:49):
I was, don't forget about it.

Speaker 1 (01:28:52):
Sorry, Yeah, no, no, you're fine. I agree with you.
They don't forget about it. You use it for the
rest of the game.

Speaker 2 (01:28:57):
Right, I love that. I love that. Like it's because
the ship in some ways feels that way. Right once
you get the airship, it's like, well, I don't even
know where I parked my ship anymore. I might as
well go give it back to the pirates and provoke it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:08):
Well, you can't. You can't park your airship anywhere. If
you try to park it in trees, it goes and
then it goes h and it comes right back up.

Speaker 2 (01:29:17):
And this was more pronounced than the NES version, like
how particular it was, And it's partially because you know
they It's essentially like the Pixel remaster is a sixteen
big game, not an eight big game. And that's very
evident when you're flying around in the airship. In the
NES version, if you tried to land in that thing

(01:29:38):
on what looked like a square patch of planes land,
it still wouldn't let you do it. If it was
like in between a desert in a forest and mountains, like,
you still wouldn't be able to land there. So it's
it definitely has the same effect. In the Pixel remaster.
You can only land in the same spots you were
able to in the NEES version. But it just I

(01:30:01):
think it looks a little bit more clear in the
pixel remaster about where you can land.

Speaker 1 (01:30:06):
I had a note here about the town Elfheim. I
don't know why. I just really like that town. You know,
the town music, Like you had said, it's very pleasant.
I don't know, like nothing happens in Elfheim, not really,
it's it's just a pleasant little town. And like how
it's laid out, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:30:22):
There's also yes, surrounded by the marsh.

Speaker 1 (01:30:25):
That's true. Yeah, is this the town is Elfheim? The
town where the tombstone that says here lies link.

Speaker 2 (01:30:31):
Is it is? It is that very town.

Speaker 1 (01:30:34):
I found that by accident. That was really delightful. I
got a big chuckle out of that. And then I
checked every other tombstone then I came across, and they
all just say it's a gravestone.

Speaker 2 (01:30:43):
Right in every other town in the game, or anywhere
you come across them.

Speaker 1 (01:30:48):
I did have one more area that I wanted to
shout out, Mount do or Gar. I was so thrilled
to walk in here. When we walked in, you see
a bunch of dwarfs, not dwarves, thank you Tolkien. You
see a bunch of dwarfs and that alone is enough
to get me excited. But then you talk to them
and it's the same dwarfs from Final Fantasy nine and
Conda Petty. They have a thick Scottish accent and it's

(01:31:12):
localized differently to lolli ho instead of rally Hoe, you know,
because the Japanese l on the r are you know
too English speakers, sounds very similar. But it I was
so thrilled. I was chuffed as nuts to see these
little Scottish, little Scottish dwarfs just all around being little guys.
I do like them a bit more in nine. They
have a little bit more personality, just because you know,

(01:31:33):
they have more space to write, so they could talk
about wanting to eat, and you know, all the oohs
around instead of owls. This was This was really delightful though.
I love this little little area lolli Ho. I like that.

Speaker 2 (01:31:47):
There's a side quest that brings you back there too
later in the game.

Speaker 1 (01:31:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's where you get the Massa
mune right or no, not Massa miniscaliber, yeah, which I
had adamn tite, but I didn't have a warrior, so it.

Speaker 2 (01:32:02):
Was useless to meet some get some good money for
that though.

Speaker 1 (01:32:07):
Yeah, I was rolling in it. What did I need
it for?

Speaker 2 (01:32:09):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:32:11):
Did you have any others that you wanted to shout
out before we talk about the final Boss and the
sort of ending of this game.

Speaker 2 (01:32:16):
Yeah, I you know, obviously this is something synonymous with
Final Fantasy now, but the mix of kind of futuristic
tech and fantasy was in this game and that stuck
out to me as a kid. When you get to
the tower and Tiamots essentially like level.

Speaker 1 (01:32:38):
Right, oh, yeah, that dungeon, that one random mini boss
Mecca Warrior or something.

