In 1990, the first Final Fantasy game was released for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. The next two games in the role-playing game series, also released for the original Nintendo, weren’t translated into English, and we wouldn’t get versions of those games for decades. There have been several remakes of these games over the years, including a few in 3D.
But a new set of remasters of these first three games have recently been released. The Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters stay much truer to the originals than the previous remakes - the graphics are updated, but mostly just with better colors and shading. The artwork is all fundamentally the same as it was in the original releases.
The music, always a hallmark of the series, has all been lovingly rearranged by the series’ original composer, Nobuo Uematsu. Every song feels like the definitive version of that specific track, in a way that previous remakes never accomplished. Like the graphics, they seem like what the originals would have always been, had the technical capability been there.
All three of the games play essentially like the originals, with a few quality-of-life improvements that smooth out a few of the rough edges. Each has a distinct story and characters, and although the series didn’t get deep into dramatic storytelling until the fourth game in the series, they all have a plot that moves the action forward toward a climactic battle to end the game.
The biggest complaint about these games I’ve seen is actually the font - for a game that relies so heavily on reading, the font that was chosen is narrow and hard to read. However, fans are working hard on unofficially fixing this.
The games are available on smartphones and PC, and later this year, they will be joined by Pixel Remasters of the three games in the series originally released on the Super Nintendo - Final Fantasies IV, V, and VI.
