Final Fantasy Adventure

Final Fantasy Adventure is basically "top-down Zelda meets Final Fantasy", and pulls double-duty as both a Final Fantasy spinoff and the humble first game in the Mana series... back when Square still had humility to speak of.

It was reprinted late in the Game Boy's lifespan (around the release of the Game Boy Color) by Sunsoft, of all companies.

Unused Items#

A total of 21 unique items (with 22 entries) are unused. Many of the slots in the English version are blanks or consist of garble, but the Japanese version has unique names for each of these items.

Item Hex #	Japanese	Translation	English Garble
0D	フレアウェーブ	Flare Wave	rCE:-
0E	フレアバズーガ	Flare Bazooka	drC
16	あほうヨビ2	Dummy Spare 2
1A	ひのゆびわ	Fire Ring
1B	さびついたかぎ	Rusted Key
1C	あおいたま	Blue Orb
1D	あかいたま	Red Orb
1E	マナのペンダント	Mana Pendant	gW
20	ミスリル	Mythril	hOpq
21	スターサファイア	Star Sapphire	OR-MdwDC
23	バランサー	Balancer
24	ムーンクリスタル	Moon Crystal	i-vJpORq
26	シナリオヨビ2	Scenario Spare 2	NWpGn
27	シナリオヨビ3	Scenario Spare 3	NWpGn
28	シナリオヨビ4	Scenario Spare 4	NWpGn
29	シナリオヨビ5	Scenario Spare 5	NWpGn
2B	ムーンクリスタル	Moon Crystal	i-vJpORq
30	たいまつ	Torch
31	ドワーフのランプ	Dwarf Lamp
34	だいちのドラム	Earth Drum
35	モーグリのふえ	Moogle Flute	k-
39	リザーブ	Reserve	p

There doesn't appear to be anything associated with these items except the names in the final game. While some of these seem to be debug remnants, most of them may indicate that there would have been more story/key items at one point.

Although anecdotal, a Blue and Red Orb (sharing exactly the same names in Japanese) are used in the first SaGa game. As an oddly similar but irrelevant parallel, SaGa 1 also shares a virtually identical subway fight/ride with this game's sequel. (Secret of Mana also shares Final Fantasy III and SaGa 2's useless save file counters only done in those three games, but we're getting off track here.)

• Flare Wave and Flare Bazooka are grouped with the other item spells, suggesting Nuke could have also been purchased at stores. This may have been removed since Nuke is required to solve an in-game puzzle which gates progress through the main story. The spells do work, but they do not appear to do any damage. It should also be noted that the Flare Wave item's Japanese name does not match that of the Cloud of Darkness' signature Particle Beam ability - called Flare Wave in the AWJ fan translation - which is instead called はどうほう.
• Fire Ring and Rusted Key are grouped underneath the usual keys.
• Blue Orb, Red Orb, Mana Pendant, Mythril, and Star Sapphire are all placed around the Mirror. The Mana Pendant is a key item you temporarily obtain at one point in the game, and the Mythril is the Bag of Silver you obtain while aiding Watts in his quest. Those two items are not accessible in the menu.
• The second Moon Crystal is grouped with the other crystals (between Crystal and Nectar). It is likely this item was to provide some form of temporary powerup.

The English garble is a result of the Japanese character set being replaced with the English one and the tile locations for each character were never updated. However, many appear to be changed, since a number of blank characters do not match when comparing font tile sets:

• Flare Wave: Added the spell orb icon and removed the last character.
• Flare Bazooka: Removed everything after the C.
• Rusted Key: Removed everything after the crystal icon.
• Mana Pendant: Removed everything after the armor icon.
• All Scenario Spares: Removed the 6th character.
• Moogle Flute: Removed all characters after "k-".
• Reserve: Renamed to "p".
• All the blank ones were made blank on purpose.

Oddities#

• There are two items which cast the Ice spell: Blizzard and Frost. The problem is that the Ice spell is coded so that the projectile will always either turn the enemy into a snowman, or do nothing to them; it never actually does damage, and the chance to turn into a snowman seems to be hard-coded per enemy as all-or-nothing (thus making these items identical in function). Perhaps at some point the Ice spell did actual damage before the snowman transformation?
• The "Moogle" status has a cure in the form of the Moogle potion, but said potion is impossible to use as a Moogle (and thus a waste of money) because the A/B buttons are disabled when in the form, which eventually goes away on its own. Maybe the potion was coded before the code to disable the A/B buttons was programmed?

Regional Differences#

Title Screen#

Japan	US	Europe	Germany	France

The game was released in Japan as Seiken Densetsu, with "Seiken" being spelled in stylized letters on the logo. The Japanese version was subtitled Final Fantasy Gaiden on the packaging, but this subtitle doesn't actually appear on the title screen. When the game was released in North America, it was renamed to make the Final Fantasy branding more apparent.

It was released two years later in Europe as Mystic Quest, due to none of the Final Fantasy games being available on the old continent at the time. Square would reuse the title for a later Final Fantasy spinoff (with a very similar logo to boot). When that game was released in Europe, it became Mystic Quest Legend.

HUD#

Japan	US

• Even though the tiles/font used for the HUD were left intact in the English version, they decided to use the generic font that was built for the game instead.
• To accommodate the descending lowercase alphabet letters added, the numbers and letters were all raised by one pixel.
• The currency in the Japanese version is known as ルク (Ruku) but is just gold or GP in the English version, so the R was replaced with a G.

Censorship#

Due to Nintendo of America's policies on religious imagery, a couple of tiles were altered.

The Star of David was replaced with an eight-sided star (which, ironically, is also a religious symbol).

Japan	International

The coffins in Kett's basement had their crosses removed and replaced with a "V".