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Category: ff2
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FFII: Upwind Released
For the Whirlwind family of mods, click here. For clymax’s projects, click here.
The Final Fantasy II: Upwind mod for the Famicom has been released courtesy of clymax.
The mod is a cousin of the Whirlwind mod for FFV and is intended to deliver an experience similar to Whirlwind‘s Open World mode.
The mod is recommended for use with the English fan translation by Demiforce as improved by Chaos Rush, available here. The Japanese version should also be compatible and will also be actively supported.
The mod can be identified by the “Wind” label in the main menu, just like in Whirlwind.
Release Build: Features
Chest loot is now fully randomized.
Development Build: Features
Dev builds are available from our Discord and have advanced features.
You will no longer get random encounters unless you hold down the B button while walking. For a demo, see the video below.
Movement speed has been doubled in the overworld and in towns and dungeons.
You can now save even in towns and dungeons.
The airship can now be called by pressing the A button anywhere.
You will start with all key terms already learned.
Party members can now have the same name. This is for future seeding purposes.
The Jade Passage can now be accessed early. Ten other sequence breaks have been created in the overworld.
Gil is now boosted to 10x.
The airship always moves at double speed regardless of item collection and regardless of toggling the B button.
The rates of leveling and stat ups are now boosted to 10x.
It is 4x easier to run away from battle.
True chest seeding has been added. To get this to work, the fourth save slot can no longer be used.
Chests will be seeded based on the first five letters of Firion’s name. The order of opening chests matters. Set (manual) seeding is now supported.
You can also toggle off chest randomization. Simply press the Select button when in the main menu or row menu. This lets you play with vanilla chest contents.
The boulder event in the Snow Cave has been disabled for now.
You are now granted the ship at game start.
The door in Kashuan Keep has been opened.
The doppelganger in Mysidian Cave has been despawned.
Ricard in Leviathan has been despawned. This is so Crystal Rod won’t be needed to pass through Leviathan. But he’s now believed to be unrecruitable.
The Cyclone can be accessed early.
Auto (random) seeding is now supported. Enter “auto ” as Firion’s name to get a different seed each time.
Gil chests now contain randomized items when rando chests is set to on.
Gil chests containing the same amount of gil will contain the same randomized item.
Several dozen dummy items have been filtered out of the pool of rollable items.
A secret warp to the Emperor has been added.
A new item has been added to the pool of rollable items. This item is now required to be in your inventory to use the secret warp.
Increases to max HP are now much more generously awarded.
What do you think?
If you’ve played FFII, how would you rate it versus other FF’s? What do you think about its unique battle system? Although no longer readopted in the FF series, that battle system later found a new home in the SaGa sister franchise.
If you haven’t played FFII yet, this mod offers a modernized way to enjoy a classic game that never got a Western release on the system. So what are you waiting for?
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Final Fantasy II
The Most Bizarre Speedrun in All of FF?
syo is a content creator specializing in analyzing the techniques used by speedrunners in FF games. You can follow syo’s projects via YouTube, Twitch, or Patreon.
No, not Final Fantasy II (IV) on the SNES. FF II on the Famicom.
Remembered more for its unconventional (by FF standards) system for character progression than for its existence in the 8-bit era of gaming, FF II gets a special treat for fans, in the form of a feature video from FF-speedrun content-creator syo. (The system would later find a new home in the sister franchise, SaGa.)
Speaking with FFV Central about what prompted the video to be made in the first place, syo says:
I became fascinated with the NES version when I learned about the use of the poison status to skip encounters.
The whole idea is what hooked me to make the video when I first found out about the speedrun.
Tactical Toxicity
We at FFV Central certainly didn’t know why staying poisoned would make a run go quicker (before watching syo’s video, that is).
All we could imagine was the punishment of playing through an RPG with the screen continually blurring in and out (or, apparently in this case, with audio blaring).
On what else stood out when making the video, syo says:
For [the] glitchless [speedrun category], I was surprised to learn that it’s significantly faster to have Firion solo carry the game, it seems wrong but it’s just how smart people figured out how to abuse the progression system.
Here at FFV Central, we’ve also seen the surprising effectiveness of solo carries versus party-oriented approaches, and it’s interesting to see this strategy come up in FF II.
For instance, notorious in the community of JRPG achievement hunters, the All Party Combinations Subset for Final Fantasy on Retro Achievements1 was ultimately designed to require party members not only being alive but also being within a certain level range of one another.2
On what syo may have done differently in the video, syo says:
Something I wish I’d touched on a bit more too is that on the overworld, encounters are always after a set amount of steps, so its very fast to just save 1 tile before an encounter, get the encounter, and then soft reset.
This tricks the game into thinking you got the encounter and lets you continue walking freely.
Sounds only slightly harder than entering the menu to do the same in the overworld in FFV. And much easier than memorizing a step route (typically the fastest option).
Leaderboard Denied
Speaking to FF Central further, syo lamented the lack of a recognized speedrun category for FF II’s English mod, despite some of the fascinating quirks this game offers to players. Says syo:
I’d really like to see . . . [interested] reader[s] . . . try their hand at speedrunning the game. The [FF I & II speedrunning] discord is a great place to get started, and with enough interest, the goal of getting these categories made will come naturally.
What do you think? Are you a fan of FF II on the Famicom? Do you think there should be a speedrun category for FF II in English?
A Plan Forward
If you have ideas to help make the leaderboard happen, check out the speedrunning Discord mentioned above or reach out to us.
For example, for the English mod to both be eligible for a category and attract runners, the English mod would need some playtesting to confirm that all the time-saving glitches in the Japanese version remain intact in the English mod.
It’d be preferable that such runs be recorded so that they can serve as a reference for the leaderboard moderators.
Some measure of the time difference between the Japanese and English versions should also be documented.
The modding team at FFV Central can investigate porting these glitches back over from the Japanese version if needed.
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