Secret of Evermore (SNES)

Oh damn it's Super Adventures' 8th birthday today! I didn't write anything for the site all last year but I'm fairly sure those 12 months still count towards its age.

I gave writing about games a long rest because it became too much like work to me and I was so done with this site that I couldn't even get one post finished a week anymore, but I've managed to slowly regenerate my interest in playing games in the meantime thanks to my time off. In fact I've decided that the break I took worked out so well that I should take more breaks, more often. So this year I plan to take a two month break every two months!

Unfortunately this does mean that I have to give you two months of game articles each time or else I'm not actually taking a break from anything. So it is with deep regret that I inform you that Super Adventures is now back (for two months).

Developer:

Square

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Release Date:

1996 (1995 NA)

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Systems:

SNES

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This week on Ray Hardgrit's resurrected Super Adventures in Gaming I'm playing Secret of Evermore, which I'm fairly sure isn't a spiritual successor to Secret of Monkey Island.

All I know about it is that it's an action RPG on the SNES by Squaresoft... made in America... with music from Jeremy "Elder Scrolls" Soule. So that's a bit unusual. This was actually the only game ever developed by a Square team in the US, which sounds like a bit of a warning sign but probably isn't. They briefly considered making a sequel to the game in fact, until it was decided that it was time to jump ship from the sinking SNES.

The US only got one more Square RPG on the SNES after this, Super Mario RPG, and us folks in Europe didn't even get that for some reason. Evermore was only the fourth Square RPG to ever get a release in PAL regions, after two Mystic Quests and Secret of Mana, and the next game we got was Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation.

Okay I'm going to play the game for a couple of hours, write about what happened, then finish with a bit of a review at the end. Even though I've got no business reviewing a game I've only played a couple of hours of.

Secret of Mana (SNES)

Developer:

Square

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Release Date:

1994 (1993 JP/NA)

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Systems:

SNES

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This month on Super Adventures, I'm finally getting around to the legendary Secret of Mana!

I'm running a few weeks late here so I'll get my internet-sourced trivia introduction text out of the way quickly so I can get to the game.

• That 'Nasir' you see on the title screen is Nasir Gebelli, the programmer of Final Fantasy I, II and III.
• Trying to figure out the game's exact relation to Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger could drive you nuts.
• It started out as a project codenamed "Maru Island" before becoming a Seiken Densetsu sequel.
• It was planned for the SNES CD addon, but was drastically revised and cut down for a cartridge release.
• Many of the unused ideas from the CD version ended up in Chrono Trigger.
• The dialogue was cut back even further for the English translation due to space limitations.
• It's getting a 3D remake next year!
• It's one of the games on the Super NES Classic!
• I've never played it.
• Well actually I have, but it wasn't for long and I don't think I liked it much.
• All I remember is walking down a river and maybe visiting a town before getting bored.

Also, it's one of the most popular and critically acclaimed SNES games, so I'm going to have to try not to hate on it too much.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Movie)

Written by:

Al Reinert, Jeff Vintar

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Directed by:

Hironobu Sakaguchi

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Release Date:

2001

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I've been writing about video games for a long time now, over five years in fact, and it's starting to become a dull routine for me to be honest. I need to widen my scope, pick a new subject, try something different! I mean I'm still fascinated by games and I always will be, but I have a very slight obsession with science fiction as well and it'd be nice to shift gears and focus on that for a while.

So this week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about a science fiction movie! Because I do that now.

Speaking of trying something new, 'Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within' was the debut movie from Square Pictures, the video game company's new computer animated film division. And it was also the last, because it bombed so hard. They'd would only work on one more project, the 'Final Flight of the Osiris' short for the 'Animatrix', before being shut down. I guess if you keep using 'Final' in your titles it will eventually come true.

I'm not sure the movie failed because it was based on a video game though, because I've seen this before and I know full well that it ain't based on any 'Final Fantasy' games I've played. But this isn't a case of a movie studio taking a brand name and doing their own thing with it, as it was conceived and directed by 'Final Fantasy' creator Hironobu Sakaguchi himself! His very first film in fact, and also his last.

