Apr 042018
Though it’s frequently called the worst Final Fantasy game of all time, or at least one of the weakest, we’re here to say THAT AIN’T SO! Not only is the game itself perfectly decent, the soundtrack is every bit as incredible as the proper numbered entries. Get ready for some heavy shreddin’ guitar!
00:00 – Title Screen
05:08 – World Map
05:53 – Beautiful Forest
08:14 – Dungeon of Ice
12:26 – Battle 1
14:38 – Battle 2
20:39 – City of Fire
22:29 – Lava Dome
24:09 – Last Castle
31:41 – Battle 3
Awesome episode as always! Its a pity Mystic Quest didn’t take off; I think it’s a terrible introduction to Final Fantasy, but it could have made for an awesome franchise in its own right if Square made a sequel with some improvements.
Patrick, I just checked out VGDrum and love the cover for Chessmaster. Have you tried doing the final stage from Super Star Soldier on the TG16? It sounds like mostly drum rolls and double bass pedals (I know nothing of drum terminology), but I think it would make for a great cover with actual drums.
Hi Steve, thanks for listening. Glad you liked Chessmaster, haha.
I’m not familiar with Super Star Soldier but I’m listening to this one right now and I am digging it! Very cool, Iron Maiden-esque triplet galloping rhythm. I’ve kinda resigned from continuing solo covers and at this point would very much prefer to do covers / arrangements in a band setting, so I hope the opportunity to do requests like this track comes up! 🙂
A missed opportunity for me to mention while we were recording, but I have to hand it to my friend Amanda’s band Descendants of Erdrick for doing some Mystic Quest battle cover back in the day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4NGcvxYK6w
Amanda’s recently become a guitarist for Andrew W.K., and she’s snuck some Mystic Quest battle riffs into her guitar solos during shows this past year 😉
I waited a long time for the first Final Fantasy to come out, having only the one page preview of it in Nintendo Power to entice me. I loved it, and played through it when it came out, and played 2 when it came out, though I didn’t really like it as much. I remember renting Mystic Quest and playing through it at my grandparents’ house in Des Moines, and I liked it, it never seemed like a throwaway Final Fantasy to me. I thought there were other RPGs that felt more disposable, like Secret of Evermore, and a number of other action RPGs on the Super Nintendo, but Mystic Quest didn’t seem so bad, and I think the monsters and weapons were standard FF staples.
Des Moines! Damn
SMB 3 and Rocket Knight on Genesis are also linked to that house in my brain. Quite a span of genres and consoles. Playing on a 13 inch TV that certainly didn’t help the sound quality.
FFMQ was a great game! I was a Sega kid initially.. so my RPG’s were limited to Shining Force & Phantasy Star. But my friend had a SNES and Mystic Quest. I remember many rain-soaked bike rides down to his house just so we could play it. This was definitely a gateway game for me.. finally got my “no u don’t need that mom” to buy me a SNES where many upon many of hours were then spent playing FFMQ, FFIV and even Breath of Fire. Luv me some JRPGs!
Another great ep! This was one of those rental games for me. Only 5 days with it and I wasn’t enthusiastic enough to buy. Good tunes though.
Haven’t played Mystic Quest, but the tile-based world map you mentioned sounds a lot like the format Square would use on Mario RPG a few years later? I feel like it’s not such a compromise to do things this way…As great as (most of) the early console Final Fantasy games are, their world maps tend to feature a ton of empty, unused space that might’ve benefited from a bit more distilling…
In any case, the soundtrack bops. Thanks for keeping these coming, fellas.
Man, it’s always a THRILL when I wake up in the morning and my podcast app says there’s a new vgmpire.
This episode was shorter than I’d like, and about a game I’m not crazy about, but I’ll take what I can get! I beat Mystic Quest with a friend a LONG time ago back when it came out. Having already played FF4 I didn’t think much of Mystic Quest. Some of this music is pretty good, I guess, but I just have it associated with a fairly shallow game.
Keep ’em coming, Brett!!
People can say what they want about the game play. But, the music in this game is my favorite of all FF games.
good tunes, and i’m pretty sure lil b once again rapped over one of the tracks from this game, in which he compares himself to lex luger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NR63_cJGzY