Who was the first summoned beast in Final Fantasy history? It turned out to be the divine dragon Bahamut!
This is the 641st original article of the Old Boy Game Box, by @Overlord Crab
When it comes to "summoned beasts", many players' first reaction is the Final Fantasy series.
As an important element of FF, summoned beasts have almost become representatives of the game, such as the summoned beast Saint Dragon Bahamut in the title logo of Final Fantasy 5.
Although the title of Final Fantasy 10 does not summon beasts, the heroine Yuna is a summoner.
So do veteran players know which game first introduced summons in the Final Fantasy series? The answer is Final Fantasy 3 on the red and white machine
As for the first summoned beast to be designed, it was not a chocobo, but Odin, who was famous for his iron sword.
After the first two games of Final Fantasy achieved unprecedented sales and popularity, the game brand has become a hot presence in the game industry of parent company Square , so how to make the third game in the series has become the most critical issue in the company.
The first two generations of D&D dragons inspired by dungeons and dungeons and white and black magic systems seem to have reached the end of the game, including FF2's new class Dragon Knight and Dark Knight, which are based on the previous generation of classes.
In Final Fantasy 3, the main producer Hiromichi Tanaka proposed to design a monster character that could appear to help us fight enemies during the battle, which would create a "monster vs. monster" feeling.
So this idea was implemented in the game, and the first summoned beast to be finalized was Odin, inspired by an original knightly drawing by the art design Yoshitaka Amano.
However, the knight originally held a sword, not the eternal spear Gungonir held by Odin, the main god of Norse mythology.
Tanaka said that he should be careful, anyway, this is the world of Fantasy, who said that Odin can't use a sword? So this sword developed into the famous iron sword in the FF series.
Tanaka felt that the attack method of this monster companion should be a little cooler, rather than the magic effect in the first two games just splash screen and texture overlay. So a foreign programmer, Nasser Gibeli of Iranian America, used a magic called "CRT to integrate separate scan lines" to realize this idea for Tanaka.
Specific to the game, he wrote the code to move the scan lines left and right when the game image was generated, so as to achieve the effect of separating the upper and lower bodies of the monster, as if it was cut in two by Odin, and this animation system could be implemented on the weak FC platform, which surprised the production team members at the time!
Starting with Odin, the design of Final Fantasy summoners completely freed themselves, and soon the series mascot chocobos appeared in the ranks of summoners.
Among them, Old Crab believes that several summoned beasts with excellent design, such as the ice demon Shiva, mostly appear in the image of ice and snow beauty; Thunder God Ram, the image of an old man with a hanging beard, can unleash advanced thunder attribute magic; Flame Demon Everett, a horned demon burning with hell flames; The giant Titan who shook the earth, these four summoned beasts represent the four magical elements "earth, water, fire and wind".
In addition, there are three more superior summoned beasts, including the aforementioned iron sword Odin, the legendary sea monster Leviathan that can launch a powerful waterspout, and the holy dragon Bahamut, who can also cut enemies in half and spray millions of nuclear fusions, and Nasser also created special performance effects for each of the above summoned beasts.
The class of summoning monsters was originally named "Illusionist", "Magician" and "Sage", and the Magician Illusionist looked similar to the GameBoy game "SaGa" developed at the same time as the period, I don't know if the two production teams visited each other.
The three class skills "Summon" activate summoned beasts, which are designed to have "white", "black" and "fit" effects. In Final Fantasy 3, after touching the Water Crystal, you can qualify as a Magician, a lower-level class of summoning, and can randomly activate the white and black effects of summoned beasts.
From the Earth Crystal, you can summon a superior class Demon Realm Phantom, which can summon a more powerful combination effect. The costume for this class is the classic of the summoner of the future Final Fantasy series - a wide green hooded robe and a unicorn horned image on his head.
Finally, the summoning obtained from the Forbidden Land Eureka and the ultimate class of the legal system, the Sage, is proficient in white and black magic and summoning magic, and his ability growth is also the highest in the legal profession.
Final Fantasy 3, which founded Summoned Beasts, was just in full swing because it was during the console revolution period.
Square is also stepping up the production of games for new consoles, and there is no separate overseas version for FF3, which has led to relatively low attention from the third generation internationally.
Fortunately, the domestic FC version has been localized by a certain star technology, so many players of that era are fortunate to play the Chinese version of the classic game.
Final Fantasy 3 was not remastered for a long time, and rumors spread that the game's source code was lost within the Smiths. In fact, this is all rumors, even if the source code is lost, the original materials such as the plan still exist!
To make a game on a new console and a new platform, the workload is certainly not comparable to the red and white machine era, and the source code of the time is not required to remake a new game.
Old crab feels that it is still difficult to produce three generations of transplants or remakes due to insufficient heat. But after the advent of the new century, SE, which had begun to corrupt internally, transformed into a cold rice specialty with a spatula in hand, and finally launched a complete remake of Final Fantasy 3 in the NDS era.
The old crab still has to thank the fried cold rice pacesetter SE, this plate of fried rice I eat delicious!
Author: Overlord Crab
Editor: Xiao Lei