Speaker 2 (01:32:43):
Yeah, but also when you go into the waterfall and
you find a robot there who gives you the item
need to like continue the quest, and then there's other
robots like NPCs in that dungeon that you come across,
and like you do come across, yeah, more tech based
enemies when you make it to Tiamont's later, and like
I always thought that was so cool as a kid,
because I'm like, man, I want to know more about

(01:33:05):
this world, like did when were those made? Like what
happened was like because it alludes to that, you know,
the elves came from the sky and they lived up
there in the past, and it just it's those little
tidbits of like lore that you know, just make it
very fleshed out, like they knew what they were doing,

(01:33:25):
they had a plan, and they had a world that
this story existed, and I love that. I love that
sort of detail.

Speaker 1 (01:33:32):
They absolutely did. They even telegraph the time loop element
that's coming in with the elves and they say like, yeah,
we sent five or four or five warriors out five
hundred years ago and they've never returned, and you learn
that they get turned into bats and you get to
talk to them. They're all still here. And this is
before you're explicitly told this is a time loop, but

(01:33:54):
you get told that here at the end, after you
destroy all the Fiends, you open a portal and restore
the light to crystals. You open a portal in the
Temple of Chaos where we first went to fight Garland
at the beginning of the game. It takes you back
two thousand years into the past, and this is where
you get to confront the creator of the Fiends, Chaos,
who is actually Garland. What happened was two thousand years

(01:34:16):
ago he sent and please correct me if this is incorrect.
This is like, again, this is not meant to be analyzed.
This is just your weekend D and D campaign, right,
They're not trying to write a great novel. It's just
a fun fiction, a fun fantasy, and that's okay. But
what happened was two thousand years ago Garland sent the
Fiends forward in time so that they might send him

(01:34:39):
backward in time before his death, and that creates this
infinite sort of loop of time where Garland gets to
live forever basically, and this leads into the final fight.
He transforms into Chaos, which even in the NES version
looks so sweet.

Speaker 2 (01:34:56):
Oh absolutely, Like you had said, Lych was your favorite.
But I was like, man, I gotta put my hat
off to Chaos here.

Speaker 1 (01:35:03):
Oh that's that's a good point. Chaos are lit. I
think I'm still going lich like I love Lych's design.

Speaker 2 (01:35:09):
No, that's fair, it's a great design.

Speaker 1 (01:35:11):
Chaos you had mentioned earlier. This is where the difficulty
spikes the most. Chaos is long. Chaos is a long fight,
and it is it is tough. He can cast haste
on himself and I don't know, I grind it a lot.
Between my second and third time I beat him on

(01:35:32):
my third time, my second and third time, I grind
it a lot. He was still one shotting my guys
mostly one shotting my guys if he used physical attacks. Now,
if he used magic attacks that hit everybody, that was
nothing like I could handle that unless it was Flair.
But if he was punching that oftentimes would one shot

(01:35:52):
most people. It didn't one shot the monk or whatever.
The Master Monk didn't one shot him. It generally didn't
one shot my Red Wizard. But like if he hit
my White Mage with that, she was done like out
t KO.

Speaker 2 (01:36:06):
Yeah. So do you know why Flair did more damage
than like the magic texts because it's not in amental right,
that's right, it does physical damage. Hey, exactly, that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:36:19):
That's also why that is the op spell. Whenever you
go back in time, you're gonna have to fight the
four Fiends all over again, which is something I really like.
I really like revisiting bosses and they're stronger, you know,
which does kind of imply that these fiends get softer
with age, so they're not they're not too different from
us humans. Huh when did this pain come into my neck?
And why does it hurt whenever I turn them a

(01:36:40):
certain it's been happening for you three and a half weeks.
Please help, But you do fight them all over again.
Flair is the op spell to use because and I
think Holy as well, because they do physical damage or
at least Flaired at least Flare does. I don't know
about Holy.

Speaker 2 (01:36:54):
I will say the way I wouldn't fight him as
using all Monks. I'll tell you that much. What level
were you when you were able? Like about what was
like the average level of your party when you were
able to defeat Chaos fifty?

Speaker 1 (01:37:08):
Everybody was fifty.

Speaker 2 (01:37:09):
Oh yeah, nice, that's the way to do it. That's
like right about my first playthrough where I was. I
think just by playing through the game, you're going to
be about level fifty when you get there. For the
all Monk playthrough, I had to have them up to
level sixty five.

Speaker 1 (01:37:24):
Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (01:37:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:37:25):
That's one of the interesting things about the monk that
we didn't talk about and something that I did not
know because I'm pretty sure this is something maybe the
game manual tells you.

