Fnord Incorporated

warning: i am going to geek out for a minute or two.

i have a list of my top five favorite video games of all time.

ChronoTrigger (snes)
Final Fantasy III (snes)
Legend of Zelda: A link to the past (snes)
Secret of Mana (snes)
Lufia II (snes)

i pretty much lost interest with most video games once the systems started moving away from cartridges. i cant stand the long load times, i dislike the emphasis on graphics rather than story. if i had my way, i would go back to all games being purely sprite based. there is a decent culture built around this same feeling. i know at least one friend who is in the process of writing and making his own pixel based RPG because he shares the same feelings.

So back story out of the way, a year or so ago, i bought the new release of Final Fantasy VI Advance. This is basically a rerelease of Final Fantasy 3, but with a new cleaned up translation done by Tom Slattery. It is pretty good, but i miss the old Ted Woolsey translation that was done for the Super Nintendo.

I have played this through three or four times since i got it and have had a hell of a lot of fun. recently i got the itch to play again and pulled it out.. in an attempt to get everything accomplished before the catastrophic point of no return mid game, i decided i would take advantage of a walk through. this is something i try to refrain from doing, but sometimes it is easier to reference someone elses work, especially if you have already hammered out a game ahell of a lot of times.

i am now officially glad that i did so. i have not even referenced what i got the walkthrough for yet, mainly because the writing of the introduction is incredibly incredibly enjoyable to read. i decided that i would back it up, post it for access here and throw a snippet of it up for reading.

i know that most people who visit thsi site will not be interested in this, but, as always, tell me it sucks and move along.. there is no reason to try to force you to read it.. you will be missing out though.. seriously..

if you want a great introduction, read the foreword,
for straight up humor, scroll down to the introduction excerpt,
if you want the whole kit n kaboodle, scroll down to the GameFaqs link

Foreword written by Imzogelmo

The year was 1994.
Until that time, humanity seemed a bleak existence — why, the 20th century alone saw the world ravaged by two world wars, a tense period known as the Cold War, and various regional conflicts. Finally, in the latter decades of the century, a new ray of hope emerged — the video game. Instead of fighting and killing one another, now mankind could do sovicariously or, if it was preferred, two could team up and do battle against
a fictional foe.

Like all forms of expression, the video game underwent many reformations (or generations) before the recipe became “just right.” Several genres of game sprang into being: platform games, shoot-em-ups, action/adventures, sports, puzzlers, fighting games, and RPGs. Each type of game appealed to a different
type of player or interest, and all the while advances were being made both in capacity of games’ data and complexity of the hardware used to run it. By the early 1990’s, the types of presentation that would work with a given genre were well-established, and players could afford to specialize in a particular genre without narrowing the field of games too greatly.

That brings us back to 1994, or, as Nintendo called it, “The year of the cartridge.” In that year,  _Final_Fantasy_VI_ was released, and there was much rejoicing. The genre was RPG; the fictional foe was the evil Emperor Gestahl, and later, the pompous nihilist Kefka. Sure, there were other RPGs before it, but none that struck the perfect balance of character similarity vs. diversity, importance of storyline vs. gameplay, and plot linearity vs. non-linearity.

The depth of characters and robustness of the game engine (plus the time investment required to fully explore the nuances of the game) made this one of the highest-rated games in terms of replayability. Furthermore, the vivid graphics and moving musical score made it a complete experience, not just a game.

“But it is just a game!” I hear someone in the back say.

No, it is not just a game. In the fast-paced world where information is old as soon as it can be emailed, a video game generally has a very small window of time that it is considered new or exciting. For the early history of
video games that may not have been so true, but for the entire history of this game, the internet has been a very influential medium for discussion among players. For many fans of the series, this is still the greatest game, in spite of the hype surrounding some of its successors. So no, it is not “just a game” — it is a culture. And like many great cultures, it needs great works to explain, enhance, and record its story.

To document every piece of useful (and no-so-useful) data on a culture — that’s a difficult task. Many approximations have come forward, but always they have had inaccurate, inconsistent, or insufficient information. That is not meant as an insult on previous guides — like I said, it’s difficult. Much information has been uncovered through deliberate playing and replaying of the game, through hacking its internal code and data, and through combined effort of its many fans. This guide seeks to improve upon and surpass all
previous attempts. This guide seeks to be the great work of which I speak.
This guide covers _everything_.

 an excerpt from Djibriel’s Introduction.

The original document was first released in November 2005, and we’re roughly two years down the road now. It may seem weird to some that ’simply ‘adapting the original 1381 kB file took about as long as writing the monstrosity in the first place, but you’d be surprised at how much work it is! Saint Jerome and Ted Woolsey would’ve shared my pain I’m sure, had they not both passed away 16 centuries ago.

At the very start of this document I’d like to mention that none of this would have ever happened if there weren’t so many righteous characters out there who advised my walkthrough to people on the message boards, who e-mailed me just to say they enjoyed the FAQ in one way or another or otherwise made me feel like I didn’t spend all this time just for personal enjoyment… I had a market to work for. Hotels around the globe replaced their Holy Bible with a printed version of the Battle Tactics Walkthrough. Rumors have comely women carry snippets of my guide in their panties to feel sexier and more confident. Like Stephen King and Robert Jordan, I had to struggle to deliver my ultimate work before Death’s ever-fickle hand took me in its grip. Before you, you see the results. The all-inclusive Walkthrough and Battle Tactics Guide for Final Fantasy VI Advance.

But what is this document you’re seeing? Does it really contain everything? Is it some kind of Hitchhiker’s Guide to FF VI Advance? The Encyclopedea CCLV VI Supremea? The Cosmog Sutra, where you’ll learn all about Tantric Gameplay (lasts for hours; winning the battle is NOT the main goal)?

Anyway, thats all i had. it was just well written and continues to be so all the way through the end.

link to the orgininal file on GameFaqs

The Advance Walkthrough and Battle Tactics Guide; WoB
Version 1.2
Djibriel, August 2007
~~~~~~~~~~~
“Read this” graffiti image found via google images in a subdirectory called ~epstein on OFB.net
lots of great images in both places, go check them out if you get the chance