Halloween fun with Final Fantasy I

As mentioned back in Blog 2.0 (my second blog, now gone), I love playing Final Fantasy I, the classic Nintendo NES game.* I also have a little tradition to play it on Halloween, particular to fight my way through the Marsh Cave, one of the more difficult parts of the game early on. The tradition to play this game and this particular part of the game stems from when I was about 12 or so, and was playing one Halloween night with a good friend at the time named “Dave”. The Marsh Cave had lots of undead and spooky monsters, so it really fit the Halloween mood, and we had so much fun that night, we forgot all about Trick or Treating.

Anyways, I was stuck on call this weekend, and slammed with lots of issues to fix.** It wasn’t until about 11pm that I realized I hadn’t eaten dinner, nor had I played FFI, so I sat down, loaded the game and did my adventure in the Marsh Cave. Trouble was, was that this year, the adventure went really poorly, and so allow me to show you what happens when you fight in a dungeon and come poorly prepared.

Here’s my party leaving the safety of Elfland. I have plenty of good weapons and armor, but I didn’t have much money left for heal and pure potions. I figured I could power my way through without using them much:

Even in getting to the cave, I was ambushed by arachnids and poisoned twice. I brought 7 pure potions with me, and had to waste 2 of them before even arriving:

Ok, so here’s the main entrance of the Marsh Cave. Dark and spooky.

The Marsh Cave has two paths. One leads to an upper area with some treasure, while the lower path goes down to where your goal is. I took the upper path first of course, as I wanted some easy treasure. That too turned out to be harder than thought. The enemies in the Marsh Cave can be deceptively strong:

Those Red Bones are surprisingly tough, and with the Creep stunning people, the fight will drag out unless you use powerful spells from the beginning. Unfortunately, you also need those spells later, so I was trying to be conservative.

Here’s the crew by the way:

• Debu – the lead fighter. That’s my wife’s nickname for me. Means “chubby” in Japanese, but in a cute way. As the leader, I get all the best weapons and armor of course.
• Dude – the second fighter. He’s the high-school jock who couldn’t find a better job, so he decided to get a job outdoors fighting monsters. He does what I say though, dammit.
• Hime – the white mage. This is my nickname for my wife, which means “princess” in Japanese. Pronounced like “hee-may”.
• Mr. X – the black mage. People who still play the game*** love the mysterious character of the black mage, so the name just seemed fitting. I always use it for the Black Mage.

Anyways, before long, I was ambushed by scorpions (a strong enemy in this dungeon) and poisoned again twice and nearly had one character killed. That used up heal potions and pure potions fast, for limited gains. I pondered going back to Elfland after completing the upper path, but felt my luck would turn around soon.

Instead, it was a grueling fight down the lower path, where I was poisoned again 5 more times. By then I only had 3 pure potions left, so two of my characters were poisoned and there was nothing I could do about it. By now I was 3 levels deep into dungeon so I decided to press on and then run back out when done. Here’s the final goal of the cave: fighting the wizards and taking the crown:

Wizards, despite their name, don’t use any magic. They just hit hard and fast, and most magic won’t harm them except Lightning magic. Being the cheapskate I was though, I hadn’t spent the money on a LIT2 spell for Mr. X though. DOH! The wizards also decided to gang up on Mr. X and he was killed in the 2nd round. I also skimped on armor for him thinking I’d find better stuff in the Marsh Cave and save money. Oops!

The fighters did manage to kill the Wizards and I got the Crown, but getting back out of the dungeon was getting hard now that my black mage was dead. On the fight back up, all three characters were poisoned by now and getting weaker with each step. This fight, near the entrance, pretty much ended my hopes of success:

The ghouls killed my white mage before she could use her HARM spell, which would have killed the whole lot of them. Meanwhile, the ghouls kept paralyzing my fighters. Eventually they did escape, but now near death.

My second fighter, Dude, died not long after, but I, Debu, did make it out barely. I used my last cabin to heal and rest, but this didn’t do much good. I was still poisoned, and the cabin didn’t recover enough life for me.

This fight pretty much was my downfall as I ran back to Elfland:

I just couldn’t run away as these weak enemies kept hitting me over and over. I actually did manage to flee, but I had 1 life left by the time an ogre attacked. He hit me over the head once, and that was it.

My party was destroyed and I had to play over. The lesson behind this is:

• Be prepared. Bring at least 20 pure potions, if not 20, to the Marsh Cave and 30 heal potions at least.
• Don’t be a cheapskate. It will always punish you in the long-run.

So that was my Halloween adventure! :p

Namuamidabu

P.S. Halloween in Ireland by the way is pretty much like Halloween in the US, but they had a lot more parades and lots of fireworks. Baby didn’t sleep well that night.

* – As my mom reads this blog, she’ll be proud to know that she bought me this game I think for my birthday one year. Thanks mom.

** – It’s also why my blog hasn’t been updated in days. This time of year is always a real grind at work due to holiday preparations and the sheer volume of work everyone has to endure.

*** – The game is more than 20 years old, but still commands a loyal following of l33t players. These guys are hardcore, but I am glad to see I am not the only one who still plays it.