Speaker 2 (01:37:34):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:37:35):
One thing that's easy to see is most equipment that
you put on his body is going to lower his defense,
like unless it's a ribbon. You really don't want him
wearing anything, which is how I like to go out
on Saturdays. But weapons will raise his attack power. But
the thing is is if you leave him unequipped with
a weapon, and I'm pretty sure you told me this,

(01:37:56):
so I'm if I misunderstood, please correct me. If you
leave him unequipped, he's going to you more hits and
output more damage, and that's what you want.

Speaker 2 (01:38:04):
Yeah, yeah, but I don't know for sure that that
is the case if you don't start that scaling from
the beginning of the game. So with my al month team,
I didn't equip anything. I didn't equip weapons to them.
I just started from the get go. And I think
it's something in the coding of the game, like the
way it handles scaling is essentially like your attack output

(01:38:25):
becomes greater if you don't equip a weapon, which is cool.
If it wasn't intentional, it's still really fricking cool because like,
think of this karate master and like he's only strengthening
his hands with each punch he gives, right.

Speaker 1 (01:38:38):
He's not tempted by the new technology.

Speaker 2 (01:38:41):
Yeah, it's so cool. And so by the end of
the game, I was landing like twelve hits for significant damage,
you know, like one thousand damage. Yeah, so it's it's cool.
And the weight of armor also, as you mentioned, is
what knocks their evasion down. So Amonk, the one thing
is he's a glass cannon, but he can evade a

(01:39:01):
whole lot of attacks, and if you put armor on him,
he can no longer do that. And I like that,
Like that is a logical thing, right when you're thinking
of someone who is like this kung fu master essentially, right,
it is neat.

Speaker 1 (01:39:14):
I did not know. I had no idea, So my
monk was honestly not a great asset to me through
most of my game. I gave him the Massa Mune
towards the end and was just buffing him with saber
and haste and temper. So he was a giant globe. Yeah,
he was dealing tons of damage, but I mean without that,
I would not have beat Chaos, I don't think.

Speaker 2 (01:39:36):
Yeah. And the one thing with the all Monk team
is that there's only three ribbons in the game, which
is frustrating, very frustrating. Essentially, like you have a fourth
party member who doesn't have ribbon, and ribbon offers a
whole lot of magic defense. So I had one monk
who was pretty much worthless in that chaos fight because
as soon as he would cast a magic spell that

(01:39:58):
damaged everyone that you know, monk would just take so
much damage. Uh yeah, And I believe the remakes, not
the pixel remaster, but like the GBA and PSP versions
actually had a fourth ribbon in some of the additional content.

Speaker 1 (01:40:14):
Well, I can tell you I didn't find one. I
only had three as well. I I definitely had one
on my monk. I think I maybe I left it
off of the Red Mage because like he was kind
of the most indispensable, the least indispensable, the most dispensable.
That's how prefixes work. So I wasn't like two broken
up if if he was down, mainly because like you know,

(01:40:36):
my white my black Maige was dealing flair. My white
Mage had full life and holy and ciraga and heologia,
so like she was, she needed to be protected at
all costs. Yeah, I put her in the last position
just in case. Actually nice, But yeah, you beat chaos
and you sever the tie, you sever the loop. And

(01:40:58):
what this does is it undone the loop, which means
it undoes your heroic deeds, and your heroism will forever
lie unknown, which I'm a big fan of stories that
do this. You know, where virtue is its own reward,
the protags just end up as normal people. I like
that a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:41:16):
Yeah, I think it's really cool, like we saved the
world and no one knows.

Speaker 1 (01:41:20):
I love that it's its own reward, right. The reward
is the virtue of what we've done.

Speaker 2 (01:41:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:41:27):
Absolutely, And that's Final Fantasy. I'm really glad that I
went through it. It's not going to be the last
Final Fantasy game of the year. We have a couple more,
but this was a real treat I could I'm not
going to replay it anytime soon, and if I'm being
totally honest, I'm probably not going to play the nes
maybe on an emulator. I'm not sure, but I could

(01:41:50):
see myself going through this again next year.

