Introduction

I think everyone knows the deal about Final Fantasy II. Crazy-ass leveling system and a dark depressing plot that made it the black sheep of the Final Fantasy series, which combined with the coming Super Nintendo caused the game not to be released outside Japan.

What most people don't know is that the game was planned to come over here at some point, and in fact there was enough progress on that front that a preliminary translation existed. In fact, that translation eventually leaked online and is floating around even today, though it's not nearly as prevalent as the NeoDemiforce translation. However, this was merely a rough draft done by Kauro Moriyama (who also translated FF4's initial English release), and as a result there's a ton of awkward dialogue, misspellings, and just confusing stuff that would've inevitably gotten ironed out if Square decided to actually give it a wider release. So naturally I'll be showing this version off.

To get an idea of just what we're in for, here's the intro crawl.



This runthrough will focus on showing off the beauty of this translation as well as a quick look at Square's first take on a serious story full of death, death, and death. I'll cover gameplay, but if you're more interested in that I highly recommend Gabriel Pope's run of the game, where he really does the game justice and shows off the way you actually play this game. Mine will inevitably be clunkier, though I'll probably let you guys decide things.

If you want to learn more about this translation, check out this article on Lost Levels about it. It's where I learned about it long ago, and I'd completely forgotten about it until yesterday when I went back there for the first time.

As usual, spoilers in tags.

I post when I update on Twitter. I don't usually post other stuff, so you don't have to worry about me filling your feeds with random shit.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Chapter 1 - "He lost his mind to an airship."
• Chapter 2 - "Oh! No......!"
• Chapter 3 - "No one takes my Silver!"
• Chapter 4 - "Will we have to die soon?"
• Chapter 5 - "The King is damaged mentally."
• Chapter 6 - "You ruined my life!!"
• Chapter 7 - "I may not be your guide, but let me join you!"
• Chapter 8 - "Next attack of the Warship will be the end of time."
• Chapter 9 - "But it's ..free!!"
• Chapter 10 - "I was a little offensive, but I really liked you."
• Chapter 11 - "We finally came back to this Fin again!"
• Chapter 12 - "A knight name Hearn tried to be friends with the Dragons for 30 years."
• Chapter 13 - "We are all in here because of that old man's Xtal Rod!!"
• Chapter 14 - "I got lost by the shipwreck ....! .... I missed you ..!!"
• Chapter 15 - "Now I shall bring you to the Death!!"
• Chapter 16 - "Now! Be glad to be killed as the very first ones!!"
• Chapter 17 - "DarkLord sold his soul to an evil thing from the dark side."
• Final Chapter - "Memories of people cried bitter tears will soon be forgotten"

Fan Stuff

TurnipFritter drew a great depiction of the team we ended up with!


FeyerbrandX shows off the natural conclusion of Nathan Fillion's magical studies.


TurnipFritter shows off the logistics of traversing a tornado.


And of course, it's not a proper LP without some avatars courtesy of Explosionface.