The Many Lives of Final Fantasy

It's common practice to say that the video game industry is in peculiar moment in its life. To recap: Consoles have transitioned to the requisite newer, more powerful boxes while digital distribution and the evolution of the mobile space has forced disruption to pricing models. Old guard publishers, particularly of Japanese origin, have struggled to adapt to the high cost of HD game development, while a guy in his basement can make tens of millions on simple mobile mini games. It's a spectacular upheaval, really.

Part of what makes this particularly interesting time is how the industry looks back as it lumbers forward. With the advent of downloadable content and digital sales, some publishers have been doing an admirable job with keeping their back catalog easily accessible to the curious fan. SNK, for example, is really a company that produces one new video game every few years by way of the King of Fighters franchise. However, the former Neo Geo producer does its best to re-release old games on a variety of other online services like PSN and Steam. Granted, these tend to be no-frills reissues, for their part, which would infer that the former arcade juggernaut needs to make some quick cash to bankroll future development costs. Developers do this all the time. Still, it's nice to know that if I ever have a jones to play, say, Metal Slug without the legal gray area of emulation, companies like SNK still let you sign into your PSN/Steam/XBL/Virtual Console account and have it at home or on the road.

Then there's Square Enix.

For years (decades, almost), Square Enix has seen themselves as something of a unique case in all things. Certainly successful with a stable of recognizable IP in their portfolio, Square was both one of the first companies to regularly reissue their software while also charging higher prices than their peers for the privilege of playing them. This presents a sort of conundrum. On the one hand, and what we'll call the benevolent side of things, Square has kept the first Final Fantasy in circulation in one form or another since as early as the 16-bit generation as if it were the grandfather that still won't shut up about Casablanca. On the other, much more cynical hand, you could say that Square is a company that needs the money, now more than ever. Development of Final Fantasy XIII had certainly caught them with their pants down, so not only will they always find a way to sell the game that originally saved them from extinction as a metaphorical way to keep the ship sailing, they're going to sell it for a premium; a "Square Enix tax," as it's come to be known. While the first FF is definitely the example we're using here, it doesn't take a lot of searching through the IOS and Google stores to find the company trying to sell its games well over and above the cost of its contemporaries.

It's natural at this point to feel conflicted, so why don't I make it harder for you to metabolize. The following is a quick list of all of the releases, ports, and rereleases of the first Final Fantasy limited what what has made its way outside of Japan. Soak them in.

Final Fantasy - 1990
Platform: NES
Original Price: $50 USD
Comparables: NES games generally sold for similar prices give or take a few bucks
Current Price: about $20 loose

The game that either saved the company from bankruptcy or spared series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi from throwing in the towel on game development to go back to school (depending on who you ask) was original release for the Famicom in Japan in 1987 and then moseyed on over to the West with the backing of copious Nintendo Power coverage in 1990. Prices have fluctuated in the aftermarket until relatively recently where it's settled in its current state. It is not exactly a kind game to the player.





Final Fantasy - 2000
Platform: Wonderswan Color
Original Price: less than 4,800 yen (guesstimate) before importing fees
Comparables: Slightly lower. If you were importing a Wonderswan, you were probably doing it for this.
Current Price: roughly $50

This is a bit of a cheat as it never technically left Japan, but the Wonderswan Color (Gunpei Yokoi's successor to the GameBoy published with Bandai) version of the game was heavily imported by curious Western gamers. While the game was rereleased twice already at this point for the MSX computer and again for the Famicom (packaged with Final Fantasy II), this was the first version to drastically overhaul the graphics for the Wonderswan's beefier handheld screens. More of an artifact of a time that Square and Nintendo began their short-lived, but no less seismic feud than anything thanks in part to...


Final Fantasy Origins - 2003
Platform: PlayStation
Original Price: $30
Comparables: Unusually budget priced compared to even contemporary PSOne games of the time
Current Price: $10

A repackaging of both Wonderswan versions of FFI and FFII with additional goodies like a few FMV sequences and further retouched graphics. Still somewhat archaic (and brutal) compared RPG contemporaries of the time, now three years into the PlayStation 2's lifespan. Brilliantly low priced for a package this, even for the time.






Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls - 2004
Platform: GameBoy Advance
Original Price: $30
Comparables: About the same. Most GBA games ran for the same price in most regions
Current Price: $10

A further rework of the Wonderswan releases with additional dungeons and tweaks. Commonly found if you have the ability to play GBA games (such as the various GBAs in past production as well as the Nintendo DS), but something of a shoddy port.







