The Nintendo DS portable system had its North American launch yesterday. Those of you who picked it up are encouraged to share their thoughts. This may be the first portable system I own, as it looks like it may be home to the only legal English language release of Final Fantasy III.
Not got one, but…
…I want one!
Unfortunately us Europeans haven’t got a release date for it yet, beyond ‘early 2005’.
Final Fantasy…
That whole numbering system really messes with my head sometimes. (Remember, folks, this is for the Japanese FF3, not the American FF3, which was the Japanese FF6.)
I just want a GBA (preferably, because I don’t want to have to fight the crowds trying to get a DS) port of FF6, because it’s been a long time since I played that. The music from the opera scene still gives me goose bumps, because it was good music, and it was downright tricky to get through the Opera House on-time the first time through. (The Opera House scene was timed, wasn’t it? It’s been a while. All I really remember was never being able to get through the final tower to Kefka.)
They’ve proted a number of other Super NES games to the GBA, so hopefully this one will be there soon.
(I know, there’s already a port of FF6 for the Playstation. I think I sold my copy to fiziko a while back, actually. Besides, my PS2 lives with the girlfriend, serving mainly as a DVD player, and she’s two hours away.)
Re: Final Fantasy…
Yes, as was the sequence where you could read the lyrics so you’d know how to respond during the opera. Well, I guess the opera wasn’t really timed, but if you stall too long, then the audience is less satisfied and you don’t do as well, so speed is a virtue.
Kefka’s tower I could manage. It was the tower where one half didn’t like physical attacks that rocked me at first. Then I found out that Umaru could still use physical attacks, (probably because you could never actually use magic with him) so I gave him the Rage Ring and another relic (I don’t remember which) and watched him decimate everyone we faced while the other three party members healed him occasionally. Good times. :)
FF 1 and 2 (aready available for the PlayStation in Final Fantasy Origins) are on the way in a single GBA cartridge. FF3 is being rereleased in Japan for that Nintendo DS, which I why I suspect we’ll get it here. The Final Fantasy Tactics Advance out for the GBA is, I’m told, a new game similar to the PlayStation FFT, rather than just a port. Rumours of a release of games 7-9 as a trilogy with upgraded graphics and sound for the PS2 have died out, to be replaced with rumours of a PS3 release of the trilogy with PS3 quality graphics and sound. That would be mighty cool.
What I want to see instead, though, would be an English language release of FF3 (which I’d probably buy a game system for, as long as it’s not for XBox) followed by Origins/Chronicles/Anthology style releases of the Dragon Quest series (known to most of North America as Dragon Warrior.) That’s another great series that hasn’t been released completely in North America, and now that Square has merged with Enix, it’s not impossible.
Re: Final Fantasy…
It’s similar, but different. Almost all levels have a character called a Judge in them, who enforces a set of rules that limit what actions you can do (there’s a law that prevents Damage to Animals, so in order to beat that level you have to use a Beastmaster Character to fight the animals against each other, other laws keep you from using certain skill sets, or techniques, etc). The exception to this are the areas referred to as “Jagds” – there are no Judges there, thus you don’t have to follow the rules, however, if one of your characters is killed they stay dead (whereas in the other areas, the Judges ensure that nobody actually ‘dies’).
I’ve been working on FF:TA off and on since about February, mostly in between classes (I had two three-hour breaks between three classes back then). It’s pretty long, provided that you do the side quests, but I’m fairly sure that I’m close to the end right now, or at least I hope I am, as I just crossed the 45 hour mark.
I’m totally with you on the release of an Anthology-style Dragon Warrior collection. I sold my copy of Dragon Warrior for the NES back in the day, and I still regret it, though I do have VII sitting here for my PSX, and I really should finish it at some point (that’s really the problem with working at a game store – too many games and not enough time or money)
Re: Final Fantasy…
It takes over 60 hours to do the whole thing with sidequests. After you “finish” the game, you can keep going and do more quests too.
