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That's right, friends. The game that inspired our site, Final Fantasy VI, turned twenty today, with its original Japanese Super Famicom release on April 2, 1994. Since that time, the game's been released in Japan, North America, and Europe repeatedly for systems like the SNES, PlayStation, and mobile phones.

I know that I've got fond memories of playing this game after school every day until the first time I beat it, and then replaying it again immediately after getting the Nintendo Power Player's Guide for Christmas that year. I've got a lot more fond memories since starting up CoN - hey, I've even talked about how awesome the game is on the CoNcast! To celebrate this great anniversary, what fond memories do you have?

Source: Kotaku

It's weird, I first rented this game a year or so after beating Final Fantasy 2(US) and probably when the game initially came out. I was young enough then, I kept thinking "Where are all the characters from the other game?" not quite getting it. I never rented it again and didn't actually pick it up to honestly play it a good five or so years later.

Still trying to wrap my head around what I was thinking that first time around, haha. Cheers to the 20th anniversary and my favorite collection of music, favorite villain, and memorable plot all in one game!

Suplexing the Ghost Train with Sabin. Never gets old

oh jeez, I can't believe I forgot about this. I was waiting on Oct. 20, the NA release date to celebrate.

Ah, I remember watching my cousin play this game as a wee little chap, him showing me the Opera scene and the Jurassic Forest, not knowing anything about the game, then going down to his room in the basement and using it as our airship!

The makings of a future sage...

First, to understand the next sentence, you must know that I was born and raised in Appalachia. During my dad and I's weekly visit to the flea market in early 2006,

(which by the way, are places that you should at least visit once, if not just for the socio-cultural experience, to find things that haven't been seen in 20 years!)

Anyways, as we passed the game store, I stopped to look around. And there it was, at $50, the price of a new game basically. I can't remember if we haggled the guy to get it for $40 or $45, but I knew that I needed to play for myself, so (for me at least, cuz I wasn't paying!) the price was worth it.

After all this, getting excited and putting it in the SNES.... nothing! The screen was black. I was mortified; not only would I not be playing, but we had just bought a non-refundable dud for $50! Thankfully, after a couple trusty "eject-blow-rinse and repeat" sessions, it finally worked. Thinking back to it, the scene that I remember impacting me the most initially was the flashback showing the Empire at the very beginning. I think that it was the first time I began to realize that this story was something else.

And of course, I remember looking around for information on the game, and finding this website filled with crazy people! I still have the printouts by the way, of the CoN guide from 2006 before I was a member. At the time I joined , FFVI was the only game I had played that the site covered.

I'm struggling to remember details in my thinking, but I think that it was a least by 2007 that I began thinking of it as my all-time favorite game, becoming a fanboy for the game. At the time, it felt like me, the guys at CoN, and a few others had played it, and no one else. Now, of course, I know that wasn't true, but it felt that way at the time. But around that time I started to notice a shift in popularity for the game, many lists were starting to place it higher in all-time best games, etc.

Perhaps the most shocking moment, which felt at the time almost like a coup, was when Yahtzee, of all people, he who hates everything, mentioned that he liked the game in his review of FF13. Now it's kind of silly, but I remember calling my cousin after seeing it. And a few years back, IGN calling it the best RPG...

Yes, now I know that those lists are mostly bogus and completely subjective, but I think the point for me is that I was so impacted by the game that I wanted to root for it. Back then, I loved it because it was a great game and a great experience. I still love it for that, but now I love it just as much for introducing me to the rest of FF/Chrono Trigger and to the CoN community, which is to this day, one of the most reasonable places to talk on the internet.

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Praise Be To Helix!

This game hurt me as in, physically damaged me.

Okay, so the very first run through of this game I'd done waaaaay back in the long long ago, I'd gotten to the final scene where everyone tells Kefka that Friendship is Magic™.

I'd been loving the drama of the game up this point and was really impressed with how well it was written and how little there was of the 'odd' dialogue you got from standard half-assed translations of the JRPGs of the day, but even this endless pap parade was getting to me. The entire time I'm thinking, "Jeeesus, can this get any sappier? Is one of 'em going to go 'I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it people like me'?"

Then the magic happened...

That beautiful, nay--ANGELLIC retort from Kefka.



I will not dare to defame that glorious dialogue on a mere forum post. If you know the game, you know what he said. I will merely exposit that for a solid five minutes, I was laughing. I couldn't breathe. I honestly thought I was going to suffocate and I ended up falling out of my bed and knocking myself out.*

When I came to, I had a massive headache, which sucked hardcore cause I had a final boss to tackle and that line still had me giggling, which just made my head ache worse. But it was all worth it for that third tier music, which is still my favorite videogame track.

*I was playing the game from a rather precarious spot on the top of a bunk bed.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 3rd April 2014 03:13

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Arts

Farts

Twarts

I was first introduced to the game via ROM and Emulator by accident. My brother and I were not allowed to have any video games but somehow we did manage to have a few on the computer. I was poking around on the computer one day, figured out how to make the programs work and started with Final Fantasy IV. I fiddled around with a few other games, trying to find my particular tastes and establish a favored genre of gaming and then I came across VI.

