Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster

There was a small trend on the Nintendo Entertainment System (and its Japanese equivalent, the Famicom) where the second installment of a game would alter the first game's formula only to return to and improve upon the first game's base. This could be seen with Castlevania, Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda, and of course Final Fantasy. In this case, the level-up system of the second game has returned to something similar to the first game, along with being able to choose a definitive class for each of your characters. The twist in Final Fantasy III is that now you could change those classes on a whim with the introduction of the job system. This, coupled with a map fully three times the size of the previous games, makes this a far more robust experience than Final Fantasy I and II and makes the fact that those two games were released on a single cartridge while Final Fantasy III was given a 3DS remake make more sense.

There were aspects of this game I enjoyed a lot more than the previous games, with more to explore and NPCs which were more fully realized. There's even brief cinematics littered throughout the game. This did seem to come at a cost to your protagonists and their personalities, and since the game could never be sure who you were bringing to a fight a lot of the bosses were fairly easy. There were only two instances where a certain job would be beneficial, both times heavily hinted at in the game itself. The protagonists, a group of four orphans initially called Onion Knights (and whom are given names and whatnot in the 3DS remake), also lack any motivation other than being chosen to go on this mission though the game's still enjoyable despite this. It's certainly a fuller game experience than the first two, and if you do choose to fully explore the world you'll find a lot to like and things to help you in your quest to stop the darkness from taking over the land. There was also a moment when I flew off the initial map and discovered another full map beneath it which would have blown my mind as a kid though I doubt I ever would have gotten that far.

If I had gotten that far, then there is a point when I would have just completely given up, and that's the last area of the game which is called the Dark World. The most powerful enemies in the game dwell here, and not just as one of the five bosses you have to face, but just wandering around the map. In fact, the man the game had thus far claimed was the ultimate evil and provided one of the more difficult boss fights in the game is just wandering around. You might have to fight him at any point in the Dark World, and you better hope you stocked up on whatever items you needed before you came here because once you're in the Dark World there's no escape. It's a treacherous slog of grinding and trying vainly to make some progress, any progress at all, and the only mercy is that you can save at any time in the Pixel Remaster. You couldn't do that in the original version of the game, so anyone who beat that is not someone you should mess with.

To be fair, the Dark World does get easier once you've defeated one of the four sub-bosses, as you can then use the crystal they were guarding to heal yourself indefinitely. This, coupled with the ability to turn off encounters and boost the experience you get from winning fights, gradually makes the Dark World less of a terror. You still have to contend with several enemies who can completely kill your party with one attack if you're not careful or strong enough, including the final boss who just keeps shooting your entire party with a particle beam that'll kill your entire party in three shots if you're not lucky.

In short, outside of a lack of protagonist personality and a punishing ultimate area, this game defintiely represented a step in a positive direction and showed the world what a Final Fantasy could be. Now, if they hadn't decided that part of this was an absolutely brutal final area, that would have been great but there's not a lot we can do about that now.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

At the beginning of the millennium when spending money was sparse for me and movies were far more expensive, I spent a lot of time on the sites belonging to the B-Masters Cabal, a group of people who reviewed (and some who still do review) movies that were bad, weird, forgotten, or in some cases just kind of fun. Most of these films were reviewed with a certain amount of affection, though there were always one or two which were obviously despised, but every so often there'd be a movie which was a true cult classic. The Abominable Dr. Phibes, starring Vincent Price, was one of these films. I don't remember much of the review, save that I'm sure they mentioned how darkly comic the film was, but it was more than enough to ensnare my teenage imagination and put me on the hunt for it. This, and the fact that it starred Vincent Price, who I first encountered in the context of The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby-Doo and later found to be a positive presence in whatever he chose to do. I even remember the exact moment my hunt bore fruit: I was chatting with an ex-girlfriend in Best Buy when my eyes happened to spy, sitting right there behind her, a two-pack of The Abominable Dr. Phibes and its sequel. I may have even gently pushed her aside to get to the DVD, which turned out to be a double-sided disc but still well worth whatever I paid for it.

The movie proved to be just as advertised: a darkly comic film starring Vincent Price. In truth, it's the tale of a super-villain taking revenge on those he believe took his wife from him, with the titular Phibes utilizing a loose interpretation of the Biblical plagues to murder the team of doctors (and one nurse) who had attempted and failed to save that wife. We know what's going on almost immediately, at least that he's going around murdering people in intricately planned and bizarre ways, with the protagonist only having to try to figure out why Phibes is doing this and who his next target will be, and if he can stop him. This protagonist is a Scotland Yard inspector named Trout, and his name seems only to serve to allow his superior to call him by the names of many other fish. The amazing thing about the movie, at least in the context of today's cinema, is that Phibes gets away with all of it. He murders everyone involved with his wife's failed surgery but one doctor, and even that can be counted as a win for Phibes due to the man's machinations. And then, his job done, Phibes retires to the darkness of the grave to be with his departed (and incredibly well-preserved) wife.

Even though I've watched the movie a number of times at this point, it's still enjoyable since everyone in the movie seems to be having a great time getting murdered, murdering, and trying to find a murderer and Price does steal the show, seeing as how Phibes is supposed to be wearing a life-like mask and so his mouth never moves with his dialogue coming from a cord hooked up to his throat and into various sound amplification apparati. There's also several musical interludes featuring Phibes and his mysterious assistant Vulvania, whose true nature is never revealed in this movie and I can't remember if it is in the sequel.

One of the most overtly comedic parts of the movie is when one of the doctors is murdered by a brass unicorn head launched through the air by a catapult in order to skewer him against a wall. This by itself is ridiculous enough in that it actually worked (though we don't get to see Phibes standing on a rooftop by a catapult, unfortunatley) but then we see them unscrewing the unicorn from the wall with the impaled doctor along with it, his feet twisting along with the unicorn.

There's honestly not a lot I can say against this movie. The plagues used do seem to be an especially liberal interpretation of them, and several of them use live animals and I can only hope that these animals emerged unscathed. In any case, I'm looking forward to the sequel, which I'll review next, and hopefully within the next few weeks.

QUICK BITS

MOVIE: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
PRIOR KNOWLEDGE: The B-Masters Cabal
OBTAINED: Best Buy
WATCHED BEFORE: Yes
WATCHED WITH: Alone
GOOD/BAD/MEH: Good