Fourteen years ago and a couple of console generations ago 2D gaming was entering its in-home glory days for the Nintendo fan with the release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. While there may not have been a large level of releases in the remaining quarter of 1991, one certain RPG came out that stood well among others not only in that year but in the many to come which was Final Fantasy IV (Final Fantasy II though for quite a few years to American audiences, but that’s another story.) Final Fantasy IV from the earliest teases of an excellent story within the introduction of the game lead a gamer into an experience unlike most others in an RPG in that era or for some time to come. While I am sure it could be argued Final Fantasy IV has the most well written and fleshed out story loaded with friendship, betrayal, death, triumph, and more well beyond anything else in the long standing series of games. The level of interaction and symbolism is something rarely seen in a title and it has been finally so well created for the American ‘Nintendo’ market beyond even the massively upgraded rewrite for the PSX release some years ago. Final Fantasy IV just in time for this Christmas has come to store shelves once again for the first time in fourteen years for those who never strayed away from Nintendo’s camp and I for one can tell you the wait was well worth it.

Audio and Visuals:
Final Fantasy IV back in its day on the Super Nintendo was a triumphant assembly of both a great upgrade in both audio and visuals from the 8bit Nintendo era. Final Fantasy IV as a Gameboy Advance game though thanks to some nice upgrades in both departments (for the most part) has raised the bar well enough to make it a high level companion for this handheld as well. The musical assembly of this game is nothing short of a magnificent piece of work put together by the acclaimed Square-Enix music composer Nobuo Uematsu. There is a stark level of fluidity with his compositions within this game which really brings together every last scene of the game in such a way it would pale in comparison without them. Each piece of music is a great companion to the activity given on the screen which plays a key element in development just as much as the script does much like in a theatrical released movie production. Not only though does every event in the game have its own special theme, but every single character has its own theme music as well which can add a bit of personality to the individual. Whether you are hearing a very depressingly toned sad piece of music because your party was just consumed by Leviathan, hearing an upbeat faster slightly cheerier piece of music as you fly along in your airship, or if you’re getting a rousing applause in the form of a jingle because you just won another battle all the accompanying music sets the pace perfectly again and again. The audio package is just so vast it can range from a simple harp playing theme, a rock like beat being banged out, to what appears to be a full orchestra playing for your pleasure out of your speakers. Thankfully so the music has not only been recreated from the Super Nintendo era but it greatly appears to be somewhat upgraded with some enhanced tracks and samples used for the pieces in the game. While the music thankfully has not been messed with by going the route of a remix, it has been cleaned up and beefed up in just the right ways to stay true to the original, yet adding just a bit more spice and clarity.

Sadly though the audio package as gorgeously done as it was in the music department can not be reported as a full on success in the least bit. Where the music accompaniment has been nicely improved the other half of the audio ‘coin’ has turned up a bit as a slightly ‘dirty penny’ as the saying goes. Now personally I have not touched the Bandai Wonderswan version of the game (let alone the Japanese handheld itself) I am at a loss to explain some of the sound effects. While in some cases some of the sound effects do sound true and in a few cases enhanced over the Super Nintendo era samples like the music was, some of the stuff is well off key, hell…actually it’s out in left field. I admit as a person who has touched all American versions of this game, I am at a loss to explain some of the sound samples so I have to guess one of two things. Either some samples were messed up in the conversion to the Game Boy Advance from the old cartridge, or they came over from the Wonderswan and were either messed up in the first place or again were due to the conversion. Needless to say more but while some sound effects are a treasure to the ear, others range from off-key to some nearly contemptible beep.

Having that been said though one would really then have to wonder if the video package were handled as well as the audio overall or perhaps had some shortfalls as well. Final Fantasy IV in its day had some early yet colorful RPG tiled graphics, some large lightly animated sprites, and used the Super Nintendo’s Mode7 graphics (scaling, zooming, and rotation) in very creative ways. Over time though Final Fantasy IV began to look a bit less artsy up against later Square Final Fantasy releases and other titles like Chrono Trigger. Thankfully I can report that Square-Enix did the right thing and put a quality effort into bumping up the game in the video department in quite a few ways, yet like the audio hit a quite small bump in the road along the way.

One of the greatest enhancements I believe to this package from Square-Enix was to throw away all the original sparsely colored and drawn background images during combat (where you spend most your time.) What was before a few color lightly drawn image has been replaced with some far more beautifully high color crafted imagery. For example deep within the core of the Moon late in the game you enter a crystalline like area and during combat on the original release some equally angled nearly two toned tiles were the background. This has been replaced with some more crystal tiling but with added color and depth which also has some other visuals around the wall areas as well. Within caves before where it would have been some dirt and rock on the ground now has a fleshed out cave wall with some higher detail. Things like this have been the normal with the upgrades of the visuals in the game. Even added to the title prior to hitting the title sequence now is a beautifully crafted introduction in which you fly into the screen over some cloud cover with a slow scroll to the right as it tells a story around some in game graphics scenes of various things going on that didn’t exist before. The truth of it is while not large changes there have been tons of small visual upgrades done across the board. At every level from that large intro right down to a small graphical wall tile or the sprite that represents your airship or the boat earlier in the game things have improved for the better. But as I alluded to leading into this section on graphics there has been a small slightly annoying problem added into the visual package. Again this could be poorly reused code from either the Super Nintendo or the Wonderswan but the zooming/scrolling sequences (the Mode 7 I mentioned) done during airship flight are slightly problematic as far as scrolling goes. While it’s not a noticeable problem going north and south, when you travel east and west (especially over a land mass) the graphical engine just chugs and drags off and on just enough to be annoyingly noticeable. It doesn’t hamper the gameplay but it will make you wonder why it can be smooth one way but not the other.