Speaker 2 (01:41:53):
Eh. Maybe I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm going to play
through it again. I know, I am. I just know it,
and thank you for getting me to play through it again.
It had been too long, and I think between my
two playthroughs, I'm at about twenty some odd hours and
it's incredible. To me because it made me think, wow,

(01:42:14):
this is only two playthroughs, like how many hours have
I played Final Fantasy in my life? And it was
worth every one of them. I will say that, well.

Speaker 1 (01:42:23):
I'm glad that you joined me. This was an absolute blast.
We've got to the end of the show, so now
I want to give you a space to talk about
list Off. You've been on the show before longtime listeners now,
but for new listeners who aren't familiar, why don't you
tell them a little bit about what you and Brian do.
Brian still hasn't come on the show. He doesn't like me.

Speaker 2 (01:42:41):
I don't know why Brian loves you.

Speaker 1 (01:42:43):
What you and Brian do and what new episodes you've
got going on where they can find you all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:42:49):
Sure, so I am one half of list Off podcast
with Brian and me being the Ryan and yeah, we
put out bi weekly episodes where we do lists that
are all around the gaming world. So we just had
started having guests back on and our first guest back
on the show was actually Rick and we did our

(01:43:11):
favorite handheld consoles. We recently did racing games PS four games,
our favorite weird games, just recorded one that was about
our favorite solo developed games. So if you're into that
kind of stuff, you like lists, you like hearing people's
opinions on games, feel free to give us a listen.
We're available anywhere you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 (01:43:33):
I co sign list Off. It is a terrific, terrific show,
and I always love going on. I love talking about
our handhelds. That was a great episode, a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:43:43):
You brought a level of expertise to it that we
just couldn't reach, So thank you for that. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:43:49):
Oh, I don't know about that. They're just they're fun
to tinker with and fun to experiment with. But it's
a good time and that was a great episode. List
Off is a great show. You could find links to
them in the description. You can also find links to
all of our stuff, all of Pixel Project Radio stuff,
And I want to draw your attention to just a
few things. First. We do have a discord server. It

(01:44:09):
is free to join, and it's a great way to
not just hang out with the community, but keep up
to date with the show. That's usually where I announce
things first is in the Discord and the Patreon if applicable,
and occasionally I'm able to give special episodes or special
cuts of episodes to the discord numbers. That admittedly doesn't
happen too often, but listen, it's free. It's a great

(01:44:33):
place to hang. It's my favorite place to hang, and
I think you should consider it. I also think you
should consider stopping by the Patreon page that's patreon dot
com slash Pixel Project Radio. In addition to a backlog
of content going back years, you will also get our
schedule in advance voting privileges to decide what is being done,

(01:44:53):
both on the Patreon and in the main feed. And
let's be honest, the satisfaction of supporting somebody who's creating stuff,
which I think we should all be doing more of.
But if you'd like to check it out, you can
do that at Patreon dot com slash Pixel Project Radio.
And finally, you can find links to all of our socials,
mainly that's going to be Blue Sky. We are still

(01:45:15):
on Instagram, not quite as active. Instagram is a bit
barren for most podcasts from what I'm seeing these days,
unless you're one of the big ones like NPR. But
we ain't no NPR. We're just a little guy. You
can find us on Blue Sky on Instagram. We are
also on TikTok and YouTube. You can certainly listen on
YouTube if you'd like. Those don't count towards the metrics,

(01:45:37):
so I don't love that, but the episodes are there.
I do occasionally put out shorts on YouTube and TikTok's
on TikTok. Haven't been doing as much of that lately,
but there is more to come. So if you'd like
to subscribe there as well, you can do so. And
with that, once again, Ryan got to say thank you.
This has been a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:45:58):
Well, Rick, I gotta say thank you to you. I'm serious, like,
this is one of the most meaningful games from my
entire life, and it had been, Like I said, it's
just been too long since I had played it. And
when you asked me to come on for this episode,
I was very flattered, very honored, So I definitely appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:46:20):
Hey, the pleasure is all mine. I'm glad that you
got to join, and I'm glad that you got to
replay it, so it's just an all around good time.
Heck yeah, with that, it's time to close out the episode.
I am Rick your host as always. Once again, thank you,
thank you for sticking around. We're signing off for now.

Speaker 2 (01:46:38):
Take care,

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Where It All Began | Final Fantasy (Ep. 140)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Where It All Began | Final Fantasy (Ep. 140)