And then my brain exploded.

The game was everything I never knew I wanted. The music, the characters, the villain and yes...the SAP (x3) I was hooked. I remember when I was in Highschool everyone around me was going on and on about Sephiroth and being on that bandwagon for a while; and then I found the roms for Chrono Trigger and FFVI again and dove into my little corner where no one understood me. I made the mistake of saying Sephiroth had nothing on Kefka because said clown actually managed to destroy a world where the swordsman with 'mommy issues' only tried. I have to stop here and say, however, that I still do love Sephiroth as a villain and a character in general.

No one around me knew or cared about who or what Kefka was or why Terra Branford was so important. They all stared at me when all the 'gamer girls' would have their little lists of video game characters they would date when mine was topped with Locke Cole and Setzer Gabbiani. My friends found it adorable that I was addicted to SNES games considering they all knew that I wasn't allowed to own any systems beyond my computer (Which my father kept souped up just for this purpose. How he snuck this under my Mother's radar I will never know.) Yes, we were all excited about Kingdom Hearts and the new FFs that were coming out but I kept waiting for Terra to appear...and she never did. I was pretty close to offended when the Snes games were given no mention in the KH games but the later FFs were. I sat on the sofa in my boyfriend's basement watching all of our friends cheer on Cloud Strife and only wanting to go home and get back to the World of Ruin. Yes, I played KH and had a blast, but I'd still sit at the computer (or GBA) for hours seeing Terra and thinking: "That. I want to be just like her." Brave in the face of the terror of her past, looking for answers about emotions she wasn't sure she was capable of and then scraping together enough food and lodgings to protect a number of children and a pregnant teenager after the world ended....I also wanted to push Celes off the edge of the world and make my favorite pairing happen...The World Is Square after all...I can do that. x3 To be honest, though, I don't mind her so much anymore and actually have begun to find her character interesting despite the agonizing melodrama of her story.

Now, somewhere around 14 years after being first introduced to the game, I went ahead and did something ridiculous but so very, very satisfying. ...We all know where I'm going with this....I don't think I need to say it. I will say, however, that standing in a group of people all dressed up from a game I had always thought no one ever knew about and being blinded by dozens of camera flashes at once is a fantastic feeling. We all remembered what no one else ever thought to try in our age group. We stood out. We were the gamer nerds the gamers themselves shied away from. We were and will always be the SNES fans.

Happy birth/release day, Final Fantasy VI.

This post has been edited by St Khael on 3rd April 2014 04:09

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I'm your Mama Terra, come hang out with me around the internet!

Retro gaming cosplayer with a focus on Terra Branford.

Man 20 years already? Guess I never really thought that it had been out this long. I remember my dad got this game when it first came out on the snes and no matter how hard I try to think about it I always think I saw him fight againt Whelk in a desert. Weird right? I dredge on of course. Only after a couple years did he give me the snes and the games with it. My tiny little mind couldn't comprehend how awesome it was till the music from the blackjack poured into me. I never beat the floating continent at that point, so I stopped playing....four years later and a diehard gamer at this point. I started it up again to find my data erased (Its happened twice over my life) So restarting the game with a more open and older mind I could understand how terrific this game was. I cried at the lose of Terra's parents. I laughed at the dialog from Sabin and Gau. And I felt truly connected with every character, side from GoGo and Umaro (Will never make those two to lvl99) Edgar and Sabins coin toss, Rachels theme....the saddest music in this game will always touch me deeper than any of the now games. I guess I'm ranting, but with how amazing of a game this is and how it's really delved into each of our lives, its kinda hard not to. Thank you Final Fantasy 6. Thank you

I first heard of the game in about 2002, I think. I played the first half of the game...and coincidentially it was right when I finished high school in 2003.

So I decided to hold off on continuing until after I got to university. I mean, I'd heard some spoilers already, but...that cliffhanger was just such a perfect place to stop on.

And indeed I did finish the game after I got to university. And I loved it. So much that I joined a couple internet fora where fans of the game gathered. I think one of them's called Caves of Narshe; maybe you've heard of it.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

The opening music and atmosphere left a huge impression on me. I've had dreams set in Narshe. Those first 6 notes, the way the snow and darkness worked together to make a wide open landscape seem claustrophobic. FF6 was best at the times they straddled the edge between the story of their characters, and the world that gave rise to FF6: Ramuh's hiding place in Zozo, Madonna and Maduin in the world of the espers, Tom Bombadil, the submerged castle. FF6 couldn't have been what it was without its characters, but those characters needed an equally compelling world to live in.

Edit: I think I first played in '97. I first came to the CoN for one of two reasons: to figure out how to revive General Leo, or for resources for my own FF6 sequel. I don't remember which, probably both.

