“Final Fantasy I & II” now available on the App Store

Every couple of years, Square-Enix dusts off the first couple of games of the Final Fantasy series, gives them a vigorous spit polish and then throws them on the gaming handheld du jour. So if you haven’t played Final Fantasy I or II on the original NES, PSP, PlayStation, GBA, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, ad infinitim… good news! You can now pick up both Final Fantasy I and FInal Fantasy II are now available over on the App Store.

The original Final Fantasy game includes five bonus dungeons, as well as the Soul of Chaos and Labyrinth of Time extras added to some of the more recent ports of the game. As for Final Fantasy II, you also get five bonus dungeons, as well as the Soul of Rebirth and Arcane Labyrinth packs.

These classic RPGs will keep you busy for dozens of hours, so from that perspective, $9 is a steal… but I’ve never personally felt that the first couple of Final Fantasy games aged particularly well, and while the new sprite work is undeniably attractive, the gameplay and story in the games seem more like an archeological curiosity of modern gaming than anything I’d want to revisit. So I’ll hold on to my $18 for now… but wake me up when Square-Enix gets around to porting Final Fantasy VI to iPhone OS, would you?

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John Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in Gaming, iPhone Apps, News |

http://ihbs.co.uk Ben
having never played the original of these two (I hopped on board for final fantasy X and got every one except 11 since) Im quite interested in these two. how long were the original games? is it the full gmae or a simple mini game?
Cameron
$9 is actually pretty expensive considering I picked up the GBA combo cart (I and II) for that price a few years ago.
@Ben: You can probably finish FFI in about 20-30 hours, depending on how much you grind. I’m sure the difficulty is from the GBA/PSP versions, and not the original, which makes them faster.
I seem to recall FFII is a little longer.
And yes, it’s the full games.
http://ihbs.co.uk Ben
@camereon,
thanks! take into consideration the portability (one less device to carry around) and it would probably work out at an ok cost? for 20-30 hours gameplay its one of the longest games on the iphone to date, which could alone justify its price tag?
Church of Apple
That’s a pretty good price for them. Timeless games. I think V was the best pre-playstation version, though.
http://gereen.dk Ulrik Damm
I’ve played Final Fantasy 1 PSX version and played some of FF2, and I loved those games! I got FF1 for iPhone, and it’s an awesome port, even through it runs a little sluggish on my iPhone 3G :( Going to buy FF2 when I’m done, and I really hope that they’ll also make the rest :)
Yukeake
I’d advise anyone with a 2G/3G that the games are *very* sluggish. They’re still playable, mind you – the turn-based nature of the combat means it’s not crippling – but it’s very obvious these have *not* been optimized for the lower speed processors in the previous-gen iPhones.
Probably not a huge issue (as early adopters of the 3G will be out-of-contract this summer and quite a few will likely upgrade to this year’s model), but it would be very nice if Square were to patch this up a bit.
Also, reboot your phone after installing – at least on mine, it was incredibly crashy until I did so.
Juan
That’s great!!! Now I can relive these great games! Do you guys think think that there will be more of this stuff? If so please email me about what you think! Thanks again!!!