|
 Alternate Title: LOCK, Shop Stock, and Two Useless TMPRs - Let's Play Final Fantasy 1 NES! Released on the FamiCom in 1987, Final Fantasy was the Hail Mary for lead designer Hironobu Sakaguchi, and for the floundering Square Co., LTD as a whole. Given the money to be created only because of the success of Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy was seen as a cheap knock-off and bombed, and became little more than a footnote in gaming history. ...I'm kidding. It sold gangbusters, has been ported and remade more times than Super Mario Bros., and is now one of the best-selling video game franchises ever. Anyways, let's LP it. "Useless TMPRs"...? There are several spells in the original FamiCom and NES version of Final Fantasy that are bugged to the point of uselessness. TMPR is supposed to raise the target's Damage, but the increased stat is never actually read by the combat engine, and thus the spell effectively does nothing. If you like stupid little trivia like that, then oh boy is this the Let's Play for you. This will be an entirely mechanics-focused LP of the NES version of Final Fantasy 1, with a special focus on highlighting all the little quirks and bugs that came with being rushed out by a small team and a dying company. Let me be clear: This is not going to be an extended drag or roast of the game. Yes, it's buggy and about 75% of the playtime is made up of level grinding, but I love Final Fantasy 1, warts and all. Not just because of nostalgia, either, I didn't play the original NES version of it until well into adulthood. It's got a scrappy charm, lots of style, great music, and just enough jank to give it a real personality. In fact, the only JRPGs I love more are Chrono Trigger, and the GBC remake of Dragon Quest 3, and neither of those are nearly as fun to dig under the hood with as this beautiful bodgestrosity. Haven't there been other FF1 LPs? Yes, but neither of them really dug into the meat of all the little things right and wrong about this game. As the kind of person who scours wikis and plays with spreadsheets for fun, I intend to bring a unique perspective to this game, both for old veterans, and for readers without the patience for dealing with FF1 NES's... quirks. Do we get to choose the party? Yes. Mostly. I'll be laying down some minor ground rules both for keeping the run interesting and for the sake of my sanity, but 3/4s of the party will be up to goons to decide. Spoiler Policy? It's a 30 year old game, there's no point in having a spoiler policy for the story, but I would appreciate it if you refrained too much from going into mechanical topics I haven't covered yet. That's why I'm here. Anything else? No arguments about later Final Fantasy games, or whether Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest is the better series, or any of that nonsense. Discussion is absolutely welcome, whether that be about later ports and remakes, personal experiences, or casual opinions. I love that kind of thing! It's when the posturing about who has the Right Video Game Opinions happens that I get tired of it. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 12:20 on Apr 19, 2020 |
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 21:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 16, 2024 21:20 |
|
|
Main Updates Level 01: Naked and Afraid Level 02: I, GrWOLF, Will Knock You All Down! Level 03: Get Rich Quick Schemes Level 04: Are You Sure This Isn't The Mechanics Corner? Level 05: Eye of the FrWOLF Level 06: Key Items and KEY Items Mechanics Corner Class Choice Rundown Why do you have to hold RESET while turning off the power? Leveling and Statistics Red Mages, Pt. 1 Tendales Talks About The A-Team NASIR Fan Art, etc.  FeyerbrandX draws a connection between Special Thanks Game Corner Guides for their extensive coverage and walkthrough that makes fact-checking and looking up specific stats much, much easier. TASVideos, and speedrunners in general, for their exhaustive cataloguing of exactly how every little weird bug works. CirclMastr - Party name theme suggestion. Hirayuki - Correction on the source of the "Wooden" name for early armor. Procrastine - Got a proper FF1 map so I didn't have to use the remake's, and figured out the XP-to-next-Level formula. Tendales - Side updates girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Jun 29, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 21:07
|
|
|
Reserved just in case
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 21:07
|
|
|
