New Release - Final Fantasy III Players Guide

[Areala]

Retromags Presents!

Final Fantasy III Players Guide

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Scanned By: Areala    Edited By: Areala    Uploaded By: Areala    Donated By: Areala

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[Ethereal Dragonz]

I had this one. I remember it well .

[ml0045]

I also had this one as well as the official Nintendo one. I remember this one being kind of big and little color but it did state likes and dislikes for each character and always was curious if it was official or not.

[Areala]

2 hours ago, ml0045 said:

I also had this one as well as the official Nintendo one. I remember this one being kind of big and little color but it did state likes and dislikes for each character and always was curious if it was official or not.

As best I can tell, this guide was official. Olafson writes in the acknowledgements section that a number of Squaresoft members, including translator Ted Woolsey, offered him help and assistance with the game's inner workings, which is the type of support unofficial guides had to do without.

Nintendo's own strategy guide is also official, since it was produced in conjunction with Square Japan specifically for Nintendo's exclusive use.

The only unofficial guide to the game, at least from that era, is Prima's Complete Forbidden Final Fantasy III Game Secrets, which was written based on a Japanese import copy of the game as well as early reports and preview builds seen in Western gaming media. It's objectively a terrible guide (the maps, especially, are just awful), but it also contains an absurd amount of tables, charts, and other stuff which isn't touched by the other two guides. I have it, and eventually it'll be archived here.

*huggles*
Areala

[JHD]

I was initially confused by the title since Final Fantasy III was a Japan-only release. Then I realised that it is actually a guide for FF VI. 

The first game in the series that I ever played was VII on the original PlayStation, so I am more familiar with the Japanese numbering system. I have since played all of 1 through 12, except for 3 and 11. 

 

[Areala]

4 hours ago, JHD said:

I was initially confused by the title since Final Fantasy III was a Japan-only release. Then I realised that it is actually a guide for FF VI. 

The first game in the series that I ever played was VII on the original PlayStation, so I am more familiar with the Japanese numbering system. I have since played all of 1 through 12, except for 3 and 11. 

 

Yeah, Squaresoft caused a bit of an issue with re-numbering Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI for their overseas releases. Although I am happy to report, every Final Fantasy game has received an official North American release, since Final Fantasy III came out on the Nintendo DS in 2006.

There were a multitude of guides produced for Final Fantasy VII, including multiple versions of the official guide from Brady, which were issued to correct mistakes and omissions from earlier print runs, and the unauthorized Ultimate Guide from Versus Books, which got the company sued by Square for using way too much of the company's copyrighted artwork and materials between the covers.

Who knows? If response to my current guide works is positive enough, we might see some of those added to the archives...

*huggles*
Areala

[JonnyCGood]

1. At 187 pages and 97MB, it could easily afford a higher file size.

2. It doesn't include the separate fold-out maps, which are admittedly hard to scan. The older scan for the book does in fact include them.

https://imgur.com/a/ZlcuLkl

Edited June 2, 2022 by JonnyCGood

[Areala]

4 hours ago, JonnyCGood said:

1. At 187 pages and 97MB, it could easily afford a higher file size.

2. It doesn't include the separate fold-out maps, which are admittedly hard to scan. The older scan for the book does in fact include them.

https://imgur.com/a/ZlcuLkl

1. It could, but this would have exponentially increased the time it took me to make it. My scanner is an old flatbed and, at 300dpi, takes a hair over two minutes to scan one side of an 8.5x11 page in colour. At 600dpi, it's five minutes per side; doing the math reveals it would take me 15.5 hours (not including the extra time it takes to manually flip the page and place a new one between scans) to produce a 600dpi version, or just under six hours to do it at 300dpi, and I simply haven't the time for that. If someone else wants to de-bind and scan their own copy at a higher resolution, I'll be delighted to see my inferior version replaced. If not, it's a perfectly readable placeholder.

2. There are no separate fold-out maps in the file because there are no separate fold-out maps which come with this book. I've owned this guide since its release, handled multiple copies of it over the years, and can assure you it never had any fold-outs. The images you linked to are the maps which came bundled with the game itself, not from a third-party source. If someone included them in a different scan somewhere else, then props to them, but they didn't come from Peter Olafson's book, which is why they aren't in this file.

*huggles*
Areala

[Leathco]

I only had the Nintendo guide as a kid and had no clue this existed.  I was late to the party on Final Fantasy 3.  I was a huge fan of the original on the NES, than out of no where someone from school traded me the two SNES games for some others I had (around this time the PS1 and N64 were in their early days). 

[cleansed]

I worked for squaresoft at the time FF6 was released.  I had been very blessed to be hired on as a game play counselor after getting to beta test secret of mana, mystic quest, breath of fire, and final fantasy 3.  Peter actually came out to our facilities in Redmond and it was mine and another GPCs responsibility to take him around town and what not.  He mined our brains for FF3 related stuff, made some phone calls to us later on, and then that was it.  I didn't know I was credited in the guide until later.  I am also credited in secret of mana as a beta tester.  My name is Joshua Gabbard.

[kitsunebi]

The above post is necro as all get out, but definitely too interesting to deny approval.  So enjoy the three-years-old bump to the top of the new release list, @Areala!

Seriously, this isn't directed at the above post or anyone else specifically, but just in general - this is why I wish people who comment on downloads did so on the issue's download page, not the new release post.  Because after a week or so, the new release post gets bumped off the front page and is (usually) forgotten about forever.  But people will continuously access the download page, since that's where they go to actually download the file, so having comments posted there means that more people will actually see them months and years later.

Edited October 9 by kitsunebi

[ml0045]

Quote

I worked for squaresoft at the time FF6 was released.  I had been very blessed to be hired on as a game play counselor after getting to beta test secret of mana, mystic quest, breath of fire, and final fantasy 3.  Peter actually came out to our facilities in Redmond and it was mine and another GPCs responsibility to take him around town and what not.  He mined our brains for FF3 related stuff, made some phone calls to us later on, and then that was it.  I didn't know I was credited in the guide until later.  I am also credited in secret of mana as a beta tester.  My name is Joshua Gabbard.

Hey, that's pretty cool. Feel free to tell us more. Make a post, post here,etc. Us retro fans would love it.

Edited October 9 by ml0045