Despite its utter failure, Spirits Within was a pretty important milestone in cinema, as it's the first full-length 'photorealistic' motion captured animated movie. A proper big-budget serious cartoon aimed at adults starring humans, four years in the making! To give it a bit of context, it came out 6 years after Toy Story (the first full length CG movie) and around the same time that 'Final Fantasy X' hit the PlayStation 2. So yes, it really is 15 years old at the time I'm writing this.

(I'm basically going to go ahead and spoil this entire movie one scene at a time now, so please stop right here unless you're okay with that).

Kingdom Hearts (PS2)

Today's 'K' game is... Kingdom Hearts, obviously. It's not exactly an obscure series, but it's pretty much slipped right by me so I'm coming into this one almost entirely clueless. I have absolutely zero nostalgia for the game.

I do know that it's an epic collaboration between Square and Disney, bringing characters from both their franchises together in an attempt to come up with a third person action game with enough star power to rival Super Mario 64. This would've been back when Square still had that feud with Nintendo going on, so Super Mario RPG 2 was way off the table.

Okay I admit that a few years back I did give Kingdom Hearts half an hour or so to win me over, but I didn't exactly come away from it with a deeper understand of what I'd been playing. All I remember of it now is running around a desert island looking for fish to eat. Forever.

Hang on, is that a dead fish sticking out of the protagonist's mouth right now? I just assumed that it must be a bit of plant, but now that I'm looking at it properly...

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (PC) - Guest Post

I don't generally play multiplayer games for Super Adventures, as I just don't feel like they're a good fit for the site. But Jihaus here plays what he damn well pleases and today he's taking on the latest MMO to steal a numbered slot in the Final Fantasy line: Final Fantasy 14: Online 2: A Realm Reborn.

Ray was hitting a bunch of Final Fantasy games recently and I figured it'd be a good time to jump back into Final Fantasy XIV. I'm relatively familiar with the game from the short time I played the beta earlier this year but this time I have a chance to start over with it and really analyze it.

This will be the first MMORPG post of Super Adventures in Gaming so some may be wondering how this is going to work, being that MMORPGs are long, drawn out affairs in which it takes a lot longer to do things compared to offline games. The answer to that is, about the same, I'll just be compressing the timeline a bit here so this will seem a lot faster than the game really is.

As a bit of backstory, we're actually playing A Realm Reborn, not the original FFXIV Online released in 2010, which was apparently such a critical flop that Square Enix shut down the servers and redid the game, rereleasing it 3 years later in this newer, improved package. I haven't played the original so I can't compare, but I'd say I'm familiar enough with MMORPG mechanics to give this a fair shake.

Of course you run into the most horrible of MMO roadblocks before getting here: installing the game, and waiting for it to update EVERYTHING, a process I let run overnight as the ETA was in the thousands of minutes at first. Once that was over, I was able to just use the same account I had and proceed.

Final Fantasy XII (PS2)

Today on Super Adventures I'm playing classic PlayStation 2 JRPG Final Fantasy XII, sometimes also referred to as Final Fantasy 12 by people who want to maximise the chances of their site showing up in search results.

I've been playing through the first few hours of all the main series Final Fantasy games in order this year, but I'm going to have to jump from 10 to 12 here, skipping 11 entirely, as it appears that Square accidentally gave the name to their multiplayer spinoff. They could've called it Final Fantasy Online, Final World of Fantasy, or Final Fantasy: MMO Gaiden, but nope they slapped the name Final Fantasy XI on it and waited for the fans to come to them as they always do, eager to get them all signed up for that monthly fee.

So no, I'm not playing that one.

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)

Here's another requested game for y'all: Super Mario RPG, known in Japan as 'Super Mario RPG'. Good name that I reckon, let's you know exactly what you're in for. Plus it's always nice to get another game with 'Super' in the title onto the site.

Mario's been jumping around in video games since Donkey Kong back in 1981 so it's pretty amazing to me that it took him this long to get his own RPG. I mean by this point he'd already started his racing career in Super Mario Kart, played Yahtzee in Mario's Game Gallery, practised medicine in Dr. Mario and shown off his artistic side in Mario Paint; the guy's a real renaissance man.

He wouldn't get around to trying his hand at street fighting or, uh, partying until the N64 era though, which was actually just months away at the time this was released. As far as I know, this is the final Mario game on the Super Nintendo. It may well be Square's final game released on the console as well, in North America at least.