Level 01: Naked and Afraid ♫ Prelude ♫   There's not a whole lot of story to FF1, just a single splash screen, and then we're spat out to either continue or start a new game.  The default party is... well, it's interesting, certainly. Quite a lot of consistent physical damage once everyone gets rolling, but you miss out on most of magic system, as your only caster is split between two different schools, and there will always be spells they can't learn. It's close to a pretty good party, though, just gotta change one little thing...  There we go. Replacing the Thief with a White Mage gives access to much more consistent crisis healing, and the Red Mage is freed up to dabble more heavily into Black Magic and weird utility spells. I'll be putting most of the party for the real play up for thread vote, but this will be good enough to get us started. Anyone who gets the name references, you're a bigger nerd than I am. ♫ Main/Field Theme ♫   Here we are! No intro cinematic or really any kind of guidance on where to go, just a town to the north and some forest. Let's check out the woods first, walk around and get the lay of the land. ♫ Battle Scene ♫    Yeah, that's not a great idea. Unlike most other RPGs (including the remakes), your starting party is always completely naked, with no weapons, no armor, and no spells. And, with no real point of reference, a new player might not even realize that equipment is a thing, and just blithely march onward until they run into anything that hits harder than an IMP and get flattened. ♫ Town ♫    Instead, the right call is to head into town and the castle, for some equipment and story. From here, I won't be quite as detailed about every single thing I do, but the point of this LP is to talk about Final Fantasy 1's quirks. Waking up naked in a field with no idea where to go is certainly a quirk.   NPCs occasionally give guidance, but sometimes are just there for flavor or very light story, and there's a few different NPC sprites. Considering the memory limitations of the NES, it's actually kind of nice, even if a lot of it is reused later. Oh, said translation is janky at times, to be sure, but this game only very rarely approaches the levels of useless mistranslations of, say, Legend of Zelda. (And I'll be happily pointing it out when it does.) ♫ Shop ♫   Now, let's do some shopping.  There 40 types of weapons in FF1, and every class has different ones that they can use. There's no in-game indication of who can use what, but the feelies that came with the original game include helpful charts for weapons, armor and spells. Also a full walkthrough of the first two thirds of the game, because old school Square instruction manuals did not gently caress around. We pick up two Rapiers for Gral and Trye, they're the no-brainer best choice for any class that can use them, with a solid 9 base damage, an accuracy boost, and a 2.5% critical hit rate. Black Belts are the only class who can use the Wooden Nunchaku, a weapon even stronger than the Rapier, if less accurate and with a lower critical hit rate. Thanks mostly to apocryphical stories about clerics and inquisitors only using blunt weapons, White Mages like Elma get access to the Iron Hammer, a weapon just as powerful as the Rapier, with the accuracy of the Nunchaku, and the highest crit rate of all available starting weapons. A Thief would also be using a Rapier, while Black Mages are the worst off offensively, stuck with either the mediocre Wooden Staff, or the more accurate but even weaker Small Knife. Now is also a very good time to talk about those weird critical hit rates. In what was initially probably a bug (though later canonized by the remakes), rather than using their own hard-coded crit rates, weapons in FF1 use their position in the weapon look-up table. Thus, the first weapon in the list, the Wooden Nunchaku, has only a 1% crit rate, while the Iron Hammer has a 3%. This tops out at the strongest weapon in the game, the Masamune, with a 20.4% chance to crit.  As for armor, Gral and Trye both get Chain Armor, which has a very sexy 15 Absorb, usually enough to reduce most early monsters' attacks to dealing a single point of damage per hit. This comes at the cost of a 15% penalty to Evade, but it's more than worth it. Kay gets Wooden Armor, which has only 4 Absorb, and an 8% penalty to Evade. It is... much less impressive than Chain. Elma can only equip Cloth, which grants a single point of Absorb, with a negligible Evade penalty. Not great. Thieves and Black Mages would also be wearing Wooden Armor and Cloth, respectively. Trivia Corner: The word translated by the localization team as 'wooden' is supposed to mean 'leather', 'hide', or 'fur'. I feel like that might be slightly more plausible than your monk wearing a log with arm holes cut in it, but that's Final Fantasy 1 for you. SA Poster and professional translator Hirayuki suspects that the odd choice was because "Wooden" fit into the space provided, and looked better than "Leathr". I presume that 'Hide Armor' was passed over as an option because of the potentially-confusing homonyms. That, or someone just dramatically misread the word as "treebark", and we're... barking up the wrong tree.    