Topic: Final Fantasy I & II to GBA!

[ruby_onix]

Square games in Japan are historically vastly overpriced, just because Square knows they can get away with it.

I remember seeing them justify it once in an interview, saying "Yeah but, you have to realize that this FMV we keep putting into our games costs an arm and a leg. It's REALLY expensive stuff."

Remember when Shinji Mikami complained that Kingdom Hearts didn't deserve to sell as many copies as it did for the price that it did? A LOT of American fans got all "How dare he say that about my Kingdom Hearts?" without having any idea of how much the game actually cost in Japan.

(Of course, I'm not saying that we should expect FF1&2 GBA to be any cheaper in America.)  

[Ian Sane]

If they try to sell this in North America for $60 it won't sell because it's available for much cheaper on the PSX and is easily found in any store that sells Playstation games.  We just won't pay that much for ports even if they're Final Fantasy.  Remember that Capcom overcharged the RE2 & 3 Cube ports and sure enough they didn't sell that well.  If they're going to be greedy they would be better off splitting the comp into two games and charging $30 each for them.  That probably would sell considering that Nintendo's ports always sell well.  Not that I want SE to do that.

[jasonditz]

I remember paying $70 for Might and Magic 2 for the Genesis... but no, I'm not paying $60 for a GBA title... especially a port.

[Infernal Monkey]

Mystic Quest Legend is the crappiest SquareSoft RPG ever. =p
Final Fantasy I and II on the same cart is quite nifty, I may get it. It'd beat the hell out of trying to play them on the PSone, where it takes a good five seconds everytime you want to go to your menu screen.

[Shift Key]

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I guess us North Americans really don't have a whole lot to complain about when it comes to game prices.

You really have no idea Mouse

And I'd hate to think how much it will end up being in Australia, where most GBA games are $60 already. So they'd better not make it $100 or I am just gonna snap!

[ruby_onix]

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Final Fantasy I and II on the same cart is quite nifty, I may get it. It'd beat the hell out of trying to play them on the PSone, where it takes a good five seconds everytime you want to go to your menu screen.

Actually, FF Origins on the PSOne isn't nearly as bad as you'd expect.

For reference, I popped FF5 from Anthology into my PSOne. You're right. Counting steamboats, it literally took four to five steamboats to open or close a menu.

But FF1 from Origins only took about one to two steamboats.

FF2 was even faster, usually taking less than one steamboat. Any faster and it probably would've felt uncomfortable.

It took a bit longer when entering or leaving a town (around four seconds), but you don't need to do that very often (unlike menus, where you have to get from one, to another, to another), so it's not that bad.

And the fights aren't bad either. About three seconds of loading (entering or leaving the fight scene), and part of that is covered up by one of those swooshy fades to black, which passes by a LOT faster than any of the ones you've seen in an FF game since FF7. If you just hold down the button, "fight" commands are entered at lightning speed, and the characters respond in quick movements, wasting very little time. The whole fight scene "feels" faster than it is. And it's not very long in the first place.

If anyone's thinking about playing Origins, you'll much more likely be frustrated by how intolerably "old school" it is at it's peeking-through core (which should still affect the GBA versions), than any complaints about the hardware. Square did a really good job in "remaking" the games on the PSOne. I'm curious to see if they CAN add anything to them on the GBA. Adding FF3j would seem to be the most obvious decision, but they don't seem to be doing that. According to RPGFan, they're reworking the MP system (MP in FF1 was kinda odd, having different levels), and adding some new levels and story elements.