It is the Spring of 1994 and in Japan, a new RPG has hit the shelves—Final Fantasy VI. A few months later in Autumn, the US would get a new game as well. This game was—Final Fantasy III? Another victim of the SNES number debacle, but it was indeed the third U.S. Release. I first played this during the rise of the SNES emulators and I always got stymied at the same point. Every time I got onto the Floating Continent I wouldn’t be strong enough to survive. All three previous attempts to beat the game ended at this same point. I own an in-box copy of Final Fantasy III. Yet, for our needs, we would be booting up the Advance version of this game.

Squaresoft was on a roll with their second generation of games, giving us a new game after only a little over a year. Final Fantasy V of course wouldn’t see this release until the Playstation release in 1998. Well, officially at least, unofficially we had the first fan translation patch for the SNES version in 1997. An endeavor I encourage people to read about here. This is hands down, as of playing the game, my favorite game in the franchise. I’ve played the SNES, Playstation, and Advance versions, and I’ve loved all of them. The Advance version was the one I beat and mastered. I maxed out all the classes, beat all the secret bosses, and loved doing it! This would again be the version I would be playing for the stream.

Months after the release of Final Fantasy III, the next generation of consoles came to homes. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System had arrived. This means the next installment of the franchise would be a whopping 16-bits of action! We got Final Fantasy IV the same year as Japan: 1991. This was the first official sequel for the west. And this is where the confusing numbering of games begins. After Final Fantasy IV came out, Japan got a second version that same year. A simplified version removing some spells, abilities, and items. This was Final Fantasy IV Easy Type, and it was this game that got sent to the West as Final Fantasy II. I first played on a cart with a ruined battery which meant every time I powered off the console I had to start over. The furthest I ever got was the Tower of Zot. Now it is time to finish it finally, using Final Fantasy IV Advance on the Gameboy Advance.

Only two years after Final Fantasy II, Japan got another sequel. An exclusive close to the first trilogy of games: Final Fantasy III. Released on the Famicom, it would remain that way for quite some time. Outside of fan translations, there was no official release of this version. In 2006, the world got its first official taste of this game in the form of a 3D remake on the Nintendo DS. While I played a large portion of the fan translation I didn’t sit down with it until the DS version. I only got so far into the game before the forced social networking frustrated me enough to stop. Mobile phones got a port of the 3D version and so we are playing the PC version of that port. Which is great since they replaced social media with monster hunting!

The desire to play the beginning of the Final Fantasy franchise has proven to be a cursed endeavor. So far we have had some kind of issue or less than stellar gameplay for some reason or another. So while we are making the transition to the 3D generation of games, enjoy a compilation of the issues we have had to struggle with!