Posts tagged final fantasy

A highly productive half hour bus ride. I found the guy who I was meant to give the Rosetta Stone to (more or less by accident) and I also found a landing spot near the town I thought it was impossible to get to in the airship. So now I’m on course again. No more wandering around randomly for a while!

And everybody levelled up.

Oh, and can just mention once more how utterly gorgeous the Micro’s screen is, please?

So, on the bus this morning I opened up the SP and did a couple of levels of the Lifespring Grotto. Got a cool knife that steals health from enemies. Really doesn’t work well on the undead though. Ouch.

But then, at work, the postman came…

GAME BOY MICRO GET!

Famicom edition, if you’re interested. Looks gorgeous. Non-gaming-geeks in office also thought it looked good.

Couldn’t charge it, but it seemed to come with a little bit of charge, so after gazing at the lovely shiny metalness of it for a while I shoved the Final Fantasy cart in and turned it on.

The screen is lovely. Absolutely lovely. I was concerned at first that it would be too small, but some FF play has put paid to those fears. In fact, I think it’s easier to see the battle numbers flying by on the Micro than it is on the DS. Something to do with the smaller screen and the brightness and the general crispness of it, I suppose.

Anyway, I didn’t play it long. Just long enough to get to an annoying level with disappearing pathways. The Micro’s on charge now. Luckily it didn’t blow up when I plugged it in. Yes, I used a step down converter, but I was still worried.

Anyway, I need a good session or two on it, but the Micro certainly seems like a lovely piece of kit. I worked out that it’s my seventh Game Boy. Nintendo must love me.

Ah, bus journeys are ace.

I got four levels down into a dungeon. It’s… a bit easy right now. No difficult enemies. In fact, the enemies are scared of me.

The party trod warily through the depths of the dungeons, torches flickering on the walls. (Which was odd, as they were underwater, but we’ll let that one slide.) They trod carefully, quietly, but their efforts to go unnoticed went in vain. Without warning – an ambush! Three giant snakes stood (can snakes stand?) before them. Unready as they were, they fumbled for their weapons, giving the pythons time to launch uninterrupted attacks…

“The python ran away.”

“The python ran away.”

“The python ran away.”

“You gained 1 exp.”

The way forward was once again clear and the party breathed slightly more easily…

See? Rubbish. And even if they do attack they either miss or do 1 hit point of damage. (Even my weakest character has about six hundred hit points now.)

And yet it’s still fun. There are loads of games around right now that should be boring or annoying but somehow aren’t. I need to write an essay about it. Possibly.

Oh Nintendo, I love you again. I kind of stopped when Super Mario Sunshine came out, I admit. And the Gamecube, while host to some excellent games, is definitely my least played of the three main consoles this generation. But, oh, your handheld consoles are things of beauty. Not in the looks sense, of couse. The DS is as ugly as rotting zombie Santa. The SP and the Micro are nice, though. In fact the Famicom SP is absolutely gorgeous.

And the batteries last a good long time. Long enough to get me from Maidstone to Stansted Mountfitchet, stay overnight and then come back again. Not that I was playing the SP for the whole time… just most of it.

Got lots done in Final Fantasy. Most importantly I got my class upgrades. I haven’t actually done much with them – I’ve not bothered buying spells for my two characters who can now use magic – but my party now look much better. And being a ninja is obviously cooler than being a thief.

I just finished the third crystal dungeon, which opens up another optional dungeon place. Unfortunately, it’s out in the middle of the ocean, so I can’t land my airship there. Time to find out where I left my ship…

Well, after advice I gave up on the impossible bosses, but didn’t know where else to go.

So I toured the world, fighting of pirates and sharks, until I happened upon a small town I’d never been to before. A nice man there gave me a canoe and told me to go west. But life wasn’t peaceful there. No. There was a bloody great volcano called Mount Gulg. I can only imagined that the person to discover it celebrated with a few drinks and hiccuped at the moment of naming.

Anyway, I ran around inside for a while – Flame Mail get! – and met a boss who looked very nasty, but turned out to be no threat at all.

And now I think I have to go to a cave in the north, but that can happen later.

I’m about ten hours in now. Good stuff.