Re: Final Fantasy…
Good, then I should be able to finish it mid-December, then I can either play Breath of Fire or Advance Wars 2, or I might trade it in for the re-release of FF 1 & 2 on the GBA.
The SP is such a great system for RPGs.
Re: Final Fantasy…
Heh, I’ve got over 100 hours of time in FFTA, with about 30 missions left to complete. I just can’t get some of them to activate :(
But after you beat the game there are some fun characters to unlock, and a total of 300 missions to be completed.
As for Advance Wars 2, thats been my staple of entertainment on plane flights lately. I’d beaten the entire campaign on S rank except for the cursed final mission, which I finally conquered last week! Now just half the war room and the hard campaign to go…no clue how many hours I’ve sunk into that game.
Yes, the GBA rocks for RPGs. I really want a re-release in color of the FF Legends series from the old gameboy. That was much fun as well. You do know that you can get Dragonwarrior I&II, and III for GB as well? But those are GBColor, I believe, so while they’ll work with a GBA I dont believe they’ll work with the DS.
Re: Final Fantasy…
They won’t; the DS has compatibility with DS games (obviously) and GBA games in single-player mode only (it doesn’t support the GBA link system, which is a shame I feel). Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges won’t work with the DS, and neither will things like the GBA/GC link cable (I assume there’ll be a way to link the GC and DS at some point, whether games supporting the GBA will work with that I have no idea, we’ll have to wait and see).
Re: Final Fantasy…
serious: Ah, but does it support the wireless adapter I got with my copy of Pokemon FireRed?
Re: Final Fantasy…
No. I can’t remember exactly where I read it, but I did read that the wireless networking system in the DS is not compatible with those wireless adapters. The only reason as a programmer I can see for that is that the DS uses a substantially different networking protocol – probably because of its autodiscovery features and support for 16 (is it 16?) players – and that it’s unfeasibly complex (economically no doubt) to implement the GBA protocols as well.
On the other hand, it could just be marketing. It is likely that adding GBA multiplayer compatibility would raise the price of the DS though, maybe Nintendo don’t feel they can compete if the price goes any higher. Especially with the PSP announced at such a low price point.
Re: Final Fantasy…
I’d really like a FF4/5/6 port to GBA….
Re: Final Fantasy…
I thought that the game Secret of Mana that was released at the same time as FF:TA was a remake of those older FF: Legends games?
The Dragon Warriors available for GBC are different from the original as far as I know, but the next time they come through I’ll take another look. Who knows? (But at the $12.99 I sell them for that would definitely be a steal!)
Re: Final Fantasy…
No, it was Sword of Mana was released on GBA, and it’s a remake (not a port) of Final Fantasy Adventure … I think :P
Re: Final Fantasy…
Secret, Sword – hey, at least I got the ‘S’ and ‘remake’ parts right.
And before anyone bothers to tell me, yes, I know Secret of Mana is a game on SNES – they’re all Seiken Densetsu titles in Japan, so it’s an honest mistake.
Re: Final Fantasy…
Final Fantasy Adventure was definitely a Mana game, although I don’t know which. The Final Fantasy Legend series was a port of the Romancing SaGa games, but as the rest of the SaGa games were for Sega’s system, Nintendo made Square change the name for the Game Boy releases so that people looking for games strictly by title would buy Nintendo product instead of Sega.
The Final Fantasy games were the main reason I was faithful to Nintendo as a child. Had I known then what I know now, I’d have been so mad at Nintendo for depriving us of the real FF2 (unreleased here because Nintendo wanted to own the characters to use as mascots like Mario), the real FF3 (unreleased here because FF4 was already out by the time they stopped fighting over FF2), and FF5 (unreleased here because FF6 was out by the time they finished negotiating over FF4.) Nintendo even asked Sony to release FF7 as FF4, just to avoid answers the questions they knew fans would ask. Sony has my business now, and will keep that business exclusively if there is a PSP port of FF3. That doesn’t seem too likely right now, though.