Mastery #14: Final Fantasy II (SNES - US Edition)

 

        

    Even just looking at the boxart of this game instantly gives me nostalgia. Something so incredibly simple just a red background and gold lettering and using the sword for a 'T'. This game & it's US sequel (Final Fantasy III or Final Fantasy VI) are probably my top two favorite Final Fantasys. They hold a special place in my heart. A place of child hood dreams & goals while playing these games. To be honest I would've loved to have this as my first Mastery but given time & other games that I just ended up randomly playing and mastering I guess this had to take spot 14. Now I am not about to bore you and try to explain why this game is so great, you can find a ton of articles or extremely detailed information on these games online literally almost anywhere, but what I will tell you is my history of this game & running through the Achievements. 

    

    Growing up in the early/late 90's was great. Seeing the rise of the internet, the revival of video games, weird candy, crazy colors, and the evolution of the cellphone. I was never very good at school work, most of the time when I got home from school I usually played games most of the time. Growing up with 3 older brothers & a one working Mom (Which she busted her ass for us which I love greatly to this day) this game fell on my lap when I borrowed it from one of my best friends when I was younger. His uncle would often play these type of games (RPGs) and really was my first introduction into the genre. Being a fan of fantasy type stuff when I started playing this game I instantly loved it. Just the screenshot above is like ingrain into my memory. Just the awesome color palette, the character design, the battle system, the music everything was just so incredible to me when I was younger. The only thing that really held me back when I was younger was my inability to read it. Don't get me wrong, I could read by the time when I started playing this game but it was fragmented. It wasn't until I really started playing this game until I started to really learn how to read. The love of this game made me do my homework (really just with reading) just to get farther in this game. I know inevitably I would've learn how to read but my love for this game & it's music pushed me to learn, so often I regularly recall saying, "If it wasn't for RPGs I wouldn't be able to read". Granted it's a overstatement to say the least but this game & it's sequel really helped me shape who I am today. (Final Fantasy III/VI holds a different more special place in my heart lol) 

    

    For those of you who don't know this game tells the tale of a dark knight by the name of Cecil as he is beginning to doubt the actions of the kingdom he serves. Punishment for his questioning he is sent on a quest which he assumed was delivering a package but was actually a bomb to blow up a neighboring village that housed very strong wizards/summoners. After surviving he begins his quest to save the kingdom he once loved and eventually the world. The story continues to follow Cecil where he will met friends, enemies, & faced with crazy boss fights, betrayal & even his darkest feelings. 

    

    Even writing this post I am engulfing myself listening to Nobuo Uematsu's music to this game. After borrowing this game from my friend when I was younger I remember playing his uncle's file which was at the end of the game & I remember beating it. I was so excited, even though I didn't do any of the work but it was just so cool to see the ending to a game (Before this I really only beat maybe Megaman or Kirby by this point). Even renting this game from blockbuster I often played other people's files...Yes if you can remember back when you rented a RPG from blockbuster normally your game would be erased by the person who rented it before/after you. Unless you're like me & just lied about returning it then keeping it another week, sorry Mom. I still remember at one point I gave up renting it or borrowing it from my friend it was time to buy the game. Truth be told I don't remember how I got the money I might have just asked my mom if we could buy it. I remember calling a handful of different places to see if any store had it in stock. One of the local stores I called said they didn't have it in stock but the person on the phone was willing to sell his copy. I remember being scared but excited on the phone and cautiously asked how much he wanted for it. He came back saying "$40" which at the time was a great deal in my opinion. (Even though today they still go for close to that price range lol) I was so excited to finally get my own copy of the game, I anxiously awaited my mom to come home from her long shift at work only to bother her to drive me back out to get a game. If my memory serves me right it was winter time & it was already dark out & my loving mother took me out to the store after a long day of work just to get this game. (I am really thankful for her. I often tell her this story too lol) I remember finally arriving and walking into the store, it wasn't a place I too often went too but wish I did after seeing all the games. The gentleman at the desk was a heavier set man & looked like what you would perceived to be a typical dungeon master. Not making fun of him in the least bit, looking back on it now we could have been great friends if it wasn't for the jarring age gap. And so I bought it Final Fantasy II, just the game itself, no box, insert, or manual. To this day I still hold that game in my collection....without a box, sleeve or manual.

