Final Fantasy IV

I'd been debating in my head which version of Final Fantasy IV to play when the time came and had not yet made a decision. Last night I finished Final Fantasy Adventure which put FFIV on the docket. I woke up early this morning and finally made a decision... I'm going to play the NA release of the game for the Super Nintendo. I'm also going to play the DS version as well to see the differences first hand, though I am going to play it through completely on the SNES first and likely only play the DS version on the TTC.

I ran into my first problem when my SNES wouldn't acknowledge that a game was plugged into it. I tried Final Fantasy IV, Gradius 3, and Final Fantasy VI with no luck. So I resorted to the old standby... I blew into it. I vaguely recall reading that blowing is actually a bad idea since you're likely to force the dust in deeper to the connectors but whatever. In retrospect I probably should have used the can of compressed air that was sitting on a nearby counter... At any rate, it loaded up a game after that, though nudging the cartridge sent it to a black screen. I gave it another quick blow and made sure to not bump it and it seemed to work fine. I don't have any working SNES controllers so I'm using a Super Famicom controller which ordinarily wouldn't be a problem but the cord is really short and I'm a little worried that I'll end up yanking on the console when I turn to get a drink or something and reset the game. Guess I need to save often!

I played through the game up to the end of the first dungeon before hitting the showers before work. Mist dragon died really fast and only got off one shot of her brutal counter-attack AE.


Perhaps the neatest thing is I changed the main character's name to Nick (of course) and got referred to as Nick, Captain of the Red Wings. Hmm...