It’s not real. Not really.
Download Link: Released 2017.05.15
In a special edition of the podcast, Lusipurr, Adeki, Sebahamut, and SiliconNooB recall their first experiences with the Final Fantasy series.
TSM Episode 429: First Fantasy
10 Comments
-
Lusipurr
This podcast is not real.
Not really.
-
Sebahamut
Everything I “said” on this podcast was taken out of context. My words have been twisted. I deny all. Lusipurr will be hearing from my legal team.
-
Consider yourself 0wned.
-
S.T.
Like many others, my first FF game was Final Fantasy VII back in 1997 on the PS1. I remember I went to my cousins house about a week before my 10th birthday, and he was in the middle of the second phase of the iconic Sephiroth fight at the end of the game. I had played some strategy games like Shining Force II previously and was used to the menu-laden combat, but this was the first time I remember games having a cinematic quality to it. I had never seen or played a Final Fantasy game beforehand, and only knew about the series thru some friends who had played the games on the SNES. After he finished the battle completely, he began telling me about the story and gameplay, and I was pretty hooked. I had a Saturn at the time, and told my parents that I wanted a PlayStation for my birthday as well as this game. About a week later, there was a shiny new PlayStation waiting with my other birthday gifts as well as FFVII. I played that game constantly and it quickly became one of my favorites. I also took the time to try some of the classic FF games as well afterwards, including what would become my favorite game in the series, Final Fantasy VI.
Alas, I now wait to see SquareEnix completely blaspheme my first FF memory with Final Fantasy VII Remake, as they continue their downward cycle into mediocrity and blandness.
-
Dancing Matt
My Final Fantasy story is similar to Lusipurr’s. I grew up reading Chronicles Of Narnia and Choose Your Own Adventure novels, and had a clear preference for things medievel. Sometime during 1990 I saw the Nintendo Power strategy guide for Final Fantasy in a store, and became instantly smitten that there was a video game had embodied all of that. So I got it for Christmas that year, and still remember spending that day figuring the game out, not knowing what to expect besides it being a different kind of game than I’d played before.
I loved so much about it, but never did get that far into it, starting over multiple times to try out different party configurations and such. I also played a ton of Dragon Warrior I – IV and Final Fantasy Adventure and Legend II at the time. I knew I liked everything that Squaresoft put out, so you can imagine the rest of the story.
Speaking of Choose Your Own Adventure books, did you read the Lone Wolf series by Joe Dever? I read every last one of them – it was my first intense interest in a series of media, and the precursor to getting very into RPGs, Magic: The Gathering, and the like.
-
@ST and DM: We’re going to read BOTH of your FF stories in the next podcast!
@ST: I’ve got GREAT news for you about Square Enix’s unceasing blasphemy. Tune into the next podcast for an epic Lusi-ragesplosion!
@DM: I know well the FF1 strategy guide: in fact, I still have my copy.
-
LC11
My first Final Fantasy game was IX when I was around the age of 13. The only JRPG games I had played previously were Super Mario RPG and Chrono Trigger which set me up to at least understand what was going on. I remember the website named FF9 as the best beginner RPG (something like that) and it really was true in my case. I fell in love with the story, characters, music, just all of it. It’s the game that really started my passion for JRPGS, which is the primary type of game I played from then on. I still kind of hate the beginning portion of the game all these years later though because I didn’t have a memory card when I first got it (parents didn’t know it was required) and played through the start of the game over and over trying to get a little further every time until I finally saved up enough money to get a memory card. After all these years and games I’ve played FF9 is still one of my favorites.
-
RabidKitten
Another person here who has a Final Fantasy story similar to Lusipurr’s. My first NES games were Mario, Metal Gear, and Zelda. I was raised by a single mom and she was smart enough to ask the guys at the store what the “good games” were, so I generally played the good games as a little kid. As I got older I realized that I really enjoyed games that were more fantastical in nature. Around the time Dragon Warrior came out, Nintendo Power released a little booklet inside one of the issues that was filled with incredible illustrations of all the armor and items within the game. I adored that book, and would draw my own lists of items from worlds I made up. This led me try this strange game that performed battles via menus instead of realtime action, and I fell in love, I played the heck out of Dragon Warrior. It was not long after that Final Fantasy popped up in Nintendo Power. The add featured a game similar to Dragon Warrior but this time it had flying castles, boats with propellers, and a party of multiple characters. I had to have that game, so I asked my mom for it and she was savy enough to find it for my birthday. If I played a ton of Dragon Warrior, I played even more Final Fantasy.
On a side note: Sebahamut, if you had a rough time with Final Fantasy 7 which is one of the easiest Final Fantasies, then your mom was doing you a favor. Because Final Fantasy 1 was one hard game. I think it would be a jolly good laugh if Sebahamut played Final Fantasy 1 on Stream, The original NES version with no cheatsie emulator save stating. Play it in its original form.
-
Thanks, LC11 and RabidKitten, for your ‘first Fantasy’ stories–we’ll be including them in our next podcast.
This discussion panel has been a big success. And, yesterday, Durga and I came up with a great new topic for next week, especially for classic gamers. So, stay tuned for that!
@RabidKitten: I think it would be a jolly good laugh if Sebahamut played Final Fantasy 1 on Stream, The original NES version with no cheatsie emulator save stating. Play it in its original form.
I am pretty sure I mentioned this in this podcast, but there are things about the original that don’t really hold up today. Buying potions ONE AT A TIME, for example. Only being able to save at an Inn! All those “Ineffective” attacks from attacking dead units–something which had such a formative influence on the way that I play games that I still mentally calculate enemy HP and divide my attacks so that my units they won’t attack already-dead units, even although games now automatically redirect those attacks!
I played FF1 to pieces when I was a kid. My strategy guide is in a woeful state, even although I took very good care of my books. I had to wrap the box in packing tape to make certain it would not fall apart. And I have played just about every subsequent release of FF1–on GBA, PS1, PSP, and iOS. And yet… even I would struggle going back to the original and playing it without save states.
Potions ONE AT A TIME. One at a time!!! Honestly, playing the FFOrigins version (same difficulty, gold, xp, etc) is close enough. It has all of the original game’s mechanics, but it allows you to buy multiple items and to save on the world map without having to go to an inn, and you can turn off the brace of modern enhancements (using revive items in combat, automatic redirect of attacks, etc) to get the ‘original’ feel for the difficulty. That’s probably a reasonable compromise!
-
Clinton
My first ff was mystic quest when I was around 10, but since that doesn’t really count, my true first was ff3 aka ff6. I think I was around 12, my father would rent games for me at a local grocery store and if we held onto it long enough they would wipe the computers and he never had to pay a late fee, but we were honest enough to at least return it. My experience was sort of similar to Adeki’s but instead I was able to make it inside the final dungeon. I was immature for my age so I didn’t think about balancing out the parties, I wiped the floor with the overloaded party and couldn’t make it with the weak party. The problem, I saved after I went into the dungeon, so there was no turning back. I never beat it. I tried playing an emulated version on my Galaxy S5, got close to the final dungeon and shortly after my phone broke down. Now I have a Motorola phone and a bunch of emulated games on it, I will give ff6 a shot again someday.