I do have a copy, but right now my whole collection is in boxes since we lost my display shelves in the move. Didn't want to dig it out yet just for a picture. I will update when I buy a new display shelf.

    Earning the cheevos (RetroAchievements) for this game was a easy and simple task. The whole set consists of just story progression, which rightfully so should be. For those of you who don't know but the US release of this game was massively tampered with. The original Japanese game was harder, had more abilities, more side-quests and overall was a much more completed game. This game being released to the US being easier was in a attempt to make RPG's in the US more popular. Debatable if it really did or not I usually tend to lean more on the side that it didn't unfortunately. (Final Fantasy 7 on the other hand...) So the cheevos for this game was a much easier batch to mimic the US game version. I casually played through this game for the cheevos because of that reason. It was a blast to run through this game again, counting the times I beat my SNES cart & the other times this game has been released I have probably beaten it like 10 times. Ironically enough when I tried beating it again recently I had the achievements off on RetroArch so I beat the game without the cheevos on. I wasn't really mad that this happen to me, just more of a facepalm moment. But beating it a second time wasn't that much more difficult especially since my save was still at the end of the game & everyone was pretty stacked. Not to mention again this is the easier version. 

    I also took my time mastering this achievement, not intentionally but was because this was all played on my NVIDIA Shield + RetroArch. So many times when I would pick up and play this game, it was normally done on our main TV in the house. I started the achievements on this game back in April 2020, and finished it in May 2022. This also marks my first Final Fantasy game Mastery. It wasn't entirely intentional for I kind of wanted to go in order. But let's be real here, I should start my mastery the way I started the Final Fantasy series as a whole. 

P.S. My next Final Fantasy Mastery probably won't be FF III/VI. I want to sit down and play that one with Megan so she knows the story of my favorite RPG/Final Fantasy game of all time.

Mastery #11: Garfield (Proto) (Atari 2600) - Archive Edition

     This is my Archive Edition of "Journey Through Retro Games & RetroAchievements". Why I call it my Archive Edition? Is because normally each blog post will be of me Mastering a game's achievements, meaning that I will create the post after I just completed the game. The Archive Edition will be games that I mastered before I started this blog. So spoiler alert but there will probably only be 11 Archive Edition posts. But like the number stated above, this was my 11th mastery, so it's the most recent mastery before I started this blog. 

    

    Not many people know there was a Garfield Atari 2600 game. I am not too familiar with the origin or the story behind it but quick glances online didn't show that much promise for me at the time. But this game was an EXTREMELY short game. Most Atari 2600 games are normally short like this so it's no surprise in anyway that the achievements (cheevos) was rather easy to get on this one. But for the most part the game consists of you jumping on the fence or houses while eating lasagna, avoiding Odie, & I guess saving Nermal? The game in it's entirety is like 2 minutes long not sure if there was more anticipated to the game or not. 

    

    I have always been a fan of Garfield from his comics to the 80's cartoon series. I still remember the very first dvd boxsets I really owned was 'Garfield & Friends' and 'Home Movies'. The opening song to Garfield & Friends was always stuck in my head growing up. My older brother would sing it a lot of times just throughout the house and it would be engraved into my head until today. I remember asking my brother where he got the song from because my brother was not to be one to watch cartoons with me at the time. I mean he was in High School while I was about to go into the 6th grade. Which I guess in retrospect now maybe even watching cartoons when going into the 6th grade was too old too hahaha. My brother told me he would see it in school, the school we went to often had tv's in a specific hallway that would just normally play ABC, NBC, or Fox. Even in elementary during the scholastic book day we use to have, I remember making a dive towards the Garfield books. Even as I got older they turned into great bathroom books, you know the times before cell phones had the entire internet in your pocket. 

    

    Anyway there isn't that much I can really say about this game that really hasn't already been said. It's such a interesting game in general cause how short it was. If I was younger and bought this game at full retail I would have been sad but I would have loved it just the same. Given it was a prototype though it's technically unfair to make that judgement & any repo carts out there should only be paying for the work it is to move the game to the actual Atari game chip. 