This post has been edited by Iain Peregrine on 4th April 2014 03:12

Thanks for making me feel old.

My most recent fond memory of this game is playing through it a few months ago with my then fiance (now wife). She's a big fantasy fan but not much of a gamer, but she played through it like a champ and really enjoyed the story. The random battles not so much...still not much of a gamer I guess.

I guess my memories of this game are playing the port version of the PlayStation and not knowing what to do, since wasn't used to retro games. I struggled alot of the dungeons, like the Phoenix Cave, so getting passed them was amazing.





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Top Three fave Final Fantasies Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy V [ GBA ]

I was introduced to FFVI in the mid-90's by a friend of mine named Brad. At the time, there were only 2 other FF games, and my friends and I loved both of them very much. From the first time Zeromus died in FFIV (II at the time), we talked about how much better the next one would have to be. Imagine our skepticism when Brad brought the game over (the rest of us were still stinging from the bad console releases of Ultima VI and Dragon Warrior IV was still the current Dragon Warrior game)and then our first immediate playthrough of the first couple of chapters in the game. From then on, the game became THE BEST EVER!! We've played this game so many times, we can still remember the games' lines by heart.

"Son of a submariner! You'll pay for this!!"

Classic.

It's now at that ripe age where it can almost buy beer, but has been old enough to suck on tobacco and buy condoms for some time now. Ahh, youth... where does it go.

Anyway, for me it was memories of playing it with my brother over and over and over again, and the beautiful one-liners of the strategy guide we bought with it. It's still my and my brother's favorite games, and Kefka is still quite possibly the most badass villain there ever was... I mean, he won. Even when you beat the game, he won.

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~Status Report~

* Completed... Dragon's Head
* Completed... Soldiers of the Empire: Disciples (release pending)
* In Progress/Undecided... Of Love and Betrayal
* Planning/Assembly... Where it all Began

Twenty years.

Man, how time flies.

I've got thoughts--nay, feels--but most of them seem, at least for me, better reserved for October, as that's when I got my copy.

Still...I'd been following the coverage of the game in Nintendo Power, and I was thoroughly convinced that it would be the best thing that ever happened to me. Before VI, as straight JRPGs went (as opposed to action-adventure titles like Zelda), I'd only ever played games in the Dragon Warrior series and Capcom's Breath of Fire. They were fun, and I enjoyed them, but this seemed to be...something else entirely.

And it was.

I sat up late into the night the first day I had it and played all the way to the multi-party battle at Narshe. Considering that my RPG skills were not, as now, good enough to make this a walk in the park of an expository arc, I suffered and struggled along for hours in Sabin's scenario, which I chose first. (I still hate that train...)

And the next day, I drove on into the story, had my mind blown by the opera, tore up the MagiTek factory...and found myself, after hours, on the other end of an all-nighter. My very first.

My kid brother got in on the fun the next day, and as usual, I ended up serving as his advance guard--playing through several steps ahead so I could dish out the advice if necessary. He decided Mog was the man, and we did a good bit of bonding over the game. Years later, when I was in Japan for a year on exchange, I found one of the die-cast Mog figurines that had been sold by Square. I boxed it up and sent it home to him, and twelve years on, it still occupies a position of honor in his living room.

Considering all he's been through in his life, I would've figured he'd have eBayed it years ago...but nope. The moogle endures.

So, yeah. Feels.

I've played this game in every possible incarnation except the smartphone version, original Japanese included, and it never gets old, perhaps for that reason alone. Matter of fact I'm parked outside the Fanatics' Tower right now, actually, on my current game, and--shock of shocks--I've finally persuaded my spouse, the betimes dubious Mr. Chocobo, to play after only six years of talking about how good it is.

(He hates the Phantom Train, too. Clearly it was meant to be. )

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This is a signature. You might think that there is something to it...but in fact it is just an ordinary signature.

I was eight going on nine and I went over to a friends house who rented it. It changed my life and was there when I most needed it

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His Divine Shadow

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Click to vist FFF.

I somehow conned my parents into getting this for me on it's release. This is back when SNES games were $50, standard at launch. This bugger was $70.

I was enthralled the second the music started in the opening. I should point out as well, while there are several characters I really love from this game... Mog will always be my favorite.

A little late coming to this thread (which is odd given that I participated in the CoNcast), but when have I ever let that stop me ?

I didn't play FFVI when it came out; in fact, I didn't play it until more like ten years after its release. The fact that I was able to do so and love it - and still love it - says a lot about the game. People still play SNES games for a number of reasons, like nostalgia or some niche gameplay aspect. There aren't a ton of titles from that generation that get replayed and revisited because they are truly great games that can stand up to the shiny stuff all them youngsters are playin' with today, but FFVI is one of them.

I guess the point of what I'm trying to say is: when we talk about the anniversary of a game like FFI, we commemorate an historical event. When we talk about the anniversary of FFVI, we appreciate how dang impressive a feat it was that n years into the future it still feels vibrant and alive.

A toast!

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

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