🎮 The race is on

I'm currently playing through Final Fantasy 4 Advance! You can find me live-tooting (HEH) screenshots and impressions on Mastodon with the #RenkonPlays hashtag. This is the archive of the first batch of posts.

Day 1

Over the weekend, Daikon started up his very first run of Final Fantasy IV on our Super Famicom Classic (loaded up with games courtesy of Hakchi, heh). The idea was that I would gently nudge him through it since I am a terrible nerd and have almost every nook and cranny of this game memorized, while staying mostly hands-off so that he could freely enjoy the story for the first time.

With how easy it is to import in games with Hakchi, you'd think the FC/SFC Classics were made to be modded...

He is playing on the original SFC Japanese ROM, as in not the Easy Type version (where the spells are numbered e.g. Blizzard 2 instead of Blizzara) and the text is all in hiragana/katakana, no kanji. This means it is quite hard to sight-read, and he is going quite slowly through the dungeons. There was a bit of a learning curve:

Daikon: What does サイトロ (Sight) magic do
Me: idk, try using it. It might show you enemy stats (note: mistaking it for Libra, ライブラ)
Daikon: I can't use it in battle
Me: Oh weird. On the overworld?
Daikon: Okay, here I go
*overworld map zooms out a bit. effect is canceled when hitting any button*
Daikon:
Me: ohhhh right, there WAS a spell like that
Daikon: That used TWO MP
Me: LMAO yes it costs MP to zoom out the map
Daikon: Rydia is out of MP now 😑
Me: Good thing you saw where town is on the map 😭

...and getting used to the way you're more meant to plow through battles in Final Fantasy, versus strategically picking when to stop and fight:

Daikon: Augh sick of random battles
Me: There should be a save point soon
Daikon: Oh okay good *runs from battle* *drops some gil* wtf I lost money by running
Me: wtf who runs from battles
Daikon: Running from unnecessary battles is important in JRPGs
Me: This isn't DQ, you're playing FF, just mash the Fight command 😭

...and knowing when to call it a night:

Daikon: Getting sleepy
Me: Go back to the last room and save
Daikon: Okay *does not go back, keeps pressing on*
Me: uh
Daikon:
Daikon:
Daikon:
Me: uhhh
Daikon:
Daikon:
Me: I thought you were sleepy
Daikon: I am
Me: Okay so why didn't you go back and save
Daikon:
Me: You wanna keep going?
Daikon: 🥺
Me: lol okay keep going then
Daikon: Thank you
Daikon:
Daikon:
Daikon:
Daikon: so sleepy
Me: 😑

Day 2

The next morning, I was getting jealous of just watching Daikon and decided to start up Final Fantasy IV Advance on the Miyoo Mini Plus. The idea was that I would try to catch up to where he was and then we could play through it together.

BUT. When I told my plan to Daikon, instead of stopping to let me try and catch up to where he was (he had just recruited Yang) he instead KEPT SPEEDING ALONG 💀 So now the race was ON.

After a couple of hours, I set aside the Miyoo to do something else. Coincidentally, Daikon declared he also was getting tired, turned off the SFC Classic, and went to do gamedev. I tried to sneakily turn my Miyoo back on but forgot to turn down the volume, and the instant he heard the FF4 music he was like "WHAT. ARE YOU PLAYING. THAT'S NOT FAIR." And then raced over to the sofa to play some more 💀💀💀

Daikon: You're playing the Advance version, which has B-dash. It's not fair!!
Me: The idea is that we are supposed to play this TOGETHER!!
Daikon: You have B-dash!!! And you can auto-sort your items!! I can't do that on the SFC version!!
Me: You're still like three hours ahead of me, the idea is to PLAY IT TOGETHER
Daikon: Just B-dash your way here!!!

Day 3

Woke up early to try and catch up with Daikon. The goal was to get Yang into my party before Daikon woke up and realized what had happened:

It was a rousing success:

Unfortunately, I did not entirely escape detection:

Daikon: Good mor--WHAT IS THAT. WHAT ARE YOU DOING
Me: *quickly hides the Miyoo*
Daikon: IS THAT FINAL FANTASY
Me:
Daikon: WHICH ONE
Me:
Daikon: WHICH FINAL FANTASY WAS THAT
Me: Which one do you think?!
Daikon: NOOOOOO
Me: By the way, I got Yang in my party now 😎
Daikon: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Day 4

I've been banned from playing this when Daikon is at work 😔 But I mean... how would he even know, you know? 🤔

Decided to progress a teensy bit by walking from Mt. Hobs to just outside Fabul. I mean, you can hardly even call this progress, right?! I also played around with some different overlays, and I think I like this darker one better than the scanlines from the previous batches of screenshots. It looks a lot better on the Miyoo screen, not so much in these screenshots unfortunately... oh well.

Daikon logged on and saw me posting screenshots of this to Mastodon and scolded me, so it is time to log off 😭 Until next time!!