Mailbag call: Share your Final Fantasy VI thoughts
Great Final Fantasy or greatest Final Fantasy? Join the inevitable screaming argument in our upcoming podcast.
This week is all about the Super NES Classic Edition, which not only brings some beloved games back into circulation for the first time in two decades but also offers the first-ever official release of a first-party Nintendo game that, once upon a time, represented the bleeding edge of 16-bit game tech. But even once the thrill of the mini-console launch has subsided, you'll still be feeling the aftershocks here at Retronauts, as we'll be publishing in-depth episodes about some of the games on the console over the coming months. Today we have a full-length show on Yoshi's Island, and this coming weekend we'll be recording a few new episodes on some Super NES mini titles.
We'll be kicking off with one that RPG fans everywhere love: Final Fantasy III, also known as Final Fantasy VI in more civilized lands and times.
Released in 1994, Final Fantasy III did a bunch of weird and interesting things. It lacked a single protagonist, instead letting players faff around with a team of a dozen warriors or more, some of whom served in the point-of-view role but none of whom were the sole protagonist. It included a character customization system that allowed players to make any party member be and do pretty much whatever they wanted… but that system doesn't appear until about a third of the way through the adventure. Also, its progression is extremely linear right up until the midpoint of the story, at which point everything changes radically: The world, the party makeup, the flow of the action, the overall objective. Also, at one point, you have to sing opera.
We'll be exploring Final Fantasy III in exhaustive detail in an upcoming episode, and we know you have opinions about it. So please share them! Drop me an email at jparish [at] retronauts [dot] com sometime this week and we'll do our darnedest to read it on-air. (You can also post a comment here, but I'll be prioritizing email messages since they're easier to sort through during a recording session.) Please try to keep your comments to around, say, 200-250 words. Let us know why Umaro is the real hero of the game, or why Magicite is overpowered, or do the contrarian thing and tell us why people who like this game are brainwashed sheeple. It's a free country! And we want to present a wide range of opinions and memories about this RPG classic to complement and contradict our own. Thanks!