Final Fantasy X (PS2)

Today I thought I'd take a quick look at Final Fantasy X on the PlayStation 2 and see what that's all about. Depending on who you talk to it seems to either be the best in the series since FFVII or a complete mess, so I'm curious about which side I'm going to end up on.

Final Fantasy X began development back in 1999, which was a crazy time for the franchise seeing as Square was also simultaneously working on Final Fantasy IX and Final Fantasy XI as well as the epic (financial) disaster that was the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within movie. It's real shame that film wasn't put into development just a couple of years later, after the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies brought the fantasy genre into fashion, as we might have actually gotten a proper Final Fantasy movie out of Square Pictures before it vanished. With Chocobos and Black Mages and everything!

Instead the closest we've got is Advent Children and that's just sad.

Final Fantasy IX (PSX)

Holy crap, am I up to Final Fantasy IX already? Man, that's a lot of JRPGs. This one was the last of the original PlayStation era (and the first of the PlayStation era to not get a PC release, annoyingly.)

Alright, like always I only intend to take a quick look at this to get an idea of what the gameplay is like and how it's evolved from its predecessors, but it's an RPG so I'll probably end up grinding for five hours before I even get to the second dungeon cave.

Final Fantasy Tactics (PSX)

Here's another obscure cult Japanese RPG I'm sure you've probably never heard of, released for a classic CD based Sony console called the 'PlayStation'.

Final Fantasy Tactics was released a mere six months after Final Fantasy VII in the US and Japan, but took a little longer to reach Europe. Like, a decade longer. A strange decision perhaps considering how much cash FFVII was raking in at the time, but I'm sure they had their reasons.

Final Fantasy VI (SNES)

Today I'm taking a quick look at Final Fantasy VI on the Super Nintendo, or at least that's my plan. It's an RPG though so I'll probably end up playing it for hours. Oh ignore the title screen by the way, it lies. This was the third of the series to be released in the West, so they renumbered it for the US version to avoid confusion (funny how that never works).

Annoyingly it didn't make it across to Europe though until eight years later, in March 2002, by which point it had gotten its proper title back again (and was ironically the sixth numbered FF game released over here anyway, after 7, 8, 9, 4 and 5).

I'll admit right now that I'm not coming into the game entirely clueless this time as I have actually finished this once before. Though I had my face buried in a walkthrough the whole time and I wasn't actually paying attention, so it'll basically be all new to me.

Final Fantasy V (PSX)

Today I'm taking a quick look at Final Fantasy V, the last of the numbered FF games to not get a Western release, at least not for a long while. But FF2 and FF3 were skipped over at the time because the NES had become obsolete before they could make it across the ocean. FF5 on the other hand could have made it into US shops mid 1993, around the peak of the system's popularity, so why didn't it? Apparently the reason was that it's "just not accessible enough to the average gamer", which has me a little worried, because I'm an average gamer! I don't want to get hopelessly confused by a SNES RPG, that'd just be embarrassing.

Incidentally, Square's refusal to give the world a English release made this one of the first games ever to get a full fan translation. Fortunately I don't need it though as Square eventually did give English speakers their own version of the game a decade later on the PlayStation.

Final Fantasy IV (SNES)

I'm kind of disappointed this logo doesn't have a animated shine going across it. I guess I've been spoiled by games like Link to the Past and Silver. Also for anyone following the site chronologically, you might have noticed that this is the 5th shiny metal logo in a row. Pure fluke, I promise you.

Alright today I'm taking a look at Final Fantasy IV, (aka. Final Fantasy II) on the Super Nintendo. This was actually the first game in the Final Fantasy series to get a near simultaneous US release, coming out less than sixth months after the Japanese version. They achieved this miracle by just missing out the last two NES games entirely and skipping ahead, renumbering this to FFII and hoping no one noticed. It could've been Final Fantasy I in Europe following that method, but alas us poor Europeans were skipped over entirely once again. Still, I'm just happy the game actually got an English release somewhere this time, as it'll save me from translating it from Japanese as I go, one message box at a time.

My associate Ocean already wrote up his thoughts on this game in a guest post last year, but I've been playing through the series in order and I didn't want to miss this out, so please ignore his hard work and insights, and consider this the one true FFIV article on the site.