Final Fantasy - 2007
Platform: PlayStation Portable
Original Price: $40
Comparables: Also close to the same, but perhaps a bit higher
Current Price: $5

Another thoroughly common remake of the first game, though conspicuously absent from PSN, this version further retouched and updated the graphics. The rereleases at this point had been slowly wimping down the difficulty for the past several releases, but even IGN's review of the game took issue with this particular version.






Final Fantasy - 2009
Platform: Wii Virtual Console
Original Price: 500 Wii points (about $5)
Comparables: In line with Nintendo's other VC NES games
Current Price: Same

An emulated reissue of the original North American NES version, warts and all. Also AWOL from the US Nintendo eShop, which, at the time of this writing, includes the 3DS and Wii U stores.








Final Fantasy - 2010
Platform: iOS
Original Price: $8.99
Comparables: Ludicrously overpriced in comparison. Most mobile games are a fraction of this
Current Price: Same

A heavily tweaked revision of the PSP version for the touchscreen interface.









Final Fantasy Origins - 2012
Platform: PlayStation Store
Original Price: $9.99
Comparables: The high end; PSOne games on PSN range from about $5 to $10
Current Price: Same

The PSN rerelease of the PSOne game. Nothing at all is different from the original release, but now you can play it on your various PlayStation platforms. Currently, this is the most reliable way to play the first game on anything but a phone.







Final Fantasy - 2012
Platform: Android
Original Price: $8.99
Comparables: See iOS version above
Current Price: Same

Yet another release of the PSP version basically identical to the iOS release from 2010.









TOTAL: 
9 Releases in NA
3 Currently available (Origins, various phone versions)
6 Versions unaccounted for (Japanese/ EU releases)

Decision time. Now that we can see that the game has been readily available since its release for one platform or another, it's time to wonder: is Square Enix using its powers for good? Your comments, if you please.

Let's just look past the fact that I've been absent for the past several days. This seems to be a month full of contradictions, broken promises, and as far as this past weekend has proven, high levels of idiocy.

But it's because of this idiocy that I've gotten the opportunity to essentially bum rush through Lightning Returns. While I'm not quite finished with it, I've found myself with four days left of the game's two week countdown to, essentially, chill out and watch paint dry. Sure, I'll be mopping up any errant side quests and such within that time, but because I'm a sinner and have read a little ahead of what's going on (which we can thank GameFAQs for), I've found that I've stumbled into a commendable amount efficiency. When I started playing it last Wednesday, this was not at all the case.

See, Lightning Returns is one of those games that makes a bad first impression. Aside from being narratively tied to what I can only call the worst (numbered) Final Fantasy, it's built on an engine that was never intentioned for open-world exploration, and it runs poorly. This makes the act of playing it sometimes cumbersome and other times straight up irritating, especially when your mashing a button and watching nothing happen on screen. The worst part for me, though, is that until you get several hours into the game, you just feel like you're playing it wrong; the daily countdown is intimidating and stressful, and the combat --as good as it is-- isn't really the easiest thing to grasp. The latter beef is made a little worse by the crazy amount of customization you're afforded by changing outfits. By day 3, I felt like I was drowning, and had even considered starting over on Easy mode so I could be a little smarter about my travel and work plans.

Turns out, that wasn't really necessary. When I finally finished off my first boss in the evening of day 3, the pieces had fit together in my subconscious just enough that I could better view the big picture of the game, and that gave me both a renewed sense of purpose and a battle plan for tackling the myriad tasks that LR set in front of me. That isn't to say that it's been easy going, though. One of the boss battles was stupidly hard, and even certain "normal" enemies are better avoided altogether because of how resource-intensive they tend to be.

But, now that I'm basically doing busy work to kill time to the end of the game, I have to say that I'm really enjoying it. Yes, for as much as I rag on FFXIII and XIII-2, I can't help but have a good time with LR in spite of myself. Maybe this is Stockholm Syndrome finally setting in, but taken on its own terms while shutting your brain off for most of the story stuff, it's a wacky game, but a wacky game that can be a fun in the right mindset. This makes me wish that it wasn't just the B-tier game that Square Enix had lying around with FFXIII characters shoehorned in that it obviously is, and that they had taken the time to develop it independent of that and not beholden to a (or any) franchise. But that would be too 1990s of Square, and those ultra lucrative days are in their rear view mirror (Bravely Default aside, I guess). 