    

    The most difficult cheevo and I do mean difficult very lightly was the beat the game without getting hit or scoring a point. The only reason why this turned to be "difficult" was because it was a waiting game more than anything else. You see the lasagna moves across the screen & since the only option you have to move is by jumping it's inevitable that you will eat lasagna just trying to get to the end of the game. And that's really about it, sadly there was no music or anything to it. I would love to hear their rendition of the Garfield theme on the Atari 2600 (I know the year the cartoon came out was post Atari 2600 era). This game is mostly fun to just check out and have a quick play while waiting for your car to warm up or while you throw hot pockets in the microwave. https://retroachievements.org/game/17914

    

Mastery #13: Time Zone (NES)

 

    This was not my intentional plan in anyway. Megan had recently gotten Dragon Quest XI for the Switch so she was playing it out in our living room. As I was still waiting for my Retroid to be delivered I decided to pull out our little TV and my RetroPie I built last year. I wasn't crazy about the RetroPie which is why I don't use it too often. Without going down a long winded hyper-critical reason why I don't like playing on the RetroPie, this game fell on my lap with the 'random game' option built into the RetroPie menu. Seeing it was a game I have never played before & I had just finished smoking I figured, "what the hell". The opening was a cute little animation opening up for a possibly good game. Although the story was in Japanese (I do believe there is a English patch that is supported by RA) the cute artwork drew me in. I was not prepared for the strange frustrating but loving journey I was about to go on. The game immediately gives Super Mario 3 vibes. With it's overworld map and selecting the level, even in actual gameplay it plays very similar to it. This wasn't too uncommon by this point in the game industry though either.

        Each world consisted of 4 levels and one quiz stage & the game itself only contained 6 worlds. The four levels definitely played very similar to each other in each world. As in there is a introductory stage, than a moving screen stage, precise jumping stage, usually to a mix of the whole bag on the last stage. What really drew me into this game aside from the artwork was how the character attacks. Getting the feeling of "I have played something like this before..." my initial reaction to seeing the first enemy was to jump on them. Luckily this already taught me something which was you don't kill enemies by jumping on them, but also you don't die either. This will come in handy to my surprise when fighting bosses. But the main character's primary attack was he would throw his hat similar to a boomerang. But instead of a simple throw forward and it comes back to you the hat moved in a way similar to almost like a yo-yo. With the proper throw & jump the hat would circle your main character like a fly hovering dog crap. You can't throw the hat again until it returns back to the character, this simple fascinating mechanic wasn't used very often in the NES library. When thinking about it this kind of weapon doesn't exist in many games in general, but when throwing your hat & hitting an enemy the hat keeps going in motion hitting other enemies as well. Doing this attack releases some endorphins in my brain, it's like knocking over a bunch of dominoes lined up. It's difficult to explain without playing it and seeing it but it's such a cool mechanic that isn't used very often in gaming.

 

     Now to the nitty gritty, the achievements. Like mentioned before I randomly choose this game, so I had no idea what cheevos (short name for RetroAchievements) was in this game. I just randomly selected it the game and just figure I would play earning any rando cheevos along the way. After earning the first cheevos beating the first world was when I was interested in looking up the other cheevos. I noticed rather quickly this was a small simple set of only 6 achievements. https://retroachievements.org/game/4687

    It was at this point where I became way more attentive and interested in earning all the cheevos to this game. Seeing it was just a simple "Beat the game" cheevos set I started my quest. I was trying my best to beat the game in one sitting, but since it was a work night & it was already getting rather late I tried my luck beating it all in one go. At this point I realized just how annoying this game can be, mixed with the drowning repeating music the level designs were not the greatest & the enemy placement is almost meant to mess you up more than be 'obstacles'. The playable character moves fast & whenever he throws his hat he jolts forward a bit, but how the screen renders it doesn't give you the ample time to react when an enemy spawns on the screen. This gave me to a lot of game over screens which thank goodness this game gives you unlimited continues. After several trial n' errors I had to forfeit the night and prepare to power through it on a different day. But I felt comfortable getting farther faster for this game can be easily memorized thus getting far in each world is rather quick. 

This jump took me forever. How was I suppose to know that the blue head dinosaur was suppose to launch me up into the air to land on this tree?

