Facebook – Top 100 FAVORITE Video Games: 62

62: Final Fantasy (NES… but then more systems than I can count)
Developer: Squaresoft
Year: 1987

Hate for old Final Fantasy titles is kinda a cool thing to have. Most people I know started with FFVII and/or FFVIII. As such, 2D games – especially now – are not things that gamers of this current generation are going apeshit over. Which is a damn shame, because the best FF games come from the earlier days, not these later ones (X and onward? Not my cup of tea). But any disregard for the series’ first outing is likely caused by one of these two things: intentional ignorance or accidental ignorance. The game that launched, for the most part, an entire genre of games is so important that overlooking it would be the same as the crime against platforming would be if you elected to disregard the first Super Maro Bros.

As this game came out when I was freakin’ 2-years-old, Final Fantasy’s story is not at the forefront, necessarily, but still present enough to matter. Four Warriors of Light are summoned to do battle with the evils that haunt the countryside and the kingdoms. They are sent forth to rescue a princess and stop an evil knight named Garland, the series’ first primary antagonist and (SPOILER!) surprise final boss. Along the way they’re fight the four fiends to relight the four elemental crystals and bring peace to the land. In the end they’ll discover a time paradox, a floating castle, and the demon lord Chaos who, (SPOILER!) is actually Garland. From the future. Yeah, time travel in the first Final Fantasy. How many other games have tried that, since?

The gameplay in this one is pure and simple RPG fare, but it should be – its the first of its kind, for the most part. You level each individual hero (who you’ve given a class to since the start of the game and those classes are made more powerful after a certain point in the game – black mage becomes black wizard, for example) and gain new spells, weapons, and items from stores in towns as you progress, the quality of these things increasing as the game moves forward. Dungeon crawling and turn-based battles take up the majority of the playtime, with this game holding some of the most difficult battles in the entire series, for a number of reasons, primary of which is the simplicity of the game’s engine. It allows for overpowering of enemies with little clue as to how to really take them down. And a lack of real save points (depending on the version of the game you’re playing, of course) makes trial and error a foolish approach, almost.

The game also starts the series off with one of its most applauded aspects: its music. Uematsu is, as I’ve said many times over, the best composer in video game history. The FF Prelude, the main theme, and Victory Fanfare are all examples of songs that have been around since the start of the friggin’ game series and are mainstays in most cases or, at the very least, have shown up over and over again. The visuals, too, stand the test of time, constantly being reused in sprite comics everywhere and many of the elements of character designs remaining the same throughout time. The black mage looks like Vivi in FFIX, white mage outfits are still similar (at least, as of FFX-2), and many monsters maintain similar looks.

All in all, the first Final Fantasy, while – obviously – not the best in the series at this point, is still a great game and better than a good number of the ones that came after it (examples: FF2, FFX-2, FFXII…). It launched a series that is still going strong and even got a sort of sequel recently with Dissidia (all the events in that crossover game relate heavily to the first game’s universe). With enough ports to cover nearly every system… EVER! …the game is still a strong contender for most ported game of all time (I will look that up, actually). While not as deep or engaging as other games or even the second FF (in regards to the plot), FF is a game changer in all the right ways.

Classic Moment:
Finding out that Garland was sent to the past by the fiends in the present time, just so Garland could send the fiends you just did battle with to the future? Awesome. By the time you figure out this plan to live forever, though, Garland is now Chaos and immensely powerful. This plot twist is 100% unexpected by the end of the game and an awesome shocker last fight when you don’t know its coming. It just goes to show that, even in a game this old, the writing team behind one of the greatest video game series ever knew what they were doing.

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Added February 1, 2017
First real editorial note about one of these lists: I said FFX wasn’t my cup of tea but I do believe it is featured on this list, possibly higher than this game if memory serves me (nope, it was #89). Just a note about that.
Having said that, I have since gone through and done this one again. Its a winner. But you don’t need me to tell you that.
Again.