Does my optimism for a glorious new Square Enix still hold? Last week, in the throws of those first strange hours of Lightning Returns, I might have said no. I was actually having a bit of buyer's remorse by Thursday night. At this point, though, I'm going to come back around and say yes. Is this the game to "save Final Fantasy?" Not by a long shot. It's something different, though, and it's something fun. For now, I'll take that.

Bravely Going

Today marks the NA release of Square Enix's Bravely Default, the deliriously goofy name for what appears to be the best new Final Fantasy in almost a decade. Everybody and their brother says so. I have to be honest, I am awfully excited to go play it.

The reasons, though, are firmly set in that I'm ready for a good RPG, and not because I just love old school Final Fantasy games. I mean, I do, but if I were to only want to play something new just because it feels like something old I would sit around and download bullshitty tablet game all day long as that seems to be the market for recycled content you can overpay for. Less cynically, though, I like the optimism and good will, however tenuous it is at the moment, that Bravely Default and this Tuesday's Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is bringing back the struggling Square Enix. In the most simple terms, that company really needs a win, and even if it comes from the court of public opinion and not sales figures, it would go a long way toward rebuilding the publisher into the creative powerhouse that it was in years' past.

But that's still just cleaning off our rose-tinted glasses. It's been a pretty tumultuous decade for Square both financially and figuratively. Major releases have tanked and at the cost of tens of millions of dollars (plus incalculable time wasted in development). More than perhaps any major Japanese publisher other than Konami, HD development really caught Square with its pants down. This is ironic considering that the company's games were such a champion of new and emerging audio/visual technology in older console generations; the advent of higher resolutions and consistent frame rates have led them to fumble around trying to figure out exactly how to move their major franchises forward. The problem, as Final Fantasy XIII has shown us, was that they did it on their terms, and not their audience. So much time and money wasted on making a stiflingly linear game that still seemed half-baked upon release was a clear enough indicator that the emperor had no clothes, and that proletariat gamer could only look at them in baffled amusement.

You could probably say that the divisiveness over Final Fantasy games, and much of Square's output, began during one of the earlier PlayStation generations, but the 2008 release of XIII represents a clear partition in their existence. Certainly before XIII came out, the hardest of the hardcore fans of the series would piss and moan that things Just Weren't Like They Used to Be (as evident by the first guy to buy FF XII in Japan telling CEO Yoichi Wada that they should remake VII during a live press event), but this was during a period that games from the franchise --and the company as a whole-- were still coming out at a steady clip and of high quality. While, yes, you could complain that X or XII wasn't your cup of tea, but you couldn't argue against the fact that all of that production went into making as solid a product as could be made for its time. Visually impressive, finely balanced, and (for the most part) coherently written were things that you could expect from a new Final Fantasy game whether you liked it as much as their Super NES predecessors or not. But then XIII came out, and all of a sudden, all of your doomsday scenarios about a company falling apart seemed frightfully on-target.

For as subjective as video game reviews really are, the overall consensus was that we were seeing quantifiable evidence that they Just Weren't Like the Used to Be. While there is certainly a small cadre of XIII apologists out there, the years since its release has lead to much head shaking and shoulder shrugging over its design. So much, in fact, that it took Square to cobble together two more games in the XIII "series" to make good by the fans. The fact that they even did this proves that the old guys were right all along, and a general perception that if Square Enix, the shepherds of the once titanic genre, couldn't figure it out than the RPGs of yesteryear were doomed to fade away.

This is defeatist thinking.

This morning, I read this exemplary article about the shooing of Jay Leno. Part of the story was about how smug a villain Leno had become over his 22 year tenure as host of the decaying Tonight Show, but much more of it was how sad the world will be without Leno in it to punish with our "hipper," "edgier" scorn. This really struck a chord with me, especially today with Bravely Default's release. While the opposite may be true in that I did it because I care and not because I have empirical evidence of their idiocy, but I have been ragging on Square for years now, and their paleolithic design sensibilities and business practices need to bow out for the younger, sexier, more in-touch Jimmy Fallons of the game design world. When I sat back and really reflected on it, though, this is not at all what I want.

No, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the JRPG isn't mounting a comeback (it's been here for years), nor am I going to pontificate that the publisher has finally gotten its head out of its ass (we still need to be cautious about Final Fantasy XV, after all). We need to stop being so pious toward past successes, and less embittered to recent failings. I know that this sounds a little counter intuitive because I began by telling you how excited I am for a decidedly retro RPG, and I just said a second ago that it's hard to be totally optimistic about what the company is pushing out over the next few years, but really, optimism is something Square desperately needs, and Bravely Default and Lightning Returns, while diametrically different games, clearly show that the company can push their creativity when they need to. That's good for everybody. Some companies --Nintendo, for example-- really turn up the gas when they're backed into a corner, and it looks like that's what's finally happened to Square. While the reviews aren't finished being tallied for BD, and haven't even hit yet for LR:FFXIII, it's hard to disagree that this could be the start of a return to form in the post- XIII-Weren't-Like-They-Used-to-Be era. If we didn't at least hope for the fact that companies will make better games than their previous output, nobody would play anything new at all, and we need to move past that. It's time for us to be excited again. I hope that you feel the same way.

See you tomorrow.

Jibber Jabber

Before we begin, your homework for today is to read Jeremy Parish's account on why the seminal Atari 2600 failed miserably in Japan. A lot of evidence near the end is sort of anecdotal, but it's no less compelling to read because, really, after the hard numbers, a lot of what he says is as good an excuse as any.

Now, here's an image that should look familiar. That's part of the problem, but we'll get back to that:

Yesterday morning, I received a PS3 message from one Square Enix telling me how lucky I am that I can download and play the newest beta for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. Mildly interested, I clicked on the attachment which led to a PlayStation Store page that auto-filled a code to download the application to launch the game. After an alarmingly short download (because I had forgotten that the first thing you grab for an MMO is the client launching software, not the "game" itself). It was the usual stuff after opening: make a new Square-Enix ID (because my old one wasn't good enough or something), read some terms of service, agree that I live in the United States. So far so good. At this point, I had to enter a beta key code for the game to begin downloading the actual client. A little confused because I was under the impression that Square had kind of already done that for me with the email, I attempted to reread the message that I had originally received to see if there was another code inside. No dice, though, because the download application I was forced to use blocked the PS3's XMB, so I couldn't read any email. So there I sat, exhaling in frustration, staring at something I had to close just so I could go back and read something else just so I could start it all over again. I shrug my shoulders. In true Square-Enix fashion, things are finally unnecessarily difficult.

While I concede that it was my own fault for not reading the entirety of PS3 message, let's just say that this wasn't my only problem. For the sake of brevity, I'll just briefly list them:

1. I had to recreate yet another SE account and password
2. The One-Time password stymied anything I wanted to do, mostly because I wasn't sure what it was and was even less convinced SE did either judging by the instructions on their site
3. The roughly 5G download of the client was proceeding last night at an alarming slow rate; think .47 MB/s at its peak
4. I don't have the time or patience for that shit, so I typically set it up before I go to bed to let stuff that size download. Not this time, because the client download wouldn't auto-shut off the system after it was finished and installed
5. Early this morning I decided to try it again, and it downloaded at a much more manageable 1.49 MB/s speed, which only took roughly an hour to complete.
6. But that didn't matter, because I was given an error and couldn't log in to play. Why?
7. Because all of the servers have been down for maintanance since early yesterday evening

People, from what I understand, have been playing this beta since before the weekend started, and I was a little confused why I was just getting a code for it now a few days after this phase its testing had already begun, but I don't really care that much about that. What I care about is a company that's had its head in its ass for years now, and my experiences over the last 24 hours are simply indicative of Square-Enix as a developer and publisher.

Really, I thought I'd hit my breaking point with all of the fallout of Final Fantasy XIII -- a mess of a game that was a product of a development cycle that resulted in twice the amount of work necessary that ultimately, by many accounts, was just pasted together with spit and bubble gum just to get it out of the door. The good of the game was far outweighed by the bad, and judging by what we can surmise of the company and their absurd sales expectations over the years, we can safely say the same thing of the hands that built it. So full of hubris, they announced in 2006 that FFXIII would be the nucleus around which spinoff games would come: VersusXIII for the PS3, a PSP/ Mobile game called Agito XIII, and a DS release that never materialized outside of conference jibber jabber. Only one of these had actually appeared in real life, Agito, and under a changed name to separate it from the now reviled XIII universe. Oh, and only in Japan. Sequels to XIII have and will be released in the near future, XIII-2, being a mediocre game intended to "solve" some of the problems of its predecessor. Clearly, these are people that put the cart in front of the horse.