    Getting to the end of the game was much easier 2nd time around. Also even though I can't read Japanese entirely I was able to figure out the answers to the quiz questions which stacked up even more lives on my stack. The only issue I had was fighting bosses again. The bosses overall was rather simple, just memorize their pattern and attack when open. Each boss actually was pretty fun, the boss fights had elements of Megaman boss fights mixed with Joe & Mac boss fights. Obviously some bosses were more difficult than others, like the 1600's Japan levels boss was a frustrating pattern to learn. Than there were others where I was confused exactly what the last boss was like the early 1885 America levels where you fight a train as the last boss. But since this was my 2nd run I got to the final world pretty fast.

This was the World 3 (1885 AD) where you fight a train as the world's boss.

    Fighting the last boss Dr Wily..I mean Dr Time was not an extremely difficult task. Just follow the method as the previous bosses. Learn the pattern & attack when you can. Also much like Dr Wily the doctor has two forms to him, since you can only get hit once I died a handful of times on his 2nd form. At first it seemed rather random but of course there was a rhythm to it. But when I did finally earn that last cheevo it was my last guy before getting a game over & although when you die on the level you have to repeat the entire level over again. But with a game over you have to repeat the entire world over again, which in retrospect isn't THAT difficult but just rather time consuming. But with much focus and not blinking I was able to beat the doctor, but I won't lie I did hold my breath for another form of the doctor. Thus I sat back and watched the ending with all it's glory & just happy to be done with the game entirely. 

    I know there were a lot more things that I missed to this game. And I know I can probably do some cleaning up and rework on this post but I am still a bit new to this idea and just trying to flush everything out without making it a novel of a review. I know I missed talking about the power-ups and such but just trying to get the perfect mix of the story of me hunting for the achievements & the lite-review of the game. Hope you enjoy none the less!

On the left is an enemy from Time Zone. On the left is a picture of ToeJam from "ToeJam & Earl". These two look like they could be brothers or cousins.

Mastery #12: Family Feud (NES)

     I know this is number 12. It's only number 12 because I didn't really think about doing this until the 12th game. But that's how the cookie crumbles hahaha. Besides that, my goal this year is to master 20 games. For a quick understanding, but I play retro games on a emulator and using specific emulators I am able to earn retroachievements. This is prominently done by hex-code conditions in the game & is totally free to sign up and start earning your own achievements. RetroAchievements. With that quick blurb out of the way for the 12th mastery (4th mastery of the year) I choose Family Feud for the NES.

    Family Feud the show holds a unique spot in my heart. I love Steve Harvey, and although this one doesn't have Steve Harvey I still couldn't help but to hear his voice sometimes when playing the game. Even as going as far as writing down silly answers just to imagine what his face would be in that response. Granted it only made me laugh but sometimes it was ways to keep my sanity in this utter bullshit of a game. That's right, I just called this game utter bullshit. Because it is. Allow me to explain in detail. This game came out in 1991, but most of the answers seem closer to 1989 questions/answers. Already anyone can imagine that the answers would be different from than to today. Like the question "Name something you put on a Pizza" would probably have Pineapple as one of the answers with today, but in 1989? Hell no. I'm not even sure if Pineapples were even invented yet...(I know they were). But when I get questions like, "Name someone who has to listen to problems all day long" and I put "Therapists" and get zero points. I can't help to get mad. And please note that I still don't know what the highest answer is. This question was during fast money & it doesn't tell you what the number 1 answer is. Friend, Boss, Teacher all warranted zero points the only thing I got SOME points on was for the answer "Judge". Even than that only rewarded me with 4 points. Even with this being 1989 I am sure it was a known profession and I understand all the answers from Family Feud are gathered from surveys not professionals.