Unlike the MP gauge of later games in the series, FF1 uses the Vancian magic system popularized by D&D, will spells having discrete levels. A character can only cast a certain number of spells of each level of spell, based on their class and level. This number is extremely limited, especially at first, as is the number of spells of each level a character can learn. (Three, of a possible eight: four White and four Black.) Spells can't be unlearned, either, and even with all three kinds of Mage, you'll never be quite able to learn every one. This, plus the rapidly growing expense of learning them, makes spell selection extremely important. CURE is about what you'd expect, healing a character for between 16 to 32 HP, and HARM does a frankly absurd 40-80 damage to all enemy undead (and only undead). FOG and RUSE are defensive buffs, superficially similar but very different in application. FOG increasing Absorb (TL;DR: Defense), decreasing incoming all damage by 8 points, and can be cast on any party member. RUSE increases the caster's Evade by 80 points (which is a lot), but it can only self-target, thus making it much more of a niche spell (at least for now  ). FIRE and LIT are very similar, dealing 20-40 elemental damage to one enemy. Fire vulnerability is leaps and bounds more common than Lightning vulnerability, though, especially in the early game. SLEP has a very decent chance to put all enemies who don't resist it to sleep. Due to a bug, enemies always wake up on the first turn they can, but that still takes their action. Not as good as it's intended to be, but not useless. That honor goes to LOCK, which is supposed to decrease an enemy's Evade by 20 points. Instead, it does... absolutely nothing. For right now, we only have the money to pick up one spell, so I grab CURE for Elma. While Potions do the same thing, and can be bought in infinite supply, they're very expensive by early-game standards, and every cast of CURE is one less time I have to mash through the item-purchase menu. (More on that when I inevitably have to go shopping.) If I had more patience, I could save the slot for a utility spell (probably HARM), but it's not the end of the world. The other slot and Trye's magic will have to wait until I get a bit more money. Let's go hit up the king and see if he has any! ♫ Save Music ♫  ...after we heal and save. Using the Inn is by far the cheapest (and, until early-mid game, only) way to get back used spells. Thankfully, they're never too expensive, so use the Inns early, and use them often. ♫ Coneria Castle ♫    Anyways, where were we? Oh, right, plot.    This entire trip is technically optional; if you know where to go, you can just head straight to Garland's castle to kick his poo poo in. I dropped by anyways for the sake of thoroughness.   There's also a vault, locked by a.. key item.  ... ... ... We'll come back later. ♫ Menu Screen ♫  I'll explain what all this means in a future update, but I'll just put it here now for posterity. ♫ Battle Scene ♫   Finally, combat! Random encounters are handled differently than you might expect- instead of each square having a random chance, you are instead guaranteed a battle after every X steps in an area where one can take place. After your first battle in an area, you know exactly how many steps it will take for the next one. (Certain areas in the overworld not actually having encounter data makes this a little more complicated, but the concept is sound, and it's predictable enough in dungeons to be noticed even just by an observant casual player.) Here's the real fun part: The RNG for what encounter you get isn't rerolled until you turn the NES off. Not only that, but said "RNG" is actually a completely preset pattern. So, by keeping track of your steps and knowing the encounter table, you can perfectly predict what enemies you're going to fight and when. You need the tables handy for that to really be relevant info, but it's the kind of trick that speedrunners love. (It also means that trying to find certain rare encounters is a special circle of hell. There will be locations where I simply throw my hands up and say I'll talk about an enemy when we get to an area where it's more common.) The area around Coneria will only spawn encounters of 3-5 IMPs, with no other enemies present. As an interesting bit of possibly-intentional failsafing, if an area on the world map is flagged to have encounters (of which there are several), but there's no data for what to use, it defaults to this table. No MissingNo glitches here, just some extremely out-of-place IMPs surrounded by OGREs and horrible death spiders.   