Final Fantasy III

1001 Video Games

Final Fantasy VI appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Characters

The names of some of the player-controlled characters were changed from their original Japanese counterparts: * Tina (ティナ) Branford became Terra Mash (マッシュ) Rene Figaro became Sabin Cayenne (カイエン) Garamonde became Cyan**

Development

Development of the game was rushed and several superbosses are included in the game's code but were not actually used. There are also several glitches in the game, possibly a result of the rushed development.

Extras

The European PlayStation release also contains the Final Fantasy X demo disc.

Manual

The game manual in the PlayStation version contains a major spoiler, by casually mentioning a major plot twist while listing the bonus content available after completion of the game.

Multiplayer

In the configuration menu of the original SNES release, characters can be set to either Controller 1 or Controller 2, making this in effect a two-player game. However, this control to the second player only works in battle and not on the overhead view maps or levels.

References

• In the SNES version (it is unknown if this applies to the PSX remake), the two soldiers that escort Terra at the beginning of the game are named Vicks and Wedge. This is a mistranslation, and a reference to Star Wars, where there are two pilots named Biggs and Wedge.
• Larry, Curly, and Moe are named after the slapstick comedy threesome The Three Stooges.

Sequel

Sometime in the mid-1990s, Square released several models showing off their new 3-D system. Much of what they used were characters and images from Final Fantasy VI, modeled into new 3-D. For this reason many people were expecting a sequel using these same characters or some kind of spin-off game. Much speculation was around Project Reality (the Nintendo 64) which promised to be a console system built around rendering 3-D graphics. In the end, nothing developed from these rumors about Final Fantasy VI and Square's following game in the series, Final Fantasy VII became the first to use 3-D modeling techniques.

Setzer

One of the main characters in this game is an avid gambler named "Setzer" (he even has a casino build on his airship). Supposedly, this was meant to be the German equivalent of "one who places a bet" or "placer". While it technically means this in German, it is never used that way; "Setzer" is rather used for "typesetter" (well, not that typesetters are common nowadays anyway). Yet another example of Japanese usage of German "names".

Soundtrack

The entire 25-minute opera sequence is available on CD as played by a full orchestra with singers. It's on the album Orchestral Game Concert #4, (translated, CD is Japanese) which is, itself, hard to find.

There have been multiple albums released with the game's soundtrack, all of them in 1994: a three-CD set with the original music, two CDs with orchestral and piano arrangements of certain tracks, and a CD with unused or remixed tracks. More details are to be found at Wikipedia.

Translation

It is a popular rumor that the lead translator for the English version, Ted Woolsey, apparently lacked professional translating experience. The discrepancies in translations have been attributed to this fact for several years. As with many translations, name changes and dialogue 'corrections' are left entirely up to the staff, but there are many who believe that these erroneous changes are due entirely to the fact that Ted did not have the knowledge to translate the text fully.

Version differences

There were two SNES releases of Final Fantasy III, the later release contains minor hardware revisions, as well as tweaks to the game itself such as the disappearance and renaming of certain items (Hero Ring, etc).

In the original SNES release of the game, Relm's "Sketch" ability is very buggy. Using it consistently against certain enemies can cause all sorts of interesting problems such as graphical distortions, random status effects and/or inability to use party members, a hacked inventory full of items/spells that are not even possible to get, large amounts of various items/spells and sometimes even a wipe of all the game's saved battery data.

Awards

• Electronic Gaming Monthly
  • October 1994 (Issue 63) - Game of the Month
  • November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #7 (Readers' Top 10 Games of All Time)
  • November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #9 (Best 100 Games of All Time)
• FLUX
  • Issue #4 - #28 in the "Top 100 Video Games of All-Time" list
• GameFan
  • 1994 (Vol.3, Iss.1) - Overall RPG Game of the Year
  • 1994 (Vol.3, Iss.1) - Best SNES RPG Game of the Year
  • 1994 (Vol.3, Iss.1) - Best SNES Music
• Game Informer
  • August 2001 (Issue #100) - #7 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll
• Game Players
  • January 1995 - Best SNES RPG Game in 1994
• GameSpy
  • 2007 – #4 Handheld Game of the Year
  • 2007 – GBA Game of the Year
  • 2007 – GBA RPG of the Year
• VideoGames
  • March 1995 - Best Role-Playing Game of the Year