People, this cycle of idiocy is just about to begin anew. While I'll give them credit for having their best E3 showing in maybe a decade, everything said about what they presented has been par for the Nomura-caddied course. Yes, its swell that there's going to be a new Kingdom Hearts game, but for all intents and purposes, the company needed to put a bullet in that franchise years ago. The original plan of mashing up the combined Final Fantasy franchises with various Disney properties is long since dead creatively, and the obvious use of idiotic and barely playable portable spinoffs over the years (which many rightly speculate were used to fund a KHIII to begin with) has diluted its fan base. Plus, from what we already know of development --which isn't much, of course-- the game won't arrive for another few years. And by "few," I really mean "several." Don't get your hopes up that this game will be released any time soon and will clean up the dump truck of a mess that previous KHs have made.

Final Fantasy XV, though, is beginning to give the impression that it will once again set itself up for failure. Given that it's the renamed VersusXIII, one would assume that after a nearly 10 year production cycle that was birthed from the prospect of another game doing well that the company has learned from its mistakes. Total baloney. Divisive character/systems designer Tetsuya Nomura has already stated that XV is planned to have multiple releases surrounding it, so they're right back to thinking that not only will this game sell like gangbusters, but that people will like it well enough to shell out for other games in its capsule-franchise. That's awfully familiar. On top of that, there's still no guarantee that we're going to see it in the immediate future. In an interview with Nomura conducted by Famitsu (via Polygon) this very morning includes a few choice nuggets: First, he states that about two years after the original announcement of VersusXIII that it was suggested that they move the game to an official core entry into the franchise and divorce it from its attached predecessor. This should surprise no one since we only saw very brief, random showings of the game at conferences, but not since this decision was made (in 200-fucking-8). If the game hadn't become vaporware at the point, the only logical conclusion is that it became FFXV. The other thing to mention in the interview is a real doozy, though. Observe:

Nomura and his team also found themselves hitting a wall graphically with the PS3 and 360. "With current-gen systems, we couldn't fully express what we wanted to do in this project," he said. "There were more and more things that we would've had to change the form of. However, the assumption was that we'd go ahead with a current-gen release, so went through a trial-and-error process to do as much as we could. So we built an alpha version about a year ago, and the company response was 'If you remained bound to the current generation, will it will be the product you envisioned?' They suggested shifting fully to next-gen, and that was the spark that led to the move."

An alpha build of the game was made only a year ago. For a game announced in 2006. If this isn't a sign that this company's not flailing around shitting money into a sewer I'm not sure what is.

I'm really too old to be angry about this stuff. After observing the last console cycle and how the games-making business has shifted so wildly, I really can't be. Still Square-Enix, a once and future juggernaut of development and publishing has turned into a fascinating case study for arrogance, poor leadership, and listless development. I really hope to god I'm proven wrong and that Final Fantasy XV can be favorably compared to sliced bread. History, though, seems against it.

Fine, Let's Talk About E3 Press Events

So how about those press conferences yesterday, huh? Seems as though Microsoft brought a bunch of games and Sony came packing with Everything Everyone Wanted to Hear Ever. I've always thought that Jack Tretton was a class act, to be honest, but I can't shake the image out of my head that he was watching the Microsoft press event yesterday, checklist in hand, chuckling to himself how much he can make the XBONE look like it was made by crowds of dickheads. In fact, I'm surprised that, in his glee last evening, he didn't let the term slip out. That would have made for a bonafide E3 surprise.

Outside of that, though, I've never heard so many people SO PSYCHED to pay $400 for anything in my entire life. Still, the PlayStation 4 looks to begin with an impressive good will lead over the XBONE. This is swell. I keep telling myself, though, that the PS3 staggered punch drunk off of the assembly line looking like the most expensive unnecessary hobbyist machinery this side of the 3DO and it, somehow, clawed it's way back to being competitive. Microsoft has just shown how dumb they are at this E3, but that doesn't mean that they can't wise up sooner rather than later. For now, a PS4 is in my future and a XBONE still looks like an expensive cable box. A year from now, who knows?

In other news, Square Enix is consistently cagey, but Final Fantasy Versus XIII is now (to the surprise of nobody) Final Fantasy XV. Sony has proven that some people can learn from their mistakes, but E3 hasn't been clear this year if that record can go two-for-two. Since no release date has been posted for the next "officially" numbered entry in the series, I'm not holding my breath. After all, VXIII has only been in development for close to ten years.

Image also from Kotaku, mostly because I was just reading the article about 5 minutes ago