I'm bored so let's talk about what may be the single most obscure Final Fantasy game: the MSX port of Final Fantasy 1.

So, what is the MSX? It's a Japanese home computer that generally comes in a single unit, with no devoted monitor, akin to the Commodore 64.

It was released in the early 1980's, and succeeded by the MSX2.

The MSX is where the Metal gear franchise began, which is probably its biggest claim to fame. There's also a very unusual Castlevania port.

Anyway, Final Fantasy was ported to the MSX. Yep. Before the multi-platform releases of 13, the original was the first multiplatform Final Fantasy.

This was also the only Final Fantasy released on a 3.5" floppy disc.

So, is anything different about it?

Yes, though mostly in terms of visuals and sound.

The MSX has a better sound system than the NES, so the music sounds MUCH fuller and punchier.

The battle theme sounds both more energetic and somewhat menacing.

The graphics, this is where it gets weird.

The MSX had more on screen colors than the NES. So it looks better, right?

Well, check it out. It has more shading, details, and color depth and just looks fantastic.

Here is a town from the NES version.

Compare to the MSX version.

There are more general differences as well. The menu border is gold. Certain things are colored differently, such as the ninja being magenta and the black wizard having purple hair.

So it looks better, right?

Here's the thing. The static image looks better.

But the MSX doesn't have built in scrolling. Scrolling is handled by the software. So MSC scrolling is VERY choppy.

Check out the video. When you move, it looks bad.

It's REALLY apparent with the airship, as the whole movement of the world is jerky.

This is partly why Metal Gear and the stealth genre ended up being what they are, but that's another story entirely.

Apart from that, the only other difference I'm aware of is that some dungeons have different music. the marsh cave, for instance, plays the same music as Matoya's cave and the Dwarf town, but in the NES version the marsh cave has different music.

There's not much else to say about this one, as it's really more of a curiosity with some extra audio/visual polish that is marred by a peculiar hardware limitation.

OH, and one reason this is so obscure?

The MSX was never released in the U.S.

It was mostly a Japanese machine, though now that I think, it MAY have had some presence in Europe.

There were plans to bring it over here, but by then Apple, Commodore, and IBM had such-

-an outsized presence in the market that no one thought there was room for another type of machine.