The classic 1992 role-playing game Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is now available on the Wii’s Virtual Console download service, Nintendo said Monday.
Mystic Quest is the black sheep of the Final Fantasy series, or at least it was 18 years ago. Designed for and released first in the United States, it was created under the generally incorrect assumption that Americans didn’t like Japanese role-playing games because they were too stupid to play them.
Then again, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see it was just ahead of its time: Final Fantasy Mystic Quest simplified the gameplay, put the focus on flashy graphics, did a lot of the work for you and was rigidly linear, largely eliminating free exploration. So basically it was Final Fantasy XIII.
That said, you might hear a lot of people slagging off Mystic Quest today, but I liked it. It’s ridiculously easy but the music is pretty awesome and the giant monsters are often hilarious. Might be worth $8.
Image: VG Museum