IMPs are, speaking of, the perfect tutorial enemy. With an astounding 8 HP, and a max damage of 8 before damage reduction, even a Black Mage has a pretty decent chance of one-shotting one. They're only ever going to hit your very frailest party members for more than a single point of damage, and even then not for very long. As for who they atually choose to attack, it's the same formula for all enemies in the game. To spare you the boring math, if everyone is alive, the party leader has a 50% chance of being targeted, the second a 25%, and the third and fourth both have a 12.5% chance. Party order is extremely important, but there's still a very real chance that your backrow might get pounded into the dirt by repeated attacks, so you can never completely ignore their defenses.    Conventional wisdom, including my own advice for new players, suggests grinding outside Coneria until your party reaches level 2 and you can fill out your spell lists and buy a couple potions. I'm going to ignore my own advice and just head straight on up to North Coneria. This area is still overwhelmingly populated by the same 3-5 IMP encounters as outside of Coneria, but there are still a few new enemies.  GrIMPs are extremely similar to Imps, with doubled HP (16) and base damage (8-16), but they're also one of the first enemies to have Absorb, meaning a single strong hit will still take them out, but they may survive several weaker ones. WOLFs have slightly more HP than GrIMPs and the same damage, but instead of Absorb, they've got about a 25% chance to dodge a starting party's attacks. MADPONYs are the first beefy enemy, with as much HP as a Level 2 character, a bit of Absorb, decent Evade, and 10-20 base Damage. They're also the first enemy to hit twice per attack, and are quite capable of one-shotting a weakened character, especially a Mage.  Closer to our goal, the Temple of Fiends, the encounter list gets significantly scarier, including many enemies that are also encountered inside the Temple, as well as a small chance to encounter 2-4 MADPONYs, which is... oof. Thankfully, it's not hard to rush through and get inside the Temple with only a single encounter, but there are still serious sucker punches in store if you dawdle. We'll go over those enemies once we get inside the Temple.... ♫ Temple of Fiends ♫  ...in the next update! Next Level: GARLAND gives me the CREEPs. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Apr 17, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 21:07
|
|
|
Mechanics Corner: Class Choice Rundown As promised, most of the party is up to thread vote. Before you make that decision, though, I should probably go over all of the options!  Stat Growths: HP A | Str A | Agi B | Int F | Vit C | Luck C Hit% A | M.Def B | Equip A | Magic D Fighters aren't complicated. They can use every kind of weapon and armor you're going to find until some class-exclusive stuff in the very endgame. Combined with their unmatched HP and Strength growths, Fighters have excellent offensive and defensive potential, and all but assures they're going to be the first class getting multiple hits with a weapon, effectively multiplying their potential damage. Their upgrade, the Knight, fills out their equipment selection almost completely, including the second-best weapon in the game, Xcalber, and gives them access to a few low-level White Magic spells, as well. This is the only class that I am refusing to play without. The reasons for this are two-fold. First, there are a lot of Fighter-exclusive weapons and gear and I want to be able to talk about them, and second, even a completely garbage party can be carried on the back of a well-equipped Fighter. Not saying you'll give me a garbage party, buuuut... Pros: Unmatched equipment availability, excellent offensive and defensive stats Cons: Extremely limited magic options, poor evasion, PMush made it mandatory.  Stat Growths: HP B | Str B | Agi B | Int D | Vit D | Luck A Hit% B | M.Def C | Equip C | Magic D What is supposed to be the Thief's claim to fame, a high Luck, does absolutely nothing if they're not in the first slot of the party, which is somewhere they have no business being. With weapon and armor selection favorably comparable only to Black/White Mages and early-game Black Belts, they're going to be scraping the bottom of the barrel for a long time trying to remain relevant... until the class upgrade. Ninjas have a weapon selection on par with Knights, decent armor options, and access to low and mid-level Black Magic. Thieves are the Magikarp to the Ninja's Gyarados. Through the first two-thirds of the game, they are strikingly mediocre. Once