Final Fantasy VI

Here we are, after so long. I started this blog only a few months ago and we're officially seven games into the series. Six final bosses have fallen: Chaos, The Emperor, The Cloud of Darkness, Julius, Zeromus, and Exdeath have all met their end by my hand, thus far.

But now, we come to the title that everyone knows. Final Fantasy VI. The last of the so-called classic Final Fantasy titles and arguably the best of the entire series. Not only was it, undoubtedly, one of the best Final Fantasy games ever made but it was also one of the most technically advanced games ever released on the SNES.

No more playing around. Time to get serious.

Many of you who lived and gamed through the 16-bit era remember Nintendo and Sega blustering about with their made up technological terminology about why their console was better. Sega often talked about it's "Blast Processing" and the term 16-bits was even just a marketing term. Well, Nintendo often talked about it's Mode 7 capabilities. Without getting two technical, this was a method of background rendering that provided a 3D-ish effect. It was super early and honestly doesn't look all that great now but it was a huge achievement for the time.

FFVI Credits Sequence using Mode 7...

...compared to a standard cutscene, not using Mode 7.

My point in talking about this is twofold: one, I've wanted to talk about the technology behind Final Fantasy for many posts now and this is finally a good opportunity and two, Final Fantasy VI probably has the best Mode 7 effects of any game on the console. Ironic that although we often come back to this game for its classic feel, it was probably one of the strongest graphical powerhouses of its time.

Up until this point, each game (with the exception of Adventure) has been directed by series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. Since he was promoted within Squaresoft, he wasn't able to direct Final Fantasy VI. This meant some fresh blood in a series already known for its extensive experimentation.While we lost the amazing job system from Final Fantasy V, we got the largest main cast of any game in the series to this date, some of the strongest character development, the introduction of equipable special items called relics (similar ideas are used in the next several installments, i.e. Materia in Final Fantasy VII), and the espers.

Don't forget the blatantly obvious Nazi reference!

I don't want to give a full review of the game already but suffice it to say that I've been looking forward to this one. I'm excited to see if the game holds up as well as I remember it from when I was a kid. Oh, and before I go, I feel the need to express my absolute fanboy nerd-gasm when I saw a good friend of mine who has copies of Final Fantasy 1-3 (US numbering) on the NES and SNES respectively, along with several other wonderful RPG's like Secret of Mana, Dragon Warrior 1 and 2, Chrono Trigger and many others. I've known this guy for years and had no idea he had one of the greatest classic game collections I've ever seen. So mad props to him and thanks for giving me my first taste of Contra and Super C!

Game on!