Hironobu Sakaguchi's "Final Fantasy"... the first of one of longest role-playing game series known to mankind. "Final Fantasy" is the game for the NES console that started it all.

The world is veiled in darkness. Winds don't blow, the seas are stormy, and the earth rots. All people can hope for is that the ancient prophecy will be finally fulfilled. "When the world is veiled in darkness, four warriors will come..." And indeed, they come - the four characters you have previously chosen. Their first quest is to free a princess from the evil Garland.

"Final Fantasy" uses a turn-based combat. The enemies wait until your entire party have performed the moves, and the ATB (active-time battle) system is not used. You can buy weapons and rest in the towns, and the world map is populated by monsters, with which you will be engaged in random fights.

Before the game starts, you choose four characters from six different classes: Fighter, Thief, Blue Belt, White Mage, Red Mage, and Black Mage. Which four classes you choose for your character is entire up to you. You also give the characters names.

The Paramekian Empire decided to take over the world. Its soldiers and Dark Knights persecute innocent people, burn whole villages, hunt down brave warriors. Now Phin, the homeland of the four heroes, has been destroyed by the evil empire. Only four young warriors could escape, three men and one girl. On their way to a neighbor town Altea, they were attacked by the Dark Knights. Three of them were brought safely to Altea by the order of the rebel army. But one has not yet been found...

This second installment of the glorious series features turn-based combat, without using the later ATB (active time battle) system. You choose the four user of your party before the game starts. However, while the original Final Fantasy allows you to choose between six character classes, here the game chooses them for you. You can only give names for the four heroes.

The kingdom of Baron has undergone a significant change recently; the province has become the first in the world to create airships that make global travel a simple accomplishment, and has thus immediately established itself as one of the world's primary powers. But as the adage goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and as of late the king of Baron has been making moves to ensure his power will remain absolute in the years to come. To that effect, he has sent his minions out into the world, scavenging for the mysterious and potent elemental crystals for some dark and as-of-yet unrevealed end.

The Red Wings are the kingdom's elite fighters, handlers of Baron's airship fleets and the most trusted of the king's subjects. At their lead is Cecil, an orphan and now the Dark Knight of Baron, by request of the king, the man who took him in. With the airships, they have looted and burned towns, killed innocent subjects of other lands, and most recently stolen the crystal of water from the helpless town of Mysidia. Cecil, like any good soldier, has been able to justify these actions under the classification of "just following orders"... until now. Even though he wears the armor and wields the sword of the Dark Knight, he is not heartless, and his actions weigh heavily on his conscience. But the king has been kind to him, so he will not abdicate his position or remove the mantle of Dark Knight that he loathes so much.

This is the setup of Final Fantasy II (known as Final Fantasy IV in Japan), the first of the trio of Final Fantasy games released on Nintendo's 16-bit platform. With Final Fantasy II, Square Soft finally began establishing a name for itself in the U.S. While it resembled its 8-bit predecessor in many ways, there were plenty of new additions to the Final Fantasy world for fans on both sides of the Pacific.

The storyline, hinted at above, takes plenty of twists and turns in various directions, always focusing mainly on the trials and tribulations of Cecil but branching out to include the tales of many characters. You can have up to five user in your party at one time, although unlike later entries in the Final Fantasy canon, you don't control who you have or when you have them; the whims of the story dictate that. Each character is presented at a different point in the game, and all have a goal to accomplish, adding more subtext to the overall story.

The quest itself takes place on a global scale, and this particular unnamed world boasts all manner of environments, from swamps to deserts to plains, as well as a wide host of caves, castles, and other assorted dens of evil for brave adventurers to wander around, slowly building experience until they can beat the area's boss and head on to the next bit of storyline. The adventure involves dwarfs, giant airships, an ancient evil, and even an excursion to the moon before all is said and done.

In the kingdom of Baron, powerful airships rule the skies. At the head of this elite fighting force is Cecil, Captain of the Red Wings, As our adventure begins, Cecil and his squadron are ordered to steal a powerful crystal from a rival kingdom. Upon their return, Cecil questions the King's orders and is stripped of his command. To prove his loyalty, he must slay a dreadful monster and deliver a mysterious package to a neighboring town. But when the package explodes, destroying everyone, Cecil and his friend Kain vow to fight the King's dark forces. Will you be able to save the world from their evil plan to control the crystals?