that hurdle is finally jumped, they become... not the best class in the game, but certainly not the worst. Pros: Becomes a Ninja, which is amazing, has cool hair. Cons: Poor equipment selection, stat growths are extremely meh  Stat Growths: HP B | Str C | Agi C | Int C | Vit A | Luck B Hit% A | M.Def A | Equip D | Magic F There is no class in Final Fantasy 1 simpler than the Black Belt. On the surface, their terrible weapon and armor selection seems to make them even more useless than the Thief. Beneath that surface is an incredibly important feature: When unequipped, Black Belts use a completely unique damage formula, and get twice the usual number of attacks. Additionally, a completely unarmored Black Belt has Absorb equal to his level. Due to a bug, Masters actually have lower M.Def growth than Black Belts, and no other features, making them a slight downgrade. By Level 8, a Black Belt starts to rival a Fighter in melee damage and eventually overtakes them. The Absorb = Level feature stays relevant for an extremely long time, though it is eventually overtaken, as the utility endgame equipment provides starts to outweigh the slight Absorb drop. That bugged M.Def growth also means that the bottom falls out of their Magic Defense in the late-game unless you wait an extremely long time to take the class change (which has its own problems). This gives them something of a bell curve in effectiveness. They're never bad, far from it, but the midgame is really where they shine. Pros: Extremely cheap to keep equipped, absurd close-combat powerhouses Cons: Take a few levels to get rolling, no magic, poor Magic Defense in late-game  Stat Growths: HP D | Str C | Agi D | Int C | Vit C | Luck C Hit% B | M.Def C | Equip B | Magic B Red Mages can use lots of equipment, but not as much as the Fighter, and low HP and Agility growth render them less tanky than they initially appear. They can cast both White and Black Magic, but get fewer casts per level and a smaller spell selection. They're good at many things, but not great at anything. Upgrading to a Red Wizard gives them access to a few crucial mid-level spells, though. In terms of flexibility, Red Mages are completely unmatched. Depending on the needs of the party, they can tailor their spell selection to fill just about any niche, while also being quite adequate as melee fighters. However, not only are there extremely useful spells that Red Mages don't get access to until the class change (if at all), they will also never be able to use the highest tier of magic, Level 8. Having a choice of only three spells per level also requires them to either specialize in some way, or else risk being either inflexible or unfocused. They're still probably my favorite class. Pros: Decent equipment options, extremely flexible, dapper hat Cons: Never as good as a specialist, limited spell selection, actually kind of frail  Stat Growths: HP C | Str D | Agi D | Int B | Vit D | Luck D Hit% C | M.Def C | Equip D | Magic A The term 'White Mage' is synonymous with 'healer', and for good reason. The list of White Magic spells includes multiple kinds of healing, as well as giving them exclusive access to resurrection magic before the class upgrade. However, they've also got a selection of defensive buffs, both physical and elemental, various utility spells, and the HARM series, which deal unmatched damage to undead enemies (of which there are plenty.) Their upgrade, White Wizards, are the same but more, and get exclusive access to Level 8 White Magic. Real shame about their anemic equipment selection. At least they get access to hammers...? White Mages provide an excellent safety net, especially once they get access to LIFE, and losing a party member no longer means immediately fleeing back to town with your tail between your legs. 99 Potions eventually becomes a trivial purchase, which either takes the out-of-combat healing load off of your White Mage, or else renders them somewhat unnecessary. Nothing can or will ever match them in crisis healing or undead-removal, though. Pros: Powerful healing and buffs, can absolutely wreck undead enemies' poo poo Cons: Horrendously frail, low physical damage, out-of-combat healing is done just as well by items.  