Final Fantasy III (NES)

I took a look at Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II on the NES recently, so Final Fantasy III seemed like the logical next step, but I've stumbled across slight snag in my scheme: It turns out that Square never actually released the game in English. At all. The game wasn't ported across to the WonderSwan like the last two due to it being huge, so there was no PlayStation Origins release and no Dawn of Souls style port for the GBA.

Okay sure it got a full 3D remake for the DS in 2006, but that's not really the same thing. I want to see what the original game was like in all its low-tech pixelly glory and rule #3 in the column on the right says I can't play a fan translation. But I'm too stubborn to just skip the game entirely and move onto FF4, so I'm gonna do this the hard way: with a chart of Japanese letters and Google Translate.

I bet I don't even make it past the first quest.

Final Fantasy II (NES)

Wow that's the title screen, seriously?

Today I'm playing the original Final Fantasy II on the NES, not to be confused with Final Fantasy II on the SNES which is an entirely different game (probably). I've got a problem here though, as Square seems to have neglected to release the original Famicom version in English and rule #3 over there on the right strictly forbids me from playing fan translations. So I can either run each line of text through Google Translate as I go, or play a remake. Or better still, I could do both!

Final Fantasy (NES) - Replay

Super Adventures in Gaming Replay 2013 - Game 2

This is a pretty terrible choice of game for me to replay really, considering that I didn't play it myself the first time around and the original guest post by Ocean is actually fine. Plus the game isn't exactly photogenic enough to be worth showing off a second time. Not that the art's bad, it's just that it's an 8-bit NES game and even at their best they don't tend to be eye candy.

This didn't even reach the West until 1990, well into the 16-bit era, so it must have looked pretty basic to Westerners even at the time. In fact the game didn't get a European release until 2003 as part of the Final Fantasy Origins compilation on the PlayStation. The first FF game released over here was actually Final Fantasy VII, which hit shops a full decade after the franchise began in Japan.

Uh, what was I even talking about again? Whatever, here's a quick absurdly long look at the original Final Fantasy on the NES.

Chrono Trigger (SNES)

Super Adventures at Christmas 2012 - Game 5:

Here's one you might have heard of. Today I'm checking out Chrono Trigger on the Super Nintendo, considered by many to be one of the best RPGs on the system. I've got no strong feelings about it though myself, mostly because I can barely remember anything about it.

Final Fantasy VII (PSX)

Super Adventures at Christmas 2012 - Game 1:

Last Christmas I spent a week playing through every Christmassy game I could find, and it turns out that they're generally ultra obscure and a bit crap (huge shock). So this year I've decided to do the opposite, and play some of the most well known and highly rated video games ever made, games that people may actually give a shit about. For the next seven days there'll be no obscure Amiga exclusives, no movie adaptations, no ZX Spectrum screenshots, and definitely no Christmas games.

There seemed to be a large Final Fantasy VII sized hole in the site, so I thought I'd get I'd get that sorted out now, rather than put it off any longer. Yeah I know that there's is actually no possible way to say anything new about this game, as the internet is saturated with every fact and opinion in every possible way you can phrase them, but I've never let that stop me before.

I have actually played this already, but fortunately I'm blessed with a terrible memory so it should be as if I'm seeing it all for the first time.

Final Fantasy (NES) - Guest Post

Final Fantasy specialist Ocean returns, again, this time to show off the very first of the Final Fantasy series, on the NES.

I wrote about Final Fantasy IV (aka Final Fantasy II) last week, but I figured, hey why not at least play another one? Here you go, my first RPG ever. Probably my first game ever too. My introduction to the world of videogaming.

This is Final Fantasy's original NES title screen, but you won't find it at the start of the game. You have to play all the way up to unlocking the second town before they let you see it.

Final Fantasy IV (SNES) - Guest Post

Final Fantasy specialist Ocean returns to take a look at Final Fantasy II, which is actually the fourth game in the main series, but the second released outside Japan, and the first on the Super Nintendo. To avoid confusion I've labelled the post Final Fantasy IV, which is what the game's known by these days.

Nostalgia hit me so I had to do this one.

Final Fantasy 4! Released in the US as 2, which is the version I'll be playing.