In a remote village of Ur, four orphan boys were raised by the priest Topapa. Once, the Crystal of Wind, guarded by the people of Ur, sank deep into the earth. The four boys decided to retrieve it from there and went down into an underground cave. But when they found the crystal, it spoke to them and from its words they understood they were chosen for a much more important and world-embracing mission...

"Final Fantasy 3" is the third Final Fantasy game for the NES platform. It is the last Final Fantasy game that does not use the ATB (active time battle) system (until it was removed again in "Final Fantasy X"). The turn-based battle engine has been improved: if the enemy is defeated, the next character will automatically switch to another enemy, and not hit the air, like in the previous two games. Before the game begins, you give names to the four boys, which look the same (only in different colors) and belong all to the same class. Some minor issues were slightly changed to resemble more the classical Final Fantasy look (such as the menu layout etc.).

A world once vibrant with the power of magic has plunged into an industrial age, one that has raped the countrysides, disempowered its people, and brought tremendous conflict that has touched every corner of the globe. All the lands are now governed by a corrupt empire, headed by Emperor Gestahl, who uses powerful machines to keep the world at bay.

There is also another weapon, one far more powerful than any conventional powers: a young girl named Terra whose blood is half of the mysterious creatures known as Espers, the last remnants of that magical time so long ago. They have turned her into a biological weapon with their mind-controlling slave crown.

But Terra will slip free of the Empire's grasp and meet up with a young rogue named Locke, a man living with the pain of a lost love who he could not help. Together they will begin an epic journey that will stretch across the land, perhaps even bringing it to its end. But the ultimate question is whether or not the powerful Empire is really the most dangerous threat to the heroes and the world, or if somehow there is a force even more powerful, chaotic, and deadly that is pulling the puppet strings from behind the veil.

So begins Final Fantasy III, known as Final Fantasy VI in Japan, the last domestic Final Fantasy to appear on the Super NES. Final Fantasy III is a role-playing game which spans the course of several years and incorporates sixteen different characters for you to play, each with his or her own back-story and plot. These episodes are introduced into the story as players achieve certain milestones.

The game boasts hours of gameplay and many different locations to explore. Familiar Final Fantasy faces and items make an appearance during the course of the game, from Chocobos and Mogs to airships, masamunes, and other objects. Most of the characters have at least one different and unique skill, such as the ability to do combo power moves, emulate other animals, and capture and summon the powerful Espers hidden around the world, from Bahamut to Ragnarok.

Final Fantasy III also has a magic system similar to other Final Fantasy titles, with basics such as Fire, Ice, Bio, Warp, plus a host of spells new to the franchise. It additionally features two different versions of the same world, before and after a war: The World of Balance and The World of Ruin. Final Fantasy III includes battery backup that allows players to save three different games on the same cartridge.

This hack fixes a few obvious bugs in the original Final Fantasy III game. Bugs fixed include spelling, grammar, story continuity, and programming errors.

It does not reverse any changes made by the the NOA translators and censors.

The backstory of Final Fantasy V is revealed in phases through cutscenes and interactions with non-playable characters. One millennium before the events of the main story, a powerful mage named Enuo imperiled the world using the power of an evil entity called the "Void". The people retaliated by using twelve legendary weapons to vanquish Enuo; however, the Void itself could not be destroyed. Consequently, the people split the world's four elemental Crystals into two sets, effectively creating two worlds. The Void then became sealed in a dimensional cleft between the two worlds.

Nearly a thousand years passed without incident, and both worlds prospered due to the powers of their Crystals of Wind, Water, Fire, and Earth. New kingdoms and towns flourished, and travel by ship acted as a critical means of commerce and communication. However, a sinister force was stirring in the second world

In Japan Final Fantasy III was actually FF6. This is the original Japanese version that has been translated into English by fans, instead of by NOA. A few programming bugs in the original game have also been fixed.