    Even with all the bullshit I still overcame the challenge. Granted I feel I should've accomplished this much faster than I anticipated but the journey this game put me on is what really started to make me think about blogging my journey through earning retro achievements. The amount of research and data collecting that went into this game is more than I was expecting. I won't lie since all these games have to be played on a emulator I used this to my advantage. Pausing the game and searching for answers is not only available but to be expected to earn these achievements. Call it cheating if you want, but I welcome you to try and get all these answers right by memorizing or just knowing what people's answers were in 1989. But when playing this game & having a 3 strategy guides open with all different types of answers to the questions, I kept finding myself stuck with questions & no answers on the guides. The guides were rather pretty big too, so it surprised me when I came across so many questions that there were no answers on the guides. This lead me to search even deeper online thinking 'There has to be a place where all the answers are'. I didn't go on some long extensive search deep into the dark web or anything but simple searches through Google & DuckDuckGo gave me no answers. I did happen to come across someone else's work for questions on the Family Feud's Achievement page which helped out immensely filling up some of the gaps of questions that I was missing. But even still I would come across so many that literally stumped me. This led me to start my own database of questions and answers, what I didn't expect is just how many questions this game had. With the total of 4 strategy guides open & my 500+ lines of questions/answers on my personal guide I was still getting questions I never saw or had answers too. This opened me up to a new found respect for this game. To how much bullshit it pulled by stealing questions by answering the most abstract answer ever just to win the round, to just calling game over without going to the next round when there is only a 20 point difference, the amount of questions this game has just seems to have no end in site. It's impressive just how many questions this game holds and how often it would throw different questions at you. It's RNG is better than Spotify's or YouTube's RNG algorithm.

     

    Most of the achievements were easy except the last two. Last two being "The Overachieving Family" & "The Perseverant Family". Other achievements to this game can be found here: https://retroachievements.org/game/1680. Winning the fast round with $200 always seemed easy to me when watching Family Feud. But when playing the game with these older questions caused a lot of headaches for me. But it also started making me learn about new things in life. Like different pet birds, what different types of roofs are made of, no one's grocery bill was $150. This is something else this game really caught my attention on, the fact that I was ending up trying to research online what some of these answers might be. Which opened my mind to new and different things. The other person who ended up helping me out a lot about this game is Megan. There were a handful of times I found myself with two wrong answers & only one answer left on the board asking Megan for the final answer. Many times she would be right other times she would give me two answers & I would choose the wrong one. 

    On one of my last runs of the night I was able to finally achieve the last two achievements needed. Although it wouldn't go without issues, first being my cat Stark stepping on the keyboard during gameplay. And not just any key, he pushed the space bar, which on the emulator it fast forwards the game. It wasn't like he did this at a time where there was nothing going on. He did it during the question time, so not only did I not have the chance to read the question I didn't have the chance even ring the bell to answer. The other family ended up answering it and passing the play to my family which than left me frantically trying to get my cat off the keyboard in the nicest way possible. By the time I did finally get him off the space bar I was already down two wrong answers and one more would of given the other family an opportunity. Luckily the question was one that was on my list of questions I happen to capture so answering them was easy.  After winning "The Overachieving Family" achievement I was entering what I originally thought would be my final round. Nervously hoping that the question the game would throw at me would be ones I have answers too. In previous runs when getting this close to the end of the game the game would throw some crazy curveballs my way by asking a question I had never seen before. But this time around it was a bit more forgiving, easily being able to get to the fast money part all I need was to win this and it would have put me over the $20,000 limit and earning "The Perseverant Family" achievement. But of course the game throw the a curve ball my way, in the fast money section it asked me all questions I had no good answers for. Including "Name someone who has to listen to problems all day long" which it was at this time I was finally able to get some points with the 'Judge' answer. But I didn't win it, forcing me to play against another family. The last family I went up against was named Trump, at the time I laughed cause I was thinking, "Oh great this is how I know the game is going to cheat me". But to how unclimactic this may sound but the game just threw me the most simplest questions. I mean this was like 3rd grader doing a 1st grader spelling bee. After that it put me in the fast money once again & just like the questions it tossed me in the round, once again I was able to smoothly slide through the last questions pushing me over the $20,000 limit.

   

    

    Thank goodness the game was able to spell Congratulations correctly. Although the only thing that makes me curious about this ending screen shot is that the 'leave' is written in a different font & color making me wonder if there is an alternate ending to this game or what? But with all of that said this was a quick over view of my journey collecting all the achievements for Family Feud for the NES. May the family ASSCHEEK forever be remembered in Family Feud NES History.