Stat Growths: HP D | Str F | Agi F | Int A | Vit F | Luck F Hit% C | M.Def C Black Mages are like cats, in a way. Throughout most random encounters, Black Mages will be putzing about, poking away ineffectually with knives. When it's time for zoomies, though, they become the unparalleled kings of burst damage, with offensive spells, (unreliable) instant kills, and the best buff in FF1 NES, FAST. Black Wizards get even more, topping out at the ultimate damage spell, NUKE. Unfortunately, they somehow manage to be even more frail than White Mages, thanks to lower HP, Agi, and Vit growths. In the remakes where Black Mages get access to MP and, thus, the ability to cast much more often, most enemies have their Magic Defense buffed significantly. This is because a Black Mage who wants to can absolutely erase encounters, and being able to do so with any regularity would break the game in half. Thus, a Black Mage is an extremely all-or-nothing class, and will usually spend most of the time shoving Potions into people's faces, right up until it's time to nuke (or NUKE) something. Pros: Order something dead, and it will die. Cons: Very finite spell reserve, frailest class in the game, mostly just a warm body when they're not casting. ----------- Rather than make everyone just pick one class, or clamor over whose party composition is the best, we will be using approval voting. After following the poll link, check  all classes that you're interested in seeing used. This can be just one or, if you're feeling cheeky, all five. (Though I'd prefer you leave at least one unchecked, just so I have at least something to go on.) Whichever three have the most after an arbitrary point in time will be the party I'm using. What about doubles? In the interests both of not getting myself punked and in having more to talk about, I will not be using more than one of any specific class. All of them have something interesting to add to mechanical discussion, and I'm already going to be missing out on two. No need to cut out any more. Poll link is here. I will be taking naming theme suggestions in the thread, and you're welcome to discuss and debate who you do or don't want to see, but only the actual poll responses will be counted. (Make sure to keep in mind that character names have a 4-letter limit.) And, again, for emphasis: Check all classes that you're interested in seeing.
girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 09:36 on Sep 30, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 21:09
|
|
|
In for black mages. FF1 is one of my favorite FFs. PMush Perfect posted:Unlike most other RPGs (including the remakes), your starting party is always completely naked, with no weapons, no armor, and no spells. And, with no real point of reference, a new player might not even realize that equipment is a thing, and just blithely march onward until they run into anything that hits harder than an IMP and get flattened. Please don't doxx my first run of the game.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 21:15
|
|
|
The names of the party members should be Bear/Seek/Seek/Lest
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 21:36
|
|
|
as someone who only ever finished the decades later re-releases of this game that made it a lot more Final Fantasy-y and less some kind jank wizardry fangame - I'm interested to see all the quirks in this game. hoping for the GOAT party, fighter/monk/white and black mages
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 21:47
|
|
|
Aw man, I had an idea like this for an LP ages ago. I just never had the time to pull it off. I hope a black belt gets included because 1) they're fun and 2) there's some fun fuckery you can pull off later with equipment, keeping bonuses while using the inherent defense of the black belt. edit: darealkooky posted:hoping for the GOAT party, fighter/monk/white and black mages I like you
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 21:47
|
|
|
hoping for red and white wizards because they look amazing. the thief has great hair but the ninja is just not the same.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 21:52
|
|
|
So I clicked that link to the manual and read the first few pages. It.... explains in detail that when you go on stairs the screen fades out and will then fade in on whatever's on top of the stairs? Why does this manual have to explain screen transitions?  Like even if this is your very first time touching a video game, which it might well have been back then, if you just press the d-pad a bit you're gonna figure this out by yourself.Also, while we're talking about weird mechanics, why does the note in the manual about saving your game say you need to hold down the reset button while turning off the console? What does that do?
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 21:54
|
|
|
My only thought on names is that we should really have one named Goon. Carbon dioxide posted:So I clicked that link to the manual and read the first few pages. It's because of save corruption. The processor didn't immediately poo poo off so there was a chance it would just write random crud all over your stuff. It's also not just in the manual! The inn gives you a helpful reminder EVERY time you save(use the inn).
