2011-03-08:



A single white mage beating Chaos in Final Fantasy 1. 

The story begins years ago in the 8-bit theater comic when Black Mage, reading the FF strategy guide in a sort of forth wall breaking moment, makes the offhand comment "Four white mages? It'll never work." Of course, such a thing is not IN the strategy guide, but "bare with me" as black mage would say. This raised the question, could the game be completed after choosing the four weakest characters in the game?

Fast forward to yesterday when I was reading the "Nintendo Project: An 8-bit Psychochronography" which just featured Ferrari Grand Prix Challenge and Final Fantasy, which pictured the infamous four white mage party, and again stirred my curiosity like so much cream into that horrible coffee stuff you people swill down in rather astonishing quantities (no offense). So naturally I turned to the internets to get the answer. 

And the basic progression went something like this:

Yes, with some work and a little luck, the game can be beaten by four white wizards.

But really, that's too easy. 

Let's see if the game can be beaten by four white mages.

Check. And honestly, if you can't, I mean what's wrong with you?

Ok Mr. Smarty Pants, let's see you beat the game with four white wizards who can only cast the various "cure" and "harm" spells, and no others.

And yes, even this was accomplished! Now the gauntlet really gets tossed down.

Fine, beat the entire game from beginning to end with ONLY one white mage.

AND IT WAS DONE.

Made possible of course by the Mesamune, the ultimate sword in the world any class can use that's found in the final dungeon, right before the final boss. But that's beside the point. 

A single healer at level 50 beating the entire game, by herself? That's just crazy talk, but it has been done. How? Well, the first several rounds the white mage spent just soaking up damage and using items to up defense and evade. Then more rounds casting cure to get her HP back. (I use the pronoun "her" in this case as the 8-bit theater white mage was indeed a female, rather then a male as is implied by the original game) After Chaos casts cure4 in first time, she goes to town with an all out offensive, narrowly beating Chaos with about 150HP left. 

Astonishing. Just goes to prove… that FF1 can be beaten by a single white mage. And if the Scatman can do it, so can you.

I suppose there's some kind of life lesson in there someplace but I can't figure out what it is.

Very sunny again today, thank you Goddess. Another day of Solar Engine bliss, which is working out quite well in my opinion. 

Did three jobs total today, the first of course Rebath as I anticipated last night. The cute girl that works there is due in May, meaning that's when her problems will truly begin. I cleaned out Jim's computer, well, ran some scans and updated stuff, it seemed fine. Changed the excel spreadsheet a little, and then worked on Dan's. Didn't find anything there but he said it sometimes BSOD when he's on the internet and it's really slow. Well you are using a cell G3 USB dongle there, it's not going to be RR. As for the BSOD, I think it's that dongle too, I didn't see any crashes, and I've brought it home and it's been fine too. 

Then I went to see Bert, who did need one of his employee's machines cleaned. It had the same fake anti-virus I saw a few days ago. Luckily I was more prepared this time, having saved the 64bit processes explorer version the 32bit version seems to generate when you run it on a 64bit system. Ain't windows grand? 

But how did she get the trail version of Avast! pro? That was odd. 

Another odd thing, one website they go to, some tax form site or something, was insisting I load Adobe Reader. Some javascript check, or some crap. So I loaded the stupid thing it wanted and then it went ahead and used the foxit reader plugin anyway to view the PDF content. Thanks guys, that's just great.

Then to see Lou, who wanted to hook up the machine he made t-shirts with. Don't ask me why. He needed a VGA cable, a new power adapter (I happened to have an extra) for his router and an ethernet cable. Mind you, he had all of these things before he closed the shop, where did they go? And of course he wants his Win98 box and the XP machine to print to the printer so he needs a USB switch box. Is it really worth it?

Then home! Testing the laptop, ate dinner, some phone calls today apart from Bert. So I have one for tomorrow and one for thursday. Debbie wants sometime Monday, but I'll have to call her after my car inspection is done. 

That's about all that happened that's exciting today. 

Now I must go see a mouse about an aquarium. Then I must write down the steps I will be following in combat from now on. I always and I mean always forget to tap ley lines. And there were like a billion of them where we where, because we were right under the freaking Tree of Mana (world tree, whatever you want to call it) ARG! But noooooo, the person with the spirit manipulation of 10 always forgets, and uses her own energy like a freaking tool instead of all that free energy floating around. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

And then we take over the world!