It doesn't look amazing, but the huge enemy sprites are nice. The PlayStation Portable remake brought an even more radical visual overhaul to the game. It's not great new material, but it's there, and novel enough that a seasoned player might want to check it out. On the other hand, this version does add a lot of new material. Enemy encounters were rebalanced to be far easier as well. Spell charges became a standard mana pool, removing much of the need for planning and party management. The Game Boy Advance remake of Final Fantasy I & II brought some new things to the table, but it also made some sweeping, fundamental changes to the original Final Fantasy's basic design. You can hunt down the PS1 disc, which will work on a PS2 and PS3 as well and should cost practically nothing, or download it from PlayStation Network to play on PS3, PSP, or Vita for a mere $5.99 (and it includes Final Fantasy II, if you don't mind a little pain).įinal Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls (GBA)

Also, all the buff and debuff spells work correctly here, finally. The Origins version keeps details like spell charges and, you know, actually challenging enemy encounters but at the same time, it patches up annoying NES details like the need to buy 99 potions one at a time. It hits the ideal balance between old-school fidelity and new-school quality-of-life design. Recommended version: Final Fantasy Origins (PlayStation)įor my money, the absolute best way to approach Final Fantasy is to play the PlayStation remake. You should be able to find bare carts of Final Fantasy these days for around that price, and thanks to the invincible technology Nintendo used in its chips, the save batteries will probably still work. That means they produced a ton of carts for it… some of which were still lingering in Toys 'R' Us a decade later for less than $20. in 1990, and they had huge hopes for the game. Nintendo published Final Fantasy for NES in the U.S. but doing is more fun than watching, right? If you're interested in checking out the game that kicked off the entire franchise, you have no shortage of options… I've begun working my way through the NES game in a Let's Play video series, with a party carefully crafted by social media selections to be as generic as possible: until nearly three years later, but in absolute terms, the world's most popular role-playing franchise has just entered its fourth decade of existence. The original Final Fantasy debuted in Japan 30 years ago this week. Mission control for retronauts former EIC of 1UP.com and taking dapper (and frogs) back from the Nazis.

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