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 22:03
|
|
|
Carbon dioxide posted:Also, while we're talking about weird mechanics, why does the note in the manual about saving your game say you need to hold down the reset button while turning off the console? What does that do? FoolyCharged posted:It's because of save corruption. The processor didn't immediately poo poo off so there was a chance it would just write random crud all over your stuff.  Mechanics Corner: Why do you have to hold RESET while turning off the power? It's for roughly the same reason that old Windows computers would tell you when it was safe to turn off the computer, plus a bit of jank. When powering down, the power supply doesn't go to zero immediately, it takes just a little bit of time. And, during the little bit of time, it's possible for the CPU to think it's supposed to be reading instructions, which can cause certain kinds of data to be written to the wrong location or corrupted. In a game without any data that NEEDS to be overwritten, like every NES game back when password-saves were the standard, that's not a big deal. The RAM is gonna be wiped when the power's cut anyways, and the only thing an average user might notice is the console crashing halfway through powering off. This becomes a much more serious problem when you've got persistent data that needs to be preserved. The way this is prevented is by putting the system into a brown-out mode, where the amount of power drawn is deliberately lowered to a point where the CPU won't be tripped off by it any more. (Clumsy analogy, it's like telling your dog to sit before you start taking off their leash.) The kinds of transistors needed to do that automatically were expensive in the 80s, so instead, it's bodged by holding down the RESET button, which puts the console in a soft reset state that, by what was probably pure luck, lowers the power draw to levels similar to what a brown-out mode would. It's entirely plausible that if the reset had been designed differently, that workaround might not have existed, and the NES wouldn't have ever been able to save games without an add-on (or making cartridges that could save games dramatically more expensive). As a minor and not at all coincidental note, every NES game that can save was originally released on the Famicom Disk System add-on, which instead wrote saves to floppy disks, thus completely sidestepping the CPU issue. (Metroid, which also uses saves on the Famicom, was instead janked in a password-save system when being ported to the NES.) girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Apr 16, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 22:12
|
|
|
Oh, this will be fun! Thanks. I never played FF myself--I didn't have a NES--but I did watch my friends play it here and there.PMush Perfect posted:Trivia Corner: The word translated by the localization team as 'wooden' can also be used to mean 'leather'. I feel like that might be slightly more plausible than your monk wearing a log with arm holes cut in it, but that's Final Fantasy 1 for you. Quite a lot of early video game localization was done by giving the translators a raw list of the game's script with little or no context, and I strongly suspect FF1 is among them.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 22:26
|
|
|
Hirayuki posted:Oh, this will be fun! Thanks. I never played FF myself--I didn't have a NES--but I did watch my friends play it here and there. Edit: quote:Trivia Corner: The word translated by the localization team as 'wooden' is supposed to mean 'leather', 'hide', or 'fur'. I feel like that might be slightly more plausible than your monk wearing a log with arm holes cut in it, but that's Final Fantasy 1 for you. SA Poster and professional translator Hirayuki suspects that the odd choice was because "Wooden" fit into the space provided, and looked better than "Leathr", and that makes as much sense to me as anything. I presume that 'Hide Armor' was passed over as an option because of the potentially-confusing homonyms. That, or someone just dramatically misread the word as "treebark", and we're... barking up the wrong tree. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Apr 16, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 22:32
|
|
|
It's me, the weirdo voting for all 3 of the mages
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 22:35
|
|
|
So far, Black Mage and White Mage are leading by a healthy margin, with Black Belt and Red Mage nearly tied for third. Even Thief's still got a decent votecount, though, and the Mages' lead is far from insurmountable, so it's still anybody's game.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 22:41
|
|
|
PMush Perfect posted:Neat! I'll change that part of the update, thanks.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 22:44
|
|
|
Hirayuki posted:Besides, it's fun to picture your dudes wearing bankruptcy barrels in battle. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 22:47
|
|
|
I like swords!
