I recently came down with a nasty cold. On my birthday, no less. This may sound like the opening to the greatest 80’s teen movie never made, but the reality was pretty unglamorous and involved a lot more snot. I had plans! Big plans! Well, it was more like my wife was making big plans for me, but y’know what I’m getting at. Staying in bed and having a bunged up nose to match my bunged up mind is always tedious, so I thought I would play something to kill time until my white blood cells got off their duffs and did their job. All I wanted to do was indulge in something that felt familiar, that I didn’t think too hard about; so Final Fantasy it was. I’ve actually finished the game twice in the past – once on the Game Boy Advance many years ago, and again recently when the Pixel Remaster launched on PC, but never the NES one.
Rather than drumming up a review as I usually do upon beating a NES game, I did a whole bunch of research and came up with a list of 8 obscure facts about the first Final Fantasy to post instead. There were two reasons behind this: first, I LOVE researching games and learning all sorts of weird trivia about them, no matter how strange or pointless some of my findings may be. It’s easily my favourite part of the review process. Secondly…I actually finished the game about a week ago, but I couldn’t think of a single thing to say about the first Final Fantasy that hasn’t already been said a million times before. And I tried, dude. I really tried.
The NES version was cool. FF’s a fun time. Grind heavy? Absolutely. Weird equipment system? Yeah, that’s true too. But you don’t need me to tell you that. Anybody who’s anybody will tell you that! It definitely had its fair share of quirks, charms and antiquities, but in essence, it was the same game as the other two ports I had played in the past; a solid, classic RPG experience. I was impressed that dungeon and town layouts remained basically unchanged from the original NES edition in all the future iterations; just goes to show the strength of those designs has withstood the test of time.
On the off chance you’ve never played it before, I’d personally recommend playing one of the newer versions of the first Final Fantasy – anything from the WonderSwan Color and beyond is a safe bet. They all retain the same level of difficulty, but with nice little quality of life tweaks that’ll make your experience top notch.
Anyway, here endeth my weird not-review post thing. The first Final Fantasy will now forever remind me of the time I was sick on my birthday. And also the movie “Splash” starring Darryl Hannah, I guess. Funny how things work out like that.
To summarize:
NESJunk 