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 23:02
|
|
|
ultrafilter posted:I like swords! ...wait.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 23:05
|
|
|
ultrafilter posted:I like swords! 4 white mages? It'll
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 23:11
|
|
|
Junpei posted:It's me, the weirdo voting for all 3 of the mages Not that weird, I did it too. This is the first game that got me into video games. I will gladly enjoy another LP of it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 23:23
|
|
|
I have yet to see a good Red Mage in any Final Fantasy game (which is probably why they hid Dualcast behind them in V)
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 23:29
|
|
|
Pretty sure you can learn three spells per spell level, not just two.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 23:31
|
|
|
Because of the way spell lists work out, Red Mage has a lot of tiers where they can only learn 2 spells. Because that's literally the only ones they can learn. Red Wizard changes that a bit.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 23:33
|
|
|
Rabbi Raccoon posted:I have yet to see a good Red Mage in any Final Fantasy game (which is probably why they hid Dualcast behind them in V)  Pardon me? But yeah, generalists are really hard to do in systems where people can change specialties at will. You need a game with multiple roles to fill and not enough slots to fill them with specialists. FF1 qualifies, but only if you realize how good having multiple physical attackers is.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 23:45
|
|
|
Ooooh you asked for it Im cashing in my bigger nerd than you card The names are references to the guardian series of cards in Yugioh, used by Rafael in the Waking the Dragons arc of Yugioh DM. The full names are Grarl, Tryce, Kay'est and Elma.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2020 23:49
|
|
|
Rigged Death Trap posted:Ooooh you asked for it  Winner, winner, chicken dinner. The other two Guardians are Baou and Ceal. Tiny bit of Yugioh trivia, Butterfly Dagger - Elma is extremely banned, and likely will be for the rest of the game's lifespan unless it receives an errata. It just allows for too many infinite loops. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Apr 17, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 00:02
|
|
|
Both of the dedicated casters are now firmly planted in as being part of the party, but Red Mage and Black belt continue to go back and forth. Vaguely considering doing a run-off vote.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 01:09
|
|
|
Alternatively, pick whichever one has more weird under-the-hood mechanics in a party of fighter, mage and mage.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 01:19
|
|
|
EponymousMrYar posted:Alternatively, pick whichever one has more weird under-the-hood mechanics in a party of fighter, mage and mage. Fighter, Black Belt, White Mage, Black Mage.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 01:43
|
|
|
Ahhh FF1. Played the GBA remakes of it and 2 so many years ago, I played it so much I had a level 99 party and finished every little bit of content possible in it. Fighter, WM, BM and good old fisty mc fisterton the BB. Also, suggesting Yugi, Jden, Ysei and Pnik as a naming convention, since you are already a yugioh person
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 01:50
|
|
|
Aw. Someday the Red Mage will have their day.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 02:00
|
|
|
I'd like to see white mage and black mage at least, if only to see the full gamut of spells.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 02:12
|
|
|
So I went to the Nintendo World Championships in 1990. On the floor they had every game. What they did though was reset every single machine every 15 minutes to make sure that everyone got a chance. They also had Final Fantasy. But this meant that unless you were there when the machine reset, you had no idea what was going on, and most likely someone had randomly made all the choices and already died naked multiple times. I putzed around for about 5 minutes, couldn't figure out what was going on, and gave up on the game. Thankfully a few months later the Nintendo Power with the huge FF walk through came out and I got obsessed with the game again.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 02:40
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 02:45
|
|
|
I can't believe I missed the YGO reference. I've spent hours ranting at people about how the game has changed and what cards are terribly broken and yet I couldn't remember an archetype that has a card as stupid as Butterfly Dagger - Elma. I feel ashamed.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 02:55
|
|
|
Another bit of YGO trivia, Rod of Silence - Kay'est is not banned but when paired up with the somewhat mediocre Vylon archetype, which was released years after the guardians and their equips IIRC, it causes some shenanigans involving blowing up your own Vylon equip spells with Rod of Silence's effect that ultimately results in their boss monster, Vylon Omega. Admittedly you need 4 specific cards to get that loop going, but it's about the closest thing to relevance the guardian archetype ever got after Butterfly Dagger - Elma was banned. Anyway, back on topic, I enjoy seeing breakdowns of janky games, so I'll be following this thread closely. I only played the GBA remake of FF1 so I missed out on a lot of the jank. This'll be a learning experience for me.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 02:56
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 16, 2024 21:20 |
|
|
Aw, I just saw this thread and would have voted Red Mage  Black Belt/White Mage/Black Mage is a good crew though.I've never played the original version of this but the GBA remake was a lot of fun for how simple it was, I had actually been thinking about revisiting this or another game in this vein.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2020 03:17
|
|
